John Kendal had turned the key upon his dusty work-room
in Bryanston Street among the first of those who, according
to the papers, depopulated London in July. He had an old
engagement to keep, which took him, with Carew of the
_Dial_ and Limley of the Civil Service, to explore and
fish in the Norwegian fjords. The project matured suddenly,
and he left town without seeing anybody--a necessity
which disturbed him a number of times on the voyage. He
wrote a hasty line to Janet, returning a borrowed book,
and sent a trivial message to Elfrida, whom he knew to
be spending a few days in Kensington Square at the time.
Janet delivered it with an intensity of quiet pleasure
which she showed extraordinary skill in concealing. "May
I ask you to say to Miss Bell--" seemed to her to be
eloquent of many things. She looked at Elfrida with
inquiry, in spite of herself, when she gave the message,
but Elfrida received it with a nod and a smile of perfect
indifference. "It is because she does not care--does not
care _an iota_," Janet told herself; and all that day it
seemed to her that Elfrida's personality was inexhaustibly
delightful.
Afterward, however, one or two letters found their way
into the sandal-wood box, bearing the Norwegian postmark.
They came seldomer than Elfrida expected. "_Enfin!_" she
said when the first arrived, and she felt her pulse beat
a little faster as she opened it. She read it eagerly,
with serious lips, thinking how fine he was, and with
what exquisite force he brought himself to her as he
wrote. "I must be a very exceptional person," she said
in her reverie afterward, "to have such things written
to me. I must--I _must!_" Then as she put the letter away
she reflected that she couldn't amuse herself with Kendal
without treachery to their artistic relationship; there
would be somehow an outrage in it. And she would not
amuse herself with him; she would sacrifice that, and be
quite frank and simple always. So that when it came to
pass--here Elfrida retired into a lower depth of
consciousness--there would be only a little pity and a
little pain, and no reproach or regret. There was a delay
in the arrival of the next letter which Elfrida felt to
be unaccountable, a delay of nearly three weeks. She took
it with an odd rush of feeling from the hand of the
housemaid who brought it up, and locked herself in alone
with it.
A few days later, driving through Bryanston Street in a
hansom, Elfrida saw the windows of Kendal's studio wide
open. She leaned forward to realize it with a little
tumult of excitement at the possibility it indicated,
half turned to bid the cabman stop, and rolled on undecided.
Presently she spoke to him.
"Please go back to number sixty-three," she said, "I want
to get out there," and in a moment or two she was tripping
lightly up the stairs.
Kendal, in his shirt-sleeves, with his back to the door,
was bending over a palette that clung obstinately to the
hardened round dabs of color he had left upon it six
weeks before. He threw it down at Elfrida's step, and
turned with a sudden light of pleasure in his face to
see her framed in the doorway, looking at him with an
odd shyness and silence. "You spirit!" he cried, "how
did you know I had come back?" and he held her hand for
just an appreciable instant, regarding her with simple
delight. Her tinge of embarrassment became her sweetly,
and the pleasure in his eyes made her almost instantly
aware of this.
"I didn't know," she said, with a smile that shared his
feeling. "I saw the windows open, and I thought the woman
downstairs might be messing about here. They can do such
incalculable damage when they really set their minds to
it, these _concierge_ people. So I--I came up to interfere.
But it is you!" She looked at him with wide, happy eyes
which sent the satisfaction she found in saying that to
his inmost consciousness.
"That was extremely good of you," he said, and in spite
of himself a certain emphasis crept into the commonplace.
"I hardly realize myself that I am here. It might very
well be the Skaagerak outside."
"Does the sea in Norway sound like that?" Elfrida asked,
as the roar of London came across muffled from Piccadilly.
She made a tittle theatrical movement of her head to
listen, and Kendal's appreciation of it was so evident
that she failed to notice exactly what he answered. "You
have come back sooner than you intended?"
"By a month."
"Why!" she asked. Her eye made a soft bravado, but that
was lost. He did not guess for a moment that she believed
she knew why he had come.
"It was necessary," he answered, with remembered gravity,
"in connection with the death of--of a relative, a granduncle
of mine. The old fellow went off suddenly last week, and
they telegraphed for me. I believe he wanted to see me,
poor old chap, but of course it was too late."
"Oh!" said Elfrida gently, "that is very sad. Was it a
granduncle you were--fond of?"
Kendal could not restrain a smile at her earnestness.
"I was, in a way. He was a good old fellow, and he lived
to a great age--over ninety. He has left me all the duties
and responsibilities of his estate," Kendal went on, with
sudden gloom. "The Lord only knows what I'll do with
them."
"That makes it sadder," said the girl.
"I should think it did," Kendal replied; and then their
eyes met, and they laughed the healthy instinctive laugh
of youth when it is asked to mourn fatuously, which is
always a little cruel.
"I hope," said Elfrida quickly, "that he has not saddled
you with a title. An estate is bad enough, but with a
title added it would ruin you. You would never do any
more good work, I am sure--sure. People would get at
you--you would take to rearing farm creatures from a
sense of duty--you might go into Parliament. Tell me
there is no title!"
"How do you know all that?" Kendal exclaimed, laughing.
"But there is no title--never has been."
Elfrida drew a long sigh of relief, and held him with
her eyes as if he had just been snatched away from, some
impending danger. "So now you are--what do you say in
this country?--a landed proprietor. You belong to the
country gentry. In America I used to read about the
country gentry in _London Society_--all the contributors
and all the subscribers to _London Society_ used to be
country gentry, I believe, from what I remember. They
were always riding to hounds, and having big Christmas
parties, and telling ghost stories about the family,
diamonds."
"All very proper," Kendal protested against the irony of
her tone.
"Oh, if one would be quite _sure_ that it will not make
any difference," Elfrida went on, clasping her knee with
her shapely gloved hands. "I should like--I should like
to beg you to make me a promise that you will never give
up your work--your splendid work!" She hesitated, and
looked at him almost with supplication. "But then why
should you make such a promise to _me!_"
They were sitting opposite one another in the dusty
confusion of the room, and when she said this Kendal got
up and walked over to her, without knowing exactly why.
"If I made such a promise," he said, looking down at her,
"it would be more binding given to you than to anybody
else--more binding and more sacred."
If she had exacted it he would have promised then and
there, and he had some vague notion of sealing the vow
with his lips upon her hand, and of arranging--this was
more indefinite still--that she should always insist, in
her sweet personal way, upon its fulfilment. But Elfrida
felt the intensity in his voice with a kind of fear, not
of the situation--she had a nervous delight in the
situation--but of herself. She had a sudden terror in
his coming so close to her, in his changed voice, and
its sharpness lay in her recognition of it. Why should
she be frightened? She jumped up gaily with the question
still throbbing in her throat.
"No," she cried, "you shall not promise me. I'll form a
solemn, committee of your friends--your real friends--and
we'll come some day and exact an oath from you, individually
and collectively. That will be much more impressive. I
must go now," she went on reproachfully, "and you have
shown me nothing that you've brought back with you. Is
there anything here?" In her anxiety to put space between
them she bad walked to the furthest and untidiest corner
of the room, where half a dozen canvases leaned with
their faces to the wall.
Kendal watched her, tilt them forward one after another
with a kind or sick impotence.
"Absolutely nothing!" he cried.
But it was too late--she had paused in her running
commentary on the pictures, she was standing looking,
absolutely silent, at the last but one. She had come upon
it--she had found it--his sketch of the scene in Lady
Halifax's drawing-room.
"Oh yes, there is something!" she said at last, carefully
drawing it out and holding it at arm's length. "Something
that is quite new to me. Do you mind if I put it in a
better light?" Her voice had wonderfully changed; it
expressed a curious interest and self-control. In effect
that was all she felt for the moment; she had a dull
consciousness of a blow, but did not yet quite understand
being struck. She was gathering herself together as she
looked, growing conscious of her hurt and of her resentment.
Kendal was silent, cursing himself inwardly for not having
destroyed the thing the day after he had let himself do it.
"Yes," she said, placing it on an easel at an oblique
angle with the north window of the room, "it is better so."
She stepped back a few paces to look at it, and stood
immovable, searching every detail. "It does you credit,"
she said slowly; "immense credit. Oh, it is very clever!"
"Forgive me," Kendal said, taking a step toward her. "I
am afraid it doesn't But I never intended you to see it."
"Is it an order?" she asked calmly. "Ah, but that would
not have been fair--not to show it to me first!"
Kendal crimsoned. "I beg," he said earnestly, "that you
will not think such a thing possible. I intended to
destroy it--I don't know why I have not destroyed it!"
"But why? It is so good, so charming, so--so _true!_ You
did it for your own amusement, then! But that was very
selfish."
For answer Kendal caught up a tube of Indian red, squeezed
it on the crusted palette, loaded a brush with it, and
dashed it across the sketch. It was a feeble piece of
bravado, and he felt it, but he must convince her in some
way that the thing was worthless to him.
"Ah," she said, "that is a pity!" and she walked to
the door. She must get away, quite away, and quickly, to
realize this, thing, and find out exactly what it meant
to her. And yet, three steps down the stairs she turned
and came back again. John Kendal stood where, she had
left him, staring at the sketch on the easel.
"I have come back to thank you," Elfrida said quickly,
"for showing me what a fool I made of myself," and she
was gone.
An hour later Kendal had not ceased to belabor himself;
but the contemplation of the sketch--he had not looked
at it for two months--brought him to the conclusion that
perhaps, after all, it might have some salutary effect.
He found himself so curiously sore about it though, so
thoroughly inclined, to brand himself a traitor and a
person without obligation, that he went back to Norway
the following week--a course which left a number of worthy
people in the neighborhood of Bigton, Devonshire, very
indignant indeed.