All true revelations soon seem as old as the hills and as obvious.
Yesterday they were not, to-day they have struck you dumb, to-morrow
they will have become commonplaces, and henceforth you will be incapable
of seeing anything else. So it was with Audrey. Her engagement was
barely a week old before she felt that it had lasted for ever. Not that
she was tired of it; on the contrary, she hoped everything from Ted's
eccentricity. She was sick to death of the polished conventional
type--the man who, if he came into her life at all, must be introduced
in the recognised way; while Ted, who had dropped into it literally
through a skylight, roused her unflagging interest and curiosity. She
was always longing to see what the boy would say and do next. Poor
Audrey! Her own character was mainly such a bundle of negations that you
described her best by saying what she was not; but other people's
positive qualities acted on her as a powerful stimulant, and it was one
for which she perpetually craved. She had found it in Hardy. In him it
was the almost physical charm of blind will, and she yielded to it
unwillingly. She had found it in Ted under the intoxicating form of
vivid emotion. Life with Vincent would have been an unbroken bondage.
Life with Ted would have no tyrannous continuity; it would be a series
of splendid episodes. At the same time, it seemed to her that she had
always lived this sort of life. Like the "souls" in Ted's ingenious
masterpiece, Audrey had suffered a metempsychosis, and her very memory
was changed. The change was not so much shown in the character of her
dress and her surroundings (Audrey was not the first woman who has tried
to be original by following the fashion); these things were only the
outward signs of an inward transformation. If her worship of the
beautiful was not natural, it was not altogether affected. She really
appreciated the things she saw, though she only saw them through as much
of Ted's mind as was transparent to her at the moment. It never occurred
to her to ask herself whether she would have chosen to stand quite so
often on the Embankment watching the sun go down behind Battersea
Bridge, or whether she would have sat quite so many hours in the
National Gallery looking at those white-faced grey-eyed Madonnas of
Botticelli that Ted was never tired of talking about. It was so natural
that he should be always with her when she did these things, that it was
impossible to disentangle her ideas and say what was her own and what
was his. She was not given to self-analysis.
But there were limits to Audrey's capacity for receiving impressions.
Between her and the world where Katherine always lived, and which Ted
visited at intervals now becoming rarer and rarer, there was a great
gulf fixed. After all, Audrey had no grasp of the impersonal; she could
only care for any object as it gave her certain emotions, raised certain
associations, or drew attention to herself. She was at home in the dim
borderland between art and nature, the region of vanity and vague
sensation. Here she could meet Ted half-way and talk to him about ideals
for the hour together. But in the realm of pure art, as he had told her
when she once said that she liked all his pictures because they were
his, personalities count for nothing; you must have an eye for the thing
itself, and the thing itself was the one thing that Audrey could not
see. In that world she was a pilgrim and a stranger; it was peopled with
shadowy fantastic rivals, who left her with no field and no favour;
flesh and blood were powerless to contend against them. They excited no
jealousy--they were too intangible for that; but in their half-seen
presence she had a sense of helpless irritation and bewilderment--it
baffled, overpowered, and humiliated her. To a woman thirsting for a
great experience, it was hard to find that the best things lay always
just beyond her reach; that in Ted's life, after all of it that she had
absorbed and made her own, there was still an elusive something on which
she had no hold. Not that she allowed this reflection to trouble her
happiness long. As Katherine had said, Ted was two people very
imperfectly rolled into one. Consciously or unconsciously, it became
more and more Audrey's aim to separate them, to play off the one against
the other. This called for but little skill on her part. Ted's passion
at its white-heat had fused together the boy's soul and the artist's,
but at any temperature short of that its natural effect was
disintegration. Audrey had some cause to congratulate herself on the
result. It might or might not have been flattering to be called a
"clever puss" or an "imaginative minx" (Ted chose his epithets at
random), whenever she pointed out some novel effect of colour or
picturesque grouping; but it was now July, and Ted had not done a stroke
of work since he put the last touches to her portrait in April.
It was now July, and from across the Atlantic came the first rumours of
Hardy's return. Within a month, or six weeks at the latest, he would be
in England, in London. The news set Audrey thinking, and think as she
would the question perpetually recurred, Whether would it be better to
announce her engagement to Ted, or still keep it a secret, still drift
on indefinitely as they had done for the last four months? If Audrey had
formed any idea of the future at all, it was as a confused mirage of
possibilities: visions of express trains in which she and Ted were
whirled on for ever through strange landscapes; visions of Parisian life
as she pictured it--a series of exquisite idyls, the long days of
quivering sunlight under blue skies, the brief languid nights dying into
dawn, coffee and rolls brought to you before you get up, strawberries
eaten with claret instead of cream because cream makes you ill in hot
climates, the Paris of fiction and the Paris of commonplace report; and
with it all, scene after scene in which she figured as doing a thousand
extravagant and interesting things, always dressed in appropriate
costumes, always making characteristic little speeches to Ted, who
invariably replied with some delicious absurdity. The peculiarity of
these scenes was, that though they succeeded each other through endless
time, yet neither she nor Ted ever appeared a day older in them. As
Audrey's imagination borrowed nothing from the past, it had no sense of
the demands made by the future. Now, although in publicly announcing her
engagement to Ted she would give a fixity to this floating
phantasmagoria which would rob it of half its charm, on the other hand
she felt the need of some such definite and stable tie to secure her
against Vincent's claim, the solidity of which she now realised for the
first time. Unable to come to any conclusion, she continued to think.
The news from America had set old Miss Craven thinking too. She had at
first rejoiced at Audrey's intimacy with the Havilands, for various
reasons. She was glad to see her settling down--for the first time in
her volatile life--into a friendship with another girl; to hear of her
being interested in picture-galleries; to find a uniform gaiety taking
the place of the restless, captious moods which made others suffer
besides herself. As for the boy, he was a nice clever boy who would make
his way in the world; but he was only "the boy." Three months ago, if
anybody had told Miss Craven that there was a possibility of an
engagement between Audrey and Ted Haviland, she would have laughed them
to scorn. But when it gradually dawned on her that Katherine hardly ever
called at the house with her brother, that he and Audrey went everywhere
together, and Katherine never made a third in their expeditions, it
occurred to her that she really ought to speak a word in season. Her
only difficulty was to find the season. After much futile watching of
her opportunity, she resolved to trust to the inspiration of the moment.
Unfortunately, the moment of the inspiration happened to be that in
which Audrey came in dressed for a row up the river, and chafing with
anxiety because Ted was ten minutes behind time. This at once suggested
the subject in hand. But Miss Craven began cautiously--
"Audrey, my dear, do you think you've enough wraps with you? These
evenings on the river are treacherous."
Audrey gave an impatient twitch to a sort of Elizabethan ruff she wore
round her neck.
"How tiresome of Ted to be late, when I particularly told him to be
early!"
"Is Miss Haviland going with you? Poor girl, she looks as if a blow on
the river would do her good."
"N-no, she isn't."
"H'm--you'd better wait and have some tea first?"
"I've waited quite long enough already. We're going to drive to
Hammersmith, and we shall get tea there or at Kew."
"I don't want to interfere with your amusements, but doesn't it strike
you as--er--a little imprudent to go about so much with 'Ted,' as you
call him?"
"No, of course not. He's not going to throw me overboard. It's the most
natural thing in the world that I should go with him."
"Yes--to you, my dear, and I daresay to the young man himself. But if
you are seen together, people are sure to talk."
"Let them. I don't mind in the least--I rather like it."
"_Like_ it?"
"Yes. You must own it's flattering. People here wouldn't take the
trouble to talk if I were nobody. London isn't Oxford."
"No; you may do many things in Oxford which you mayn't do in London. But
times have changed. I can't imagine your dear mother saying she would
'like' to be talked about."
"Please don't speak about mother in that way; you know I never could
bear it. Oh, there's a ring at the front door! That's Ted." She stood
on tiptoe, bending forward, and held her ear to the half-open door.
"No, it isn't; it's some wretched visitor. Don't keep me, Cousin Bella,
or I shall be caught."
"Really, Audrey, now we are on the subject, I must just tell you that
your conduct lately has given me a great deal of anxiety."
"My conduct! What _do_ you mean? I haven't broken any of the seven
commandments. (Thank goodness, they've gone!)"
"I mean that if you don't take care you'll be entangling yourself with
young Mr. Haviland, as you did----"
"As I did with Vincent, I suppose. That _is_ so like you. You're always
thinking things, always putting that and that together, and doing it
quite wrong. You were hopelessly out of it about Vincent. Whether you're
wrong or right about Mr. Haviland, I simply shan't condescend to tell
you." And having lashed herself into a state of indignation, Audrey went
on warmly--"I'm not a child of ten. I won't have my actions criticised.
I won't have my motives spied into. I won't be ruled by your miserable
middle-class, provincial standard. What I do is nobody's business but my
own."
"Very well, very well; go your own way, and take the consequences. If
it's not my business, don't blame me when you get into difficulties."
Audrey turned round with a withering glance.
"Cousin Bella, you are really _too_ stupid!" she said, with a movement
of her foot that was half rage, half sheer excitement. "Ah, there's Ted
at last!" She ran joyously away. Miss Craven sank back in her chair,
exhausted by her unusual moral effort, and too deeply hurt to return the
smile which Audrey flashed back at her, by way of apology, as she flew.
The bitter little dialogue, at any rate, had the good effect of wakening
Audrey to the practical aspects of her problem. Before their engagement
could be announced, it was clear that Ted ought to be properly
introduced to her friends. However she might affect to brave it out,
Audrey was sensitive to the least breath of unfavourable opinion, and
she did not want it said that she had picked up her husband heavens
knows how, when, and where. If they had been talked about already, no
time should be lost before people realised that Ted was a genius with a
future before him, his sister a rising artist also, and so on. Audrey
was busy with these thoughts as she was being rowed up the river from
Hammersmith. At Kew the room where they had tea was full of people she
knew; and as she and Ted passed on to a table in a far corner, she felt,
rather than saw, that the men looked after them, and the women exchanged
glances. The same thing happened at Richmond, where they dined; and
there a little knot of people gathered about the river's bank and
watched their departure with more than friendly interest. If she had any
lingering doubts before, Audrey was ready now to make her engagement
known, for mere prudence' sake. And as they almost drifted down in the
quiet July evening, between the humid after-glow of the sunset and the
dawn of the moonlit night, Audrey felt a wholly new and delicate
sensation. It was as if she were penetrated for the first time by the
indefinable, tender influences of air and moonlight and running water.
The mood was vague and momentary--a mere fugitive reflection of the
rapture with which Ted, rowing lazily now with the current, drank in the
glory of life, and felt the heart of all nature beating with his. Yet
for that one instant, transient as it was, Audrey's decision was being
shaped for her by a motive finer than all prudence, stronger than all
sense of propriety. In its temporary transfiguration her love for Ted
was such that she would have been ready, if need were, to fix Siberia
for their honeymoon and to-morrow for their wedding-day. As they parted
on her doorstep at Chelsea, between ten and eleven o'clock, she
whispered, "Ted, that row down was like heaven! I've never, never been
so happy in all my life!" If she did not fix their wedding-day then and
there, she did the next best thing--she fixed the day for a dinner to be
given in Ted's honour. Not a tedious, large affair, of course. She was
only going to ask a few people who would appreciate Ted, and be useful
to him in "the future."
As it was nearly the end of the season Audrey had no time to lose, and
the first thing she did after her arrival was to startle Miss Craven by
the sudden question--
"Cousin Bella, who was the man who rushed out of his bath into the
street shouting 'Eureka'?"
"I never heard of any one doing so," said Cousin Bella, a little
testily; "and if he did, it was most improper of him."
"Wasn't it? Never mind; he had an idea, so have I. I think I shall run
out on to the Embankment and shout 'Eureka' too. Aren't you dying to
know? I'm going to give a grand dinner for Te--for Mr. and Miss
Haviland; and I'm not going to ask one--single--nonentity,--there! First
of all, we must have Mr. Knowles--of course. Then--perhaps--Mr. Flaxman
Reed. H'm--yes; we haven't asked him since he came up to St. Teresa's.
If he isn't anybody in particular, you can't exactly call him nobody."
Having settled the question of Mr. Flaxman Reed, Audrey sat down and
sent off several invitations on the spot.
Owing to some refusals, the dinner-party gradually shrank in size and
importance, and it was not until within four days of its date that
Audrey discovered to her dismay that she was "a man short." As good luck
would have it, she met Knowles that afternoon in Regent Street, and
confided to him her difficulty and her firm determination not to fill
the gap with any "nonentity" whatever. Audrey was a little bit afraid of
Mr. Percival Knowles, and nothing but real extremity would have driven
her to this desperate course. "If you could suggest any one I know, who
isn't a nonentity, and who wouldn't mind such ridiculously short notice:
it's really quite an informal little dinner, got up in a hurry, you
know, for Mr. Haviland, a very clever young artist, and his sister."
Knowles smiled faintly: he had heard before of the very clever young
artist (though not of his sister). He was all sympathy.
"Sorry. I can't think of any one you know--_not_ a nonentity--but I
should like to bring a friend, if I may. You don't know him, I think,
but I believe he very much wants to know you."
"Bring him by all means, if he won't mind such a casual invitation."
"I'll make that all right."
Knowles lifted his hat, and was about to hurry away.
"By-the-bye, you haven't told me your friend's name."
He stopped, and answered with a sibilant incoherence, struggling as he
was with his amusement. But at that moment Audrey's attention was
diverted by the sight of Ted coming out of the New Gallery, and she
hardly heard what was being said to her.
"I shall be delighted to see Mr. St. John," she called back, making a
random shot at the name, and went on her way with leisurely haste
towards the New Gallery.