Kendal, as the door closed behind Elfrida on the afternoon
of her last sitting, shutting him in with himself and
the portrait on the easel, and the revelation she had
made, did his best to feel contrition, and wondered that
he was so little successful. He assured himself that he
had been a brute; yet in an uncompromising review of all
that he had ever said or done in connection with Elfrida
he failed to satisfy his own indignation with himself by
discovering any occasion upon which his brutality had
been particularly obvious. He remembered with involuntary
self-justification how distinctly she had insisted upon
_camaraderie_ between them, how she had spurned everything
that savored of another standard of manners on his, part,
how she had once actually had the curious taste to want
him to call her "old chap," and how it had grated. He
remembered her only half-veiled invitation, her challenge
to him to see as much as he cared, and to make what he
could of her. He was to blame for accepting, but he would
have been a conceited ass if he had thought of the danger
of a result like this. In the midst of his reflections
an idea came to him about the portrait, and he observed,
with irritation, after giving it a few touches, that the
light was irretrievably gone for the day.
Next morning he worked for three hours at it without a
pang, and in the afternoon with relaxed nerves and a high
heart, he took his hat and turned his face toward Kensington
Square. The distance was considerable, but he walked
lightly, rapidly, with a conscious enjoyment of that form
of relief to his wrought nerves, his very limbs drawing
energy from the knowledge of his finished work. Never
before had he felt so completely the divine sense of
success, and though he had worked at the portrait with
passionate concentration from the beginning, this
realization had come to him only the day before, when,
stepping back to look with Elfrida, he saw what he had
done. Troubled as the revelation was, in it he saw himself
a master. He had for once escaped, and he felt that the
escape was a notable one, from the tyranny of his
brilliant-technique. He had subjected it to his idea,
which had grown upon the canvas obscure to him under his
own brush until that final moment, and he recognized with
astonishment how relative and incidental the truth of
the treatment seemed in comparison with the truth of the
idea.
With the modern scornful word for the literary value of
paintings on his lips, Kendal was forced to admit that
in this his consummate picture, as he very truly thought
it, the chief significance lay elsewhere than in the
brushing and the color--they were only its dramatic
exponents--and the knowledge of this brought him a new
and glorious sense of control. It had already carried
him further in power, this portrait, it would carry him
further in place, than anything he had yet done; and the
thought gave a sparkle to the delicious ineffable content
that bathed his soul. He felt that the direction of his
walk intensified his eager physical joy in it. He was
going to Janet with his success, as he had always gone
to her. As soon as the absorbing vision of his work had
admitted another perception, it was Janet's sympathy,
Janet's applause, that had mingled itself with his certain
reward. He could not say that it had inspired him in
the least, but it formed a very essential part of his
triumph. He could wish her more exacting, but this time
he had done something that should make her less easy to
satisfy in the future. Unconsciously he hastened his
steps through the gardens, switching off a daisy head
now and then with his stick as he went, and pausing only
once, when he found himself, to his utter astonishment,
asking a purely incidental errand boy if he wanted
sixpence.
Janet, in the drawing-room, received him with hardly a
quickening of pulse. It was so nearly over now; she seemed
to have packed up a good part of her tiresome heart-ache
with the warm things Lady Halifax had dictated for the
Atlantic. She had a vague expectation that it would
reappear, but not until she unlocked the box, in mid-ocean,
where it wouldn't matter so much. She knew that it was
only reasonable and probable that she should see him
again before they left for Liverpool She had been expecting
this visit, and she meant to be unflinching with herself
when she exchanged farewells with him. She meant to make
herself believe that the occasion was quite an ordinary
one--also until afterward, when her feeling about it
would be of less consequence.
"Well," she asked directly, with a failing heart as she
saw his face, "what is your good news?"
Kendal laughed aloud; it was delightful to be anticipated.
"So I am unconsciously advertising it," he said. "Guess!"
His tone bad the vaunting glory of a lover's--a lover
new to his lordship, with his privileges still sweet upon
his lips. Janet felt a little cold contraction about her
heart, and sank quickly into the nearest arm-chair. "How
can I guess," she said, looking beyond him at the wall,
which she did not see, "without anything to go upon? Give
me a hint."
Kendal laughed again. "It's very simple, and you know
something about it already."
Then she was not mistaken--there was no chance of it.
She tried to look at him with smiling, sympathetic
intelligence, while her whole being quivered in anticipation
of the blow that was coming. "Does it--does it concern
another person?" she faltered.
Kendal looked grave, and suffered an instant's compunction.
"It does--it does indeed," he assured her. "It concerns
Miss Elfrida Bell very much, in a way. Ah!" he went on
impatiently, as she still sat silent, "why are you so
unnaturally dull, Janet? I've finished that young woman's
portrait, and it is more--satisfactory--than I ever in
my life dared hope that any picture of mine would be."
"Is that all?"
The words escaped her in a quick, breath of relief. Her
face was crimson, and the room seemed to swim.
"_All!_" she heard Kendal say reproachfully. "Wait until
you see it!" He experienced a shade of dejection, and
there was an instant's silence between them, during which
it seemed to Janet that the world was made over again.
"That young woman!" She disloyally extracted the last
suggestion of indifference out of the phrase, and found
it the sweetest she had heard for months. But her brain
whirled with the effort to decide what it could possibly
mean.
"I hope you have made it as beautiful as Elfrida is,"
she cried, with sharp self-reproof. "It must have been
difficult to do that."
"I have made it--what she is, I think," he answered,
again with that sudden gravity. "It is so like my conception
of her which I have never felt permitted to explain to
you, that I feel as if I had stolen a march upon her.
You must see it. When will you come? It goes in the day
after to-morrow, but I can't wait for your opinion till
it's hung."
"I like your calm reliance upon the Committee," Janet
laughed. "Suppose--"
"I won't. It will go on the line," Kendal returned
confidently. "I did nothing last year that I will permit
to be compared with it. Will you come to-morrow?"
"Impossible; I haven't two consecutive minutes to-morrow.
We sail, you know, on Thursday."
Kendal looked at her blankly. "You _sail?_ On Thursday?"
"I am going to America, Lady Halifax and I. And Elizabeth,
of course. We are to be away a year. Lady Halifax is
buying tickets, I am collecting light literature, and
Elizabeth is in pursuit of facts. Oh, we are deep in
preparation. I thought you knew."
"How could I possibly know?"
"Elfrida didn't tell you, then?"
"Did she know?"
"Oh yes, ten days ago."
"Odd that she didn't mention it."
Janet told herself that it was odd, but found with some
surprise that it was not more than odd. There had been
a time when the discovery that she and her affairs were
of so little consequence to her friend would have given
her a wondering pang; but that time seemed to have passed.
She talked lightly on about her journey; her voice and
her thoughts, had suddenly been freed. She dilated upon
the pleasures she anticipated as if they had been real,
skimming over the long spaces of his silence, and gathering
gaiety as he grew more and more sombre. When he rose to
go their moods had changed: the brightness and the flush
were hers, and, his face spoke only of a puzzled dejection,
an anxious uncertainty.
"So it is good-by," he said, as she gave him her hand,
"for a year!"
Something in his voice made her look up suddenly, with
such an unconscious tenderness in her eyes as he had
never seen in any other woman's. She dropped them before
he could be quite certain he recognized it, though his
heart was beating in a way which told him there had been
no mistake.
"Lady Halifax means it to be a year," she answered--and
surely, since it was to be a year, he might keep her hand
an instant longer.
The full knowledge of what this woman was to him seemed
to descend upon John Kendal then, and he stood silent
under it, pale and grave-eyed, baring his heart to the
rush of the first serious emotion life had brought him,
filled with a single conscious desire--that she should
show him that sweetness in her eyes again. But she looked
wilfully down, and he could only come closer to her, with
a sudden muteness upon his ready lips, and a strange
new-born fear wrestling for possession of him. For in
that moment Janet, hitherto so simple, so approachable,
as it were so available, had become remote, difficult,
incomprehensible. Kendal invested her with the change in
himself, and quivered in uncertainty as to what it might
do with her. He seemed to have nothing to trust to but
that one glance for knowledge of the girl his love had
newly exalted; and still she stood before him looking
down. He took two or three vague steps into the middle
of the room, drawing her with him. In their nearness to
each other the silence between them held them
intoxicatingly, and he had her in his arms before he
found occasion to say, between his lingering kisses upon
her hair, "You can't go, Janet. You must stay--and marry
me."
* * * * * * * *
"I don't know," wrote Lawrence Cardiff in a postscript
to a note to Miss Bell that evening, "that Janet will
thank me for forestalling her with such all-important
news, but I can't resist the pleasure of telling you that
she and Kendal got themselves engaged, without so much
as a 'by your leave' to me, this afternoon. The young
man shamelessly stayed to dinner, and I am informed that
they mean to be married in June. Kendal is full of your
portrait; we are to see it to-morrow. I hope he has
arranged that we shall have the advantage of comparing
it with the original."