Kendal mounted to Elfrida's _appartement_ in the Rue
Porte Royale to verify the intimation of her departure,
or happily to forestall its execution the morning after
her note reached him. He found it bare and dusty. A
workman was mending the stove; the concierge stood looking
on, with her arms folded above the most striking feature
of her personality. Every vestige of Elfrida was gone,
and the tall windows were open, letting the raw February
air blow through. Outside the sunlight lay in squares
and triangles on the roofs, and gave the place its
finishing touch of characterlessness. Yes, truly,
mademoiselle had gone, the evening before. Was monsieur
then not aware? The concierge was of opinion that
mademoiselle had had bad news, but her tone implied that
no news could be quite bad enough to justify the throwing
up of such desirable apartments upon such short notice.
Mademoiselle had left in such haste that she had forgotten
both to say where she was going and to leave an address
for letters; and it would not be easy to surpass the
consciousness of injury with which the concierge demanded
what she was to say to the _facteur_ on the day of the
post from America, when there were always four or five
letters for mademoiselle. Monsieur would be _bien amiable_,
if he would allow that they should be directed to him.
Upon reflection monsieur declined this responsibility.
With the faintest ripple of resentment at being left out
of Elfrida's confidence, he stated to himself that it
would be intrusive. He advised the concierge to keep them
for a week or two, during which Miss Bell would be sure
to remember to send for them, and turned to go.
"_Mademoiselle est allee a la Gare du Nord_," added the
concierge, entirely aware that she was contributing a
fact to Kendal's mental speculation, and wishing it had
a greater intrinsic value. But Kendal merely raised his
eyebrows in polite acknowledgment of unimportant
information. "En effet!" he said, and went away.
Nevertheless he could not help reflecting that _Gare du
Nord_ probably meant Calais, and Calais doubtless meant
England, probably London. As he thought of it he assured
himself that it was London, and his irritation vanished
at the thought of the futility of Elfrida in London. It
gave him a half curious, half solicitous amusement instead.
He pictured her with her Hungarian peasant's cloak and
any one of her fantastic hats in the conventional highways
he knew so well, and smiled. "She will have to take
herself differently there," he reflected, without pausing
to consider exactly what he meant by it, "and she'll find
that a bore." As yet he himself had never taken her
differently so far as he was aware, and in spite of the
obvious provocation of her behavior it did not occur to
him to do it now. He reflected with a shade of satisfaction
that she knew his London address. When she saw quite fit
she would doubtless inform him as to what she was doing
and where she might be found. He smiled again at the
thought of the considerations which Elfrida would put
into the balance against the pleasure of seeing him. They
were not humiliating; he was content to swing high on
the other side indefinitely; but he admitted to himself
that she had taken a pleasure out of Paris for him, and
went back to his studio missing it. He went on missing
it for quite two days, at the end of which he received
an impetuous visit--excessively impetuous considering
the delay--from Nadie Palicsky. In its course Mademoiselle
Palicsky declared herself robbed and wronged by "_cette
incomprise d'Americaine_," whom she loved--but _loved_,
did he understand? No, it was not probable that he
understood--what did a man know of love? As much perhaps
as that flame--Kendal permitted himself the luxury of an
open fire. Nadie stared into it for a moment with cynical
eyes. Under the indirect influence of Kendal's regard
they softened.
"She always understood. It was a joy to show her anything.
She interpreted Bastien Lepage better than I--indeed that
is true--but only with her soul, she had no hands. Yes,
I loved her, and she was good for me. I drew three breaths
in her presence for one in her absence. And she has taken
herself away; even in her letter--I had a line too--she
was as remote as a star! I hope," continued Nadie, with
innocent candor, as she swung her little feet on the
corner of Kendal's table, "that you do not love her too.
I say prayers to _le bon Dieu_, about it. I burn candles."
"And why?" Kendal asked, with a vigorous twist of his
palette knife.
"Because you are such a beast," she responded calmly,
watching his work with her round cleft chin in the shell
of her hand. "That's not bad, you know. That nearest girl
sitting on the grass is almost felt. But if you show it
to the English they will be so shocked that they will
use lorgnettes to hide their confusion. Ah!" she said,
jumping down, "here am I wasting myself upon you, with
a carriage _a l'heure!_ You are not worth it," and she
went. After that it seemed to Kendal that he did not miss
Elfrida so much. Certainly it never occurred to him to
hasten his departure by a day on her account, and there
came a morning when he drove through Bloomsbury and
realized that he had not thought about her for a fortnight.
The British Museum suggested her to him there--the British
Museum, and the certainty that within its massive walls
a number of unimaginative young women in collarless
sage-green gowns were copying casts of antique sculptures
at that moment. But he did not allow himself to suppose
that she could possibly be among them.
He sniffed London all day with a home-returning satisfaction
in her solidity and her ugliness and her low-toned fogs
and her great throbbing unostentatious importance, which
the more flippant capital seemed to have intensified in
him. He ordered the most British luncheon he could think
of, and reflected upon the superiority of the beer. He
read the leaders in the _Standard_ through to the bitter
end, and congratulated himself and the newspaper that
there was no rag of an absurd _feuilleton_ to distract
his attention from the importance of the news of the day.
He remembered all sorts of acquaintances that Paris had
foamed over for months; his heart warmed to a certain
whimsical old couple who lived in Park Street and went
out to walk every morning after breakfast with their
poodle. He felt disposed to make a formal call upon them
and inquire after the poodle. It was--perhaps with an
unconscious desire to make rather more of the idyl of
his homecoming that he went to see the Cardiffs instead,
who were his very old friends, and lived in Kensington
Square.
As he turned out of Kensington High Street into a shoppy
little thoroughfare, and through it to this quiet,
neglected high-nosed old locality, he realized with an
added satisfaction that he had come back to Thackeray's
London. One was apt, he reflected, with a charity which
he would not have allowed himself always, to undervalue
Thackeray in these days. After all, he once expressed
London so well that now London expressed him, and that
was something.
Kendal found the Cardiffs--there were only two, Janet
and her father--at tea, and the Halifaxes there, four
people he could always count on to be glad to see him.
It was written candidly in Janet's face--she was a natural
creature--as she asked him how he dared to be so unexpected.
Lady Halifax cried out robustly from the sofa to know
how many pictures he had brought back; and Miss Halifax,
full of the timid enthusiasm of the well-brought-up
elderly English girl, gave him a sallow but agreeable
regard from under her ineffective black lace hat, and
said what a surprise it was. When they had all finished,
Lawrence Cardiff took his elbow off the mantelpiece,
changed his cup into his other hand to shake hands, and
said, with his quiet, clean-shaven smile, "So you're
back!"
"Daddy has been hoping you would be here soon," said Miss
Cardiff. "He wants the support of your presence. He's
been daring to enumerate 'Our Minor Artists' in the _Brown
Quarterly_, and his position is perfectly terrible.
Already he's had forty-one letters from friends, relatives,
and picture-dealers suggesting names he has 'doubtless
forgotten.' Poor daddy says he never knew them."
"Has he mentioned me?" asked Kendal, sitting down squarely
with his cup of tea.
"He has not."
"Then it's in the character of the uncomplaining left-over
that I'm wanted, the modest person who waits until he's
better. I refuse to act. I'll go over to the howling
majority."
"_You_ will never be a minor artist, Mr. Kendal," ventured
Miss Halifax.
"Certainly not. You will rise to greatness at a bound,"
said Lady Halifax, with substantial conviction and an
illustrative wave of a fat well-gloved hand with a
doubled-up fragment of bread and butter between the thumb
and forefinger, "or we shall be much disappointed in
you."
"It's rapidly becoming a delicate compliment to have been
left out," Mr. Cardiff remarked, with melancholy.
"Some of those you've honored with your recognition are
the maddest of all, aren't they, daddy, as we say in
America! Dear old thing, you _are_ in a perilous case,
and who is to take you round at the Private Views this
year--that's the question of the hour! You needn't depend
upon me. There won't be a soul on the line that you
haven't either put in or left out!"
"It was a fearful thing to write about," Kendal responded
comfortably. "He deserves all the consequences. Let him
go round alone." Under the surface of his thoughts was
a pleased recognition of how little a fresh-colored
English girl changes in three years. Looking at Miss
Halifax's hat, it occurred to him that it was an agreeable
thing not to be eternally "struck" by the apparel of
women--so forcibly that he almost said it. "What have
you been doing?" he asked Janet.
"Wonders," Lady Halifax responded for her. "I can't
think where she gets the energy or the brains--"
"Can't you?" her father interrupted. "Upon my word!" Mr.
Cardiff had the serious facial muscles of a comedian,
and the rigid discipline he was compelled to give them
as a professor of Oriental tongues of London University
intensified their effect when it was absurd. The rest
laughed, and his cousin went on to say that she wished
_she_ had the gift. Her daughter echoed her, looking at
Janet in a way that meant she would say it, whatever the
consequences might be.
"I must see something," said Kendal, "immediately."
"_See_ something!" exclaimed Lady Halifax. "Well, look
in the last number of the _London Magazine_. But you'll
please show something first."
"Yes, indeed!" Miss Halifax echoed.
"When will you be ready for inspection?" Mr. Cardiff
asked.
"Come on Thursday, all of you. I'll show you what there
is."
"Will you give us our tea?" Miss Halifax inquired, with
a nervous smile.
"Of course. And there will be buns. You will do me the
invaluable service of representing the opinion of the
British public in advance. Will Thursday suit?"
"Perfectly," Lady Halifax replied. "The old rooms in
Bryanston Street, I suppose?"
"Thursday won't suit us," Janet put in decisively. "No,
papa; I've got people coming here to tea. Besides, Lady
Halifax is quite equal to representing the whole British
public by herself, aren't you, dear?" That excellent
woman nodded with a pretence of loftily consenting, and
her daughter gave Janet rather a suspicious glance. "Daddy
and I will come another day," Janet went on in reassuring
tones; "but we shall expect buns too, remember."
Then they talked of the crocuses in Kensington Gardens;
and of young Skeene's new play at the Princess's--they
all knew young Skeene, and wished him well; and of
Framley's forthcoming novel--Framley, who had made his
noble reputation by portrait-painting--good old Framley
--how would it go?
"He knows character," Kendal said.
"That's nothing now," retorted Lawrence Cardiff. "Does
he know where it comes from and where it's going to? And
can he choose? And has he the touch? And hasn't he been
too long a Royal Academician and a member of the Church
of England, and a believer in himself? Oh no! Framley
hasn't anything to tell this generation that he couldn't
say best on canvas."
"Well," said Lady Halifax disconcertingly, "I suppose
the carriage is at the door, Lawrence, but you might just
send to inquire. The horses stand so badly, I told Peters
he might take them round and round the square."
Cardiff looked at her with amused reproach, and rang the
bell; and Janet begged somebody or anybody to have another
cup of tea. The Halifaxes always tried Janet.
They went at last, entreating Cardiff, to his annoyance,
not to come down the narrow winding stair with them to
their carriage. To him no amount of familiar coming and
going could excuse the most trivial of such negligences.
He very often put Janet into her cab, always if it rained.
The moment they left the room a new atmosphere created
itself there for the two that remained. They sought each
other's eyes with the pleasantest sense of being together
in reality for the first time, and though Janet marked
it by nothing more significant than a suggestion that
Kendal should poke the fire, there was an appreciable
admission in her tone that they were alone and free to
talk, which he recognized with great good-will. He poked
the fire, and she on her low chair, clasping her knee
with both hands, looked almost pretty in the blaze. There
had always been between them a distinct understanding,
the understanding of good-fellowship and ideas of work,
and Kendal saw with pleasure that it was going to be
renewed.
"I am dying to tell you about it," he said.
"Paris?" she asked, looking up at him. "I am dying to
hear. The people, especially the people. Lucien, what
was he like? One hears so much of Lucien--they make him
a priest and a king together. And did you go to Barbizon?"
Another in her place might have added, "And why did you
write so seldom?" There was something that closed Janet's
lips to this. It was the same thing that would not permit
her to call Kendal "Jack," as several other people did,
though her Christian name had been allowed to him for a
long time. It made an awkwardness sometimes, for she
would not say "Mr. Kendal" either--that would be a rebuke
or a suggestion of inferiority, or what not--but she
bridged it over as best she could with a jocose appellative
like "signor," "monsieur," or "Mr. John Kendal," in full.
"Jack" was impossible, "John" was worse. Yes, with a
little nervous shudder, _much_ worse.
He told her about Paris to her fascination; she had never
seen it: about the boulevards and the cafes and the men's
ateliers, and the vagrant pathos of student life there--he
had seen some clean bits of it--and to all of this old
story he gave such life as a word or a phrase can give.
Even his repressions were full of meaning, and the
best--she felt it was the best--he had to offer her he
offered in fewest words, letting her imagination riot
with them. He described Lucien and the American Colony.
He made her laugh abundantly over the American amateur
as Lucien managed him. They had no end of fun over these
interesting, ingenious, and prodigal people in their
relation to Parisian professional circles. He touched on
Nadie Palicsky lightly, and perhaps it was because Janet
insisted upon an accentuation of the lines--he had sent
her a photograph of one of Nadie's best things--that he
refrained from mentioning Elfrida altogether. Elfrida,
he thought, he would keep till another time. She would
need so much explanation; she was too interesting to lug
in now, it was getting late. Besides, Elfrida was an
exhausting subject, and he was rather done.