On the day after this conversation Clytie was surprised by an
announcement from Durdleham that Mrs. Blather and Janet were suddenly
coming to town and would avail themselves of her often repeated
invitation to pay her a visit in her new home. Janet had been ailing for
some time past. The over-refined Davenant blood had never been vivifying
at any time, and now, as there were sudden dangers of a grave kind,
their Durdleham doctor had advised her consulting a London specialist.
They hurried to catch the great man before he left for his summer
holidays. That was their apology to Clytie for the shortness of their
notice. Ordinarily on their rare visits to town they put up at Durfey's
Hotel in Albany Street. Their father and grandfather had put up
there from time immemorial, and they spoke of Durfey's with solemn
familiarity, as if it were the one hotel of London. On this occasion,
however, they came and stayed with Clytie.
Their presence in the house was a relief to her, even though it was by
way of counter-irritation. Thornton showed himself in the light of a
charming host and delighted his sisters-in-law. They could not find
enough felicitations to bestow upon Clytie. They forgot the old
misunderstandings, took it for granted that Clytie had finally settled,
was happy, without any ulterior desires. They went round the house, Mrs.
Blather manifesting mild enthusiasm over the more solid arrangements in
the way of furniture and domestic appurtenances, Janet going into little
ecstasies over the decorations.
“I never thought you had such a talent for house management,” said Mrs.
Blather after an inspection of the linen-cupboards and china-closets.
“I hardly think it requires absolute genius,” replied Clytie, “to see
that sheets are folded up properly and that plates are not put away
dirty.”
“Ah!” said her sister, with a philosophic sigh. “So many young wives are
so inexperienced.”
It was a delight to Mrs. Blather to see Clytie in this aspect. She could
talk to her now on common ground; Clytie had become an ordinary sensible
woman, who could discuss the things that fill the ordinary sensible
woman's life: housemaids, fancywork, and the price of fish. Mrs. Blather
knew that Hammerdyke was fairly well off, but she thought it her duty
to give Clytie many valuable hints as to household expenditure, to which
Clytie listened with suave distraction. She also gave her recipes for
cooking, and the washing of lace, and infallible methods for removing
wine stains from tablecloths; also neat little formulas for the
management of a husband.
“But yours is simply perfect,” she added, with reference to this last.
“Oh, Clytie, you are a lucky girl!”
To Clytie there was something pathetically humorous in the aspect she
presented to her sisters; in finding herself, for the first time in her
life, perfect in their eyes; in their changed relations. It was amusing
to be the lady of the house, and to make plans for Gracie and Janet's
entertainment. She brightened under the sense of it, and though many
a misconception on their part caused her a sharp twinge of pain, she
allowed them to purr on contentedly, taking a small measure of enjoyment
from the comfort thereof. Besides, she felt that it would not last
long. Their stay was limited to three days. A week of it would have
been intolerable. For this reason she declined to accompany them back
to Durdleham. At first Mrs. Blather was rather hurt at her refusal;
but Clytie gently smoothed over the matter, tactfully avoiding to give
specific reasons.
Although Thornton was amenity itself in his intercourse with Clytie when
they met in her sisters' presence, in their private relations he showed
a certain soreness--the result of the process of understanding.
She tried to heal this, to win back from him, if not love, at least
gentleness and courtesy.
“I must thank you, Thornton, for being so nice to my sisters,” she said
once.
“I suppose I know how to behave myself in my own house,” he replied
coldly, and Clytie retired, and listened, with an ache in her heart, to
Mrs. Blather's epithalamion.
Still it comforted her to see Thornton his old bright self again, as she
had known him before her marriage, even though she knew his brow would
darken on the departure of her guests. It gladdened her to hear him talk
animatedly to Janet of the wonders of the forest and the romance of war.
The hall, the staircase, and the walls of his smoking room were lined
with curiosities of travel: spears and skin-covered shields, swords,
wooden maces--a whole armoury of savage weapons. There were feathered
headdresses, great rings roughly wrought of virgin gold, strange
garments, some stained with blood. On the landing above the hall stairs
hung an evil wooden yoke with pendent chains which he had lifted from
the necks of two dead slaves, left by the caravan to die and rot by the
way; and, flanking it, two great lions' heads glared defiantly. To each
relic a history was attached, now commonplace, now ghastly. Clytie knew
them all, but she accompanied her sisters as Thornton took them round,
a perfect cicerone, and she was pleased to see his face light up and his
eyes glow with the reminiscence of dangers and brave deeds. It brought
her a glad memory of the past and a little hope for the future. She was
grateful, too, to Thornton for thus effectually hiding from her sisters
any signs of their recent differences and divergencies. She could
receive their congratulations with a sense of grim humour. Anything
approaching pity, with whatever delicate sympathy it might be conveyed,
would have made her wince with pain. Even Mrs. Farquharson, who had
sharp eyes and many kindly affinities with her, shared Mrs. Blather's
unquestioning belief in the happiness of her lot. Before others Thornton
was still the gallant lover and courteous husband, and Clytie was not
unthankful. When questioned as to Thornton's plans for the autumn she
answered vaguely. The session had worn him out. He was going up to
Scotland for the grouse shooting. She herself was going to take care of
the house until his return. She preferred staying in London in August to
going anywhere without him. And Mrs. Blather, quite satisfied, paid her
a little compliment on her wifeliness, and suggested various household
improvements to occupy her time during her grass-widowhood.
So Mrs. Blather and Janet went back to Durdleham, to raise a flutter of
excitement at the Durdleham tea tables over their accounts of Clytie's
moral and material prosperity and her husband's manifold perfections.
But the old man, Mr. Davenant, shook his head and sighed. Slow to
receive fresh impressions, he could not conceive Clytie other than
wilful and paradoxical. And he was suspicious of the brilliant soldier
of fortune. He would much have preferred his daughter to have married a
steady-going country gentleman or professional man. Still no fault could
be found with Hammerdyke, who had treated him with every courtesy.
Before Thornton's departure for Scotland a kind of reconciliation was
patched up between them. The first overtures had come from Clytie. After
all, he was her husband. They were bound together, for better or worse,
till death parted them. It was only common sense to struggle that it
should be for better. She humbled herself, then, a little, confessed
that she had been unreasonable in some things. He happened to be in a
softer mood, and encouraged her to tell him she was sorry if she
had been cold and selfish. Unconsciously she made him feel quite
magnanimous. He kissed her gaily, bade her think no more about it, and
even condescended to say with regard to the main point at issue:
“Well, perhaps you are about right in not caring to go to Durdleham.
Your sisters are not rapid.”
A remark which, although it jarred somewhat on Clytie's strung nerves,
she nevertheless accepted as a token of peace.
This was the second time in her life that she had deliberately humbled
herself before a man. She thought of it with a queer little pang. When
she had put down her young pride so as to retain Kent's friendship and
esteem, on the day that Jack had destroyed Winifred's picture, it had
been all gladness and triumph. She remembered how happily she had gone
to sleep that night, in pleasant subconsciousness of certain feminine
workings. It had been a joy to surrender then. But now? She shrugged her
shoulders, tried to dismiss it from her mind.
In the middle of August she found herself alone in the great house,
enjoying the leisure and solitude, the independence, the freedom from
friction. She devoted most of her time to her painting, which had been
sadly neglected since her marriage. Her studio was a pleasant room, with
a good light. It had not the severe, businesslike air of the one in
the King's Road; it was warmer, heavier with velvet hangings, richer in
quaint furniture. Instead of the whitewashed walls scrawled over with
grotesque caricatures, it had a delicately toned Morris paper. The floor
was polished, strewn with thick rugs; a great white bearskin lay before
the hearth. The piles of canvases stretched upon rough wooden backs that
used to lie stacked up in odd corners Thornton had had framed for her,
as a surprise to greet her on her home-coming, and now the best of them
were hung round the room. Some of her cherished possessions found a
place--the etching by Rupert Kent, two or three of Winifred's delicate
studies, and an exquisite Jacquemart that Kent had given her long
ago. But otherwise all was new, luxurious, separating her from the old
associations of her art life.
Whilst searching for a subject she took out her studies for the Faustina
picture. But she put them aside with a shudder. She was painting merely
for amusement, to gratify the artistic impulse that urged her to create.
But the hope, by which she had been gradually rising towards the goal
of her ambition, the hope of fame and full accomplishment, was gone,
apparently beyond recall; and she mused upon it sadly. This sense of
finality is characteristic of youth--its one governing pessimism. Yet
she was cheerful enough, glad to feel the brush between her fingers
again, and to smell the familiar odour of turpentine, and to see
her fancies take visible form under her touch. The artist within her
asserted itself, though vaguely, as from some depth where it lay buried.
It was undergoing a subtle change, and its weak, inchoate manifestations
were those of a period of transition. But Clytie knew it not.
The Farquharsons returned to town towards the end of the month, and
Winifred also, after her annual seaside holiday with the children. And
many of Clytie's other friends remained in London, and welcomed her back
among them. It was like a return to her old life. Only Kent was absent
from her circle. She missed him, sighing a little for the impossible.
Thornton wrote from Scotland with affectionate brevity. He did not know
that he could have missed her so much. He had bagged so many brace that
morning. He longed to see her. He thought he might as well stay on with
Carteret so long as there was any sport forward. His letters, dashed
off with a broad quill pen in a great, bold hand, covered four sides
of notepaper, and came once a week. Clytie had no reason to complain of
lack of attention on the part of her husband. Consequently she looked
forward to less troubled days when they should lead their common life
together again.
An occasional visitor that she had during these weeks was the boy Jack.
He had been for a term at the industrial school to which Treherne and
Kent had procured him admittance, and now passed as a reformed character
amongst his enthusiasts. The teachers at the school, with vivid memories
of stormy scenes, might have demurred at this opinion; but they were
miles away holiday-making, and for the time blissfully oblivious of
Jack. Four months over a spelling-book and a carpenter's bench, even
though the latter may be situated amid pleasant fields, are not long
enough to purify the blood from the wildness of London streets; and a
lifetime so spent cannot wash out hereditary taint; but they can teach
the use of soap and water and a suitable adjustment of garments. And
Jack was clean, and his wild elf locks were cropped into compulsory
smugness, and his clothes conformed to a strictly conventional order.
This external revolution was so startling that an accompanying moral
reform seemed unquestionable. Even his mother's dull pessimism was
affected by it. When she returned from her work she bribed him with
bread and treacle to sit in a chair where she could admire him, instead
of sending him out of her way into the streets as she had been wont
to do. But Jack ate the bread and treacle and then sauntered into the
street of his own accord. He did not admire his mother, and only heeded
her blandishments when they assumed an objective form. He admired one
person, and that was Winifred. With her the young animal was tame,
almost docile. It was merely owing to lack of special instinct that he
did not lick her hand. He was often in the studio, where he had been
constituted general factotum during his holidays. He swept the floor,
cleaned the windows, set the brushes and paints in order before Winifred
arrived, ran messages for her, and whenever she permitted would sprawl
on the ground by her side, following her movements with his great brown
eyes. To prevent him from wasting his time and energies in this passive
adoration, Winifred often invented commissions for him which he executed
with proud despatch, disregarding all allurements to eat the lotus of
the gutter and holding his person sacred as Winifred's messenger. It was
in consequence of this that he found his way to Clytie's house, acting
as postman for his patroness. At first he was shy. He had not lost the
feeling of awe with which Clytie inspired him, nor had he forgotten the
dread picture of her anger on that day when she had summarily dismissed
him from her service. It was only his devotion to Winifred that had
induced him to put, as it seemed to him, his head in the lion's mouth.
But when he found that the lion was kind and roared as gently as his own
dove, and further, gave him various unimaginable dainties to eat and odd
shillings to spend in surreptitious tobacco, the house in the Cromwell
Road became invested with pleasant associations.
It was after Clytie had had two or three visits from him that the idea
occurred to her to paint the portrait of the reformed Jack. The sittings
continued long after the necessity for them had ceased. Jack came of his
own accord. At last one day he astonished her by refusing the shilling
that she held out to him.
“I didn't come for that,” he said bluntly. “I come to see you.”
Clytie and the urchin in industrial school corduroys looked steadily
for some seconds at one another, and both in their respective ways were
conscious of having added to their sum of knowledge. Then they became
real friends. Clytie looked upon him with a new interest, taking herself
severely to task for having summed him up in the past with such scornful
superficiality. She atoned for it now by seeking to interest herself
in his life, to give herself a little place in it, whereby it should
receive some individual colour. This was all the easier now, as Winifred
had smoothed down many of Jack's social asperities. Albeit not refined
of speech, he no longer used profane language in the studio, nor did he
entertain her with sanguinary details of cat murder. When the time came
for him to return to school Clytie felt quite sorry.