Unconsidered Factor

I

I WAS very young in those days, for it still seemed to me that the opinion of one’s fellows mattered, quite regardless of the worth of the fellows. In that I was possibly right; when one has lost the herd instinct, one has also lost an essential and tragic aspect of truth. Even the biologists declare that life is so inseparable from its surroundings that any definition of it must take them into account. Where, for example, does the amoeba end and the water begin? How much of the mite is cheese and how much of the cheese is mite? At what point does a woman cease to be an individual and become an obedient cell feeding on its social background? You may say — and I should agree with you — that three human beings in this reminiscence of mine were suffering over an artificial convention that should not have mattered to any of them. But no less artificial was all the ado about Hero’s virginity or Desdemona’s handkerchief.

I was then living in a Balkan capital. Its women were exquisite, and its morals those of ceremonious monkeys. It called itself a little Paris, and it was indeed a nineteenth-century Paris, removed in time as well as space from its prototype. The salons, the intrigues, the gallant officers, the bankers sweating to get into society, the divorcées tumbling out of it, reminded me of the brilliant circle so dispassionately stamped into his pages by de Maupassant.

You could do what you liked so long as you were discreet; if you were not, the other monkeys threw sticks at you with the fury and accuracy of terror — terror lest the ceremonies by which they persuaded themselves that they were civilized should be shown up as an empty game. The resident AngloSaxons played the game — they were mostly plain business men trying to earn a living, at pains to keep on good terms with people of influence — and the Americans were rather more skillful at it than the English. They had better manners and so adapted themselves more easily. And many of them were used from birth to the restrictions of a small town.

The most respectable of my friends was Harcourt, an American career diplomat. He had been educated at a fabulously expensive preparatory school which taught him to be more English than the English and to speak French with the accent of the Faubourg St. Germain. After that it was easy for him to be more European than a European. He would have put on a proletarian heartiness in Moscow or a heavy Swedish courtesy in Stockholm just as naturally as he adjusted his soul to the conventions of a third-class royal court. But the bedrock upon which he built his preposterous palaces was sound.

Another of my intimates was Sandham, the English agent of a group of international financiers. He had the provincialism of his native Manchester, but also the true kindliness. He never considered man or woman without sympathy, but, like the rest of us, he conformed. He had to be above suspicion, for he handled government funds and investigated, with a terrible judicial calm, those who mishandled them.

We were three single men in that Byzantine city. Each of us lived in his own rooms, ate at one or other of the two good restaurants, visited the same houses. We were continually meeting, and as no one of us in any way offended the others we ended by often arranging to meet.

The day after Sir Humphrey Lory’s death we lunched together automatically, and were very grateful for each other’s society.

We felt the loss of him, for he had been like a fresh wind blowing through that rotten city — little he had cared what was thought of him or what was said. The end of such a vivid character left us face to face with our own unrealities; we were strained and nervous.

I had been present at his death. We were driving out to the mountains for the week-end. The autumn dust hung an impenetrable cloud of gold over the road after every pair of passing wheels. In the midst of such a cloud we met another car head on. Lory and the chauffeur were killed. I fell on a ploughed field beside the road.

II

I must have taken little part in the desultory conversation during lunch, for I remember the shock of becoming aware that Harcourt was speaking to me. His voice and Sandham’s had been shut out from my consciousness as one shuts out voices from the next table.

‘You must stop her going,’ he had said.

‘Who? Where?’ I asked.

‘Varya Costaki.’

‘What do you know about her?’

‘Nothing,’ Harcourt replied diplomatically. ‘But I suspect. And what I suspect everyone will be sure of if she goes to Sir Humphrey’s funeral. She must n’t.’

‘I shan’t stop her,’ I answered angrily.

I had been thinking of Varya. I had not yet seen her; they had kept me in hospital for the night. She was as truly a widow as Lory’s wife in England, and her sorrow would be the more immediate and desperate. She had a right to a last glimpse of him; she could not be denied that silent expression of her misery.

‘But surely you understand that she must not be seen?’

‘Why not? She loved him. She will want, to go. I’m sick of all this hypocrisy. I’m not going to hurt the woman just, to please your rotten conventions.’

Sandham joined in quietly: —

‘I’ve never heard of Varya Costaki before, and of course I don’t know what she was to Lory. May I take what Harcourt suspects as true?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But remember no one knows but us three.’

‘There’s a lot of things that no one knows but us three,’ said Harcourt dryly.

He was right to reprove me. There was no need to urge discretion on either of those two.

‘And this affair of Lory’s must remain one of them,’ Sandham said gently. ‘Do you realize what sort of funeral this will be, old man? A small chapel, the embassies, a few official representatives, the personal friends. Everybody will know everybody else. Everybody will notice a stranger — and if the stranger is a woman ? ’

‘What can they say?’ I objected. ‘Simply what they would have said if they had seen Varya and Lory dining together — another of his flames!’

‘Another of his flames!’ exclaimed Harcourt, exasperated by my hedging. ‘See here! I knew the Costaki once. Are you telling me that anyone who sees that woman at the service, all race and fineness and sorrow, would say it was just another of his flames?’

III

She was indeed an aristocrat — could trace her descent through the Comneni to the Cæsars of the West, I believe — and had moved in the inner circle of the court until a divorce was trumped up against her by an unchivalrous husband seeking fresh amusement. Since then she had been declassée — really without a social class. There were several sets, mildly intellectual, in which she would have been received and judged on her merits, but she was not at ease with such friends; she belonged fiercely to the ruling class. She was not clever. She was not unconventional. Varya accepted it as right and natural that she should be cut by her former companions, but she wanted no others. She had never attempted to remake her life, and had dug herself in between the lines, fearing as an enemy the freedom she might have had and dependent upon the past.

She was only twenty-five, and had the irresponsible emotions of a girl, although she clung to her class tradit ions. Most women cannot be really unconventional until they are over thirty. They rebel, yes! But you cannot rebel against gods in whom you do not believe.

Varya was still in the rebellious stage. A younger man — I myself, for example — might have loved her for that and then been puzzled by her maturity; but she was in every way a woman fitted for such a splendid soul as Lory. The traditional side of her steadied, her wilder side attracted him.

They saw each other daily for a whole year before Lory’s death, but their relationship was marvelously discreet. Lory only visited his own flat when he expected callers; at other times his trusted English valet made detailed and ingenious excuses for his absence. They danced and dined at out-ofthe-way places and were occasionally noticed together, but never often enough to start serious scandal. She was divorced and free. Sir Humphrey was believed to enjoy the society of women — any women. That was all that was said. It was never guessed that she was the only woman. I alone was in the secret. I had dined with them many times at Varya’s house and had rejoiced, though jealously, to see their perfect companionship — his tenderness and humor, her open adoration. They often forgot it was not marriage.

‘What does it matter if they do suspect he was her lover?’ I answered Harcourt. ‘I would rather they should suspect than that she should be hurt.’

Sandham was merciless to this.

‘A minute ago you were anxious that no one should know he was her lover,’ he said. ‘What you mean is that you would rather they should suspect than that you should have to hurt her.’

‘Put it that way if you like. But I think Lory would have felt the same.’

I tried to explain Varya to them — how her pride made a martyr of her. With the unreasoning fatalism of a woman who believes in duties, she went to all the marriages and christenings of her family. Her former circle ignored her, but did not exclude her; that was enough to allow her the illusion she needed. They did not say a word to make her feel she was an outcast. It would have burned her out — that delicate flame of a woman.

‘It’s the hell of a business,’ said Harcourt sympathetically. ‘ But somebody has to be a brute. And I don’t know her well enough and Sandham does n’t know her at all.’

I must have weakened, for I remember Sandham driving the point home. They were two to one, and both of them ten years older than I.

‘The responsibility is on you,’ he said. ‘You can’t avoid it. Lory’s honor is in your keeping. You can guard it or you can refuse to hurt a woman,’

‘That’s melodrama, Sandham! It’s sheer nonsense to say that I give away Lory’s honor because I don’t stop Varya from going to the funeral.’

‘I guess it is n’t nonsense,’ said Harcourt slowly, seeing that Sandham had got hold of an undeniable fact but put it in the wrong way. ‘We know, we three, how far the local gossip carries. Listen! Sir Humphrey had more enemies than you — but if you were married, if you had a mistress here, if it became known, do you think the news would n’t get back home?’

‘Within a month,’ I admitted.

‘Then, my God!’ Harcourt exclaimed. ‘Don’t you see your responsibility? Sir Humphrey Lory was famous — the most famous medical administrator of our time! Every paper in England will run his obituary. Even our legation is flooded out with cables. And he was married — happily married, his biographer will say.’

‘But he loved Varya too,’ I replied miserably.

‘What has that got to do with it?’

‘I see what he means,’ said Sandham — though ruthless in the pursuit of an object, he was quicker than Harcourt to appreciate new’ and intangible values. ‘Then I think we ought to consider what Lory would have wished.’

How should I know? My instinct was that Lory would have ridiculed the question with his broad ironical doctor’s smile, but I could not then see the reason why. He was the only great man I had ever met and more than double my age.

I ran into him for the first time in a cabaret. He was enjoying himself valiantly and horrifying the management. He would have none of the ladies of the house and insisted upon dancing a reel with the fat and ragged old gypsy who went from table to table selling flowers. We became companions in amusement, and that casual relationship changed little by little into something almost as precious as the bond between father and son.

He was as thorough in work as in the art of amusing himself. He had been invited out to reorganize the Red Cross, and by sheer exuberance of character had driven a love of order and cleanliness into a medical service demoralized by war and typhus. He was hated as passionately as he was loved, but his sturdy bearing and his bluff enjoyment of every circle of society and every form of entertainment compelled respect. Harcourt and Sandham had admired the doctor from a safer distance; he was too dangerous an influence in a country where ordinary mortals had to stage their private life as if they were day and night before an audience — an uncharitable audience.

It was I who introduced him to Varya Costaki. I was very proud of her, but she had never given me much of a chance to make a fool of myself. Lory called on her the next day, and she was fascinated by him. Here was a man old enough for her to have confidence in him, but with the spiritual and physical force of youth. And he laughed at her! Her own people took her seriously, made a criminal of her; she took herself seriously. Yet Lory laughed at her and called her ‘child.’ He was from another world and she adored him. She was ready to give him her love without any thought of the future. When he asked it of her, telling me first that he was going to do so, she did.

‘There can be no doubt what Sir Humphrey would have wished,’ Harcourt insisted. ‘He would n’t have wanted the Costaki to go to the chapel in view of what her presence there would imply.’

‘Do you believe he would have wished her to go?’ Sandham asked me. ‘Think about it, and answer for him.’

I did think about it, but all I could see was Lory smiling.

‘I can’t be sure,’ I said.

‘Do you believe then that he would prefer his reputation?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘ He probably would n’t have known, either,’ said Sandham. ‘So it’s up to us to act for him. Harcourt and I say you must protect him. Will you?’

‘You realize what you are asking of me?’

Sandham smiled at me. He was authoritative and very gentle.

‘ We do. You have to say a hard and cruel thing to a woman. Lory would hesitate. You hesitate. But Harcourt and I stand apart; we are judges. A cowardly part to play — but we can’t help it. We say you must tell her. Will you?’

‘Yes, if I can.’

IV

I got up and left them while their influence was still strong on me. The stream of passers-by moved slowly along the boulevard and I fell in with their pace. For once I was not impatient with the loiterers. I did not wish to reach Varya’s house. I remember looking for minutes at a little iron hatch on the pavement, speculating aimlessly about the warren of tubes that carry water and gas and electricity under our solidly planted feet. Anything — anything rather than face the coming interview with Varya!

I saw her in my reluctant imagination more vividly than I had ever analyzed her in life — a tall girl, deepbreasted and narrow-hipped, who might have danced restrained!y upon a Greek vase; her high forehead with the mass of black hair sweeping away into a loose coil at the back of her neck; her lips that seemed thinner than they were because the mouth was wide and intensely sensitive. She would look at me blankly, seeking comfort, not phrases and prohibitions; and then the meaning of my words would sink into her and for the first time in her life she would realize that she was outside. She would be longing for death herself, and I could help her with the commonest words of comfort; but actually I had to tell her — she would understand it so — that life had nothing to offer her, that she must not even be seen at the burial of her lover. I had the brutal idea of telling her the wrong hour for the service; but I could not endure the thought of her entering the empty chapel, sitting, wondering if she were too early or too late and never suspecting I had lied to her.

Before I turned into her street I walked again and again past the corner, torturing myself to find a formula — some little set of words that would say my message for me without adding to her grief. I could not find it. When I rang the bell I was still as helpless as when I left the restaurant.

I had so gladly and so often entered that house. It had been a refuge. The love of Lory and Varya had made for me as well as for them a sanctuary from the outside world. I yielded instantly to its influence. I knew that I could say no word of what I had come to say.

I remember that I was afraid when Varya came forward to greet me. She seemed no girl despairing, but a woman in the strange peace of utter sorrow. She took my hand and led me to her room as if I had been a child, a child who brought bad news. She said, ‘Tell me how it happened.’

I told her. There was very little to tell.

‘O lover, lover!’ she murmured. ‘It was a clean death for you.’

There was relief as well as misery in her voice. I must have shown in some way that I noticed it.

‘I could n’t endure ... I feared there might have been a moment when he needed me,’ she explained.

‘No. It was instantaneous.’

‘He would have wished it so. He was n’t afraid of death. Nor of life.’

Then she said very slowly: ‘I did n’t think I could bear this. But I can. He taught me to live, dear.’

‘I know.’

‘I want him. I want him!’ she cried. ‘I have n’t felt this year pass. I did n’t know I had learned anything except to love. Oh, I am hard . . . hard!’

She was silent for a while. She did not sob. She did not move head or body. But the tears ran down her face unceasingly.

‘When is the funeral?’

I answered her.

‘Will you take these flowers for me? Put them with your own.’

‘You are not going?’ I asked.

‘No. His life belonged to me, not his death. What have I to do with all you people who see him to his grave?’

Lory would indeed have smiled if he had known that I was unable to tell that to Sandham and Harcourt by myself.