Each lay awake that night, thinking. To Clytie the revelation of Kent's
love was dazing. The sense of her own dulness in never having pierced
the heart of his mystery was even more confounding. Why should she have
divined suddenly the meaning of the light in his eyes, on this first
meeting after their eighteen months of separation, when she had been
blind to it before? She only half guessed as yet why he had not told
her, but she saw that it must have arisen from a rare, strange delicacy
in his nature differentiating him from all other men that she had known.
Her heart went out in pity for him.
“How he must have suffered!” she repeated over and over to herself. And
then scenes between them came before her mind and became clear in the
light of this revelation: the strange suppressed interview after her
arrival from Durdleham; the last evening he had spent in London before
going abroad, when he had lit her fire, and she had gone up to bid him
farewell. How had her ears been so dull as not to detect the tremor in
his voice when, after kissing her hand, he had said: “You are my very
dear lady whom I will serve to the hour of my death”?
And then a little hissing snake of a thought formed itself into a
reply; and she shrank up together with a slight convulsive shiver as if
something foul had touched her.
After that she could not sleep. She got up, lit her candle, and took
a book at random from her shelves. It was her well-worn, girlish Globe
Shakespeare, one of the books she had surreptitiously procured when the
family Bowdler was included in the category of formulas against which
she revolted. She took it back to bed with her and commenced reading
where it had chanced to open. The first words that met her eye seemed
like a voice from the other world:
Such harmony is in immortal souls;
But while this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly clothe it in, we cannot hear it.
They followed so closely on the track of her own shuddering thought that
she could read no more. She blew out her candle, and remained awake,
staring into the darkness, until the gray dawn filtered through the
blinds, and she fell asleep.
Nor was Kent more restful. He had battled with his love, and with a
strong man's will had brought it under subjection, making it minister to
his happiness in spite of torturing longings instead of allowing it to
darken his life. It had awakened him to a sense of a world of beautiful
things, given him a deeper understanding and a wider sympathy than
he had before. For him truly might it be said that to love her was a
liberal education. It gave him the key to the knowledge and appreciation
of women, drew him from his seclusion into the general society he
had formerly avoided. A feminine conclusion which he would once have
pooh-poohed as weak and illogical struck him now with its intuitive
subtlety and delicacy of point. He learned that what the essentially
feminine mind lacks in breadth it gains in fineness, and he was
amazed to discover what a sensitive touch upon life is possessed by
a cultivated woman. And mingled with this new charm was another of an
esoteric kind. No woman he met had all the fascinations of Clytie, but
every woman seemed to possess one of them. He confided this once in a
roundabout way to Wither, who laughed, and told him he was growing too
susceptible and would find himself married one of these days. But Kent
shook his head. “I could only find a Clytie among them by marrying the
whole sex and making an extract of it,” he said with conviction. For not
only did the higher qualities of woman's nature manifest themselves to
him, but the minor graces of manner and appearance appealed to that side
of his aesthetic temperament that had hitherto been under a cloud. It
occurred to him then that he had been living with half his faculties.
Accordingly he felt a peculiar satisfaction in his new powers of
perception.
It had cost him a pang to forego the pleasure of the bright society that
Mrs. Farquharson gathered round her. At first he had given up going to
Harley Street through fear of meeting Clytie, for he shrank from meeting
her under the new conditions. Then as time passed on, and he accustomed
himself to the idea of Clytie as a married woman of fashion, he wished
to go, but shyness held him back. It would look strange to resume
visiting suddenly after his apparent rudeness and neglect. Probably the
Farquharsons would never have seen him again had not George met him at
a learned society's meeting, and given him a hearty and pressing
invitation.
But there was a large though somewhat scattered society in which,
although the rarest of visitors, he had always been welcome. And now
he not only mixed assiduously in this, thereby causing many laughing
conjectures as to the reason of his social reformation, but he
volunteered occasionally to go out with Wither, whose circle of
acquaintance, like Sam Weller's knowledge of London, was extensive and
peculiar. A revolution was thus effected in Kent's habits, and to a
certain extent in his mode of thought. A new zest was given to life in
this enlargement of his horizon. And all through his love of Clytie.
The awakening of the dormant sex principle had strengthened his nature,
extended his humanity in depth and breadth. In spite of a hopeless,
passionate love Kent was still a happy man.
And now this spell of her influence was broken, or at least modified.
He had seen her, felt the softness of her voice, the kindliness of her
eyes. And he had unwittingly betrayed his secret. She knew that he loved
her. She pitied him, promised that he should see her frequently on the
basis of the old friendship. It was kind and generous, he thought, to
step down from the height of her wedded felicity to comfort him with her
friendship and sympathy. An unexpected happiness was in store for him.
Perhaps, after all, his loyalty and devotion might be of some use to
her.
But strong, loyal man as he was, this sudden meeting troubled him. If
only he had spoken at once, before the other had come upon the scene,
she might have been won to love him. The old torturing regrets came upon
him, and he tossed sleeplessly on his bed. The love which, through its
very hopelessness, had all these months given him peace and a measure
of happiness now burst forth again tumultuously. It became a miserable
farce to lie awake in the darkness. He rose, went into his sitting-room
and lit the gas. Then he sat down at his writing space, and, burying his
face in his hands, remained for some time in great pain of thought.
At last his eye fell upon some notepaper lying invitingly on his
blotting-pad. An idea struck him. He would write to her. He covered
four sides with a passionate outburst of his love, writing wildly,
unthinkingly, as men must write in moments of overpowering emotion.
Then he tore up the sheet and began afresh. The summer morning light was
streaming into the room through the curtainless window, mingling oddly
with the yellow gas, when Kent enclosed and addressed the first letter
to Clytie in which he told her of his love. He got up, stiff from his
long sitting and somewhat exhausted, and going to bed, slept the sleep
of the just until it was his usual hour for rising.
The next afternoon when Clytie returned from a drive she found the
letter awaiting her. She took it up to her room, and there, sitting
on the edge of the bed, read it with conflicting feelings. It ran as
follows:
My Dear Clytie:
You know my secret. I think so. I saw it in your face. But if I was
mistaken, let me tell it to you in so many words; and as I bring to you
what is best and truest in me, it will neither dishonour me to tell it
nor you to hear it. And as you in your goodness offer me a resumption of
the old friendship, I must say it once and for all. I love you, Clytie,
with all the strength of a man who has allowed women to take up very
little part in his life. I loved you long before I knew it. It grew
up gradually during our intercourse, and only one day when you were at
Durdleham a little, little chance circumstance revealed to me that you
were not only the grand, sweet friend, but the woman that I passionately
loved. And I could not tell you for fear of paining you and destroying
our friendship--for what was I to love you? And I dreaded lest you
should think me disloyal to the trust between us. And at last I came,
resolved to speak, and it was too late. Winifred can tell you.
From that time I have carried my love with me as the vivifying principle
of my life. I thought you would never know, but now I have betrayed
myself.
Will it not pain you too much in your present happiness to see me under
this new guise? Ah, Clytie! tell me frankly as you always used to do.
I shall never, never willingly trouble the serenity of your life. I love
you too sincerely, too devotedly; and my love makes me myself too happy.
If you will meet me now and again after this, freely, at the houses
of our common friends, you shall only see the old Kent who now and then
scolded you, sometimes helped you, and who always held you dearer and
higher and grander than all other women; and yet you must let yourself
be loved--that I cannot help. It is fused into my being, and it gives
me happiness in my own way. I am an oddity, you know, Clytie, as you
yourself have called me, and oddities have their little privileges, and
if you know that it makes my happiness, and does not grudge you yours,
you will not find it hard to be loved.
If you were a woman of ordinary conventional ideas, I could not tell you
this. You would misunderstand it.
There seems but little I could do for you--and I would do so much. But
life is full of strange chances, and perhaps my chance of serving you
may come, and would then I could die for you to save you an hour's pain.
Yours in all devotion,
Kent.
Clytie read the letter over several times. At first the tears came into
her eyes and a lump rose in her throat. This simple, unrequiring love
soothed her and smote her at once. The largeness and tenderness of the
man's nature came to her almost as a revelation. What was there in her
worthy of this sacrifice? How could she tell him, she thought in her
broken pride, that she had failed miserably, wretchedly, that she had
forsaken the higher for the lower, that this selfless love of his was as
far above the sudden intoxication that had degraded her as the spirit is
above the flesh? She had thrown away the best, like the shepherd in
the German legend, who, in the sensuous heart-leap at the sight of the
glittering treasure, disregarded the voice, “Forget not the best,” and
dropped and trampled underfoot the little blue flower that opened the
enchanted hillside. How could she tell him that?
Then, too, the note of unconscious irony in his letter jarred through
her painfully. “Her present happiness!”
“Oh, my God!” she cried at last. “If he only knew how much need I have
of happiness!”
And then the strength that had kept the tears back for all these latter
months of weariness and disillusion suddenly forsook her, and turning as
she sat, she threw herself on the bed in a great agony of sobbing.
A little later she wrote Kent the following reply:
My Dear Friend Kent:
I am not worthy of such devotion. I can only wonder at it and accept
it humbly and gratefully. Words like these of yours I never could
misunderstand, Kent. If it is a pleasure to you to see me, you need not
shun me any more. Clytie.
Kent went into the studio on Monday to tell Winifred of the meeting; on
Tuesday, with a vague hope of seeing Clytie; on Wednesday, when Winifred
herself expected her, but she did not come. On Thursday, however, he
heard her voice from outside the studio door, and his heart gave a great
throb. He entered and found himself once more in her presence. Neither
spoke of the letters that had passed between them, but the faintest
pressure of the hand and a glance from her eyes told him that she
understood.
After that they met frequently--on Sunday evenings at the Farquharsons',
during the week in the studio, where for some months Clytie had taken
to coming very frequently for the comfort of seeing Winifred. Clytie
maintained her usual habits; Kent, as far as was possible, resumed his
old ones. Sometimes it was strangely like the old days. With a little
longing, perhaps, to add to the illusion, and also to give herself some
employment while Winifred worked, Clytie began a picture, choosing in a
humorous tenderness to take Winnie as her model. The picture never
was completed, for Clytie had not the temperament to do justice to the
slender figure in its quiet summer dress, and to the soft, dark face
bent so earnestly over the palette and sheaf of brushes. But while
the painting of it lasted it gave a comfortable air of reality to the
revival. It was new life to Kent to come in on his return and once
more receive Clytie's friendly nod as she stood by the easel, a
painting-apron over her dainty dress, and her hands smudged with
charcoal or daubs of paint. He did not think much of the portrait, and
he told her so with laughing frankness. But he divined why she was
doing it, and while criticising, encouraged her to proceed. His arrival,
however, as it always had been, was a signal for the cessation of
work. Then Winifred cleaned the brushes and put them in the trays,
and gathered up the tubes and rags which Clytie, with less sense of
tidiness, had strewed around her, and Clytie drew out the basket-table
and rang the bell for Mrs. Gurkins to bring up the tea. Clytie had
left behind her all her small domestic articles for Winnie's use in the
studio. So there was the familiar tea-service, the Crown-Derby cups
and apostle spoons,--a piece of wicked extravagance on Clytie's part in
times gone by,--the gray Japanese teapot whose wicker handle had still
to be delicately fingered, and the little glass sugar-bowl that looked
so plebeian beside the aristocratic porcelain. Scarcely anything in the
studio had been changed. The charcoal caricatures on the walls were as
sacred in Winifred's eyes as if they had been frescoes by old Italian
masters, and she had issued strict injunctions to spring-cleaners to
leave them intact. Even Clytie's easel was there now. Kent lived for
these afternoons.
One day Kent was going to dine with Wither and Fairfax. As his road to a
certain point was the same as Clytie's, they walked along together. This
was almost the first occasion on which they were quite alone together.
He reminded her casually of the fact.
“Yes,” she replied. “And I have been wanting to see you by yourself. I
have not thanked you for your letter. But you do see that I appreciate
it, don't you?”
“There is nothing to thank me for, since I pleased myself in writing it.
The thanks are from me to you for treating it as you have done.”
“Oh, no,” said Clytie, shaking her head and looking before her. “You
can't understand,--and perhaps it is better you shouldn't,--what a
letter like that means to a woman. Well, it meant a great deal to me. To
tell you so is the only return I can make you.”
“Don't let us talk of it,” said Kent. “I could not bear to have you as a
friend under false pretences.”
After they had walked a few steps in silence she continued the subject.
“Don't you think it would be better for you to forget all about me, and
look around for someone who can make you happy--really happy?”
“I'd have to live till the day of judgment to find her,” said Kent
bluntly.
“That's ridiculous, Kent. But can't you feel that it sometimes pains me
to see you sacrificing your life for me?”
“I am not sacrificing my life,” he answered cheerfully. “Besides, I
don't quite see what it has got to do with you--in one sense. I love
you, and I couldn't love anybody else for all the joys in creation.
Thank God, you are broad-minded enough to let me tell you this without
any chance of misconstruction.”
“Ah! That's all very well,” she said, with a little sigh. “If I were
a saint, I might placidly accept it as my due. Being only a woman, and
that none of the best, it seems such a waste of good love, Kent, and
love is a rare, rare thing in the world.”
“But it would go a-begging if you did not have it,” he replied,
laughing. “Come, don't let us say anything more about it. You are happy
with your own home and interests, and I am happy in seeing you and
having your friendship. Of course I have suffered a bit, but it's all
over now.”
“Ah!” she said. “Life seems to be made up of that.”
“Of what?”
“Suffering.”
He waved an energetic protest with his ash stick.
“Since when have _you_ grown a pessimist? I don't believe in it. Life
is made up of responsibilities and interests. There's suffering in it
of course; but there are alleviations. It's like cold and frost. If you
stood up without a rag on in the snow you'd think the world was made of
nothing else but frost. But you put on warm clothing and defy it.”
“But the poor, ill-clad, shivering wretches--what about them?”
“I'm talking of people with average material wealth,” he replied.
“That's just it. So can the people of ordinary moral wealth clothe
themselves against suffering. I don't like the morbid view of things. It
doesn't do any good. Do you remember a passage in Longfellow's
'Hyperion'--a criticism of two German poets--'melancholy gentlemen to
whom life was only a dismal swamp, upon whose margin they walked with
cambric handkerchiefs in their hands, sobbing and sighing, and making
signals to Death to come and ferry them over the lake'? It's a bit
fierce on your pessimists; but it's a wholesome little passage to
remember.”
A little while after this they parted. Kent walked on, swinging his
stick, convinced of Clytie's happiness, yet wondering at her unusual
note of pessimism, and Clytie called a cab, as she was late, and drove
home with a world of strange and troubling thoughts.
On the 1st of August Clytie received a visit from the boy Jack, who had
just come to London for his summer holiday. He had grown greatly during
the past year, had filled out. The taint of the street had gone from
him and he was becoming civilised. Clytie leaned back in her chair and
looked at him curiously as he sat, in all the self-consciousness of a
newly awakened sense of propriety, upon the edge of his seat, twirling
his glengarry cap. As an artistic object he had deteriorated. The motive
of his worth in that respect had gone with the picturesqueness of his
old garments and dirt and wild elf locks; but he was handsome in spite
of his cropped brown hair and the severity of his attire. Indeed there
was something incongruous in the corduroy uniform and the refinement of
his face, with its bright dark eyes and finely cut lips that disclosed
a perfect row of white, even teeth. And yet there was cruelty around
the mouth, the sublimated essence of the fierce savagery that Clytie
had impressed upon her famous picture. He had been transformed from the
animal into the human being, it is true; but that does not necessarily
imply that the human being does not retain many of the passions of the
animal. With the old Jack the untamable was degradingly confused
with lowness, but it shone out all the clearer now by reason of the
humanising of his face. Clytie noted all this as they talked together.
“You are getting quite a man,” she said. “When are you leaving school?”
“Mr. Kent says I'm to stay there another year,” replied Jack. “Then I'm
to be 'prenticed.”
“To a joiner?”
“I suppose so,” said Jack. And after he had scraped a little with his
toe on the ground he looked up and added: “Do you think I needn't be a
joiner if I didn't want to?”
“I don't see why you shouldn't be what you like, Jack.”
“Really!” and his face brightened. “I have been thinking I should like
to be something else.”
“What is that?”
“A carver and gilder,” said Jack bashfully.
“Where do the especial charms of that trade come in?” asked Clytie,
laughing.
“I dunno,” said Jack; “I only thought it.”
There was a touch of pique in his voice. Clytie noticed it, saw that she
had wounded susceptibilities.
“Tell me, Jack, why you want to be a carver and gilder.”
“I could make all the picture-frames for you and Miss Marchpane,” he
replied.
“Thank you, Jack,” said Clytie, touched at the boyish idea. “But perhaps
we'll make you something better than a carver or gilder. I don't know
what you could be. What could we make of you?”
A vague idea of raising Jack above the artisan level had occurred to her
during her scrutiny of his face. He was not an ordinary creature. That
he should spend his life in the dull, commonplace atmosphere of the
British workman seemed a waste of possibilities. There are millions who
possess just the qualifications for hewers of wood and drawers of water.
Why should a finer organisation not be cultivated, trained, put into an
environment where there are conditions for free development? But whether
the boy was a potential admiral, Lord Chancellor, or novelist she could
not determine. That was why she asked the question, “What could we make
of you?” somewhat pathetically. Jack shook his head in reply. He
had learned at school that life was a serious thing terminating in
apprenticeship.
“I've got to learn a trade,” he replied after a little, “and I'd sooner
be a carver and gilder than anything else.”
“But suppose a good fairy were to come, Jack,” persisted Clytie, “and
say that you were not to learn a trade, or that, if you did begin, you
would work your way out of it, and become a great man, and do glorious
things in the world--suppose you were able to choose to be anything
you liked--what do you think you would be? Tell me--something great and
bright and noble!”
She had grown animated with her enthusiasm, and leaned forward, with her
chin raised and lips parted--her attitude in moments of exaltation. The
boy looked at her for a few seconds, catching her spirit. Something
was at work within him too, for his eyes glowed, and his breath came
quickly.
“There is something, Jack. Tell me what it is!”
“I'd like to be a soldier like my father,” he said in a low voice, the
extravagant, glowing fancies that had haunted him for six months thus
finding half-choked expression.
“Your father?” asked Clytie, taken aback, and diverging into the side
track of her astonishment. “I never knew you had--I mean, I thought
you did not know anything at all about him. You used not to tell me the
truth, then, Jack.”
“Oh! but I did not know then!” he cried eagerly. “It was only when I
come here at Christmas, and you was ill, so I couldn't tell you. He
was a soldier, my father, an orficer. And I would like to be an orficer
too.”
“Really, Jack, this is very interesting,” said Clytie. “Aren't you
pleased to have a father you can be proud of? Was he a very brave man?”
“He had a sword,” said Jack proudly, as if that was proof positive of
valour.
“Come and sit down in your old place on the hearthrug and tell me all
about him.”
The boy did as he was bidden, sinking somewhat shyly at first on to the
great bearskin at Clytie's feet. But after a while he huddled himself up
in his old posture.
“Mother didn't tell me much,” he said in answer to a question of
Clytie's. “I was looking in a chest of drawers of mother's, and I see
a photograph--an orficer--all over strings and buttons and a sword and
great big moustaches. And I come to mother and says: 'Who's this?' and
she says: 'That's your father.' And then she snatched it out of my hand
and hit me a clout on the head for going to her drawer. She wouldn't
tell me no mere; but I know he was an orficer because he's got a star on
his collar. I think I knows orficers when I sees them,” he added, with
the ci-devant street urchin's knowledge of life. “And I go and look at
him now when mother isn't by.”
“But you shouldn't go to your mother's private drawers,” said Clytie by
way of moral precept.
“I've got as much right to look at my father as she has,” replied Jack
in an injured tone, whereat Clytie laughed a little.
“You are an odd youth. I wish I could make you an officer right away.
But I am afraid I can't.”
“I believe you could,” said Jack.
There was a world of childish faith in the remark and the manner in
which it was delivered. Clytie was both touched and saddened. She
regretted that she had raised hopes in the boy that from the nature of
things were doomed to disappointment. The overpowering difficulties in
the way of her sudden visionary aspirations for Jack's future ranged
themselves before her mind. So it was with a sigh she answered his
outburst of faith.
“I am afraid I can't, Jack,” she repeated. “But you yourself can do a
great deal. If you like, one of these days when you are much older, you
can enlist in the army, and then throw your soul into your duties, and
keep before you at every minute of the day the words, 'I am going to be
an officer,' and if you do this intensely, and never lose sight of it,
you will succeed. That's the only way. They call it getting a commission
through the ranks. But between now and then there are a great many
years, and I'll do all I can for you, Jack. Yet, perhaps, after all,
you'd be a happier and more useful man as a carver and gilder. Who
knows!”
Jack did not heed the pessimism of the peroration. His mind was aflame
with the possibilities of becoming an officer and he took his leave in
high spirits.
Clytie sat for a little musing over the solution of the problem that had
troubled her in the first days of her acquaintance with Jack. She was
gratified at her intuitions having proved correct. But there was still
much that was dark to her. The physiological side of the question,
however, was shadowed at present by more practical considerations. Why
could she not find a means of giving Jack a chance in life? She looked
ahead at the years to come, as she often had done since that dark
December morning, and a pain came at her heart as she beheld their
blankness. And now fate had thrown across her path this drifting spar of
humanity. Jack was hers if she chose to claim him. No one would dispute
with her the privilege.
After luncheon she walked to the King's Road and sat with Winifred, in
the hope that Kent would look in on his way upstairs. She wanted to take
counsel with him. His sturdy common sense would help her. She did not
confide her vague scheme to Winifred, because Winifred would have called
her a darling, and put her arms round her neck, and made her feel as if
she were meditating something peculiarly noble. So she waited for Kent's
sobering presence.
He came in at his customary hour, bearing a paper bag of peaches which
he had brought for Winifred. He had carried them from some distance
through the streets, and there were little wet stains on the paper. But
when the fruit was put on a plate beside the bread and butter on a flap
of the wickerwork afternoon tea table it looked fresh and inviting. This
sudden return of their old intimacy was delightful to all three of them,
and they chatted during tea as if nothing had happened to break it.
Then Clytie propounded her case, and they formed themselves into a
committee to consider it.
“I don't like social experiments,” said Kent. “It's constituting one's
self a Providence without Providence's resources. If one bit of the
machinery fails, the whole thing is apt to go wrong.”
“But I don't want to experiment!” cried Clytie. “It's quite wicked of
you to say so.”
“How can it be otherwise?” asked Kent. “You want to put an industrial
school boy of the most unconventional type and upbringing into the most
caste-bound, conventional profession under the sun. It's like putting
a bit of metallic sodium into water. A pretty experiment, though rather
common; but the result is an explosion.”
“But he must be trained and made a gentleman first,” cried Winifred,
coming to Clytie's assistance.
“Of course,” said Clytie. “Should he ever be able to get into the army,
he will be by that time quite a different being to what he is now.”
“Then you'll have to give him a rigid, conventional training, and so
spoil him,” said Kent.
“It wouldn't spoil him to learn to speak the Queen's English and the use
of his knife and, fork,” said Clytie a little defiantly.
“He'd have to learn more than that. Besides, how is he to be taught?”
“That's what I've come to you for advice about.”
Kent mused for a moment and stroked his beard.
“Are you very much bent upon this?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Then I can only see one way.”
“Well--and that?”
“Adopt him,” said Kent. “An industrial school boy can be run by a
committee--the experiment is not very dangerous, but a conventional
gentleman must have conventional references.”
His first words struck the chord she had shrunk from striking herself.
It was the formulated suggestion of a vague desire. She was silent for
a little. Then Winifred in response to a business summons went out on to
the landing, and Kent and Clytie were left alone.
“I am afraid I have been too downright and have hurt you,” he said
concernedly.
She shook her head and glanced at him smilingly.
“I came to you for common sense. You have given it me. And your
conclusion is one that I dared not come to myself.”
“That you should adopt him? A _reductio ad absurdum!_”
“Yes, I feel it. I am not my own mistress now There are difficulties.
Oh, Kent, don't let me talk of them! You see, I came to you for help--to
no one else.”
“I don't quite understand you, Clytie,” said Kent, anxious at her sudden
agitation.
She recovered herself, womanlike, and forced a laugh.
“If I were a rich, lonely old woman, I might be able,” she said, “but,
you see, I'm not. No, no, I can't adopt Jack; and we'll have to run him
by a committee, whatever happens to him.”
“Well, what have you decided?” asked Winifred, coming into the room.
“That it will be fairer to Jack to let him work out his own salvation,”
said Kent. “Let him work his way through the ranks. If there is anything
in him it will come out. You don't think me unkind, do you, Clytie?”
Whereat Clytie laughed honestly and Kent received much consolation.
They talked a little longer, on indifferent subjects, and then at
Winifred's hour of departure they all rose together. Winifred went to
the back of the studio and put on her hat; Clytie and Kent moved slowly
in the direction of the door. Kent sighed a little.
“I only seem to have seen you for five minutes,” he said, “and I have
told you nothing, but given you commonplace advice.”
“Had you so much to tell me?” she asked, smiling, as his unformulated
wish echoed within herself. “There is no reason for us to go away
because Winifred does. Would you really like to stay a little and talk
to me?”
Before Kent spoke Clytie had not the faintest thought of doing this.
But in a flash came before her the long evening she was to spend in
the great lonely house. Thornton rarely came home for dinner. He even
dressed at his club. Often he slept there. On such occasions the first
notice Clytie received of his absence was from the inscrutable butler,
who would come into the studio in the morning with: “The commissionnaire
for master's letters, ma'am.” Occasionally three days passed without
their meeting. When they did pass an hour in each other's company
sometimes there was calm and sometimes storm. It depended upon his mood.
As a general rule he was polite, even bright and entertaining, and life
with him under these conditions was just bearable. But now the thought
came with some bitterness: What did it matter whether she was at home
by seven or eight--or twelve, for that matter? Why should she not have a
cheery hour with Kent?
His face brightened as she made her smiling offer to stay.
“It is too good of you. Of course I should like to have a talk with you.
But you--can you----”
“Oh, yes,” she interrupted lightly. “I am not due home at any hour.
I want to chat with you myself. Winnie dear, we are going to remain a
little. Give me the key and I'll hand it to Mrs. Gurkins as I go down.
I haven't asked you, but I suppose we can?”
“Why, of course, darling,” said Winnie, coming up and giving her a
farewell kiss. “I hate to think the studio isn't yours.”
So Winifred went away and they remained as in the old days. The sudden
association gave Clytie a pang. A reaction from her enthusiasm about
Jack to weariness of spirit made her sink back listlessly in her chair.
“What is the matter?” asked Kent, filling his pipe. “You are not looking
yourself. It is this steaming London. Why don't you go and get some
country air?”
“Oh, one place is just the same as another. It isn't London and it isn't
the weather. It is the world that is out of joint, somehow. I am afraid
I have been moping. I think I shall invest in a cat. Then I can pour out
my grievances to it. That's the best of a cat: it never mopes. It goes
on purring cheerfully so long as it's warm and well fed, and when you
feel paradoxical it never worries you to explain yourself. Do you like
cats? I forget.”
“What are you moping about?” he asked between the first few puffs of his
kindling pipe.
“Oh, don't talk in that aggressively cheerful tone, Kent. I have come on
all over moods, and I want comforting.”
“You should work,” replied Kent with some self-restraint. “You have
hardly touched a brush in earnest this year. It is the claims of that
part of your nature that cry out if they are not satisfied. Why don't
you go on painting? What has the fact of your not having to make your
living got to do with your art?”
“Everything, in a way,” she murmured.
“I can't believe it,” said Kent earnestly. “You are not the woman to
neglect your art out of pure idleness. Come, Clytie, rouse yourself and
paint a great picture. The 'Faustina'--what has become of that?”
“Oh, don't, don't!” she cried, putting her hands up before her face. “I
can't do that now--can't think of it. Years hence, perhaps, when I am
a middle-aged woman, if I find it good enough to live till then, I may
try--but not now.”
Kent laid down his pipe and drew his chair near to her. He was pained
and troubled. He saw that her nerves were a little unstrung; but the
Clytie he knew was the last woman in the world to give way to attacks of
this kind. And then a dreary conjecture dawned upon him, and his heart
sank.
“My poor Clytie!” he said in his kind way. “You seem unhappy. I wish I
could do something to help you.”
“Ah! it's too late now,” she said impulsively, scarcely heeding the
purport of her words. “You might have done it eighteen months ago--if
you had not been quixotic.”
“What do you mean?” he asked, more and more troubled and at fault.
“Eighteen months ago? How could I have helped you? I loved you and hid
it from you. I could only have caused you pain. I love you now. I don't
hide it. Why should I? I am ready to help you if I can. I am stronger,
wiser now than I was then. How could I have helped you then?”
The simplicity of his short, reiterative sentences and the sincerity of
his tone went to her heart, “You could have helped me then by not hiding
it.”
“I don't understand,” he said. “How could the knowledge that I loved you
have helped you, unless you cared for me?”
“Perhaps I might have cared for you,” she said wearily.
“Oh, God, Clytie! don't say that. It is cruel!” he cried, starting to
his feet in great agitation. “I know I acted like a fool, but it was
with true motives. Don't twit me with them. It is more than I can bear.”
Only then did Clytie clearly realise what she had been saying. The fit
of supreme dejection passed off as suddenly as it had come, and she felt
keenly the justice of his words.
“Oh, Kent, Kent, forgive me!” she cried, with starting tears. “I hardly
knew what I was saying. You are so noble and true-hearted that you must
forgive me. Sometimes when a woman is wretched she has not control over
herself, and I am sometimes very, very wretched, Kent. I was thinking of
myself more than of you when I said the thing that pained you. Tell me
that you forgive me.”
The appeal was too human, too unreserved, to be rejected by Kent's
tender nature. He sat down again by her and took her hand and kissed it
gently.
“I have never seen you like this before,” he said. “I wish I could
comfort you.”
He knew that it was no passing irritation or weariness that forced
the confession from Clytie's proud nature. It was something deep and
final--something impossible in her married life. Her wretchedness made
him forget his own longing in the desire to be of use to her and lighten
her lot. He let go her hand, which she allowed to lie on her lap as it
fell, with the palms lightly upwards.
“I don't know why I have told you this to-day,” she said, not meeting
his eyes. “I have never breathed it or hinted it to a living being, and
it came upon me unawares. Don't despise me, Kent.”
“Clytie!”
“Oh, yes. I know what any outsider would say. I was posing as the _femme
incomprise_. I was casting away my womanly pride. Of all persons in the
world _you_ ought not to have been my confidant. Judged by conventional
canons I am to be despised, for what can the world say of a woman who
tells a man that still loves her that she regrets she did not marry him?
Oh, don't interrupt me. I may as well speak out my true self once and
for all to you. You yourself once remarked that if we were superior to
conventionalities of habit, we ought to extend our unconventionalities
to sentiment. You are loyal and staunch. You can help me by being my
friend, for I have no one else to turn to. My life is a dreary mistake.
My art does not satisfy me, because I have no hopes. One must have
enthusiasms to be an artist, and all mine are dead. Now you know.”
There was a certain fierce pleasure in this self-abasement. It was like
the vengeance of her higher nature upon her lower, the whip of scorn
applied by the spirit to the flesh.
He did not answer, but looked at her with inexpressible sadness in his
eyes. She added a few more words.
“If you despise me for telling you, let me know at once. It would be
better.”
“God forbid!” he said in a low voice. “I shall never apply to you the
conventional canons of misjudgment. I take what you have said to me as a
sacred trust, and thank you from my heart for thinking well enough of me
to give me your confidence. You must never ask me such a question again,
Clytie, for it would wound me.”
“I believe you, Kent,” she said, raising her eyes to his in her frank
manner. “And I was wrong to say you _might_ have helped me, for you can
now. And you will?”
“With my last breath,” said Kent simply. “It has been the torturing
regret of the last eighteen months that, much as I wished, I could never
do a hand's turn for you.”
“But what can I do for you in repayment, my poor Kent?”
“Be your own bright, eager self again. Throw yourself into your
painting, and the result I will take as my reward. It will be my
influence gleaming through your genius, and it will be sweet to me. Oh,
Clytie! you are wrong. A life is seldom so wrecked that it cannot be
reconstructed, for that implies the utter loss of faith. A grain of
faith in anything can move mountains; if one hasn't it, then it is time
to put an end to life altogether, it becomes one's duty not to live.”
“I came within an ace of that at the beginning of the year,” said
Clytie, with a sad retrospective smile. “Some time I may tell you why. I
thought of dying, but then it seemed cowardly. Perhaps it was I had more
curiosity to go on seeing how the world went on than I was aware of. And
now, Kent, you have put things in a new light before me, and how can I
thank you for all your goodness?”
“I have told you,” he replied, with a smile.