Audrey had never been able to enjoy the friendship of her own sex for
more than ten minutes at a time. Her own society bored her
inexpressibly, and that of the women she had known hitherto was
uninteresting because it was like her own. But Katherine was unlike all
other women, and she had taken Audrey's fancy. Audrey was always
devising pretty little excuses for calling, always bringing in hothouse
flowers, or the last hothouse novel, which Katherine positively _must_
read; until, by dint of a naive persistency, she won the right to come
and go as she pleased. As for Katherine, she considered that a beautiful
woman is exempt from criticism; and so long as she could watch Audrey
moving about, arranging flowers with dainty fastidious touches, or lying
back on the couch in some reckless but perfect pose, she reserved her
judgment. She rejoiced in her presence for its beauty's sake. She loved
the curves of her limbs, the play of her dimples, the shifting lights in
her hair. But she had to pay for the pleasure these things afforded her,
and "man's time" became a frequent item in the account. Katherine had
set her heart on Ted's studying in Paris for six months, and was trying
hard to make enough money to send him there. With this absorbing object
in view, she herself worked equally well whether Audrey were in the
studio or out of it; but it seemed that Ted's powers were either
paralysed or diverted into another channel from the moment she came in.
The baby was trying to solve a problem which had puzzled wiser heads
than his. But he had no clue to the labyrinth of Audrey's soul; he was
not even certain whether she was an intelligent being, though to doubt
it was blasphemy against the divine spirit of beauty.
His researches took him very often to Chelsea Gardens, and most of his
spare time not spent there was employed in running errands to and fro.
Owing to these distractions his nerves became quite unhinged, and for
the first time in his life he began to show signs of a temper. He had
been full of the Paris scheme at first, but he had not spoken of it now
for at least a month.
He had just sat down for the twentieth time to a study of Katherine's
head as "Sappho," and had thrown down his palette in disgust,
exclaiming--
"What's the use of keeping your mouth still, if your confounded eyes
giggle?" when a note arrived from Miss Craven.
You can't step out of a violent passion all in a minute, and perhaps
that was the reason why Ted's hands trembled a little as he tore open
the envelope and read--
"DEAR MR. HAVILAND,--Do come over at once. I'm in a dreadful fix,
and want your advice and help badly. I would ask your sister, only
I know she is always busy.--Sincerely yours,
"AUDREY CRAVEN."
Audrey wrote on rough-edged paper, in the bold round hand they teach in
schools. She had modelled hers on another girl's, and she signed her
name with an enormous A and a flourish. People said there was a great
deal of character in her hand-writing.
Ted crammed the note hastily into his pocket, and did his best to hide
the radiance of his smile.
"It's only Miss Craven. I'm just going over for half an hour,--I'll be
back for tea."
And before Katherine had time to answer he was gone.
Ted's first thought as he entered Miss Craven's drawing-room was that
she was in the midst of a removal. The place was turned topsy-turvy.
Curtains had been taken down, ornaments removed from their shelves,
pictures from their hangings; and the grand piano stood where it had
never yet been allowed to stand, in a draught between the window and the
door. Tripping over a Persian rug, he saw that the floor was littered
with tapestries and rich stuffs of magnificent design. On his left was a
miscellaneous collection of brass and copper ware, on his right a heap
of shields and weapons of barbarous warfare. On all the tables and
cabinets there stood an array of Venetian glass, and statuettes in
bronze, marble, and terra-cotta. He was looking about for Miss Craven,
when that lady arose from a confused ocean of cushions and Oriental
drapery--Aphrodite in an "Art" tea-gown. She greeted him with childlike
effusion.
"At last! I'm so glad you've come--I was afraid you mightn't. Help me
out of this somehow--I'm simply distracted."
And she pointed to the floor with a gesture of despair.
"Yes; but what do you want me to do?"
"Why, to offer suggestions, advice, anything--only speak."
Ted looked about him, and his eyes rested on the grand piano. "Is it a
ball, a bazaar, or an auction? And are we awake or dreaming, alive or
dead?"
"Can't you see, Mr. Haviland?"
"Yes, I see a great many things. But what does it all mean?"
Audrey sank on to an ottoman, and answered slowly and incisively,
looking straight before her--
"It means that I'm sick of the hideousness of life, of the excruciating
lower middle-class arrangement of this room. I don't know how I've stood
it all these years. My soul must have been starved--stifled. I want to
live in another atmosphere, to be surrounded by beautiful things. Don't
laugh like that,--I know I'm not an artist; I couldn't paint a
picture--how could I? I haven't been taught. But I know that Art is the
only thing worth caring about. I want to cultivate my sense of beauty,
and I don't want my room to look like anybody else's."
"It certainly doesn't at present."
"Please be serious. You're not helping me one bit. Look at that pile of
things Liberty's have sent me! First of all, I want you to choose
between them. Then I want you to suggest a colour-scheme, and to tell me
the difference between Louis Quinze and Louis Quatorze (I _can't_
remember), whether it'll do to mix Queen Anne with either. And whether
would you have old oak, real old oak, or Chippendale, for the furniture?
and must I do away with the cosy corner?"
Ted felt his head going round and round. Artistic delight in Audrey's
beauty, pagan adoration of it, saintly belief in it, the first tremor of
crude unconscious passion, mingled with intense amusement, reduced him
to a state of utter bewilderment. But he had sufficient presence of mind
to take her last question first and to answer authoritatively--
"Certainly. A cosy corner is weak-minded and conventional."
"Yes, it is. I'm not in the least conventional, and I don't think I'm
weak-minded. And I want my room to express my character, to be a bit of
myself. So give me some ideas. You don't mind my asking you, do you?
You're the only artist I know."
"Am I really? And if you knew six or seven artists, what then?"
"Why, then--I should ask you all the same, of course."
Boy-like he laughed for pure pleasure, and boy-like he tried to
dissemble his emotion, and did her bidding under a faint show of
protest. He gave his vote in favour of Venetian glass and a small marble
Diana, against majolica and a French dancing-girl in terra-cotta; he
made an intelligent choice from amongst the various state-properties
around him, and avoided committing himself on the subject of Louis
Quatorze. On one point Audrey was firm. For what reasons nobody can say,
but some Malay creeses had caught her fancy, and no argument could
dissuade her from arranging them over the Neapolitan Psyche which she
had kept at Ted's suggestion. The gruesome weapons, on a background of
barbaric gold, hung above that pathetic torso, like a Fate responsible
for its mutilation. Audrey was pleased with the effect; she revelled in
strong contrasts and grotesque combinations, and if Liberty's had sent
her a stuffed monkey, she would have perched him on Psyche's pedestal.
"I know a man," said Ted, when he had disposed the last bit of drapery
according to an ingenious colour-scheme, in which Audrey's hair sounded
a brilliant staccato note--"a first-rate artist--who was asked to
decorate a lady's room. What do you think he did? He made her take all
the pictures off the walls, and he covered them over with little
halfpenny Japanese fans, and stuck little halves and quarters of fans in
the corners and under the ceiling. Then he put a large Japanese umbrella
in the fireplace, and went away smiling."
"Was the lady pleased?"
"Immensely. She asked all her friends to a Japanese tea-party in Mr.
Robinson's room. The rest of the furniture was early Victorian."
This anecdote was not altogether to Audrey's taste. She walked to a
shelf where Ted had put some bronzes, looked at them with a decided air
of criticism, and arranged them differently. Having asserted her
independence, she replied severely--
"Your friend's friend must have been an extremely silly woman."
"Not at all; she was a most intelligent, well-informed person,
with--er--a deep sense of religion."
"And now, Mr. Haviland, you're making matters worse. You care nothing
about her religion; you simply think her a fool, and you meant that I'm
like her. Else why did you tell such a pointless story?"
"Forgive me; the association of ideas was irresistible. You _are_ like
her--in your utter simplicity and guileless devotion to an ideal."
He looked all round the room again, and sank back on the sofa cushions
all limp with laughter.
"I--I never saw anything so inexpressibly sad as this afternoon's work;
it's heartrending."
His eye fell on the terra-cotta Parisienne dancing inanely on her
pedestal, and he moaned like one in pain. Audrey's mouth twitched and
her cheeks flamed for a second. She turned her back on Ted, until his
fit had spent itself, dying away among the cushions in low gurgles. Then
there was silence.
Ted raised his head and looked up. She was still standing in the same
place, but one hand was moving slowly towards her pocket.
He sprang to his feet and faced her. She walked to the window,
convulsively grasping her pocket-handkerchief.
He followed her.
"Miss Craven--dear Miss Craven--on my soul--I swear--I never----Can't
you--won't you believe me?"
Still there was silence and an averted head.
"Speak, can't you!"
He leant against the window and began to giggle again. Audrey turned at
the sound, and looked at him through eyes veiled with tears; her lips
were trembling a little, and her fingers relaxed their convulsive grasp.
He darted forward, seized her hand, and kissed it an indefinite number
of times, exclaiming incoherently--
"Brute, hound, cur that I am! Forgive me--only say you'll forgive me! I
know I'm not fit to live! And yet, how could I tell? Good heavens! what
funny things women are?" Here he took possession of the little lace
pocket-handkerchief, and wiped her eyes very gently. Then he kissed her
once on the mouth, reverently but deliberately.
To do Audrey justice, she had meant to sustain her part with maidenly
reserve, but she was totally unprepared for this acceleration of the
march of events. She said nothing, but went back submissively to her
sofa, hand in hand with Ted. There they sat for a minute looking rather
stupidly into each other's faces.
The lady was the first to recover her self-possession. She raised her
hand with a benedictory air and let it rest lightly, ever so lightly, on
Ted's hair.
"My dear boy," she murmured, "I forgave you all the time."
Now there is nothing that will dwarf the proportions of the grand
passion and bring you to your sober senses sooner than being patted on
the head and called "My dear boy" by the lady of your love. Ted ducked
from under the delicate caress, and rose to his feet with dignity. His
emotion was spent, and he was chiefly conscious of the absurdity of the
situation. Every object in that ridiculous room accentuated the
distasteful humour of the thing. Psyche looked downcast virgin
disapproval from her pedestal under the Malay creeses, and the frivolous
little Parisienne flung her skirts abroad in the very abandonment of
derision.
If only he hadn't made a fool of himself, if only he hadn't told that
drivelling story about the Japanese umbrella, if only he hadn't laughed
in that frantic manner, and if only----But no, he could not look back
on the last five minutes. The past was a grey blank, but the flaming
episode of the kiss had burnt a big black hole in his present
consciousness. He felt that by that rash, unpardonable act he had
desecrated the holy thing; and with it all, had forestalled, delayed,
perhaps for ever prevented, the sanction of some diviner opportunity. If
he had only waited another year, she could not have called him her dear
boy.
"I'm fully aware," he said, ruefully, "that I've behaved like a
heaven-afflicted idiot, and I'd better go."
"No, you shall not go. You shall stay. I wish it. Sit down--here."
She patted the sofa beside her, and he obeyed mechanically.
"Poor, poor Ted! I _do_ forgive you. We will never misunderstand each
other again--never. And now I want to talk to you. What distressed me so
much just now was not anything that you said or thought about _me_, but
the shocking way you treat yourself and what is best in you. Can't you
understand it? You know how I believe in you and hope for you, and it
was your affectation of indifference to things which are a religion to
me--as they are to you--that cut me to the heart."
She had worked herself up till she believed firmly in this little
fiction. Yes, those tears were tears of pure altruism--tears not of
wounded vanity and self-love, but of compassion for an erring genius.
She drew back her head proudly and looked him full in the face. Then she
continued, in a subdued voice, with a certain incisive tremor in it, the
voice that is usually expressive of the deeper emotions--
"You know, and I know, that there is nothing worth caring about except
art. Then why pretend to despise it as you do? And Katherine's every bit
as bad as you are,--she encourages you. I know--what perhaps she
doesn't--that you have great enthusiasms, great ideals; but you are
unfaithful to them. You laughed at me; you know you did----"
("I didn't," from Ted.)
"----because I'm trying to make my life beautiful. You're led away by
your strong sense of humour, till you see something ridiculous in the
loveliest and noblest things" (Ted's eyes wandered in spite of himself
to the little lady in terra-cotta). "I know why: you're afraid of being
sentimental. But if people have feelings, why should they be ashamed of
them? Why should they mind showing them? Now I want you to promise me
that, from this day forth, you'll take yourself and your art seriously;
that you'll work hard--you've been idling shamefully lately" (oh,
Audrey! whose fault was that?)--"and finish some great picture before
the year's out" (he had only five weeks to do it in, but that was a
detail). "Now promise."
"I--I'll promise anything," stammered the miserable Ted, "if only
you'll look at me like that--sometimes, say between the hours of seven
and eight in the evening."
"Ridiculous baby! Now we must see about the pictures; we've just time
before tea."
The mention of tea was a master-stroke; it brought them both back to the
world of fact, and restored the familiar landmarks.
Ted, solemnly penitent, gave his best attention to the pictures: there
was not a trace of his former abominable levity in the air with which he
passed sentence on each as Audrey brought them up for judgment. But when
he came to the family portraits he suspended his verdict, and Audrey was
obliged to take the matter into her own hands.
She took up a small picture in a square frame and held it close to Ted's
face.
"Portrait of my uncle, the Dean of St. Benedict's. What shall I do with
it?"
"That depends entirely on the amount of affection you feel for the
original."
"H'm--does it? He's a dear old thing, and I'm very fond of him,
but--what do you think of him?--from an artistic point of view?"
She stood with her body curved a little backwards, holding the Dean up
high in a good light. Her attitude was so lovely that it was impossible
to disapprove of her. Ted's reason tottered on its throne, and he
laughed, which was perhaps the best thing he could have done.
"He is not, strictly speaking, handsome."
"No," said Audrey; "I'm afraid he'll have to go."
She knelt down beside the portrait of a lady. It was evidently the work
of an inferior artist, but his most malignant efforts had failed to
disguise the beauty of the face. It bore a strong resemblance to Audrey,
but it was the face of an older woman, grave, intelligent, and refined
by suffering.
"I've been obliged to take this down," she said, as if apologising more
to herself than Ted, "because I want to hang my large photo of the
Sistine Madonna in its place."
"What is it?"
"It's--my mother's portrait. She died when I was a very little girl, and
I hardly ever saw her, you know. I'm not a bit like her."
He stood silent, watching her intently as she spoke.
"Family portraits," she continued, "may be interesting, but they are not
decorative. Unless, of course," she added, hastily, being at a loss to
account for the peculiar expression of Ted's face, "they're very old
ones--Lelys and Sir Joshua Reynoldses."
"That face does not look old, certainly."
"No. She died young."
She had not meant to say that; a little shiver went through her as the
words passed her lips, and she felt a desire to change the subject. But
the portrait of the late Mrs. Craven was turned to the wall along with
the Dean.
"Hullo!" exclaimed Ted, taking up a photo in a glass frame,
hand-painted, "here's old Hardy! What on earth is he doing here?"
Audrey blushed, but answered with unruffled calm.
"Vincent? Oh, he's a family portrait too. He's my cousin--first cousin,
you know."
"What are you going to do with _him_?"
"I--I hardly know."
She took the photo out of his hands and examined it carefully back and
front. Then she looked at Ted.
"What _shall_ I do with him? Is he to go too?"
"Well, I suppose he ought to. He's all very well in his own line,
but--from an artistic point of view--he's not exactly--decorative."
"Poor old Vincent! No, he's not."
And Vincent was turned face downward among the ruins of the cosy corner,
and Audrey and Ted rested from their labours.
When Ted had gone, the very first thing Audrey did was to get a map and
to look out the Rocky Mountains. There they were, to be sure, just as
Vincent had described them, a great high wall dividing the continent. At
that moment Hardy was kneeling on the floor of his little shanty, busy
sorting bearskins and thinking of Audrey and bears. He had had splendid
sport--that is, he had succeeded in killing a grizzly just before the
grizzly killed him. How nervous Audrey would feel when she got the
letter describing that encounter! Then he chose the best and fluffiest
bearskin to make a nice warm cape for her, and amused himself by
picturing her small oval chin nestling in the brown fur. And then he
fell to wondering what she was doing now.
He would have been delighted if he could have seen her poring over that
map with her pencilled eyebrows knit, while she traced the jagged
outlines of the Rockies with her finger-nail, congratulating herself on
the height of that magnificent range.
Yes, there was a great deal between her and her cousin Mr. Hardy.