LIFE AND LETTERS
Saturday afternoons and Sundays gave the pause in Eve’s week of
scribbling and reading, and drawing at desk and table. She was
infinitely glad of the leisure when it came, only to discover that it
often brought a retrospective sadness that could not be conjured away.
Sometimes she went to a matinée or a concert on Saturday afternoon,
alternating these breaks with afternoons of hard work. For the Fernhill
days, with their subsequent pain and restlessness had left her with a
definite ambition. She regarded her present life as a means to an end.
She did not intend to be always a scribbler of extracts and a copier of
old woodcuts, but had visions of her own art spreading its wings and
lifting her out of the crowd. She tried to paint on Sundays, struggling
with the atmosphere of Bosnia Road, and attempting to make use of the
north light in her back bedroom, while she enlarged and elaborated some
of the rough sketches in her sketch book. Her surroundings were trite
and dreary enough, but youth and ardour are marvellous torch-bearers,
and many a fine thing has been conceived and carried through in a London
lodging-house. She had plans for hiring a little studio somewhere, or
even of persuading Mrs. Buss, her landlady, to let her have a makeshift
shed put up in the useless patch of back garden.
When she looked back on the Fernhill days, they seemed to her very
strange and wonderful, covered with a bloom of mystery, touched with
miraculous sunlight. She hoped that they would help her to do big work.
The memories were in her blood, she was the richer for them, even though
she had suffered and still suffered. Now that she was in London the
summer seemed more beautiful than it had been, nor did she remind
herself that it had happened to be one of those rare fine summers that
appear occasionally just to make the average summer seem more paltry.
When she had received a cheque for some eighty pounds, representing the
sum her furniture had brought her after the payment of all expenses, she
had written to Canterton and returned him the hundred pounds he had paid
her, pleading that it irked her memories of their comradeship. She had
given Kate Duveen’s address, after asking her friend’s consent, and in
her letter she had written cheerfully and bravely, desiring Canterton to
remember their days together, but not to attempt to see her.
“You will be kind, and not come into this new life of mine. I am
not ashamed to say that I have suffered, but that I have nothing
to regret. Since I am alone, it is best that I should be alone.
You will understand. When the pain has died down, one does not
want old wounds reopened.
“I think daily of Lynette. Kiss her for me. Some day it may be
possible for me to see her again.”
Three weeks passed before Kate Duveen handed Eve a letter as they
crossed Russell Square in the direction of Tottenham Court Road. It was
a raw, misty morning, and the plane trees, with their black boles and
boughs, looked sombre and melancholy.
“This came for you.”
She saw the colour rise in Eve’s face, and the light that kindled deep
down in her eyes.
“Not cured yet!”
“Have I asked to be cured?”
Eve read Canterton’s letter at her desk at Miss Champion’s. It was a
longish letter, and as she read it she seemed to hear him talking in the
fir woods below Orchards Corner.
“DEAR EVE,—I write to you as a man who has been humbled, and
who has had to bear the bitterness of not being able to make
amends.
“I came to see things with your eyes, quite suddenly, the very
morning that you went away. I took Lynette with me to Orchards
Corner, to show her as a symbol of my surrender. But you had
gone.
“I was humbled. And the silence that shut me in humbled me still
more.
“I did not try to discover things, though that might have been
easy.
“As to your leaving Fernhill so suddenly, I managed to smother
all comment upon that.
“You had been offered, unexpectedly, a very good post in London,
and your mother’s death had made you feel restless at Orchards
Corner. That was what I said.
“Lynette talks of you very often. It is, ‘When will Miss Eve
come down to see us?’ ‘Won’t she spend her holidays here?’
‘Won’t you take me to London, daddy, to see Miss Eve?’
“As for this money that you have returned to me, I have put it
aside and added a sum to it for a certain purpose that has taken
my fancy. I let you return it to me, because I have some
understanding of your pride.
“I am glad, deeply glad, that good luck has come to you. If I
can serve you at any time and in any way, you can count on me to
the last breath.
“I am a different man, in some respects, from the man I was
three months ago. Try to realise that. Try to realise what it
suggests.
“If you realise it, will you let me see you now and again, just
as a comrade and a friend?
“Say yes or no.
“JAMES CANTERTON.”
Eve was bemused all day, her eyes looking through her work into infinite
distances. She avoided Kate Duveen, whose unsentimental directness would
have hurt her, lunched by herself, and walked home alone to Bosnia Road.
She sat staring at the fire most of the evening before she wrote to
Canterton.
“Your letter has made me both sad and happy, Jim. Don’t feel
humbled on my account. The humiliation should be mine, because
neither the world nor I could match your magnanimity.
“Sometimes my heart is very hungry for sight of Lynette.
“Yes, I am working hard. It is better that I should say ‘No.’
“EVE.”
Four days passed before Kate handed her another letter.
“Perhaps you are right, and I am wrong. If it is your wish that
I should not see you, I bow to it with all reverence.
“Do not think that I do not understand.
“Some day, perhaps, you will come to see Lynette. Or I could
bring her up to town and leave her at your friend’s for you to
find her. I promise to lay no ambuscades. When you have gone I
can call for her again.
“I should love her better because she had been near you.”
Kate Duveen was hard at work one evening, struggling, with the help of a
dictionary, through a tough book on German philosophy, when the maid
knocked at her door.
“What is it, Polly?”
The girl’s name was Ermentrude, but Kate persisted in calling her Polly.
“There’s a gentleman downstairs, miss. ’E’s sent up ’is card. ’E
wondered whether you’d see ’im.”
Kate glanced at the card and read, “James Canterton.”
She hesitated a moment.
“Yes, I will see him. Ask him up.”
Her hard, workaday self had risen as to a challenge. She felt an almost
fierce eagerness to meet this man, to give him battle, and rout him with
her truth-telling and sarcastic tongue. Canterton, as she imagined him,
stood for all the old man-made sexual conveniences, and the social
makeshift that she hated. He was the big, prejudiced male, grudging a
corner of the working world to women, but ready enough to make use of
them when his passions or his sentiments were stirred.
When he came into the room she did not rise from the table, but remained
sitting there with her books before her.
“Miss Duveen?”
“Yes. Will you shut the door and sit down?”
She spoke with a rigid asperity, and he obeyed her, but without any sign
of embarrassment or nervousness. There was just a subtle something that
made her look at him more intently, more interestedly, as though he was
not the sort of man she had expected to see.
“It is Mr. Canterton of Fernhill, is it not?”
“Yes.”
She was merciless enough to sit there in silence, with her rigid,
watchful face, waiting for him to break the frost. Her mood had passed
suddenly beyond mere prejudice. She felt the fighting spirit in her
piqued by a suspicion that she was dealing with no ordinary man.
He sat in one of her arm-chairs, facing her, and meeting her eyes with
perfect candour.
“I am wondering whether I must explain——”
“Your call, and its object?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t think it is necessary. I think I know why you have come.”
“So much the better.”
She caught him up as though he were assuming her to be a possible
accomplice.
“I may as well tell you that you will get nothing out of me. She does
not live here.”
“Perhaps you will tell me what you imagine my object to be.”
“You want Eve Carfax’s address.”
For the first time she saw that she had stung him.
“Then I can assure you you are wrong. I have no intention of asking for
it. It is a point of honour.”
She repeated the words slowly, and in a quiet and ironical voice.
“A point of honour!”
She became conscious of his smile, a smile that began deep down in his
eyes. It angered her a little, because it suggested that his man’s
knowledge was deeper, wiser, and kinder than hers.
“I take it, Miss Duveen, that you are Eve’s very good friend.”
“I hope so.”
“That is exactly why I have come to you. Understand me, Eve is not to
know that I have been here.”
“Thank you. Please dictate what you please.”
“I will. I want you to tell me just how she is—if she is in really
bearable surroundings?”
Kate’s eyes studied him over her books. Here was something more vital
than German philosophy.
“Mr. Canterton, I ought to tell you that I know a little of what has
happened this summer. Not that Eve is a babbler——”
“I am glad that you know.”
“Really. I should not have thought that you would be glad.”
“I am. Will you answer my question?”
“And may I ask what claim you have to be told anything about Eve?”
He answered her quietly, “I have no right at all.”
A smile, very like a glimmer of approval, flickered in her eyes.
“You recognise that. Wasn’t it rather a pity——”
“Miss Duveen, I have not come here to justify anything. I wanted a fine,
working comradeship, and Eve showed me, that for a particular reason, it
was impossible. Till I met her there was nothing on earth so dear to me
as my child, Lynette. When Eve came into my life she shared it with the
child. Is it monstrous or impertinent that I should desire to know
whether she is in the way of being happy?”
Kate saw in him a man different from the common crowd of men, and Eve’s
defence of him recurred to her. His frankness was the frankness of
strength. His bronzed head, with its blue eyes and generous mouth began
to take on a new dignity.
“Mr. Canterton, I am not an admirer of men.”
“You should have studied flowers.”
“Thank you. I will answer your question. Eve is earning a living. It is
not luxury, but it is better than most women workers can boast of. She
works hard. And she has ambitions.”
He answered at once.
“I am glad of that. Ambition—the drive of life, is everything. You have
given me good news.”
Kate Duveen sat in thought a moment, staring at the pages of German
philosophy.
“Mr. Canterton, I’m interested. I am going to be intrusive. Is it
possible for a man to be impersonal?”
“Yes, and no. It depends upon the plane to which one has climbed.”
“You could be impersonally kind to Eve.”
“I think that I told you that I am very fond of my youngster, Lynette.
That is personal and yet impersonal. It is not of the flesh.”
She nodded her head, and he rose.
“I will ask you to promise me two things.”
“What are they?”
“That if Eve should wish to see Lynette, I may leave the child here, and
call for her again after Eve has gone?”
Kate considered the point.
“Yes, that’s sensible enough. I can see no harm in it. And the other
thing?”
“That if Eve should be in trouble at any time, you will promise to let
me know?”
She looked at him sharply.
“Wait! It flashed across your mind that I am waiting for my opportunity?
You are descending to the level of the ordinary man whom you despise. I
asked this, because I should want to help her without her knowing.”
Kate Duveen stood up.
“You scored a hit there. Yes, I’ll promise that. Of course, Eve will
never know you have been here.”
“I rely on you there. Men are apt to forget that women have pride.”
She held out a hand to him.
“There’s my pledge. I can assure you that I had some bitter things under
my tongue when you came in. I have not said them.”
“They could not have hurt more than some of my own thoughts have hurt
me. That’s the mistake people make. The whip does not wound so much as
compassion.”
“Yes, that’s true. A blow puts our egotism in a temper. I’ll remember
that!”
“I am glad that you are Eve’s friend.”
Kate Duveen stood looking down into the fire after Canterton had gone.
“One must not indulge in absolute generalities,” she thought. “Men can
be big—sometimes. Now for this stodgy old German.”
* * * * *