Pierston had not turned far back towards the castle when he was
overtaken by Somers and the man who carried his painting lumber. They
paced together to the door; the man deposited the articles and went
away, and the two walked up and down before entering.
'I met an extremely interesting woman in the road out there,' said the
painter.
'Ah, she is! A sprite, a sylph; Psyche indeed!'
'I was struck with her.'
'It shows how beauty will out through the homeliest guise.'
'Yes, it will; though not always. And this case doesn't prove it, for
the lady's attire was in the latest and most approved taste.'
'Oh, you mean the lady who was driving?'
'Of course. What, were you thinking of the pretty little cottage-girl
outside here? I did meet her, but what's she? Very well for one's
picture, though hardly for one's fireside. This lady--'
'Is Mrs. Pine-Avon. A kind, proud woman, who'll do what people with
no pride would not condescend to think of. She is leaving Budmouth
to-morrow, and she drove across to see me. You know how things seemed to
be going with us at one time? But I am no good to any woman. She's
been very generous towards me, which I've not been to her.... She'll
ultimately throw herself away upon some wretch unworthy of her, no
doubt.'
'Do you think so?' murmured Somers. After a while he said abruptly,
'I'll marry her myself, if she'll have me. I like the look of her.'
'I wish you would, Alfred, or rather could! She has long had an idea
of slipping out of the world of fashion into the world of art. She is a
woman of individuality and earnest instincts. I am in real trouble about
her. I won't say she can be won--it would be ungenerous of me to say
that. But try. I can bring you together easily.'
'I'll marry her, if she's willing!' With the phlegmatic dogmatism that
was part of him, Somers added: 'When you have decided to marry, take the
first nice woman you meet. They are all alike.'
'Well--you don't know her yet,' replied Jocelyn, who could give praise
where he could not give love.
'But you do, and I'll take her on the strength of your judgment. Is she
really handsome?--I had but the merest glance. But I know she is, or she
wouldn't have caught your discriminating eye.'
'You may take my word for it; she looks as well at hand as afar.'
'What colour are her eyes?'
'Her eyes? I don't go much in for colour, being professionally sworn to
form. But, let me see--grey; and her hair rather light than dark brown.'
'I wanted something darker,' said Somers airily. 'There are so many fair
models among native Englishwomen. Still, blondes are useful property!...
Well, well; this is flippancy. But I liked the look of her.'
* * *
Somers had gone back to town. It was a wet day on the little peninsula:
but Pierston walked out as far as the garden-house of his hired castle,
where he sat down and smoked. This erection being on the boundary-wall
of his property his ear could now and then catch the tones of Avice's
voice from her open-doored cottage in the lane which skirted his fence;
and he noticed that there were no modulations in it. He knew why that
was. She wished to go out, and could not. He had observed before that
when she was planning an outing a particular note would come into her
voice during the preceding hours: a dove's roundness of sound; no doubt
the effect upon her voice of her thoughts of her lover, or lovers. Yet
the latter it could not be. She was pure and singlehearted: half an eye
could see that. Whence, then, the two men? Possibly the quarrier was a
relation.
There seemed reason in this when, going out into the lane, he
encountered one of the red jackets he had been thinking of. Soldiers
were seldom seen in this outer part of the isle: their beat from the
forts, when on pleasure, was in the opposite direction, and this man
must have had a special reason for coming hither. Pierston surveyed him.
He was a round-faced, good-humoured fellow to look at, having two little
pieces of moustache on his upper lip, like a pair of minnows rampant,
and small black eyes, over which the Glengarry cap straddled flat. It
was a hateful idea that her tender cheek should be kissed by the lips
of this heavy young man, who had never been sublimed by a single battle,
even with defenceless savages.
The soldier went before her house, looked at the door, and moved on down
the crooked way to the cliffs, where there was a path back to the forts.
But he did not adopt it, returning by the way he had come. This showed
his wish to pass the house again. She gave no sign, however, and the
soldier disappeared.
Pierston could not be satisfied that Avice was in the house, and he
crossed over to the front of her little freehold and tapped at the door,
which stood ajar.
Nobody came: hearing a slight movement within he crossed the threshold.
Avice was there alone, sitting on a low stool in a dark corner, as
though she wished to be unobserved by any casual passer-by. She looked
up at him without emotion or apparent surprise; but he could then see
that she was crying. The view, for the first time, of distress in
an unprotected young girl towards whom he felt drawn by ties of
extraordinary delicacy and tenderness, moved Pierston beyond measure. He
entered without ceremony.
'Avice, my dear girl!' he said. 'Something is the matter!'
She looked assent, and he went on: 'Now tell me all about it. Perhaps I
can help you. Come, tell me.'
'I can't!' she murmured. 'Grammer Stockwool is upstairs, and she'll
hear!' Mrs. Stockwool was the old woman who had come to live with the
girl for company since her mother's death.
'Then come into my garden opposite. There we shall be quite private.'
She rose, put on her hat, and accompanied him to the door. Here she
asked him if the lane were empty, and on his assuring her that it was
she crossed over and entered with him through the garden-wall.
The place was a shady and secluded one, though through the boughs the
sea could be seen quite near at hand, its moanings being distinctly
audible. A water-drop from a tree fell here and there, but the rain was
not enough to hurt them.
'Now let me hear it,' he said soothingly. 'You may tell me with the
greatest freedom. I was a friend of your mother's, you know. That is, I
knew her; and I'll be a friend of yours.'
The statement was risky, if he wished her not to suspect him of being
her mother's false one. But that lover's name appeared to be unknown to
the present Avice.
'I can't tell you, sir,' she replied unwillingly; 'except that it has to
do with my own changeableness. The rest is the secret of somebody else.'
'I am sorry for that,' said he.
'I am getting to care for one I ought not to think of, and it means
ruin. I ought to get away!'.
'You mean from the island?'
'Yes.'
Pierston reflected. His presence in London had been desired for some
time; yet he had delayed going because of his new solicitudes here. But
to go and take her with him would afford him opportunity of watching
over her, tending her mind, and developing it; while it might remove
her from some looming danger. It was a somewhat awkward guardianship for
him, as a lonely man, to carry out; still, it could be done. He asked
her abruptly if she would really like to go away for a while.
'I like best to stay here,' she answered. 'Still, I should not mind
going somewhere, because I think I ought to.'
'Would you like London?'
Avice's face lost its weeping shape. 'How could that be?' she said.
'I have been thinking that you could come to my house and make yourself
useful in some way. I rent just now one of those new places called
flats, which you may have heard of; and I have a studio at the back.'
'I haven't heard of 'em,' she said without interest.
'Well, I have two servants there, and as my man has a holiday you can
help them for a month or two.'
'Would polishing furniture be any good? I can do that.'
'I haven't much furniture that requires polishing. But you can clear
away plaster and clay messes in the studio, and chippings of stone,
and help me in modelling, and dust all my Venus failures, and hands and
heads and feet and bones, and other objects.'
She was startled, yet attracted by the novelty of the proposal.
'Only for a time?' she said.
'Only for a time. As short as you like, and as long.'
The deliberate manner in which, after the first surprise, Avice
discussed the arrangements that he suggested, might have told him
how far was any feeling for himself beyond friendship, and possibly
gratitude, from agitating her breast. Yet there was nothing extravagant
in the discrepancy between their ages, and he hoped, after shaping her
to himself, to win her. What had grieved her to tears she would not more
particularly tell.
She had naturally not much need of preparation, but she made even less
preparation than he would have expected her to require. She seemed eager
to be off immediately, and not a soul was to know of her departure. Why,
if she were in love and at first averse to leave the island, she should
be so precipitate now he failed to understand.
But he took great care to compromise in no way a girl in whom his
interest was as protective as it was passionate. He accordingly left her
to get out of the island alone, awaiting her at a station a few miles
up the railway, where, discovering himself to her through the
carriage-window, he entered the next compartment, his frame pervaded by
a glow which was almost joy at having for the first time in his charge
one who inherited the flesh and bore the name so early associated with
his own, and at the prospect of putting things right which had been
wrong through many years.