You are going to spend a dismal evening, my dear,” said Mrs.
Farquharson, with a sigh.
They were sitting on either side of the drawing-room fire, awaiting
dinner guests.
“Why?” asked Clytie.
“Oh, the crowd that's coming--fossilised London, with figures like
amphoras and faces like old coins. It's the principle of assimilation, I
suppose. And they'll talk as if there were nothing new under the sun.”
“There isn't much.”
“Isn't there? Wait till you have lived a little longer. At any rate
there are murders and divorces and new pictures and the latter end of
the nineteenth century. Why people choose to live a couple of thousand
years before their time I can't make out. You'll see. They'll all look
as if they had been excavated--except George, and he looks as if they
had never taken the trouble to bury him. Thank goodness, they have all
got weak digestions and don't dine out much, or else we should have them
here every week.”
“But the wives are coming too,” said Clytie by way of consolation.
“Poor things! They all look weary with many proof-sheets crammed with
circumflexes over impossible letters, and wrong-headed pictures of birds
and beasts. All archaeologists are not like George, you know.”
“But then no one is like George.”
“That's a mercy,” said Mrs. Farquharson settling herself with much
comfort among the cushions of her chair. “Don't you get married, my
dear; stay independent. Do you know, one of the beings is going to read
a paper. Pity me.”
“It seems as if I am to be pitied too,” remarked Clytie.
“Ah! but you are young and can make fun out of them. I can't.”
The occasion was a meeting of Mr. Farquharson's archaeological set. The
inner circle dined at each other's houses in turn once a month, and the
outer circle came in later, for the “conversazione,” as Mrs. Farquharson
called it, with a little shudder. A paper was usually read, followed
by a discussion, from which the more flippant seceded and gossipped
casually in odd corners. Clytie had never been to one of these strangely
homogeneous reunions. The people she generally met at her friends' house
were miscellaneous, and the talk danced about upon all subjects under
heaven, wreathed in blue curls of cigarette smoke. Mrs. Farquharson had
begged her to come and support her--“to strike a note of colour among
the gray ruins.” Clytie looked forward to the incongruous formalism of
the evening with an anticipation of amusement.
She hinted as much to Mr. Farquharson when he came into the
drawing-room. He laughed, bowed his long, ungainly figure, hoped that
Miss Davenant had come to be instructed. Professor Petherick was to read
a paper on an aureus of Geta of the type Cohen No. 11,--Clytie and her
hostess communed with each other dumbly,--and many rare coins were to
be exhibited. He trusted that Miss Davenant would be appreciative and
on her best behaviour. Numismatics was not a subject that lent itself to
flippancy.
“My wife can turn the house into a bear-garden every Sunday evening,
more shame to her, though she does sit and smile in her superior way.
But twice a year I assert my individuality and this house becomes sober
and respectable. So no cigarettes to-night, Miss Davenant. When I put on
these dress-clothes I am rigid.”
“You look very nice,” said Clytie.
He looked down at himself complacently, accepting the flattery; such is
man. He always insisted upon wearing very square-toed kid boots, a high
buttoned waistcoat with a chain made of old coins banded across it, a
deep velvet collar to his dress-coat, and a shirt-collar, with two long
ends that served as a tie, beneath his beard.
“I like him better in his velvet jacket,” said Mrs. Farquharson. “Go and
put it on, George.”
But George shook his head sadly. He must be properly attired to discuss
an aureus of Geta.
The guests arrived, seven in number, and they went down to the
dining-room. Clytie sat between Professor Petherick, a little rosy man
with a bald head and gastronomic appreciation, and a young clergyman
who had taken her in to dinner. She had been for so long a time outside
Church influences that a strange little Durdleham qualm come over her.
He looked stern, overworked, dreadfully in earnest, she thought, not
likely to sympathise with the Thelemite joyousness of life of the house
whose motto was, “_Fays ce que vouldras_.” He was the only bachelor
among the guests. The six others, including the professor, consisted of
three married couples, middle-aged, respectable. Mr. Vansittart was a
great Egyptologist. It was of his wife, a faded, weary-looking woman,
that Mrs. Farquharson had so pathetically spoken with reference to the
correction of proof-sheets. Mrs. Petherick was literary, fond of lions.
Her talk was a catalogue raisonné of her menagerie. Mr. Farquharson
listened politely and went on with his dinner. The remaining couple
were the Chowders, retired Anglo-Indians, who found only late in life
an opportunity of gratifying their ruling passions--on her part
an undisturbed warm bath of domesticity; on his, archaeological
dilettanteism. She was florid and buxom; he bronzed and shrivelled.
Both talked on their pet subjects. The Rev. Victor Treherne was a keen
numismatist. “A recognised authority,” Farquharson had whispered to
Clytie. “Will give Petherick beans if he goes wrong.” Clytie knew
nothing of numismatics. She did not know the difference between a moidur
and a bezant, nor did she seek enlightenment from her neighbour. She
questioned him as to his environment--North London, a large parish,
chiefly poor. The conversation languished, then it brightened up through
common effort. Each had a King Charles the First's head to keep in the
background, feeling it to be distasteful to the other. Treherne had
left his parish behind, and had brought no other interests with him save
those circling round the famous aureus, a matter of supreme indifference
to Clytie, who, for her part, had been cautioned to act as the superior
Ki-Pi-Yu, friend of Confucius, did on certain occasions--roll her
principles up and keep them in her breast. Each, too, divined dimly
the other's personality, and they talked eagerly, seeking to like and
interest one another through a current of mutual antipathy.
The professor and Mrs. Farquharson were talking less unreservedly on the
question of female disabilities. He had theories on the sacredness of
woman's mission. Mrs. Farquharson's views were more materialistic. Her
early training had disabused her of the oak and ivy illusion, which the
professor still entertained.
“No, it's no use, professor,” she said. “A man has got to go his way and
a woman hers. If their ways lie together, so much the better--they can
help each other; if they lie apart, so much the worse. Besides, I cannot
conceive anything more irritating to a man than to be followed all about
by his wife--like a dog. No wonder some men beat their wives.”
Treherne had caught the speech. He turned to Clytie. “Do you believe
that?”
“Of course. Mrs. Farquharson and I are sworn sisters. We hold advanced
views concerning ourselves. I hope you don't think we have a mission!
Have you ever thought how distressing it is to try to live up to a false
ideal, and somebody else's into the bargain?”
“We all have to live up to an ideal. This one may be false; I don't
know. At any rate it is a high one, and worth aiming at.”
“That is Jesuitical. What is to become of a woman's self-respect when
she knows all the time she is a humbug, although a sublime one?”
“By seeking to inspire others with faith in her she will at length
acquire faith in herself.”
“Don't you think that's rather vicious?”
“I don't know. The same principle obtains in my own calling. Many a man
enters the Church who is not really fit for it. But the professional
effort he has to make to raise others in most cases raises himself.”
“That may be quite true,” said Clytie, “but it does not prove the
principle to be right. Besides, the cases are different. You undertake,
when you enter the Church, to do certain things. Now when a woman enters
the world she does not undertake to do anything, any more than a man
does. They both clamour to assert themselves as human beings. They may
go about it in different ways,--it is merely the difference of sex,--but
their ultimate end is the same.”
“And what is this?”
“To get as much out of life as possible.”
“That's scarcely orthodox.”
The accompanying smile was a touch of the curb on Clytie. She paused.
There was an interval of dining. Then she turned to reply to a remark
of the professor. Mrs. Farquharson, who hitherto had steered skilfully
through the shoals of antiquity, was run aground by Colonel Chowder.
Clytie was astonished to hear her friend talking learnedly of coins and
Latin inscriptions. She ran discursively over the points of George's
collection, toning her speech with a light counterpoint of mockery,
so that its echo should reach Clytie's ears. Mrs. Chowder bubbled
domesticity over the Egyptologist; spoke of her sons, the difficulty
of army examinations. She was bent upon their getting into the
service, also upon their marrying young. The reconciliation of these
incongruities was the problem offered for Mr. Vansittart's solution.
Clytie again turned to Mr. Treherne.
“Do you often come here? I am almost of the house and I have never met
you.”
“Once before, on a similar occasion--almost the same circle. A common
hobby brings the most divergent people together.”
“It is a pity you and I have not got one,” said Clytie, flashing a
malicious glance at him.
“Perhaps we have. What do you mostly do?”
“Paint--for my living.”
“An artist! What is your line?”
“Anything human--they call it _genre_--street life--the very poor.”
“The poor? Then we have a common hobby after all!”
“Perhaps,” replied Clytie. “But I am afraid we ride it in opposite
directions.”
“Do you know much of their lives--go among them?”
“Not much; I see them only externally, from an artist's point of view. I
should like to see deeper.”
A light burned for a moment in the young clergyman's gray eyes.
“Would you care for work among them?”
“As a student, perhaps; as a reformer, no!”
“One generally leads to the other.”
“In that case I'll not run the risk,” she replied laughing.
An hour later the drawing-room was filled with the evening guests,
mostly men. Women archaeologists are scarce. The sentiment with which
they inwrap relics of the past harms the pure scientific spirit of
inquiry. Thus Mr. Farquharson to Clytie, briefly explanative. She
laughed, reminded him how lately in a sentimental mood he had accused
women of lack of imagination; she reproached him for inconsistency.
“Inconsistency is a principle of the art of living,” he replied
epigrammatically, moving away.
The men stood in groups about the room chatting on personalities,
examining the display of coin-cases arranged here and there upon the
tables, each under the soothing light of a shaded lamp. The professor
stood by himself on the hearthrug, hemming irritably, anxious to read
his paper. The talk was subdued, attitudes formal, a contrast to
the ordinary easy abandonment of that drawing-room. The men were of a
different type, mostly elderly, sedate. Mrs. Farquharson rested for a
moment from her exertions as hostess by Clytie's side.
“Now for a minute's peace. I wish the men would smoke, they all look so
woebegone; but George says they mustn't. Now, then, my dear, I haven't
seen you for ages, except for those five minutes before dinner; what
have you been doing lately?”
“Nothing much--working. Oh! yes, I have, though. I have found a new
chum.”
“What is she like?”
“It isn't a she, it's a he.”
“Where does he come from?” asked Mrs. Farquharson, arching her
eyebrows.
“From the skies, apparently: in the first case to put out a fire in my
room--he lives over me in the attics----”
“Clytie! You must be careful. Who is he? What's his name?”
“Caroline,” said her husband's deep voice behind her chair, “I don't
think you know Mr. Kent.”
Clytie started round violently at the shock of the coincidence. Kent
was standing by her side, looking odd, changed, a bit Philistine in his
evening dress. He wore a glove over his burned hand.
They talked, explained their meeting. He had had a numismatic
acquaintance with Mr. Farquharson for a long time past. Had received
his invitation at the Museum, his private address not being known to
his host. Clytie described her own privileged position in the household,
speaking frankly, vivaciously. She felt a little thrill of pleasure at
seeing him there. He seemed, more than the other guests, in harmony with
the traditions of the house. They had not time for much conversation,
social exigencies separating them. Besides, a general buzz and a
subsiding into chairs or restful attitudes sounded the warning that
Professor Petherick was about to read his paper.
He described the coin that had come into his possession,--previously it
had been passed round for the inspection of the guests,--claiming it to
be a finer specimen than the one in the Caylus collection. The figure of
Castor beside his horse, without the pileus, on the reverse, he argued
was a portrait of the unfortunate young co-emperor. The legend on the
obverse proclaimed that it was a coin of Geta. He took this as the text
for a learned disquisition upon the aureus, tracing its origin, the
variations in its weight, to the time of Justinian, who fixed it as a
limit stake for a throw of the dice. He quoted Pitiscus, Eckhel, many
learned authorities. He read in a bland, easy tone, confident of his
facts and his deductions.
Clytie felt relieved when he had finished. Across the room she had now
and then caught Kent's eye, which had a humourous twinkle in it. She,
who an hour before had been scoffing at the dry-as-dust nature of
numismatics as a pursuit, now felt a consciousness of inferiority, of
being relegated to the tribe feminine, who are not expected to care for
intellectual matters. She nourished a seed of resentment against Kent
and all archaeologists. But when the usual discussion on the paper began
she set an example of interest in it to Mr. Vansittart, who had come
over and sat down by her side. Really, she was curious to see what part
Kent would take in the discussion. He seemed to find many acquaintances
in the room, and an appreciative welcome from each. She experienced
a strange sense of satisfaction at the dispelling of an unformulated
apprehension lest he might be unknown, insignificant. She had seen him
several times since his visit to the studio; once they had met at
Sloane Square station and had walked home together. The acquaintance was
ripening into friendliness. Now she was interested at seeing him in a
new environment. Our conception of people changes very much according
to the conditions with which we associate them. But Kent in the
drawing-room, despite his unfamiliar attire, seemed much the same as
Kent in the studio, his manner towards the men she saw him talking with
much the same as his manner towards her. Presently he rose, broke into
the discussion. The principal participators listened with apparent
respect to his remarks, few in number, but apt.
“Well, Mr. Kent is an authority,” said the professor, surrendering a
particular point with a certain grace.
The little tribute fell gratefully on Clytie's ears. Suddenly she became
conscious that her pleasure was greater than the occasion warranted. She
turned round quickly to Mr. Vansittart, who was taking but mild interest
in the affair, and somewhat abruptly opened a conversation. The Rev. Mr.
Treherne joined them soon afterwards, asking permission to introduce a
friend. Thus it came about that Clytie had a small group around her, and
her interest in Kent's proceedings was checked for a time.
Meanwhile Mrs. Farquharson had threaded her way through the crowd of
black coats, and taken Kent off with her to an undisturbed corner. She
was curious to examine Clytie's new “chum.”
“So you live in the same house as Clytie Davenant. You rescued her from
the flames, didn't you? She told me something about it. What happened,
exactly?”
Kent sketched briefly the little scene with the blazing curtains, and
mentioned his visit next day and his subsequent meetings with Clytie. He
politely expressed his agreeable surprise at meeting her to-night.
“And what do you think of her?” asked Mrs. Farquharson confidentially.
“I dare say it's an odd question, but if you will come and see us again,
you will find we are given to saying odd things.”
“Like Miss Davenant?”
“You have found that out already? Well, come, what do you think of her?”
“Honestly, or conventionally?”
“If I meant conventionally, I should not ask you the question.”
Kent waited for a moment, stroking his beard. He was scarcely prepared
with an answer even to satisfy himself.
“I don't know. She is a bit too complicated to be defined in a phrase
like a term in Euclid. She is nearer to a man than any woman I know.”
Mrs. Farquharson smiled inwardly, noting the phrase, yet liking him
for it. It was so deliciously wrong, so absurdly off the track. She
contemplated him from the empyrean of feminine wisdom, and from that
moment took him under her protection. To blunder honestly in things
feminine is one of the ways to a woman's pity, thence often to her
heart. She encouraged him, however, instead of correcting him.
“Why do you say that?”
“For one reason, because I can talk to her as I would to a man. She has
ideas and is not afraid of expressing them. In fact, she is different
from the ordinary women one meets.”
“Oh, yes! she is that,” Mrs. Farquharson granted. “She is all for _le
nouveau jeu_. When I want to tease her I tell her she will find it
_le vieux jeu_ all the time, but she won't believe it.” Then suddenly,
“Don't you think she is very pretty?”
“Pretty?” echoed Kent in some confusion. “Really, yes, I suppose she is.
I hardly thought about it,” and leaning his body aside, so as to catch a
distant glimpse of Clytie between the forms of the little circle of men
round her, he added, “she is very pretty.”
And truly it was a fair picture that his eye fell upon. She was wearing
a simple dress of ivory-coloured silk, falling in soft, straight folds
to her feet. Her low-cut bodice was relieved only by a ruffle of old
lace along the top, and the sole ornament she wore, a necklet of antique
silver, brought out the delicate modelling of her shapely neck, as
she sat talking animatedly, her chin pointing upwards. Her rich, vivid
colouring compensated for any lack of relief in her costume. The intense
blue of her eyes, the many glints in her auburn hair, twisted in a
careless knot at the back of her small, shapely head, and kept in place
by a broad silver arrow, would of themselves have supplied the place of
any ornament.
“She is very pretty indeed--striking!” repeated Kent.
Mrs. Farquharson looked at him amusedly.
“You must be an original, Mr. Kent. Fancy knowing Clytie Davenant
without thinking of her looks!”
“I am a great bear,” replied Kent. “My sister says so, and brothers
and sisters generally speak the truth to each other. Of course I have
thought of Miss Davenant's looks, in a way--admired her artistically;
but I have never realised in her society that I have been talking to a
pretty girl--one consciously so. She does not seem to expect you to be
impressed with her looks. That's one thing that I like about her.”
Mrs. Farquharson carried on the conversation a little further and then
directed it into other channels. She was pleased with Kent, and made a
mental note to see more of him. A man who could like Clytie and yet
not reflect upon her personal attractiveness was, as she had said, an
oddity, and Mrs. Farquharson made oddities rather a speciality.
It was growing late and there was a perceptible thinning in the numbers
of the guests. A few enthusiasts lingered fondly over the showcases,
comparing their contents with specimens in their own or other
collections. Among these was Treherne, by himself, deeply cogitative.
He arrested Kent, who was passing by to speak to Clytie, whom he had
scarcely seen during the evening, as he had felt bound to take an honest
and practical interest in the proceedings. The question that Treherne
desired Kent's help in solving was a knotty one, and the two men bent
over the table absorbed in deciphering an obliterated obverse. When the
matter was settled Kent looked around for Clytie, but she had already
disappeared. There was nothing left for him to do but to take his leave.
“If you care for a Bohemian Sunday evening scramble, when everyone talks
inconsequent nonsense--quite a different thing from to-night,” said Mrs.
Farquharson, shaking hands--“we shall be very glad to see you.”
In the hall he was pleased to see Clytie, fur cloaked, waiting for a
cab. She gave him a frank smile of recognition. With his white slouch
hat and waterproof--a new one--his figure seemed to her very familiar.
He talked to her for a moment or two, until the cab was announced.
“How are you going home?” she said when they were on the pavement.
“Walk,” he replied briefly.
“But it's raining hard--would you accept a lift?”
He opened the swing doors for her, shielding her dress from the muddy
wheels as she entered, and then hesitated a moment. He had in fact been
intending to pay one of his midnight visits to his South Kensington
friends, but Clytie thought his hesitation was due to considerations of
propriety. She laughed with a little thrill of defiance as she settled
herself comfortably in a corner. The touch of rebelliousness let loose
an unwonted shaft of coquetry.
“Of course if you think it would do you more good to walk in the rain
than drive dry with me----”
The interval between her two remarks had been very short, taken up
entirely with the process of Clytie's seating herself in the cab, but
still Kent felt he had been somewhat unchivalrous.
“If you really don't mind, I shall be very grateful,” he said by way of
making amends as he took his seat by her side.
After all, driving with Clytie was not unpleasant, he reflected, and he
could see Wither and Fairfax any day. That Clytie should have made her
offer did not seem unnatural. He frankly informed her of the cause of
his hesitation.
“I paid you the compliment of being mistaken,” said Clytie.
“What do you mean?” he asked, catching a glimpse of her face in the
swift gleam of a gas-lamp. She was smiling, in good humour.
“Oh! if you are mystified, so much the better,” she exclaimed, “It will
be my little revenge.”
And that was all the explanation she vouchsafed him.
However, that drive spun a thread of intimacy between them. There are
few conditions of companionship so favourable as those in a hansom cab.
The driver is practically non-existent; the three sides and roof of the
vehicle form a temporary home, a _chez soi_. The outside world lies in
front of one, very near, and yet one is out of it. Even the desolate
squares, with their occasional lamps blinking through the mist, and
their wet, sooty trees rustling reluctantly as the wind passes through
them, and their gaunt houses, each grimly and jealously guarding its
household, giving the sense of the awful isolation of souls, fail to
depress as they invariably depress the sensitive pedestrian. There is
again the cheerful rattle which precludes sustained conversation, but
encourages disjointed, intimate talk. The rush of the air, the whirling
past of figures and objects, is exhilarating even in the vilest
of weather and in the dreariest of neighbourhoods. The rapid night
glimpses, too, of coffee-stalls, their lamps glaring upon the
surrounding idlers; public houses, with the sudden babel of voices
issuing from an opened door; walkers of the pavement forlornly standing
with white, indistinguishable faces, 'buses steaming and labouring
with their somnolent fares; every 'bus-load the counterpart of the last;
swifter still, the glimpses of the occupants of other cabs that pass,
stimulating the imagination; a phantasmagoria of life, almost unreal,
yet bringing into play some of the lighter elemental forces of nature.
Clytie was almost sorry when the cab stopped at the familiar side-door
next to the shop where the legend of “Gurkins, green-grocer,” was dimly
visible through the gloom. Much of the mere woman in her had risen to
the surface, obscuring the artist, the hater of formulas, the restless
seeker after the mysteries of life. She had felt childish, frivolous,
thus appearing in a new light to Kent, not without a certain charm,
although he wondered to himself whether she, after all, was not like the
rest of womankind--“fundamentally silly.” This was a famous dictum of
his.
But when the door closed behind them, and the narrow, ill-lighted,
close-smelling passage leading to the gloomy staircase struck upon her
senses, the realities of life came sharply before her, and her usual
independence of thought and action reasserted itself. Otherwise, when
she had said good-night to Kent on the landing and had found her room in
darkness, she would not have called him back to light her lamp for her,
and, that done, have asked him to remain for a short chat. He was struck
by the change to her usual frank tones, and seeking half unconsciously
for a reason, attributed his late impression to an illusion on his part
caused by the darkness and dispelled by the light, by which he could see
her face.
“You smoke, I know,” she said, throwing her wraps on to the sofa. “You
must be dying for some tobacco. What do you smoke?”
“Oh! a pipe,” he replied with much fervour, instantly seeking for it in
his pocket.
Clytie turned to poke the fire. It was black and sulky, and her efforts
were of not much avail.
“Let me try,” said Kent, bending down with her on the hearthrug; “this
is a thing not generally known.”
He threw a lighted match on to the fire, the escaping gases burst into
flame, and cheerfulness was established in the grate.
A trivial incident, but it was recognised by them both in after years as
having served to cement their comradeship.