It was an evening in mid-February that Clytie went to a dance given by
the Redgraves in their large house in St. John's Wood. Redgrave met her
almost as soon as she arrived in the dancing-room.
“So you have come at last--we had almost despaired of seeing you. I
think there are a good many men you know--all dying to dance with you.”
“Oh, give me a little breathing time,” laughed Clytie. “You have had
time to fix on your cap and bells, let me adjust mine.”
“Don't touch yourself or you would spoil the effect,” said Redgrave,
mixing the metaphor for the sake of an opportunity of expressing his
admiration of her beauty. “I wish I could paint that portrait of you
now: 'Clytie, woman and artist.' There is one advantage about that
combination--it assures perfect taste in dress.”
He looked her up and down critically, stroking his long gray beard.
“I am glad you like me,” said Clytie. “It cost me sleepless nights, I
assure you. Didn't you know it was my serious occupation in life?”
“Well, my dear, I hope you will have your reward,” replied Redgrave,
laughing--“only you won't find anybody who admires you and your genius
half as heartily as I do.”
He nodded, smiled, and left her as one or two men came up to her,
programme in hand. She gave them the dances they requested, and took
a seat near the door by the side of some ladies of her acquaintance,
watching animatedly the waltz that was in progress.
“Good-evening, Miss Davenant,” said a voice, deep and resonant, that
made her start and the colour mount into her cheeks.
It was Thornton Hammerdyke.
“You see I procured the invitation, and here I am. Where is your
programme?”
He took her card attached with its bit of silk to her fan, and scribbled
recklessly.
“You have nearly filled it all up!” she exclaimed.
“Naturally,” he replied. “Let us dance out the fag-end of this.”
She took his arm gaily, and with him entered the whirl of dancers.
“You are looking dazzling to-night,” he said. “What witchery have you to
make your eyes so blue and your hair so glorious?”
She shook her head and smiled half inwardly, thinking of Redgrave's late
compliment and differentiating it from this. Each man was honest, in his
own way.
“I put myself down for all those dances,” he went on, “because there is
not a woman in the room fit to look at after you. I couldn't dance
with them, and I should have been bored and irritated with standing and
watching you dancing with other people. Then we can get away and sit by
ourselves.”
“But what are all the men to do, to whom I have to be polite?”
“They must give way to the man to whom you are always fascinating. I
scarcely saw you at all yesterday. Now is my chance, and I am going to
make the most of it.”
“Yes, but there are the sacred conventionalities.”
“I thought you went in for being superior to them.”
“So I am in a general way; I attach no intrinsic value to them--but they
are useful as counters in one's dealings.”
He laughed; pressed the fingers that he held in his left hand.
“To-night no checks are taken! It must be all solid gold--the true, real
Clytie. As for people talking, you are glorious enough in your beauty to
defy them. What can you and I care for idle gossip?”
The words thrilled through her. Womanlike she had humbled herself before
his greatness. To be raised thus by him to his empyrean, whence they
could look down upon the rest of earth-bound mortality, in common
grandeur, made her heart swell with a not ignoble pride.
“We shall do whatever you like,” she whispered.
To this pitch of intimacy had the past three weeks brought them--a long
enough period for an infinite number of things to happen--none the less
real for being subjective. Nothing had changed in their external
lives. Hammerdyke went into society, read a paper here and there on his
travels, digested many bad dinners and worse flattery, played cards,
smoked, and drank with his fellows. Clytie painted assiduously, read,
exchanged visits with her friends. Kent was missing from her life.
She saw him rarely, at odd moments, when they talked commonplaces
and avoided by tacit consent the subject of their disunion. They were
“league-sundered by the silent gulf between.” He told her that he was
thinking of accepting an offer privately made to him by one of the heads
of his department, of leave of absence for three months for the purpose
of studying the numismatic collections of certain foreign capitals. The
prospect was enticing, as he could thus have the run of the continental
libraries, whereby his own great work could be considerably advanced.
Clytie listened kindly, wished him good luck. He went from her sad at
heart, and she was angry with herself and humiliated at feeling somewhat
relieved at the idea of his absence. It was not that she regretted the
old life less. Its memories were still precious. But Kent's departure
would clear the way to a better understanding of herself.
Much had happened during the past three weeks--the discovery of a new
world for Clytie in which all was strange, beset with vague dangers,
vibrating with a tremulous joy akin to terror. She had been lifted off
her feet, hurried against her will into a whirl of new sensations. At
first she resisted with fierce virgin pride; then gradually she began to
close her eyes for a short sweet spell and allow herself to be drifted
by the current; finally she gave up struggling. The history of most
women at their first contact with passion.
The story of this period is very simple. In its first developments love
is usually not ultra complex. Given a man and a woman and conditions
for meeting freely alone; further, a sudden overmastering passion on
the part of the man, a half known, unfulfilled need in the woman; given
these premises, and a child can deduce the result. It is the fundamental
law of sex. Only when the sentimentalities and more delicate affinities
come into play, when the needs of the finer animal man begin to cry
after their satisfying, does love leave its simple phase and gird itself
with its infinite many-coloured web of complexities. At first the mind
may see the web glimmering in a far-away twilight--but heeds it not as
long as the sense is held captive.
Two remarkable personalities had met, Thornton Hammerdyke and Clytie.
With the intensity of a strong animal nature he had fallen in love with
her, with her beauty, charm, and directness. Her magnificent vitality
drew him, compelled him. He shut his eyes to every other interest. The
sense that he wanted her was sufficient justification for setting all
else aside. He never even thought of marriage in the first flush of his
passion. But that was the result of habit. Passion is a very different
thing from the serene considerations that, according to the Book
of Common Prayer, induce people to enter into the holy state of
matrimony--and Thornton was quite free from any considerations of
the kind. So that when marriage dawned upon his mind as a necessary
condition, he accepted it, as a reckless sacrifice, as a means to an
end, not as an end in itself. He was a man whose life had been passed
in hot, headstrong action. Desire imperiously compelled immediate
gratification. Since loving Clytie entailed marriage, he resolved to
marry her forthwith.
He informed Mrs. Farquharson of the fact, in his masterful manner.
“I am going to marry Clytie--so get yourself a wedding garment.” Mrs.
Farquharson jumped up, clapped her hands. She would not have been
a woman had the possibilities of this match not occurred to her
seductively. The announcement, however, anticipated her hopes.
“Oh, Thornton,” she cried, “I am so glad! I have been longing for it.
You two are made for each other. I must go down and see Clytie this
afternoon!”
“Better not,” said Thornton. “I'm going. Besides, I don't think Clytie
knows it yet.”
Caroline's face fell a little. “Oh! I thought you meant you were
engaged, and that sort of thing.”
“That's a detail--it doesn't matter. She's going to marry me, and you'll
come and dance at the wedding.”
Caroline kept her counsel, but she worked steadily in Thornton's cause,
sang his praises to Clytie, invented many occasions for bringing them
together. She believed with all the fervent loyalty of her nature that
this marriage was an ideal one for her cousin and her friend, and had at
heart equally the interests of each.
Thornton very quickly constituted himself a factor in Clytie's life. She
saw him almost every day in Harley Street, at home, or at the houses of
common acquaintances. His influence grew strong upon her. Glimpses of
the physical joy of life flashed before her like revelations. For the
first time she doubted the possibilities of the artistic life. They
seemed shadowy, unsatisfying.
From Thornton seemed to come realisation that something stronger, more
real, positive lay beyond them--the delight of living in pulse and nerve
and bodily fibre. Yet, unlike a man, a woman cannot live by sense alone.
Sentiment invariably plays its part. This in Clytie's case was fed by
the glamour of Thornton's heroic history, so different from that
of ordinary men, whose lives, compared with his, seemed tame and
colourless. The glow of his personality bathed magically all his
actions, all his words. In his superb manhood he stood before her eyes
as the incarnation of physical force, the victorious protest against the
shams of art, culture, and other pale shades of our morbid civilisation.
When she was lifted high with him in this triumph, sense and sentiment
were fused together and she was wholly at his mercy. Thornton had
come into her life at the most delicately critical moment of a woman's
career, when the current of her nature, checked at the turning-point
between friendship and love, struggles tumultuously for some other
channel into which to empty itself.
“We shall do whatever you like,” she said to Thornton, during their
waltz. It was the first definite surrender she had made to him. She was
surprised that it cost her so little, seemed so sweet and natural.
“Then you and I will defy the world!” he replied.
They paused to rest for a moment, leaning against the wall. An elderly
man came up, shook hands with her, and opened a desultory conversation
with Thornton. Clytie looked amusedly at the animated scene, tabulating
mentally, by force of habit, the types that passed and repassed
before her. Seldom had it struck her before so forcibly how few of her
fellow-creatures possessed the secret of the joy of life. How many of
the couples circling round, backing, glissading in that dizzying mass of
motion were really gladdened by what they were doing? Stout men puffed
around with a serious air of responsibility. Tall men, with drooping
moustaches, paced languidly in time, scarcely heeding their partners,
who expressionlessly suffered themselves to be guided hither and thither
through the throng. The robust youth of either sex seemed to look upon
dancing as an athletic exercise, and waltzed with the intent fervour of
tennis players on their mettle before a big gallery. Only here and there
did a girl, safe in the arms of a good dancer, half close her eyes and
surrender herself to the sensuous charm of motion in perfect time with
the throbs of music. Mankind is astonishingly ignorant of the essential
qualities of many of its habitual pleasures. So thought Clytie, in the
thrill of her new knowledge. The orchestra began the opening bars of the
_coda_. Thornton turned away from the elderly gentleman, and putting
his arm round Clytie's waist led her away, without a word, to finish the
waltz.
“How delightful it is to dance with someone who is not bored by it!” she
said, when the music stopped and they were pushing their way through the
crowd towards the door.
He laughed in his boyish way, throwing back his head.
“I had better not answer that remark,” he replied.
“Why?”
She looked askance at him as she asked, just as any little peasant girl
would have done. Certain conditions bring all humanity to one level. He
pressed the hand that was on his arm lightly against his side.
“Let us get away by ourselves, and I will tell you,” he said.
But this opportunity did not occur. Thornton was captured by his hostess
for introducing purposes, Clytie waylaid by brother artists for dances.
When Thornton and herself were able to find seats the music struck up
the prelude of the next waltz, and Clytie was discovered and led off by
her partner. Only three men, exclusive of Thornton, had been fortunate
enough to find places on her programme.
The hours passed away swiftly. She forgot her life, her
responsibilities, her needs. During the three dances with the
fortunate--which were early in the evening--she flashed with wit and
merriment, her partners thinking with masculine self-esteem that they
were the fine steel that had caused these scintillations. But more
than one woman there that night observed how Clytie's eyes ever and anon
caught those of Thornton, who was standing by the doorway. When the two
danced together, men watched them curiously.
“If the principle of natural selection could always be carried out like
that!” said French, the journalist, to Redgrave.
“Physically, yes; but----”
“But what? If the human race sprang exclusively from such parents, what
a glorious race it would be!”
“It might be a very good thing for the race,” replied Redgrave drily;
“but I was thinking of the parents--at least of one of them.”
“Nonsense! a marriage like that would be ideal,” said French.
Redgrave shook his head.
“I doubt it,” he said, with some earnestness. “I know a little of Clytie
Davenant. I may claim to have discovered her. She has the blood of life
in her, it is true--but she has the finer artistic temperament as well.
Mark my words, French; if she marries that man she will lose her art
clean--clean; and not another 'Jack' will she ever be able to paint.
Many of us men artists are ruined by marriage. A woman artist, to whom
it means fifty times more, runs fifty times more risk.”
“Well, perhaps we are a bit previous,” said French laughing, and turned
the conversation.
Later in the evening Thornton and Clytie came out of the dancing-room.
She was flushed, dazed with the music, the noise, the electric light and
the heavy scent of cut flowers; confused, too, by Thornton's presence,
by the after-pressure of his arm around her waist, overwrought a little
by his personal magnetism.
They threaded their way through the crowd that lined the passage and the
stairs, went through the brilliantly lit studio with its polished oak
floor and wealth of hangings and costly decoration, into the models'
dressing-room beyond, that had been turned into a small boudoir for the
occasion. Many couples were wandering about the studio, examining the
pictures and the china, but the dressing-room had escaped notice.
“This is soothing after the glare,” said Clytie, sitting down restfully
on a divan.
Great palms screened the door, the room was hung with dark, heavy
drapery, and between them shaded electric lamps shed a subdued light.
Thornton sat down by her side. After a while the steps and talking in
the adjacent studio ceased, and there rose from below the faint strains
of the music and the dull rhythmic thud of the dancers.
“What were we talking about? I forget,” said Clytie, after a short
silence, and then, meeting his eyes fixed upon her, she turned away her
head:
“Don't! I can't bear it,” she murmured involuntarily.
Then he caught her hand: “Clytie, you are adorable, glorious,
bewitching!” he cried, and kissed her quickly, twice, on the corner of
her lips. She snatched her hand away and started to her feet, pale and
trembling, her eyes blazing.
“Why did you do that? You have no right to do that!”
He rose, went to her, caught her wrists again--but this time she was
powerless to withdraw them, and he spoke in a quick, deep voice:
“I have the right to kiss you--to kiss you and kiss you till the world's
end--for I love you--and I would sacrifice all I have got--my life
itself, for one kiss from you--I loved you, wanted you, from the first
time I saw you--when the suddenly lit light revealed your beauty to me,
and you sprang glorious, bewildering out of the darkness.”
“Let me go, let me go!” she murmured, faintly struggling.
“Not until you tell me that I have the right to kiss you--I know you
will give it, you must! Clytie, I am stronger than most men, and my love
is stronger than most men's and will not be denied--I will make you,
force you to love me as passionately as I love you. Look at me. Speak!
say just a word!”
She flashed a swift, sidelong glance at him, and met his eyes with the
light burning in their dark depths. His passion intoxicated her.
“You know,” she murmured. The words came almost without volition.
He released her hands. She remained standing for a moment, motionless
with downcast eyes. Then she lifted them once more shyly, met his, and
uttered a short gasping cry as he caught her in his arms and kissed her
passionately.
“You will be my wife, and let our whole lives be one long kiss?”
“Yes,” she said, below her breath.
A little later Thornton put her into a cab, and she drove home. The cold
night air invigorated her relaxed body, but seemed to benumb her mind.
She could not think--only feel Thornton's kisses upon her. The rest of
the subjective and objective universe was a blank. Only when the
cab stopped and the driver asked the number of her house through the
trap-door in the roof, was she conscious of external things. Then she
found that he had driven a long way past the familiar door. As he turned
round grumblingly, she was aware of being chilled through from her drive
across London, and longed to get indoors.
It was not until she told Winifred the next morning that she realised
the great change that had come over her life.
“I am going to marry Mr. Hammerdyke.”
The commonplace statement, thus uttered for the first time, seemed like
a cold decree of fate, inevitable, irresistible. Winifred cried a little
at the thought of losing her.
“But you will be happy, my darling,” she said, smiling through her
tears. “He is so brave and strong and handsome, and he must love you
better than his life.”
“Yes, dear,” said Clytie, gently stroking her friend's brown hair
(Winifred was sitting at her feet) and looking tenderly at her pure,
upturned face. But her own, bent down, was aflame with reminiscence.
“When is it to be? Not for a long, long time, I hope,” said Winifred.
“Almost immediately--he wants it--there is no particular reason for
waiting.”
“I felt it was coming some day,” said Winifred; “but I did not expect it
so soon.”
“It is best,” said Clytie--“best that it should be at once; the interval
between the old life and the new would be too trying if it were drawn
out.”
“You always do what is best, dear,” whispered Winifred in her trustful
way. “Oh! you must be happy, very, very happy, Clytie dear.”
Clytie leaned back in her chair, caressing her friend's cheek with the
back of her hand, and looked around the studio. It came almost as a
shock to her to realise that in a short, short time she would have to
bid farewell to all that had grown up around her artistic life. The
grotesque caricatures on the walls stared at her like meaningless
shadows. Her palette, brushes, and paraphernalia of rags and turpentine
bottles lay strewn about like the properties of a forgotten comedy. The
unfinished pictures on easels and stands lost their fascination.
Only Winifred's little study on the other side of the studio seemed
unchanged--retaining its virginal freshness and purity. But the sound of
a step on the landing outside, buoyant, elastic, dispelled all wistful
regrets. She sprang to her feet as Winifred rose, and listened,
transformed into a radiant woman, with quivering depths in her dark blue
eyes, her red lips parted in a half smile, her chin raised showing the
full neck.
A moment or two afterwards Mrs. Gurkins appeared at the studio door.
“Mr. Hammerdyke, miss. I have shown him into the sitting-room,” she
said, and then retired.
“I knew it was he,” said Clytie.
“Go, dear,” said Winifred, putting her arm round Clytie's waist and
moving with her across the studio to the door.
Clytie kissed her laughingly and disappeared. But two tears rolled down
Winifred's cheek as she went back to the chair by the stove; and then
she flung herself down where she had been sitting, and burying her face
in her arm, began to cry bitterly.
“I don't like him, I don't like him; he will spoil my darling,” she
moaned.
Sometimes knowledge is given to those who seek after it least.