CARNATIONS

I

RUPERT WILSON came into the studio where his wife, who had been out

sketching all the morning, was washing her paint-brushes, carefully

turning and rubbing them in a pot of turpentine. She wore her painting

apron, for Marian in the midst of her artistic avocations was always

neat and spotless; and, half turned from him as she was, she did not

look round as he entered. Rupert carried his stick, a rustic, ashen

stick of which he was very fond, and his Panama hat; he was going out

and Marian probably knew that he was going out, and where; this made it

more difficult to say in a sufficiently disengaged voice, “I’m just

going down to see Mrs. Dallas for a little while.”

“Oh! are you?” said Marian. She continued to stir her brushes, and

though her wish, also, very evidently was to appear disengaged and

indifferent, she was not able to carry it out, for she added, as if

irrepressibly, “You need hardly have taken the trouble to come and tell

me that.”

Rupert looked at her, and since she did not look at him, it was very

intently, as if to measure to the full the difference between this

Marian and the Marian he had known and believed in. It was hard to

realize that his wife should show a trivial and unworthy jealousy and

should strike him such a blow; for that it was a blow he knew from the

heat in his cheek and the quickening of his pulse; but, as he looked at

her, standing there turned from him, her blue apron girt about her, her

black hair bound so gracefully around her head, the realization

uppermost in his mind was that Marian, since the second baby had come,

had grown very stout and matronly. He seemed to see it to-day for the

first time, as if his awareness of it came to emphasize his sudden

consciousness of her spiritual deficiency.

When he had met and fallen so very deeply in love with Marian, she had

been, if not slender, yet of a supple and shapely form, with just

roundness and softness enough to contrast delightfully with her rather

boyish head, her air, clear, fresh, frank, of efficiency and swiftness.

He had, of course, found her a great deal more than clear and fresh and

frank; but, entangled as he had been in that wretched love-affair with

Aimée Pollard,--the pretty, untalented young actress who had so

shamefully misused him,--torn to pieces and sunken in quagmires as he

had been, these qualities in Marian had reached him first like a draught

of cold spring water, like dawn over valley hills. These were the

metaphors he had very soon used to her when she had applied her firm,

kind hands to the disentangling of his knots and her merry, steady mind

to tracing out for him the path of honourable retreat. He had found her

so wonderful and lovely and had fallen so much in love with her that his

ardour, aided by her quiet fidelity, had overborne all the opposition

of her people. Foolish, conventional people they were,--their opposition

based, it appeared, almost unimaginably to his generous young mind, on

the fact that Marian happened to have money and that he had none, except

what he might make by his books; and also, though it was nearly as

unimaginable, on the fact that a good many of these people were in the

peerage. Marian, a year before he had met her, had broken away from the

stereotyped routine of their country life and had come to London to

study painting; and it was that Marian of the past who had seemed to

share to the full all his idealisms. They had married within three

months of their meeting.

From such a dawn, white, fresh, blissful, to this dull daylight! from

such a Marian to this narrow-minded matron! Marian still had beauty. Her

clear eyes were as blue, her wide, pale lips as sweet; but she was a

matron. Her neck had grown shorter, her chin heavier; the girlish grace

of glance and smile seemed muted, muffled by their setting; there was no

longer any poetry in her physique. And as Rupert stood looking at her

and seeing all this, his sense of grievance, though he was unaware of

this factor in it, grew deeper.

A little while passed before he said,--and it was, he felt, with

dignity,--“I really don’t know what you mean by that, Marian.”

She had now finished her brushes and had taken up her palette. She began

to scrape the edges as she answered,--and her voice was not schooled, it

was heavy with its irony and gloom,--“Don’t you? I’m sorry.”

“I trust indeed that it doesn’t mean that you are jealous of my

friendship for Mrs. Dallas?”

“Friendship? Oh, no; I’m not jealous of any friendship.”

“Of my affection, then; of my love, if you like,” said Rupert. “You know

perfectly well what I feel about all that--and I thought you felt it,

too. It’s the very centre of my life, of my art; my books turn on it.

It’s the thing I have most of all to say to the world. Love isn’t a

measured, limited thing; its nature is to grow and give. My love for

Mrs. Dallas doesn’t touch your and my relation; it enriches it rather.”

Marian scraped her palette and said nothing. He could see her cheek, the

cheek that ran too massively into her neck. Marian’s skin was white and

fine; a faint colour now rose to it; a faint colour was, in Marian, a

deep blush.

To see her blush like that gave him an odd sensation. It was as if the

blush were echoed in his heart; he felt it grow and melt softly, and

there drifted through his mind a thought of Mrs. Dallas and of her

magic.

Through the studio window, draped with its summer creepers, he could see

the two perambulators moored in the shade of the lime tree on the lawn.

The babies were having their afternoon sleep. He was very fond of his

children; and to feel, now, mingling with the strange, yearning glow,

this pause of contemplative fondness, was to feel himself justified anew

and anew aggrieved. The glow of tenderness seemed to envelope the babies

as well as Mrs. Dallas. And it shut out Marian.

What had she to complain of? Was he not a tender husband and a loving

father? Could she suspect his love for Mrs. Dallas--it was she herself

who had forced him to use that word--of grossness or vulgarity? It was

as high and as pure as his love for her.

His love for Marian had evolved into the perambulators, and this

recognition, flitting unseasonably, vexed him with a sense of slight

confusion that made him feel more injured than before. It was true that,

theoretically, he held views so advanced as to justify, in true,

self-dedicating passion, all manifestations. Practice and theory in his

young life had been far apart; but the thought of passion, in connection

with Mrs. Dallas, had, as it were, been made visible by Marian’s blush;

and, slightly swinging his hat, slightly knotting his brows as he looked

at the matronly Marian, he groped for some new formulation of his creed,

since it was evident that however much he might love Marian it was no

longer passion he felt for her. One must perhaps allow that passions

could not be contemporaneous; but he had always combated this shackling

view.

He stood there, gazing, trying to think it out,--a tall young man, well

made yet slightly uncouth, with ruffled, heavy locks and large intent

eyes. Something of the look of a not quite purely bred Saint Bernard

puppy he had; confiding, young and foolish, with his knotted brow and

nose a little overlong. And as he found himself unable to think it out

and as Marian still stood silent, scraping, scraping away at the palette

in an exasperating fashion, he said,--and now in an openly aggrieved

voice,--“I thought you liked her yourself; I thought you quite loved

her. You seemed to.”

Now that he was losing his temper, Marian was regaining hers. Her voice

had all the advantage of quiet intentions as she answered, “I did like

her; I thought her very charming. I don’t dislike her now. But I’m

sorry to see a woman of her age behaving with so little dignity.”

“A woman of her age! Dignity!”

“She is at least forty-five.”

“I don’t follow your meaning. Is a woman of forty-five cut off from

human relationships?”

“From some, certainly; if she has any regard, as I say, for her dignity.

And a woman in Mrs. Dallas’s position ought to be particularly careful.”

“Mrs. Dallas’s position!” She really reduced him to disgusted

exclamations.

“You know, Rupert, that there are all sorts of stories about her. You

know that Mrs. Trotter told us that her first husband divorced her on

account of Colonel Dallas.--Other stories, too.”

"Upon my word! You astonish me, Marian! You heard all these vile tales

when we first came here,--from people, too, who you’ll observe, run to

Mrs. Dallas’s dinner-parties whenever they have the chance,--and you

didn’t seem to mind them much when you were going there almost every

day--and taking every one you knew to see her. What about your Aunt

Sophy--if you believed these stories?--An old dragon of conventionality

like your Aunt Sophy! You took her again and again, and arranged that

luncheon in London with her when you and Mrs. Dallas went up--so that

they should have another chance really to make friends. I remember you

used the expression, ‘really make friends.’ It’s odd to hear you talking

of stories at this late hour."

“I only talk of them because Mrs. Dallas has made me remember them. I am

quite as open-minded as you are about such things. I was just as ready

to think well of her--even if they were true. Why do you call them vile?

You wouldn’t think it wrong for a woman to leave her husband if she

didn’t love him, and to go with a man she did love. If Mrs. Dallas did

that, why is it vile to say so?--Aunt Sophy, as a matter of fact, said

it was a different story. And she was charmed with Mrs. Dallas, just as

I’d determined she should be, stories or no stories. I did all I could

for her, because I counted myself her friend and thought it a shame that

any one so charming should be handicapped in any way. But I didn’t

imagine that a friend would try to take my husband from me.” Marian

spoke with severe and deliberate calm.

“I like that! I really do like that!” said Rupert, laughing bitterly.

“It’s really funny to hear you talk as if Mrs. Dallas could owe you

anything! I wish she could hear you! I wish we could have her

dispassionate opinion of that hideous old bore of an Aunt Sophy. It was

obvious enough that she put up with her simply and solely through

friendship for you. Do all you could for her! A woman who has hordes of

friends--charming, finished, cosmopolitan people of the world! Why, my

dear girl, it’s she, let me tell you, who has given you more chances

than you ever had in your life for meeting really interesting people!

They’re not the sort you’d be likely to meet at your Aunt Sophy’s,

certainly. They’d perish in her _milieu_!”

“Mrs. Dallas doesn’t perish in it,” Marian coldly commented. “On the

contrary, I never saw her more alert. She didn’t seem to find Aunt Sophy

in the least a bore. She was very much pleased indeed to lunch there and

she has looked her up every time she’s gone to London since; moreover,

she’s going to stay with her at Crofts this autumn. It doesn’t look

like boredom.”

“I wish her joy of Crofts! She’s a complete woman of the world, of

course, and she knows how to put up with all sorts and conditions of

bores. She’s taken on Lady Sophy because she’s your friend. It’s

pitiful--it’s unbelievable to see her so misjudged!--Take me from you!

I’ve never gone there but she’s asked me why you didn’t come. She still

sends you flowers pretty well every day. Those are hers, I see. I’m glad

that you’ve deigned to put them in water.”

The tall sheaf of carnations, white and rose and yellow, that stood in a

jug on a shelf in the studio must, evidently, have come from Mrs.

Dallas’s garden. No other person grew such carnations. The garden at

Ashleigh Lodge, this pleasant country house that they had taken for the

six summer months, was not its strong point, and Mrs. Dallas had kept

them reinforced from her abundance. Rupert associated the carnations,

their soft and glowing colours, their formal grace and spicy sweetness,

with the whole growth of his devotion to Mrs. Dallas. He fixed his

indignant eyes on them now.

“Of course I put them into water. I am going to arrange them and take

them into the drawing-room presently,” said Marian with her hateful

calm. “But they give me no more pleasure. Nor does she. She is like

them. They are heartless flowers and she is a heartless woman. I see

quite plainly now what I didn’t see before. She’s that type,--the

smiling, calculating siren. She lives for admiration; she’s herself only

when she has someone at her feet, and she’s seen to it that you should

be,--though I’m bound to say that you haven’t made it difficult for her.

It fits in with all the stories.”

Rupert, at this, turned away and went out. He thrust his hat firmly down

on his fair locks and swung his stick as he strode by the little

footpath through the woods. Bitter disappointment with Marian surged in

him, and hot anger, but above all an atoning tenderness that seemed

almost to break his heart in its longing to protect and justify the

woman so traduced by her. His head throbbed and drummed as he went. To

have it come to this! To have such hands laid on it--their love! their

silent, hidden love! That Mrs. Dallas returned his love he seemed to

see, with many other things, clearly, rapturously, if with trembling,

for the first time to-day. He saw it with Marian’s unworthiness;

Marian’s unworthiness had shown it to him; and now, exulting, he claimed

it. She loved him, veiling the depth in her vagueness, her aloofness,

her indulgent irony. His mind retraced, with yearning gratitude, the

steps of their relationship. No one had ever been to him what she was.

How she helped and lifted him! How juvenile and undiscriminating in

their happy acceptances were Marian’s appreciations of his work beside

Mrs. Dallas’s half-idle comments. He had read through to her, in

manuscript, all his last novel; and Marian had not seen it yet. He had

not wanted to read it to Marian; and she, besides, had been very busy

with her painting.

Mrs. Dallas had listened to the novel almost every day, sitting in the

shade of her veranda, in her white dress, with the hands that, unless

she were gardening, seemed always exquisitely idle, yet that in their

idleness seemed to dream and smile;--he could see the white skin, the

delicate finger-tips, the pearls and rubies slipping down, and his heart

contracted with a pang and ecstasy as he saw himself holding her hand,

kissing it. He must kiss it, to-day, and he must tell her. For she

needed him; he was sure of it. She needed him terribly. If she lifted

him, yet how much, too, he could lift her, out of the lethargic shallows

and sullen quagmires of her life.

She could not be happy with her husband. He felt himself shut his eyes

before the retrospect of what the disenchantments and disasters must be

that lay behind her. If she had taken great risks, with that heart of

highest courage he divined in her, if she had faced great sacrifices for

her present husband, what wonder that her loveliness was now clouded by

that irony and languor? She was not kind to Colonel Dallas; he could not

hide from himself that she was not kind to him; but, as he owned it, he

yearned over her with a deeper comprehension of tenderness, feeling his

rights the greater. How could she be kind to the selfish, complaining,

elegant old man?--for, to Rupert, Colonel Dallas’s fifty-five years

seemed old. She never said anything actually sharp or disagreeable to

him--even when he was at his most fretful and tiresome; but when he was

least so she was not any the kinder, and by her glances, by the

inflections of her cool and indolent voice in answering him, she

displayed to the full, to others and to himself, did he take the pains

to see it, how dull and how tiresome she found him. No; she was like a

weary, naughty child in this; and seeing her as a child, with a child’s

faults--and did it not prove how unblinded his love must be that he

should see it?--he felt himself fold her to his heart in a tenderness

more than a lover’s; a paternal passion was in it; he had known that it

must be in true love; he had said so in one of his books. How his books

would grow from his knowledge of her!