It was the day of the private view of the Academy; all morning and
afternoon a continuous stream of public persons had been flowing in
and out of the gates into Piccadilly and the mysterious folk who tell
the press who was there, and how they were dressed, and to whom they
were seen talking, must have had a busy day of it, for everybody was
very nicely dressed, and was talking rather more excitedly than usual
to everybody else. In fact there was hubbub of a quite exceptional
kind, connected, for once in a way, with the objects which, nominally,
brought these crowds together. The crowd in fact was not so much
excited with itself (a habit universal in crowds) as with something
else. Indeed the sight of Akroyd, who had just been knighted, talking
to Tranby (who just hadn't) roused far less attention than usual, and
all sorts of people whom he was accustomed to converse with on the
day of the private view hurried by him as he stood in an advantageous
position in front of an extremely royal canvas at the end of the third
room, catalogue in hand, scrutinizing not him, but the numbers affixed
to the pictures. For a little while he was inclined to consider that a
tinge of jealousy, perhaps, or of natural diffidence, more probably,
prompted these inexplicable slights, but before long he became aware
that there was something in the air besides himself. Opportunely
enough, Craddock made his appearance at the moment, and Sir James
annexed him.
"Something up: something up, is there, Craddock?" he asked. "Yes: many
thanks, my lady is very much pleased about it. But surely, there is an
unusual animation--how de do?--an unusual animation about us all this
morning. Is it a picture, or a potentate, or a ballerina? Ah, there is
young Armstrong. Armstrong, I hope you will come to the hundredth night
this evening. I shall say something about you at the call. No doubt
your friends in front will demand you also."
Frank looked Craddock full in the face for a moment, and decided to
recognize him.
"Hullo, Craddock," he said. "What'll you give me for my portrait, or
don't you do business in these sacred halls? No, I'm afraid no amount
of demand will produce me this evening, Akroyd. Goodbye: I'm going to
stand by my portrait again: it's the biggest lark out. Charles is up on
top, isn't he, Craddock?"
Charles certainly was up on top, for it was he, and he alone, who was
causing all this crowd to forget itself, in its excitement about him
and his work. He had risen, this new amazing star, on the artistic
horizon, and all eyes were turned towards it. In vain, for the moment
anyhow, had Mr. Hoskyns conceived and executed his last masterpiece
"Angelic Songs are Welling," in which a glory of evening sunlight fell
through a stained glass window onto the profiled head of a girl with
her mouth open, sitting at an organ, while four stupefied persons gazed
heavily at her, in a room consisting of marble and polished woodwork
and mother of pearl. In vain were acres of heather and Highland cattle
interspersed with birch trees and coffee-brown burns; in vain did the
whole gamut of other portraits, from staid railway directors in frock
coats, and maps spread on the table by them, down to frisky blue and
white youngest daughters of Somebody Esquire, frown or smile or frolic
on the walls. There were just three focusses of interest, one in the
second room, one here among the masterpieces of the masters, a third in
the room just beyond. Here was the portrait of "The Artist's Mother,"
in the room beyond Mrs. Fortescue gallantly maintained her place by the
presentment of herself, and received congratulations; in the second
room, Frank scowled and wrestled with his play. It was a Boom, in fact,
everybody wanted to see Charles' pictures without delay, and having
done so, told everybody else to go and do likewise.
Craddock had made what is known as a good recovery after the painful
operation recorded in the last chapter. He had suffered, it is true,
one relapse, when, on giving Lady Crowborough a choice of three nights
on which to come to dine with him, he had received a third-person note
regretting (without cause assigned) her inability to do so, but it soon
became apparent to him that nobody, not even she, had any intention
of making the facts of his operation known to the world. And with his
recovery there had come to him a certain shame at what he had done.
True, that shame was inextricably mixed with another and less worthy
kinsman, shame at his detection, but it was there, in its own right,
though no doubt detection had been necessary to bring it forth. It had
come, anyhow, cowering and crying into the world.
This morning, more especially, his shame grew and throve (even as his
recovery grew) when he looked on those three superb canvases before
which the whole world was agape. There was little under the sun that he
reverenced, but his reverence was always ready to bow the knee before
genius, and it seemed to him that of all the "low tricks" that his
greed or his selfishness had ever prevailed upon him to accomplish, the
lowest of all was when he let fall those little efficacious words about
Charles. He had mocked and cheated the owner of the gift that compelled
obeisance, the gift to which he, in all his tortuous spinnings, had
never failed in homage. Surrounded as these three stars were now, with
the smooth dark night, so to speak, of mere talent and more or less
misplaced industry, it was easier to judge of their luminous shining,
but he did not seek to excuse himself by any assurance of previous
hesitation or doubt in his verdict of their quality. He had known from
the first, when one summer morning close on a year ago he had stood
by Thorley Weir that a star was rising.... He felt as if he had been
picking Velasquez' pocket.
And yet the temptation at the time had been very acute. Just as there
was no mistaking Charles' genius for any second rate quality, so there
had been no mistake in his telling himself that he had been in love
with Joyce, when he had succeeded, so easily and meanly, for the time,
in removing from his path what undoubtedly stood materially in his way.
He had cleared the path for himself, so he had hoped, but the path,
when cleared, led, so far as he was concerned, nowhere at all, and he
might just as well have left it cumbered to his passage and himself
encumbered of his monstrous meanness. Joyce still stood impenetrably
barred from him, no longer only by the barrier he so rightly had
conjectured to be there, but by the fact of his own detection in its
attempted removal. But he had accepted the second rejection of himself
as final, and since his return from Egypt had forbade himself to dally
with the subject of domestic happiness. Consolation of all sorts
could be brought to play, like a hose, on a burning place; given time
the most awkward wielder of it could not fail to quench the trouble,
and--the house of life had many windows into which the sun shone,
without risk of provoking internal conflagrations. Only, sometimes, his
subtly-decorated and sumptuous flat seemed to him now a little lonely.
There was no longer any thought of a girl's presence abiding there,
turning it into that strange abode called home, and there came there
no longer that eager and divinely-gifted boy, whose growth during this
last year had been a thing to love and wonder at. He might have kept
him: that at any rate had been in his power. Instead, he had grasped at
a little more money, which he did not, except from habit, want, he had
lied a little in the hope of entrapping that wild bird, love, and he
had gained nothing whatever by it all. A certain morality, born perhaps
of nothing higher than experience, had, in consequence, begun to make
itself felt in him.
* * * * *
The crowd surged and thickened about him, and he found himself the
bureau of a myriad of inquirers. All this last winter and spring London
had vaguely heard of this amazing young genius who was going to burst
on the world, and Craddock in this room, and Mrs. Fortescue, looking
nearly as brilliant as her portrait, in the next, were seized on as
fountains of original information. Elsewhere Lady Crowborough, in a
large shady hat trimmed with rosebuds and daisies, could give news
of her own portrait now approaching completion, and Mr. Ward, who
had marked down half a dozen pictures as suitable for his New York
Luxembourg, followed, faint but pursuing, wherever he could get news of
Craddock having passed that way, to tempt him with fresh offers for the
mother portrait. Round that the crowd was thickest, and there, those
who could see it were silent. There were no epithets that seemed to be
of any use in the presence of that noble simplicity and tenderness.
Once in a shrill voice Mr. Ward exclaimed, "Well, he's honoured his
mother anyhow!" but even that, though on the right lines, savoured of
inadequacy, a fault to which she was mostly a stranger. Or, now and
then, a critic would point out the wonderful modelling of the hand, or
the high light on the typewriter, or even shrug a fastidious shoulder,
and wonder whether the quality of the brush-work was such----But for
the greater part, there was not much talking just in front of it.
Somehow it lived: to criticise or appreciate was like making personal
remarks to its face. It took hold of you: you did not want to talk.
* * * * *
Charles had not intended to appear on this day of private view, but
considering how deep and true was the knowledge that his portrait
showed of his mother, it was strange that it had not occurred to
him that it was absolutely certain that she would insist on going
herself and would not dream of considering any escort but his. She
called for him in fact, at his studio about twelve, dressed and eager
with anticipation, and Charles had the sense not to waste time in
expostulation over so pre-ordained a fact, as he now perceived his
visit to be, but accepted the inevitable and put on his best clothes,
while his mother brushed his hat. It was thus about a quarter to one,
when the galleries were most crowded and the ferment over the three
portraits was at its highest, that they entered.
Probably until that moment there were scarce fifty people out of all
the multitude who knew Charles by sight, scarce five who knew his
mother. But even as they went their way up the steps and met the
opposing crowd of out-goers, she was aware of eager unusual glances
directed at her, she heard little whispered conversations beginning
"Why surely"--she knew that people stopped and looked after them as
she passed, and all the exultant pride uprose triumphant, and laughing
in the sheer joy of its happiness, even as when first she knew she had
borne a child. Vague and wild were the conjectures at first, but every
chattering group that passed them, recognising suddenly, confirmed it,
and from conjecture she passed to knowledge. Why did they all stare
at her with her quiet unremarkable face, who always passed about so
private and unobserved, unless something had happened to make her thus
suddenly recognised and stared at? She cared not at all for the little
accesses of shyness and timidity that kept breaking over her, making
her sweet pale face flush like a girl's, for all her conscious self was
drowned and forgotten in her son, in him who in an hour had caused her
face to be famous and familiar. And how she longed that no inkling of
this might reach Charles, so that her triumph might be prolonged and
magnified, how she encouraged him to consult his catalogue, and tell
her who this picture and that was by, fixing his attention by all means
in her power on anything rather than the crowds that more and more
openly stared and whispered about her. Well she knew that if once he
guessed the cause of the whispers and glances, a horror-stricken face
and flying coat-tails would be the last she would see of him. For the
recognition of her she saw, just led to the recognition of him, and
with ears pricked and eager, she could catch the sequels--"That must
be he ... What a handsome boy ... But surely he's so young...." It was
sweeter than honey and the honeycomb.
They had passed in through the sculpture-gallery into the third room
where, as she knew, her own portrait hung, and with infinite craft,
prolonging the time, she had immediately caught sight of something
on the opposite wall, that claimed her instant attention. From one
picture she passed to another, and furtively saw how dense a crowd was
congregated on the other side of the room, and knew what it was that so
absorbed them. And Charles was getting interested now in showing her
what he had seen on that his first historic varnishing day, and was
eager with speech and pointed finger.
"Look at that Sargent," he said, "it makes you hate to look at that
sunshine. How on earth does he do it? Isn't it magic? Just blue and
yellow, same as we've all got in our paint-boxes. But he sees so
splendidly! That's half the battle, seeing----"
This was capital: at this rate her triumph would last all up the long
wall, round the top of the room, and nearly half way down the other.
Alas, it was already nearly over.
Charles looked up and saw the mass of people round the place where
undoubtedly his picture was.
"Let's go and look at you, mother," he said, "as you said you wanted
to see it hanging. I say, what a lot of people there are. There's a
gorgeous thing of Lavery's hanging next it: it was rather bad luck,
that, on me, though it's a miracle getting on to that wall at all. Come
across: we'll get that over, and then can enjoy the rest."
They crossed the room and wedged themselves into the inter-shouldered
crowd. Very slowly indeed those in front of them cleared away, and at
length they stood opposite it. Then as they looked, those round them
recognizing her, and making the infallible guess at Charles' identity,
stood a little back for them, and still a little more back. Charles,
still childlikely unconscious, was intent on his picture's neighbours:
his mother knew exactly what was happening, and despite herself felt a
gathering dimness in her eyes. In all her tale of unselfish years she
had never felt so big with personal pride, into which not one atom of
self entered.
"Well, if you've _finished_ looking at yourself, mother dear," said he
in rather a high voice.
He turned and horror glazed his eyes. It was quite impossible to
mistake what that half-circle of pleasant well-dressed folk were
staring at, not the picture's neighbours, not his picture itself this
moment.
"For heaven's sake, let's get out of this," he said, blushing
furiously. And the knot of people round his picture turned, smiling and
pleased at the boy's modesty, and the mother's superb pride.
Charles in his retreat, with his mother in his wake, ran straight into
Craddock. This was no great embarrassment, for Craddock had been to
the studio not long before: also his mother knew nothing, except that
Charles a month ago had been greatly upset in connection with Craddock.
She might have guessed more, but Charles had told her no word. And at
the moment in his confusion, any known face was a harbour of refuge.
"Hullo, Mr. Craddock," he said, "my mother wanted to come and look at
herself. So I brought her. Here she is. What a jolly show."
Craddock made his answer to Mrs. Lathom.
"Are you proud?" he said. "Are you more than proud, satisfied?"
She shook hands with him.
"I am even that," she said. "And what am I to do with this foolish boy?"
"Lead him about, show him to everybody: he has got to get used to it. I
expected a great deal myself, but I have yet to get used to this."
Charles' eyes went back to the crowd in front of his picture again.
"What has happened?" he asked. "Is it--do you mean it's a huge success,
huge, you know?"
"Walk up and down again with your mother, my dear fellow, and judge."
Charles became wild-eyed again.
"But it's a dream," he said. "It's--oh, Lady Crowborough."
Lady Crowborough was sufficiently moved to recognize Craddock.
"How de do, Mr. Craddock?" she said. "Well, Charles, my dear, you've
gone and done it. There ain't an artist here but what's cursing you.
There never was such a private view, and I've seen somewhere about
eighty of them. Now, I'm going to have my lunch. There's nobody as can
say a sensible word this morning all along of your pictures. And don't
you forget to be at Paddington in good time to-morrow afternoon for
the train down to Thorley. And if you get there before me, lay hold of
an empty carriage and put the windows tight up."
Charles was instantly and completely diverted by this new topic.
"Oh, Mr. Wroughton does expect me?" he asked.
"Yes, he told me to tell you. And if you find you're enjoying yourself
we'll stop over till Tuesday. I hate those Saturday to Monday things,
running away again before you get your boxes unpacked. I daresay
you'll find enough to amuse you till Tuesday. You can bring down your
paint-box if you want something to occupy you, and make a drawing of me
or my maid or Joyce or something."
And with a very broad grin on her face she moved away.
Frank descended next on them.
"Libel-action imminent, Charles," he said, looking firmly at Craddock
(this he found inevitable). "I've been standing in front of my portrait
for an hour, and listening. Two timid little people come up to it and
say 'Good gracious, what a dreadful-looking young man. Who is it? Turn
up a hundred and seventy-five, Jane.' 'Sunrise on the Alps! It can't
be! Youngest daughter of Lady Jellicoe. No, a hundred and seventy-five!
Oh, Mr. Frank Armstrong, is it? Fancy! And we liked "Easter Eggs" so
much.' I'll have damages for that sort of thing. You've spoiled my
public."
"Lord, if I had wished to libel you," said Charles, "I wouldn't have
let you off like that."
"Your mother too," said Frank. "Why, it's the kid seething its mother
in its own vitriol. I haven't seen it yet, I was too occupied.
Libellous fellow! What does she say to it all?"
Mrs. Lathom turned to him.
"She doesn't say much, Mr. Frank," she said. "But--but she's having
rather a happy morning."
"Well, then take me to have a look at you, and I'll take you to have a
look at me. After that, Charles' brass band which I've ordered will be
ready. 'See the conquering,' you know."
Charles lingered with Craddock.
"Now tell me really," he said, "without chaff I mean, like Lady
Crowborough and Frank."
"They have told you really," he said. "If you want it in other words,
say that your price for a full-length is a thousand pounds. That's
practical, isn't it?"
Charles shook his head.
"But I still don't understand," he said.
Then all the boyish spirits surged high, high too surged all his true
artistic ambitions and passions, rising to that splendid point of
humility which must always accompany triumphant achievement and its
recognition. The utter surprise and the shock of this last quarter of
an hour which had unsteadied and bewildered him cleared away: what had
happened began to be real.
"But what gorgeous fun!" he cried. "And how I must work. There's
everything to learn yet."
Craddock wondered whether he would find at Thorley that which should be
the centre and the sun of his wakening. Almost he hoped that he would,
for so radiant a completeness burned envy away, or at the most left
a little negligible dross. Joyce a centre sun, loving and loved, and
her lover this splendid star.... With that inspiring bliss what was
there that this young hand and eager eye might not see and accomplish.
The love of a son for his mother, the comradeship of a friend, the
mere presence of a pretty woman, a brother's well-made limbs in act
to spring, had been sufficient to bring forth the work of just one
astounding year. What when the love-light of man and woman flashed back
and forth between him and the exquisite girl down by the riverside?
Might that not open a new chapter in the history and records of the
beautiful? It did not seem to him an outrageous fantasy to imagine that
the possibility was a real one.
* * * * *
It was seldom that those who were to travel with Lady Crowborough
were privileged to reach the appointed station before her arrival;
for no amount of contrary experience convinced her that trains were
not capable of starting half an hour or so before their appointed
times. Also she liked to get a carriage to herself, and dispose on all
available seats so enormous a quantity of books, parasols, cloaks,
rugs and handbags, that the question whether all these seats were
taken could scarcely be ventured on, so heavily and potently were they
occupied. Consequently on the next afternoon Charles found her already
in possession, with the windows tightly shut, and a perfect bale of
morning and evening papers by her. She had bought in fact a copy of
every paper published that day, as far as she could ascertain, with the
object of utterly overwhelming Philip with all the first notices of the
Academy, in order to impress him as by a demonstration in force, with
Charles' immensity. She had attempted to read some of these herself,
but being unused to artistic jargon, had made very little of them.
Still there could be no doubt as to what they meant to convey.
"That's right, my dear," she said as he appeared, "and jump in quick,
for though there's time yet, you never can tell when they won't slide
you out of the station. Clear a place for yourself, and then we'll both
sit and look out of the window, and they'll take us for a couple on
their honeymoon, and not dream of coming in, if they've any sense of
what's right. And when we've started you can read all about yourself,
and it's likely you'll find a lot you didn't know before. I can't make
head or tail of it all: they talk of keys of colour and tones and
what not, as if you'd been writing a bundle of music. And leit-motif:
what's a leit-motif? They'll say your pictures are nothing but a lot
of accidentals next. Chords and harmonies indeed, as if you'd put a
musical-box in the frames. There's that Craddock got a column and a
half about your keys and what not. But I was so pleased yesterday I had
to pass the time of day with him."
"But what have you bought all these papers for?" asked Charles. "Oh,
yes: here's Craddock."
"Don't you mind him. Why to let Philip see what they all think of you.
But that's my affair, my dear. I'm going to stuff them under his nose
one after the other. You'll see. And there we are off. Now don't expect
me to talk in the train. You just read about yourself, and if you see
me nodding, let me nod. There's half an hour yet before we need be
thinking of putting my things together."
Great heat had come with the opening of May, and spring was riotous
in field and hedgerow, with glory of early blossom and valour of
young leafage. All this last month Charles had been town-tied among
the unchanging bloomlessness of brick and stone and pavement--it had
scarcely seemed to him that winter was overpast, and the time for
buds and birds had come. Already on the lawn by the water-side the
summer-batswing tent had been set up, and across the grass Joyce and
the unbrothered Huz came to meet them, with a smile and a tail of
welcome. A faint smell of eucalyptus had been apparent as they passed
through the house and Lady Crowborough drew an unerring conclusion.
"Well, Joyce, my dear, here we are," she said, "and I won't ask after
your father because I'll bet that he has got a cold. I smelt his stuff
the moment I set foot in the house."
"Yes, darling grannie," said Joyce, "but it's not very bad. He's really
more afraid of having one than--than it. How are you, Mr. Lathom?"
Lady Crowborough's maid was standing a little way behind, looking like
Tweedledum prepared for battle, so encompassed was she by a mass of
miscellaneous objects. Prominent among them was the file of to-day's
papers.
"You'll find out how he is, my dear," said Lady Crowborough, "when
you've dipped into that little lot. He's just a grand piano of keys and
harmonies."
"Ah, I read the notice in the 'Daily Review,'" said Joyce. "I was so
pleased. I long to see your pictures."
"Well, then, you'll have to wait your turn, my dear," said Lady
Crowborough. "We all took our turns like a peep-show. Drat that dog;
he's always licking my hand. Now take me and give me my tea at once,
and then he'll get something else to lick. Are we to see your father?"
"Yes, he's coming down to dinner, if he feels up to it. Shall we have
tea in the tent?"
"Well, it ain't so cold for the country!" said Lady Crowborough, as if
the Arctic region began at the four mile radius.
"It's broiling, Grannie. And do you want quite all those cushions and
wraps? They'll hardly go into the tent."
"Yes, I want them every one. And I want my tea after my journey. Go
back to the house, Charles, my dear, and tell them to bring it out."
She waited till Charles had passed beyond earshot on his errand. "Now,
Joyce," she said, "I don't want to see any fiddle-faddling between
that boy and you, and talking about the moon and the stars and Mr.
Browning's poetry and what not, as if that had anything to do with it."
"Grannie, darling," said Joyce with an agonized look at Tweedledum.
"She don't hear," said Lady Crowborough, "who could hear through that
lot of cushions and veils. And what I say to you, Joyce, I'm going to
say to him."
Joyce grew suddenly grave.
"Oh, indeed, you mustn't do anything of the kind, Grannie," said she.
"Why how could I look him in the face, and have a moment's ease with
him, if I thought you had?"
Lady Crowborough's face smiled all over.
"Very well, then," she said. "I don't want you not to look at the
face. But you take my advice, Joyce. Lord, if I were seventy years
younger I'd take it myself, in less than a jiffy. You make up your
mind you're going to have him and let there be no nonsense about it.
Mercy on us all, girls get red in the face and look away, and think
one's a shocking old woman, when one advises them to do exactly what
they want to do. You keep all the stuff about the moon and poetry till
afterwards, my dear. It'll serve to talk about then, only I expect
you'll find you've plenty else to say. He's a nice clean clever young
fellow, with a good head and a good heart, and they're not too many of
that sort going about. Lord, you should have seen all the girls and
women, too, staring at him yesterday at the picture-show. I thought
somebody would catch him up and marry him under my very nose. They'll
be at him now like wasps round a jam-pot. But you get in first, my
dear, and we'll put the lid on. Well, here he comes! Don't you look
shocked. I've talked very good sense. You haven't got a mother, but if
you had she'd tell you just the same, with no end of beautiful words
scattered about like the flowers on a dinner-table, just to hide the
victuals as she always did. But the victuals are there just the same:
it wouldn't be much of a dinner without 'em."
* * * * *
Any intercourse, flippant or nugatory, or concerned with what Lady
Crowborough summed up under the head of the "moon and Mr. Browning's
poetry" is sufficient cover for the hidden approach of two souls that
are stealing towards each other; any channel sufficient to conduct the
conveyance of such streams; and when not long after, Lady Crowborough
left them to go indoors to make her salutations to Philip, and get out
of the "nasty damp draught" that was blowing up from the river, it
was under the most insignificant of shelter that they crept nearer,
ever nearer. But, for they talked over the happenings little and not
so little, that concerned them jointly in the past, it was as if they
gathered in the store that should so soon burst the doors of its
granary, or sat telling their beads in some hushed sacred place before
it blazed out into lights and music and banners.... All this was below,
as leaven secretly working, on the surface a boy and girl by the
Thames-side talked as comrades talk with laughter and unembarrassed
pauses.
"Wonder if it'll be a June like last year," said Charles, sliding from
his chair onto the grass. "I was camped up there, half a mile away, for
three weeks of it and there was never a drop of rain. Oh, except one
night for half an hour: it smelt so good."
"I know: the best watering carts in a dusty street," said she. "You
were doing that picture of the weir and your brother."
"And then one afternoon you punted up with Craddock. And that's how it
all began."
"All what?" asked Joyce, knowing he could give only one answer, but
longing for the other answer.
"My career, large C," said Charles with pomp. "He came and bought the
picture next morning. I couldn't believe it at first. I thought--I
thought he was a fairy."
"Mr. Craddock does not answer my idea of a fairy," said Joyce after
a little consideration. "Oh, you left out about Reggie--isn't he
Reggie?--trying to make an omelette, and succeeding only in producing a
degraded glue."
"I don't think I noticed that," said Charles, looking at her.
"No, you were staring at us as if we were all fairies. Oh, but you did
notice it. It made you laugh, and me too."
Charles went back to a previous topic.
"No, strictly speaking, he isn't a fairy," he said. "At least not
completely. But it was a fairylike proceeding. Oh, yes, grant him
something fairylike. He got me the commission to copy your Reynolds,
and he started me on my feet, and believed in me. I found him a fairy
for--for quite a long time."
"Of course there are bad fairies as well," said Joyce, conceding the
point.
"Yes: do you mind my asking you one thing? Did you ever----"
"Of course not," said Joyce. "What on earth do you think of me?"
"But you don't know what----"
"Yes, I do. I never, _never_ believed one word. Does that show you?
Talk about something else. I don't want to be sick on such a lovely
evening."
Charles relapsed into laughter.
"Isn't it so distressing on a wet day?" he asked.
"No. Do you know, I think what he did to father about the picture
wasn't nearly so bad. That only made me feel rather unwell. Have you
seen him since you knew about it all?"
Charles made a little conflagration of dry leaves with the match he had
just lit before he answered.
"Yes, once or twice," he said. "I'm rather ashamed of not having seen
him oftener. I believe he was sorry, and if people are sorry--well,
it's all over, isn't it?"
"What a painfully noble sentiment," said Joyce. "But I don't think I
should caress a scorpion, however grief-stricken. Besides, how can you
say that it's all over, just because a person is sorry. He has become,
to you, a different person if you find out he has done something mean,
something--something like that. Not that I thought very much of Mr.
Craddock before," she added.
"Well, I did," said Charles.
"Don't bias me," said Joyce.
She was silent a moment.
"In a way an injury done to oneself is easier to forgive than an injury
done to somebody else----" she began.
Charles rudely interrupted.
"Painfully noble sentiment?" he enquired.
"Yes: perhaps it was. Let us be careful: we might die in the night if
we became more edifying."
"And the real point is that Mr. Craddock's little plot didn't come
off," said he. "At least that seems to me the most important thing."
For a moment their eyes met, and for that moment the huge underlying
reality came close to the surface.
She smiled and nodded her assent to this.
"Leave it there," she said ... "and then, where were we? O, yes: then
you came to copy the Reynolds. Up in my room, do you remember? And dear
old Buz lay on the sofa and got worse and worse?"
She leaned back in her chair so that he could not see her face.
"Oh, what a coward I was!" she said. "I knew there was only one thing I
could do for him, poor darling, and yet I let you do it instead of me."
"Well, there was no delay," said Charles. "It was done."
"Oh, but you understand better than that," she said. "It was I who
failed: now that's a thing hard to forgive oneself. I loved Buz best:
it was my privilege to help him in the only way possible. Yes, I know,
the thing in itself was nothing, just to press a syringe. But there
was the principle behind it, don't you see--of course you do--that I
threw love's right away.... And I don't believe I ever thanked you for
picking it up, so to speak. But I was grateful."
Charles' little conflagration had burned itself out.
"Poor Buz!" he said.
Joyce sat up.
"He didn't have such a bad time," she said, "though why I expect you to
be interested in Buz I really don't know. But I've confessed. I always
rather wanted to confess that to you--Penance?"
"I think a turn in the punt might do you good," said he, "especially if
I take the pole."
* * * * *
That, for the present, was the end of anything serious. Charles
exhibited the most complicated incompetence, as regards propulsion,
though as a piece of aquatic juggling, his performance was supreme.
Joyce told him how to stand, and like that he stood, and the juggling
began. He thrust his pole into the water and it stuck fast: he pulled
hard at it and the punt went a little backwards, but a second wrench
landed a chunk of mud and water-weed on his trousers. He pushed
again, this time with so firm and vigorous a stroke that they flew
into mid-stream, and only by swift antic steps in the direction of
the stern did he recover balance and pole. Once again he pushed, this
time in unfathomable water, plunged his arm up to the shoulder in the
astonished flood, and fell in an entangled heap of arms and legs on the
top of the stupefied Huz.
"Are we going up or down the river?" asked Joyce.
Charles looked wildly round: the bows of the punt seemed if anything to
be pointing down stream.
"Down," he said.
The punt thought not: it yawed in a slow half circle and directed
itself up-stream.
"That is down-stream, isn't it?" said he ... and they slowly slid into
the bank.
A swift circular motion began, and a fool-hardy swan coming within
range narrowly escaped decapitation. Then Lady Crowborough, having
made her visit, appeared at the edge of the lawn, and Charles rashly
promised to pick her up.... But they moved westward instead into the
crimson pools of reflected sunset. Joyce had never ached so much in all
her healthy life.
Yet even these inanities brought them nearer.... Love has a use for
laughter.
* * * * *
Six months ago on an evening of gale and autumn storm, when the
chimneys smoked and the rain made fierce tattoo on the streaming window
panes, Joyce had gone up to her bedroom leaving her father and another
guest together, and had felt some wild primæval instinct stirring in
her blood, that made her long to go out alone into the blackness and
hurly-burly of the streaming heavens, to be herself, solitary and
unencumbered by the presence and subtle silent influence of others.
And to-night, when she and Lady Crowborough left Philip and Charles
talking together--Philip's cold had miraculously almost, encouraged by
eucalyptus, vanished altogether--she again felt herself prey to the
same desire. But to-night, it was no pall of streaming blackness that
drew her, but the still starry twilight, and the warm scents of spring.
But now, even as then, she wanted to be alone, hidden and unsuspected
in the deep dusk of the star-shine, to wander through the fresh-fallen
dew in the meadows, to finger the new leaves on riverside willows, to
lie, perhaps face downwards in the growing hay-fields, to listen to the
mysterious noises of the night, to learn--to learn what? She did not
know, or at any rate did not formulate the answer, but it was something
that the dark and the spring-time were ready to tell her: something
that concerned the Spirit of life that kept the world spinning on its
secular journey, and made bright the eyes of the wild creatures of the
wood, and set the rose a-budding, and made in her the red blood leap on
its joyous errands.... Surely, somehow, in the dark of the spring night
she could link the pulse that beat in her with the great indwelling
rhythm of the world, make herself realise that all was one, she and
the singing-bird whose time was come, and the rose that tingled on its
stem with the potential blossoms.
She had taken off her dinner-dress and put on a dressing gown, and
now, blowing out her light, she went across to her open window, drew
up the blind and leaned out into the night. And then in a flash of
newly-awakened knowledge, she was aware that she wanted to be alone no
longer. She wanted a teacher who also would learn with her, one more
human than the star-light, and dearer to her heart than the fragrant
hay-fields. But leaning out into the dark, she was nearer him than in
the house, and she opened her heart ... it stood wide.
* * * * *
Just below her the gravel path that bordered the lawn was illuminated
by the light that came in yellow oblongs of glow from the long windows
of her father's study. She heard some little stir of movement below,
the sound of voices dim and unintelligible inside, and presently after
the tread of a foot-step on the stairs and so along the passage past
her room, where her father slept. Then the window below was thrown open
and Charles stepped out onto the gravel. Like her, perhaps, he felt the
call of the night; she wondered if, like her, he needed more than the
night could give him. She could look out without risk of detection:
from outside, her window would appear a mere black hole in the wall.
He paused a moment, and then strolled onto the dewy lawn. And as he
walked away towards the river, she heard him whistle softly to himself,
the song he had sung last year to his guitar. "See the chariot at hand
here of Love...."
* * * * *
Joyce lay long awake, when she got to bed, not tossing nor turning nor
even desiring sleep, but very quiet with wide open eyes. She did not
seem to herself to be thinking at all, it was no preoccupation that
kept her awake: she but lived and breathed, was part of the spring
night. But it seemed to her that she had never been alive till then.
Sometimes for a little while she dozed, nonsense of some sort began to
stir in her brain, but the drowsy moments were no more than moments.
From the stable-clock not far away she heard the faint clanging of the
hours and half-hours, which seemed to follow very rapidly, the one
after the other. By her dressing-table in the window there came a very
faint light through the unblinded casement from the remote noon-day of
the shining stars, the rest of the room was muffled in soft darkness.
Then she missed the sound of one half-hour, and when she woke again,
the light in her room was changed. Already the faint illumination
by the window had spread over the rest of it, and there was a more
conspicuous brightness on the table that stood there. Then from outside
she heard the first chirruping of one bird, and the light grew, a light
hueless and colourless, a mere mixture of white with the dark. More
birds joined voices to the first heard in the earliest welcome of the
day, and a breeze set some tendril of creeper tapping at her panes.
Colour began to steal into the hueless light; she could guess there in
the East were cloud-wisps that caught the morning.
Joyce got out of bed and went to the window, and the lure of the
sunrise irresistibly beckoned her out. The message the night had seemed
to hold for her, though contradicted afterwards, had been authentically
transmitted to the dawn--something certainly called her now. She
dressed herself quickly in some old boating-costume, went quietly along
the passage, and down stairs. At the foot Huz was sleeping, but awoke
at her step, and found it necessary to give a loud and joyful bark of
welcome. It seemed to him an excellent plan to go out.
She crossed the lawn with her dog, for the river seemed to beckon, and
would have taken her canoe, except that that meant that Huz must be
left behind. She did not want Huz, but Huz wanted, and she stepped into
the punt, that puzzled victim of Charles' aimlessness, and pushed off.
The boom of Thorley Weir--that, or was it something else about Thorley
Weir--determined her direction, and she slid away upstream. It was
still not yet the hour of sunrise, and she would be at the weir before
that.
* * * * *
A few minutes before, Charles had wakened also. He, too, had slept
but little, and his awaking was sudden: he felt as if some noise had
roused him, the shutting of a door perhaps, or the barking of a dog.
The early light that preceded dawn was leaking into his room, and he
got out of bed to draw up the blind. The magic of the hour, breeze
of morning, chirruping of birds seized and held him, and into his
mind--brighter than the approaching dawn--there came flooding back all
that had kept sleep from him. Sleep was far away again now, and the
morning beckoned.
He dressed and went out, and it was in his mind to wrestle with the
punt, perhaps, to spring on Joyce a mysteriously-acquired adeptness.
And then suddenly he saw that steps had preceded him across the lawn,
wiping away the dew, and his heart leaped. Could it be she who had
passed that way already? Would they meet--and his heart hammered in
his throat--in this pearly and sacred hour, when only the birds were
awake? It was not quite sunrise yet; should day, and another day lit by
the dawn that from everlasting had moved the sun and the stars, dawn
together? But where had she gone, where should he seek and find her?
The punt was gone: the canoe lay tapped by the ripples from the
mill-stream. Right or left? Down stream or up? Then the boom of Thorley
Weir decided him--that, or something else, some quivering line that she
had left to guide him.
The imperfect chirrupings were forming themselves into "actual song";
on the smooth-flowing river reflections of the blue above began to
stain the grey steel-colour, and the willow leaves were a-quiver with
the breeze of morning. He hardly noticed these things as he plied his
paddle round bend and promontory of the stream. Louder sounded the
boom of the outpoured weir, and the last corner was turned, and on the
spit of land where a year ago his tent had been pitched stood Joyce.
She had just tied her punt to the bank and stood looking up towards
the weir itself. Huz was by her and hearing the splash of the paddle,
turned and waved a welcoming tail that beat against Joyce's skirt. At
that she turned also, and saw him. But she gave him no word of welcome,
nor did he speak to her. In silence he ran the boat into the soft
ground beside the punt, and stepped ashore. He had left his coat in the
canoe and came towards her, hatless like herself, bare-armed to the
elbow.
She looked at him, still silent, yet flooding him with her self, and
his own identity, his very self and being, seemed to pass utterly away
from him. He was conscious of nothing more than her.
"It had to be like this," he said.... "Joyce, Joyce."
Still she did not answer, but, quivering a little, bent towards him, as
a young tree leans before the wind. Then her lips parted.
"Oh, Charles," she said, "have you come to me? I was waiting for you."