Kendal hardly admitted to himself that his acquaintance
with Elfrida had gone beyond the point of impartial
observation. The proof of its impartiality, if he had
thought of seeking it, would have appeared to him to lie
in the fact that he found her, in her personality, her
ideas, and her effects, to be damaged by London. The
conventionality--Kendal's careless generalization
preferred a broad term--of the place made her extreme
in every way, and it had recently come to be a conclusion
with him that English conventionality, in moderation,
was not wholly to be smiled at. Returning to it, its
protectiveness had impressed him strongly, and he had a
comforting sense of the responsibility it imposed upon
society. Paris and the Quartier stood out against it in
his mind like something full of light and color and
transient passion on the stage--something to be remembered
with recurrent thrills of keen satisfaction and to be
seen again. It had been more than this, he acknowledged,
for he had brought out of it an element that lightened
his life and vitalized his work, and gave an element of
joyousness to his imagination--it was certain that he
would go back there. And Miss Bell had been in it and
of it--so much in it and of it that he felt impatient
with her for permitting herself to be herself in any
other environment. He asked himself why she could not
see that she was crudely at variance with all color and
atmosphere and law in her present one, and he speculated
as to the propriety of telling her so, of advising her
outright as to the expediency in her own interest, of
being other than herself in London. That was what it
came to, he reflected in deciding that he could not--if
the girl's convictions and motives and aims were real;
and he was beginning to think they were real. And although
he had found himself at liberty to say to her things that
were harder to hear, he felt a curious repugnance to
giving her any inkling of what he thought about this.
It would be a hideous thing to do, he concluded, an
unforgivable thing, and an actual hurt. Kendal had for
women the readiest consideration, and though one of the
odd things he found in Elfrida was the slight degree to
which she evoked it in him, he recoiled instinctively
from any reasoned action which would distress her. But
his sense of her inconsistency with British institutions
--at least he fancied it was that--led him to discourage
somewhat, in the lightest way, Miss Halifax's interested
inquiries about her. The inquiries suggested dimly that
eccentricity and obscurity might be overlooked in any
one whose personality really had a value for Mr. Kendal,
and made an attempt, which was heroic considering the
delicacy of Miss Halifax's scruples, to measure his
appreciation of Miss Bell as a writer--to Miss Halifax
the word wore a halo--and as an individual. If she did
not succeed it was partly because he had not himself
quite decided whether Elfrida, in London, was delightful
or intolerable, and partly because he had no desire to
be complicated in social relations which, he told himself,
must be either ludicrous or insincere. The Halifaxes were
not in any sense literary; their proper pretensions to
that sort of society were buried with Sir William, who
had been editor of the _Brown Quarterly_ in his day, and
many other things. They had inherited his friends as they
had inherited his manuscripts; and in spite of a grievous
inability to edit either of them, they held to one legacy
as fast as to the other. Kendal thought with a somewhat
repelled amusement of any attempt of theirs to assimilate
Elfrida. It was different with the Cardiffs; but even
under their enthusiastic encouragement he was disinclined
to be anything but discreet and cautions about Elfrida.
In one way and another she was, at all events, a young
lady of potentialities, he reflected, and with a view to
their effect among one's friends it might be as well to
understand them. He went so far as to say to himself
that Janet was such a thoroughly nice girl as she was;
and then he smiled inwardly at the thought of how angry
she would be at the idea of his putting any prudish
considerations on her account into the balance against
an interesting acquaintance. He had, nevertheless, a
distinct satisfaction in the fact that it was really
circumstances, in the shape of the _Decade_ article, that
had brought them together, and that he could hardly charge
himself with being more than an irresponsible agent in
the matter.
Under the influence of such considerations Kendal did
not write to Elfrida at the _Age_ office asking her
address, as he had immediately resolved to do when he
discovered that she had gone away without telling him
where he might find her. It seemed to him that he could
not very well see her at her lodgings. And the pleasure
of coming upon her suddenly as she closed the door of
the _Age_ behind her and stepped out into Fleet Street
a fortnight later overcame him too quickly to permit him
to reflect that he was yielding to an opposite impulse
in asking her to dine with him at Baliero's, as they
might have done in Paris. It was an unlooked-for
opportunity, and it roused a desire which he had not
lately been calculating upon--a desire to talk with her
about all sorts of things, to feel the exhilaration of
her artistic single-mindedness, to find out more about
her, to guess at the meanings behind her eyes. If any
privileged cynic had taken the chance to ask him whether
he found her eyes expressive of purely abstract
significance, Kendal would have answered affirmatively
in all honesty. And he would have added a confession of
his curiosity to discover what she was capable of, if
she was capable of anything--which he considered legitimate
enough. At the moment, however, he had no time to think
of anything but an inducement, and he dashed through
whole pickets of scruples to find one. "They give one
such capital strawberry ices at Baliero's," he begged
her to believe. His resolutions did not even reassert
themselves when she refused. He was conscious only that
it was a bore that she should refuse, and very inconsistent;
hadn't she often dined with him at the Cafe Florian? His
gratification was considerable when she added, "They
smoke there, you know," and, it became obvious, by whatever
curious process of reasoning she arrived at it, that it
was Baliero's restaurant she objected to, and not his
society.
"Well," he urged, "there are plenty of places where they
don't smoke, though it didn't occur to me that--"
"Oh," she laughed; "but you must allow it to occur to
you," and she put her finger on her lip. Considering
their solitariness in the crowd, he thought, there was
no reason why he should not say that he was under the
impression she liked the smell of tobacco.
"There are other places," she went on. "There is a sweet
little green-and-white place like a dairy in Oxford
Street, that calls itself the 'Hyacinth,' which is sacred
to ladies and to gentlemen properly chaperoned. If you
would invite me to dine with you there I should like it
very much."
"Anywhere," he said. He accepted her proposal to dine at
the "Hyacinth" with the same unquestioning pleasure which
he would have had in accepting her proposal to dine at
the top of the Monument that evening; but he felt an
under perplexity at its terms, which was vaguely disturbing.
How could it possibly matter? Did she suppose that she
advanced palpably nearer to the proprieties in dining
with him in one place rather than the other? There was
an unreasonableness about that which irritated him.
He felt it more distinctly when she proposed taking an
omnibus instead of the cab he had signalled. "Oh, of
course, if you prefer it," he said; and there was almost
a trace of injured feeling in his voice. It was so much
easier to talk in a cab.
He lost his apprehensions presently, for it became obvious
to him that this was only a mood, coming, as he said to
himself devoutly, from the Lord knew what combination of
circumstances--he would think that out afterward--but
making Elfrida none the less agreeable while it lasted.
Under its influence she kept away from all the matters
she was fondest of discussing with that extraordinary
candor and startling equity of hers, and talked to him
with a pretty cleverness, about commonplaces of sorts
arising out of the day's news, the shops, the weather.
She treated them all with a gaiety that made her face a
fascinating study while she talked, and pointed them, as
it were, with all the little poises and expressions and
reserves which are commonly a feminine result of
considerable social training. Kendal, entering into her
whim, inwardly compared her with an acknowledged successful
girl of the season with whom he had sat out two dances
the night before in Eaton Square, to the successful girl's
disadvantage. Finding something lacking in that, he came
upon a better analogy in a young married lady of the
diplomatic circle, who had lately been dipping the third
finger of her left hand into politics with the effect of
considerably increasing her note. This struck him as
satisfactory, and he enjoyed finding completion for his
parallel wherever her words and gestures offered it. He
took her at the wish she implied, and eddied with her
around the pool which some counter-current of her nature
had made for the hour in its stream, pleasantly enough.
He made one attempt, as Elfrida unbuttoned her gloves at
their little table at the "Hyacinth," to get her to talk
about her work for the _Age_.
"Please, _please_ don't mention that," she said. "It is
too revolting. You don't know how it makes me suffer."
A moment later she returned to it of her own accord,
however. "It is absurd to try to exact pledges from
people," she said, "but I should really be happier
--_much_ happier--if you would promise me something."
"'By Heaven, I will promise _any_ thing!'" Kendal quoted,
laughing, from a poet much in vogue.
"Only this--I hope I am not selfish--" she hesitated;
"but I think--yes, I think I must be selfish here. It is
that you will never read the _Age_."
"I never do," leapt to his lips, but he stopped it in
time. "And why!" he asked instead.
"Ah, you know why! It is because you might recognize my
work in it--by accident you might--and that would be so
painful to me. It is _not_ my best--please believe it is
not my best!"
"On one condition I promise," he said: "that when you do
your best you will tell me where to find it"
She looked at him gravely and considered. As she did so
it seemed to Kendal that she was regarding his whole
moral, mental, and material nature. He could almost see
it reflected in the glass of her great dark eyes.
"Certainly, yes. That is fair--if you really and truly
care to see it. And I don't know," she added, looking up
at him from her soup, "that it matters whether you do or
not, so long as you carefully and accurately pretend that
you do. When my best, my real best, sees the light of
common--"
"Type," he suggested.
"Type," she repeated unsmilingly, "I shall be so insatiate
for criticism--I ought to say praise--that I shall even
go so far as to send you a marked copy, very plainly
marked, with blue pencil. Already," she smiled with a
charming effect of assertiveness, "I have bought the blue
pencil."
"Will it come soon?" Kendal asked seriously.
"_Cher ami_," Elfrida said, drawing her handsome brows
together a little, "it will come sooner than you expect
That is what I want," she went on deliberately, "more
than anything else in the whole world, to do things
--_good_ things, you understand--and to have them
appreciated and paid for in the admiration of people who
feel and see and know. For me life has nothing else,
except the things that other people do, better and worse
than mine."
"Better and worse than yours," Kendal repeated. "Can't
you think of them apart?"
"No, I can't," Elfrida interrupted; "I've tried, and I
can _not_. I know it's a weakness--at least I'm half
persuaded that it is--but I must have the personal standard
in everything."
"But you are a hero-worshipper; often I have seen you
at it."
"Yes," she said cynically, while the white-capped maid
who handed Kendal asparagus stared at her with a curiosity
few of the Hyacinth's lady diners inspired, "and when I
look into that I find it is because of a secret
consciousness that tells me that I, in the hero's place,
should have done just the same thing. Or else it is
because of the gratification my vanity finds in my sympathy
with his work, whatever it is. Oh, it is no special
virtue, my kind of hero-worship." The girl looked across
at Kendal and laughed a bright, frank laugh, in which
was no discontent with what she had been telling him.
"You are candid," Kendal said.
"Oh yes, I'm candid. I don't mind lying for a noble end,
but it isn't a noble end to deceive one's self."
"'Oh, purblind race of miserable men--'" Kendal began
lightly, but she stopped him.
"Don't!" she cried. "Nothing spoils conversation like
quotations. Besides, that's such a trite one; I learned
it at school."
But Kendal's offence was clearly in his manner. It seemed
to Elfrida that he would never sincerely consider what
she had to say about herself. She went on softly, holding
him with her eyes: "You may find me a simple creature--"
"_A propos_," laughed Kendal easily, "what is this
particular noble end?"
"Bah!" she said, "you are right It was a lie, and it had
no end at all. I am complex enough, I dare say. But this
is true, that my egotism is like a little flame within
me. All the best things feed it, and it is so clear that
I see everything in its light. To me it is most dear
and valuable, it simplifies things so. I assure you I
wouldn't be one of the sloppy, unselfish people the world
is full of for anything."
"As a source of gratification isn't it rather limited?"
Kendal asked. He was thinking of the extra drop of nervous
fluid in Americans that he had been reading about in the
afternoon, and wondering if it often had this development.
"I don't quite know what you mean," Elfrida returned.
"It isn't a source of gratification, it's a channel. And
it intensifies everything so that I don't care how little
comes that way. If there's anything of me left when I
die it will be that little fierce flame. And when I do
the tiniest thing, write the shortest sentence that rings
_true_, see a beauty or a joy which the common herd pass
by, I have my whole life in the flame, and it becomes my
soul--I'm sure I have no other!
"When you say that there is no real pleasure in the world
that does not come through art," Elfrida went on again,
widening her eyes seriously, "don't you feel as if you
were uttering something religious--part of a creed--as
the Mussulman feels when he says there is no God but one
God, and Mohammed is his prophet? I do."
"I never say it," Kendal returned, with a smile. "Does
that make me out a Philistine, or a Hindu, or what?"
"_You_ a Philistine!" Elfrida cried, as they rose from
the little table. "You are saying a thing that is absolutely
wicked."
Her quasi-conventional mood had vanished completely, and
as they drove together in a hansom through the mysterious
movement of the lamp-lit London streets, toward her
lodgings, she plunged enjoyingly into certain theories
of her religion, which embraced Arnold and Aristotle and
did not exclude Mr. Whistler, and made wide, ineffectual,
and presumptuous grasps to include all beauty and all
faith. She threw handfuls of the foam of these things at
Kendal, who watched them vanish into the air with pleasure,
and asked if he might smoke. At which she reflected,
deciding that for the present he might not, but when they
reached her lodgings she would permit him to renew his
acquaintance with Buddha, and give him a cigarette.
During the hour they smoked and talked together Elfrida
was wholly delightful, and only one thing occurred to
mar the enjoyment of the evening as Kendal remembered
it. That was Mr. Golightly Ticke, who came up and smoked
too, and seemed to have an extraordinary familiarity,
for such an utterly impossible person, with Miss Bell's
literary engagements. On his way home Kendal reflected
that it was doubtless a question of time; she would take
to the customs of civilization by degrees, and the sooner
the better.