I
When on that November night Lennan stole to the open door of his
dressing-room, and stood watching his wife asleep, Fate still waited for
an answer.
A low fire was burning—one of those fires that throw faint shadows
everywhere, and once and again glow so that some object shines for a
moment, some shape is clearly seen. The curtains were not quite drawn,
and a plane-tree branch with leaves still hanging, which had kept them
company all the fifteen years they had lived there, was moving darkly in
the wind, now touching the glass with a frail tap, as though asking
of him, who had been roaming in that wind so many hours, to let it in.
Unfailing comrades—London plane-trees!
He had not dared hope that Sylvia would be asleep. It was merciful that
she was, whichever way the issue went—that issue so cruel. Her face was
turned towards the fire, and one hand rested beneath her cheek. So she
often slept. Even when life seemed all at sea, its landmarks lost, one
still did what was customary. Poor tender-hearted thing—she had not
slept since he told her, forty-eight hours, that seemed such years,
ago! With her flaxen hair, and her touching candour, even in sleep, she
looked like a girl lying there, not so greatly changed from what she had
been that summer of Cicely's marriage down at Hayle. Her face had not
grown old in all those twenty-eight years. There had been till now no
special reason why it should. Thought, strong feeling, suffering, those
were what changed faces; Sylvia had never thought very deeply, never
suffered much, till now. And was it for him, who had been careful of
her—very careful on the whole, despite man's selfishness, despite her
never having understood the depths of him—was it for him of all people
to hurt her so, to stamp her face with sorrow, perhaps destroy her
utterly?
He crept a little farther in and sat down in the arm-chair beyond the
fire. What memories a fire gathered into it, with its flaky ashes, its
little leaf-like flames, and that quiet glow and flicker! What tale of
passions! How like to a fire was a man's heart! The first young fitful
leapings, the sudden, fierce, mastering heat, the long, steady sober
burning, and then—that last flaming-up, that clutch back at its own
vanished youth, the final eager flight of flame, before the ashes
wintered it to nothing! Visions and memories he saw down in the fire, as
only can be seen when a man's heart, by the agony of long struggle,
has been stripped of skin, and quivers at every touch. Love! A strange
haphazard thing was love—so spun between ecstacy and torture! A thing
insidious, irresponsible, desperate. A flying sweetness, more poignant
than anything on earth, more dark in origin and destiny. A thing without
reason or coherence. A man's love-life—what say had he in the ebb and
flow of it? No more than in the flights of autumn birds, swooping down,
alighting here and there, passing on. The loves one left behind—even in
a life by no means vagabond in love, as men's lives went! The love that
thought the Tyrol skies would fall if he were not first with a certain
lady. The love whose star had caught in the hair of Sylvia, now lying
there asleep. A so-called love—that half-glamorous, yet sordid little
meal of pleasure, which youth, however sensitive, must eat, it seems,
some time or other with some young light of love—a glimpse of life
that beforehand had seemed much and had meant little, save to leave him
disillusioned with himself and sorry for his partner. And then the
love that he could not, even after twenty years, bear to remember; that
all-devouring summer passion, which in one night had gained all and
lost all terribly, leaving on his soul a scar that could never be quite
healed, leaving his spirit always a little lonely, haunted by the sense
of what might have been. Of his share in that night of tragedy—that
'terrible accident on the river'—no one had ever dreamed. And then the
long despair which had seemed the last death of love had slowly passed,
and yet another love had been born—or rather born again, pale, sober,
but quite real; the fresh springing-up of a feeling long forgotten,
of that protective devotion of his boyhood. He still remembered the
expression on Sylvia's face when he passed her by chance in Oxford
Street, soon after he came back from his four years of exile in the East
and Rome—that look, eager, yet reproachful, then stoically ironic, as
if saying: 'Oh, no! after forgetting me four years and more—you can't
remember me now!' And when he spoke, the still more touching pleasure
in her face. Then uncertain months, with a feeling of what the end would
be; and then their marriage. Happy enough—gentle, not very vivid, nor
spiritually very intimate—his work always secretly as remote from her
as when she had thought to please him by putting jessamine stars on
the heads of his beasts. A quiet successful union, not meaning, he had
thought, so very much to him nor so very much to her—until forty-eight
hours ago he told her; and she had shrunk, and wilted, and gone all to
pieces. And what was it he had told her?
A long story—that!
Sitting there by the fire, with nothing yet decided, he could see it all
from the start, with its devilish, delicate intricacy, its subtle slow
enchantment spinning itself out of him, out of his own state of mind and
body, rather than out of the spell cast over him, as though a sort of
fatal force, long dormant, were working up again to burst into dark
flower....
II
Yes, it had begun within him over a year ago, with a queer unhappy
restlessness, a feeling that life was slipping, ebbing away within reach
of him, and his arms never stretched out to arrest it. It had begun with
a sort of long craving, stilled only when he was working hard—a craving
for he knew not what, an ache which was worst whenever the wind was
soft.
They said that about forty-five was a perilous age for a man—especially
for an artist. All the autumn of last year he had felt this vague misery
rather badly. It had left him alone most of December and January, while
he was working so hard at his group of lions; but the moment that was
finished it had gripped him hard again. In those last days of January
he well remembered wandering about in the parks day after day, trying
to get away from it. Mild weather, with a scent in the wind! With what
avidity he had watched children playing, the premature buds on the
bushes, anything, everything young—with what an ache, too, he had been
conscious of innumerable lives being lived round him, and loves loved,
and he outside, unable to know, to grasp, to gather them; and all
the time the sands of his hourglass running out! A most absurd and
unreasonable feeling for a man with everything he wanted, with work that
he loved, quite enough money, and a wife so good as Sylvia—a feeling
that no Englishman of forty-six, in excellent health, ought for a moment
to have been troubled with. A feeling such as, indeed, no Englishman
ever admitted having—so that there was not even, as yet, a Society for
its suppression. For what was this disquiet feeling, but the sense that
he had had his day, would never again know the stir and fearful joy
of falling in love, but only just hanker after what was past and gone!
Could anything be more reprehensible in a married man?
It was—yes—the last day of January, when, returning from one of those
restless rambles in Hyde Park, he met Dromore. Queer to recognize a
man hardly seen since school-days. Yet unmistakably, Johnny Dromore,
sauntering along the rails of Piccadilly on the Green Park side, with
that slightly rolling gait of his thin, horseman's legs, his dandified
hat a little to one side, those strange, chaffing, goggling eyes, that
look, as if making a perpetual bet. Yes—the very same teasing, now
moody, now reckless, always astute Johnny Dromore, with a good heart
beneath an outside that seemed ashamed of it. Truly to have shared a
room at school—to have been at College together, were links mysteriously
indestructible.
“Mark Lennan! By gum! haven't seen you for ages. Not since you turned
out a full-blown—what d'you call it? Awfully glad to meet you, old
chap!” Here was the past indeed, long vanished in feeling and thought
and all; and Lennan's head buzzed, trying to find some common interest
with this hunting, racing man-about-town.
Johnny Dromore come to life again—he whom the Machine had stamped with
astute simplicity by the time he was twenty-two, and for ever after left
untouched in thought and feeling—Johnny Dromore, who would never pass
beyond the philosophy that all was queer and freakish which had not to
do with horses, women, wine, cigars, jokes, good-heartedness, and that
perpetual bet; Johnny Dromore, who, somewhere in him, had a pocket of
depth, a streak of hunger, that was not just Johnny Dromore.
How queer was the sound of that jerky talk!
“You ever see old Fookes now? Been racin' at all? You live in Town?
Remember good old Blenker?” And then silence, and then another spurt:
“Ever go down to 'Bambury's?' Ever go racin'? . . . Come on up to my
'digs.' You've got nothin' to do.” No persuading Johnny Dromore that a
'what d'you call it' could have anything to do. “Come on, old chap. I've
got the hump. It's this damned east wind.”
Well he remembered it, when they shared a room at 'Bambury's'—that hump
of Johnny Dromore's, after some reckless spree or bout of teasing.
And down that narrow bye-street of Piccadilly he had gone, and up into
those 'digs' on the first floor, with their little dark hall, their Van
Beers' drawing and Vanity Fair cartoons, and prints of racehorses, and
of the old Nightgown Steeplechase; with the big chairs, and all
the paraphernalia of Race Guides and race-glasses, fox-masks and
stags'-horns, and hunting-whips. And yet, something that from the first
moment struck him as not quite in keeping, foreign to the picture—a
little jumble of books, a vase of flowers, a grey kitten.
“Sit down, old chap. What'll you drink?”
Sunk into the recesses of a marvellous chair, with huge arms of tawny
leather, he listened and spoke drowsily. 'Bambury's,' Oxford, Gordy's
clubs—dear old Gordy, gone now!—things long passed by; they seemed all
round him once again. And yet, always that vague sense, threading this
resurrection, threading the smoke of their cigars, and Johnny Dromore's
clipped talk—of something that did not quite belong. Might it be,
perhaps, that sepia drawing—above the 'Tantalus' on the oak sideboard
at the far end—of a woman's face gazing out into the room? Mysteriously
unlike everything else, except the flowers, and this kitten that was
pushing its furry little head against his hand. Odd how a single thing
sometimes took possession of a room, however remote in spirit! It seemed
to reach like a shadow over Dromore's outstretched limbs, and weathered,
long-nosed face, behind his huge cigar; over the queer, solemn, chaffing
eyes, with something brooding in the depths of them.
“Ever get the hump? Bally awful, isn't it? It's getting old. We're bally
old, you know, Lenny!” Ah! No one had called him 'Lenny' for twenty
years. And it was true; they were unmentionably old.
“When a fellow begins to feel old, you know, it's time he went broke—or
something; doesn't bear sittin' down and lookin' at. Come out to 'Monte'
with me!”
'Monte!' That old wound, never quite healed, started throbbing at the
word, so that he could hardly speak his: “No, I don't care for 'Monte.'”
And, at once, he saw Dromore's eyes probing, questioning:
“You married?”
“Yes.”
“Never thought of you as married!”
So Dromore did think of him. Queer! He never thought of Johnny Dromore.
“Winter's bally awful, when you're not huntin'. You've changed a lot;
should hardly have known you. Last time I saw you, you'd just come back
from Rome or somewhere. What's it like bein' a—a sculptor? Saw something
of yours once. Ever do things of horses?”
Yes; he had done a 'relief' of ponies only last year.
“You do women, too, I s'pose?”
“Not often.”
The eyes goggled slightly. Quaint, that unholy interest! Just like boys,
the Johnny Dromores—would never grow up, no matter how life treated
them. If Dromore spoke out his soul, as he used to speak it out at
'Bambury's,' he would say: 'You get a pull there; you have a bally
good time, I expect.' That was the way it took them; just a converse
manifestation of the very same feeling towards Art that the pious
Philistines had, with their deploring eyebrows and their 'peril to the
soul.' Babes all! Not a glimmering of what Art meant—of its effort, and
its yearnings!
“You make money at it?”
“Oh, yes.”
Again that appreciative goggle, as who should say: 'Ho! there's more in
this than I thought!'
A long silence, then, in the dusk with the violet glimmer from outside
the windows, the fire flickering in front of them, the grey kitten
purring against his neck, the smoke of their cigars going up, and such
a strange, dozing sense of rest, as he had not known for many days. And
then—something, someone at the door, over by the sideboard! And Dromore
speaking in a queer voice:
“Come in, Nell! D'you know my daughter?”
A hand took Lennan's, a hand that seemed to waver between the aplomb
of a woman of the world, and a child's impulsive warmth. And a voice,
young, clipped, clear, said:
“How d'you do? She's rather sweet, isn't she—my kitten?”
Then Dromore turned the light up. A figure fairly tall, in a grey
riding-habit, stupendously well cut; a face not quite so round as
a child's nor so shaped as a woman's, blushing slightly, very calm;
crinkly light-brown hair tied back with a black ribbon under a neat
hat; and eyes like those eyes of Gainsborough's 'Perdita'—slow, grey,
mesmeric, with long lashes curling up, eyes that draw things to them,
still innocent.
And just on the point of saying: “I thought you'd stepped out of that
picture”—he saw Dromore's face, and mumbled instead:
“So it's YOUR kitten?”
“Yes; she goes to everybody. Do you like Persians? She's all fur really.
Feel!”
Entering with his fingers the recesses of the kitten, he said:
“Cats without fur are queer.”
“Have you seen one without fur?”
“Oh, yes! In my profession we have to go below fur—I'm a sculptor.”
“That must be awfully interesting.”
What a woman of the world! But what a child, too! And now he could see
that the face in the sepia drawing was older altogether—lips not so
full, look not so innocent, cheeks not so round, and something sad and
desperate about it—a face that life had rudely touched. But the same
eyes it had—and what charm, for all its disillusionment, its air of
a history! Then he noticed, fastened to the frame, on a thin rod, a
dust-coloured curtain, drawn to one side. The self-possessed young voice
was saying:
“Would you mind if I showed you my drawings? It would be awfully good
of you. You could tell me about them.” And with dismay he saw her open a
portfolio. While he scrutinized those schoolgirl drawings, he could feel
her looking at him, as animals do when they are making up their minds
whether or no to like you; then she came and stood so close that her arm
pressed his. He redoubled his efforts to find something good about the
drawings. But in truth there was nothing good. And if, in other matters,
he could lie well enough to save people's feelings, where Art was
concerned he never could; so he merely said:
“You haven't been taught, you see.”
“Will you teach me?”
But before he could answer, she was already effacing that naive question
in her most grown-up manner.
“Of course I oughtn't to ask. It would bore you awfully.”
After that he vaguely remembered Dromore's asking if he ever rode in the
Row; and those eyes of hers following him about; and her hand giving
his another childish squeeze. Then he was on his way again down
the dimly-lighted stairs, past an interminable array of Vanity Fair
cartoons, out into the east wind.
III
Crossing the Green Park on his way home, was he more, or less, restless?
Difficult to say. A little flattered, certainly, a little warmed; yet
irritated, as always when he came into contact with people to whom the
world of Art was such an amusing unreality. The notion of trying to
show that child how to draw—that feather-pate, with her riding and her
kitten; and her 'Perdita' eyes! Quaint, how she had at once made
friends with him! He was a little different, perhaps, from what she was
accustomed to. And how daintily she spoke! A strange, attractive, almost
lovely child! Certainly not more than seventeen—and—Johnny Dromore's
daughter!
The wind was bitter, the lamps bright among the naked trees. Beautiful
always—London at night, even in January, even in an east wind, with
a beauty he never tired of. Its great, dark, chiselled shapes, its
gleaming lights, like droves of flying stars come to earth; and all
warmed by the beat and stir of innumerable lives—those lives that he
ached so to know and to be part of.
He told Sylvia of his encounter. Dromore! The name struck her. She
had an old Irish song, 'The Castle of Dromore,' with a queer, haunting
refrain.
It froze hard all the week, and he began a life-size group of their two
sheep-dogs. Then a thaw set in with that first south-west wind,
which brings each February a feeling of Spring such as is never again
recaptured, and men's senses, like sleepy bees in the sun, go roving.
It awakened in him more violently than ever the thirst to be living,
knowing, loving—the craving for something new. Not this, of course, took
him back to Dromore's rooms; oh, no! just friendliness, since he had not
even told his old room-mate where he lived, or said that his wife would
be glad to make his acquaintance, if he cared to come round. For Johnny
Dromore had assuredly not seemed too happy, under all his hard-bitten
air. Yes! it was but friendly to go again.
Dromore was seated in his long arm-chair, a cigar between his lips, a
pencil in his hand, a Ruff's Guide on his knee; beside him was a large
green book. There was a festive air about him, very different from his
spasmodic gloom of the other day; and he murmured without rising:
“Halo, old man!—glad to see you. Take a pew. Look here! Agapemone—which
d'you think I ought to put her to—San Diavolo or Ponte Canet?—not more
than four crosses of St. Paul. Goin' to get a real good one from her
this time!”
He, who had never heard these sainted names, answered:
“Oh! Ponte Canet, without doubt. But if you're working I'll come in
another time.”
“Lord! no! Have a smoke. I'll just finish lookin' out their blood—and
take a pull.”
And so Lennan sat down to watch those researches, wreathed in cigar
smoke and punctuated by muttered expletives. They were as sacred and
absorbing, no doubt, as his own efforts to create in clay; for before
Dromore's inner vision was the perfect racehorse—he, too, was creating.
Here was no mere dodge for making money, but a process hallowed by the
peculiar sensation felt when one rubbed the palms of the hands together,
the sensation that accompanied all creative achievement. Once only
Dromore paused to turn his head and say:
“Bally hard, gettin' a taproot right!”
Real Art! How well an artist knew that desperate search after the point
of balance, the central rivet that must be found before a form would
come to life.... And he noted that to-day there was no kitten, no
flowers, no sense at all of an extraneous presence—even the picture was
curtained. Had the girl been just a dream—a fancy conjured up by his
craving after youth?
Then he saw that Dromore had dropped the large green book, and was
standing before the fire.
“Nell took to you the other day. But you always were a lady's man.
Remember the girl at Coaster's?”
Coaster's tea-shop, where he would go every afternoon that he had money,
just for the pleasure of looking shyly at a face. Something beautiful to
look at—nothing more! Johnny Dromore would no better understand that now
than when they were at 'Bambury's.' Not the smallest good even trying
to explain! He looked up at the goggling eyes; he heard the bantering
voice:
“I say—you ARE goin' grey. We're bally old, Lenny! A fellow gets old
when he marries.”
And he answered:
“By the way, I never knew that YOU had been.”
From Dromore's face the chaffing look went, like a candle-flame blown
out; and a coppery flush spread over it. For some seconds he did not
speak, then, jerking his head towards the picture, he muttered gruffly:
“Never had the chance of marrying, there; Nell's 'outside.'”
A sort of anger leaped in Lennan; why should Dromore speak that word
as if he were ashamed of his own daughter? Just like his sort—none
so hidebound as men-about-town! Flotsam on the tide of other men's
opinions; poor devils adrift, without the one true anchorage of their
own real feelings! And doubtful whether Dromore would be pleased, or
think him gushing, or even distrustful of his morality, he said:
“As for that, it would only make any decent man or woman nicer to her.
When is she going to let me teach her drawing?”
Dromore crossed the room, drew back the curtain of the picture, and in a
muffled voice, said:
“My God, Lenny! Life's unfair. Nell's coming killed her mother. I'd
rather it had been me—bar chaff! Women have no luck.”
Lennan got up from his comfortable chair. For, startled out of the past,
the memory of that summer night, when yet another woman had no luck,
was flooding his heart with its black, inextinguishable grief. He said
quietly:
“The past IS past, old man.”
Dromore drew the curtain again across the picture, and came back to the
fire. And for a full minute he stared into it.
“What am I to do with Nell? She's growing up.”
“What have you done with her so far?”
“She's been at school. In the summer she goes to Ireland—I've got a
bit of an old place there. She'll be eighteen in July. I shall have to
introduce her to women, and all that. It's the devil! How? Who?”
Lennan could only murmur: “My wife, for one.”
He took his leave soon after. Johnny Dromore! Bizarre guardian for
that child! Queer life she must have of it, in that bachelor's den,
surrounded by Ruff's Guides! What would become of her? Caught up by some
young spark about town; married to him, no doubt—her father would see to
the thoroughness of that, his standard of respectability was evidently
high! And after—go the way, maybe, of her mother—that poor thing in the
picture with the alluring, desperate face. Well! It was no business of
his!
IV
No business of his! The merest sense of comradeship, then, took him
once more to Dromore's after that disclosure, to prove that the word
'outside' had no significance save in his friend's own fancy; to assure
him again that Sylvia would be very glad to welcome the child at any
time she liked to come.
When he had told her of that little matter of Nell's birth, she had
been silent a long minute, looking in his face, and then had said: “Poor
child! I wonder if SHE knows! People are so unkind, even nowadays!”
He could not himself think of anyone who would pay attention to such a
thing, except to be kinder to the girl; but in such matters Sylvia was
the better judge, in closer touch with general thought. She met people
that he did not—and of a more normal species.
It was rather late when he got to Dromore's diggings on that third
visit.
“Mr. Dromore, sir,” the man said—he had one of those strictly
confidential faces bestowed by an all-wise Providence on servants in the
neighbourhood of Piccadilly—“Mr. Dromore, sir, is not in. But he will be
almost sure to be in to dress. Miss Nell is in, sir.”
And there she was, sitting at the table, pasting photographs into an
album—lonely young creature in that abode of male middle-age! Lennan
stood, unheard, gazing at the back of her head, with its thick
crinkly-brown hair tied back on her dark-red frock. And, to the
confidential man's soft:
“Mr. Lennan, miss,” he added a softer: “May I come in?”
She put her hand into his with intense composure.
“Oh, yes, do! if you don't mind the mess I'm making;” and, with a little
squeeze of the tips of his fingers, added: “Would it bore you to see my
photographs?”
And down they sat together before the photographs—snapshots of people
with guns or fishing-rods, little groups of schoolgirls, kittens,
Dromore and herself on horseback, and several of a young man with
a broad, daring, rather good-looking face. “That's Oliver—Oliver
Dromore—Dad's first cousin once removed. Rather nice, isn't he? Do you
like his expression?”
Lennan did not know. Not her second cousin; her father's first cousin
once removed! And again there leaped in him that unreasoning flame of
indignant pity.
“And how about drawing? You haven't come to be taught yet.”
She went almost as red as her frock.
“I thought you were only being polite. I oughtn't to have asked. Of
course, I want to awfully—only I know it'll bore you.”
“It won't at all.”
She looked up at that. What peculiar languorous eyes they were!
“Shall I come to-morrow, then?”
“Any day you like, between half-past twelve and one.”
“Where?”
He took out a card.
“Mark Lennan—yes—I like your name. I liked it the other day. It's
awfully nice!”
What was in a name that she should like him because of it? His fame as
a sculptor—such as it was—could have nothing to do with that, for she
would certainly not know of it. Ah! but there was a lot in a name—for
children. In his childhood what fascination there had been in the words
macaroon, and Spaniard, and Carinola, and Aldebaran, and Mr. McCrae. For
quite a week the whole world had been Mr. McCrae—a most ordinary friend
of Gordy's.
By whatever fascination moved, she talked freely enough now—of her
school; of riding and motoring—she seemed to love going very fast;
about Newmarket—which was 'perfect'; and theatres—plays of the type
that Johnny Dromore might be expected to approve; these together with
'Hamlet' and 'King Lear' were all she had seen. Never was a girl so
untouched by thought, or Art—yet not stupid, having, seemingly, a
certain natural good taste; only, nothing, evidently, had come her way.
How could it—'Johnny Dromore duce, et auspice Johnny Dromore!' She had
been taken, indeed, to the National Gallery while at school. And Lennan
had a vision of eight or ten young maidens trailing round at the
skirts of one old maiden, admiring Landseer's dogs, giggling faintly at
Botticelli's angels, gaping, rustling, chattering like young birds in a
shrubbery.
But with all her surroundings, this child of Johnny Dromoredom was as
yet more innocent than cultured girls of the same age. If those
grey, mesmeric eyes of hers followed him about, they did so frankly,
unconsciously. There was no minx in her, so far.
An hour went by, and Dromore did not come. And the loneliness of this
young creature in her incongruous abode began telling on Lennan's
equanimity.
What did she do in the evenings?
“Sometimes I go to the theatre with Dad, generally I stay at home.”
“And then?”
“Oh! I just read, or talk French.”
“What? To yourself?”
“Yes, or to Oliver sometimes, when he comes in.”
So Oliver came in!
“How long have you known Oliver?”
“Oh! ever since I was a child.”
He wanted to say: And how long is that? But managed to refrain, and got
up to go instead. She caught his sleeve and said:
“You're not to go!” Saying that she looked as a dog will, going to bite
in fun, her upper lip shortened above her small white teeth set fast
on her lower lip, and her chin thrust a little forward. A glimpse of a
wilful spirit! But as soon as he had smiled, and murmured:
“Ah! but I must, you see!” she at once regained her manners, only saying
rather mournfully: “You don't call me by my name. Don't you like it?”
“Nell?”
“Yes. It's really Eleanor, of course. DON'T you like it?”
If he had detested the name, he could only have answered: “Very much.”
“I'm awfully glad! Good-bye.”
When he got out into the street, he felt terribly like a man who,
instead of having had his sleeve touched, has had his heart plucked at.
And that warm, bewildered feeling lasted him all the way home.
Changing for dinner, he looked at himself with unwonted attention. Yes,
his dark hair was still thick, but going distinctly grey; there were
very many lines about his eyes, too, and those eyes, still eager when
they smiled, were particularly deepset, as if life had forced them back.
His cheekbones were almost 'bopsies' now, and his cheeks very thin
and dark, and his jaw looked too set and bony below the almost black
moustache. Altogether a face that life had worn a good deal, with
nothing for a child to take a fancy to and make friends with, that he
could see.
Sylvia came in while he was thus taking stock of himself, bringing a
freshly-opened flask of eau-de-Cologne. She was always bringing him
something—never was anyone so sweet in those ways. In that grey, low-cut
frock, her white, still prettiness and pale-gold hair, so little touched
by Time, only just fell short of real beauty for lack of a spice of
depth and of incisiveness, just as her spirit lacked he knew not what
of poignancy. He would not for the world have let her know that he ever
felt that lack. If a man could not hide little rifts in the lute from
one so good and humble and affectionate, he was not fit to live.
She sang 'The Castle of Dromore' again that night with its queer
haunting lilt. And when she had gone up, and he was smoking over the
fire, the girl in her dark-red frock seemed to come, and sit opposite
with her eyes fixed on his, just as she had been sitting while they
talked. Dark red had suited her! Suited the look on her face when she
said:
“You're not to go!” Odd, indeed, if she had not some devil in her, with
that parentage!
V
Next day they had summoned him from the studio to see a peculiar
phenomenon—Johnny Dromore, very well groomed, talking to Sylvia with
unnatural suavity, and carefully masking the goggle in his eyes! Mrs.
Lennan ride? Ah! Too busy, of course. Helped Mark with his—er—No!
Really! Read a lot, no doubt? Never had any time for readin'
himself—awful bore not having time to read! And Sylvia listening and
smiling, very still and soft.
What had Dromore come for? To spy out the land, discover why Lennan and
his wife thought nothing of the word 'outside'—whether, in fact,
their household was respectable.... A man must always look twice at
'what-d'you-call-ems,' even if they have shared his room at school!...
To his credit, of course, to be so careful of his daughter, at the
expense of time owed to the creation of the perfect racehorse! On the
whole he seemed to be coming to the conclusion that they might be useful
to Nell in the uncomfortable time at hand when she would have to go
about; seemed even to be falling under the spell of Sylvia's transparent
goodness—abandoning his habitual vigilance against being scored off in
life's perpetual bet; parting with his armour of chaff. Almost a relief,
indeed, once out of Sylvia's presence, to see that familiar, unholy
curiosity creeping back into his eyes, as though they were hoping
against parental hope to find something—er—amusing somewhere about
that mysterious Mecca of good times—a 'what-d'you-call-it's' studio.
Delicious to watch the conflict between relief and disappointment. Alas!
no model—not even a statue without clothes; nothing but portrait heads,
casts of animals, and such-like sobrieties—absolutely nothing that could
bring a blush to the cheek of the young person, or a glow to the eyes of
a Johnny Dromore.
With what curious silence he walked round and round the group of
sheep-dogs, inquiring into them with that long crinkled nose of his!
With what curious suddenness, he said: “Damned good! You wouldn't do me
one of Nell on horseback?” With what dubious watchfulness he listened to
the answer:
“I might, perhaps, do a statuette of her; if I did, you should have a
cast.”
Did he think that in some way he was being outmanoeuvered? For he
remained some seconds in a sort of trance before muttering, as though
clinching a bet:
“Done! And if you want to ride with her to get the hang of it, I can
always mount you.”
When he had gone, Lennan remained staring at his unfinished sheep-dogs
in the gathering dusk. Again that sense of irritation at contact with
something strange, hostile, uncomprehending! Why let these Dromores
into his life like this? He shut the studio, and went back to the
drawing-room. Sylvia was sitting on the fender, gazing at the fire, and
she edged along so as to rest against his knees. The light from a candle
on her writing-table was shining on her hair, her cheek, and chin, that
years had so little altered. A pretty picture she made, with just
that candle flame, swaying there, burning slowly, surely down the
pale wax—candle flame, of all lifeless things most living, most like a
spirit, so bland and vague, one would hardly have known it was fire at
all. A drift of wind blew it this way and that: he got up to shut the
window, and as he came back; Sylvia said:
“I like Mr. Dromore. I think he's nicer than he looks.”
“He's asked me to make a statuette of his daughter on horseback.”
“And will you?”
“I don't know.”
“If she's really so pretty, you'd better.”
“Pretty's hardly the word—but she's not ordinary.”
She turned round, and looked up at him, and instinctively he felt that
something difficult to answer was coming next.
“Mark.”
“Yes.”
“I wanted to ask you: Are you really happy nowadays?”
“Of course. Why not?”
What else to be said? To speak of those feelings of the last few
months—those feelings so ridiculous to anyone who had them not—would
only disturb her horribly.
And having received her answer, Sylvia turned back to the fire, resting
silently against his knees....
Three days later the sheep-dogs suddenly abandoned the pose into which
he had lured them with such difficulty, and made for the studio door.
There in the street was Nell Dromore, mounted on a narrow little black
horse with a white star, a white hoof, and devilish little goat's ears,
pricked, and very close together at the tips.
“Dad said I had better ride round and show you Magpie. He's not very
good at standing still. Are those your dogs? What darlings!”
She had slipped her knee already from the pummel, and slid down; the
sheep-dogs were instantly on their hind-feet, propping themselves
against her waist. Lennan held the black horse—a bizarre little beast,
all fire and whipcord, with a skin like satin, liquid eyes, very
straight hocks, and a thin bang-tail reaching down to them. The little
creature had none of those commonplace good looks so discouraging to
artists.
He had forgotten its rider, till she looked up from the dogs, and said:
“Do you like him? It IS nice of you to be going to do us.”
When she had ridden away, looking back until she turned the corner, he
tried to lure the two dogs once more to their pose. But they would sit
no more, going continually to the door, listening and sniffing; and
everything felt disturbed and out of gear.
That same afternoon at Sylvia's suggestion he went with her to call on
the Dromores.
While they were being ushered in he heard a man's voice rather
high-pitched speaking in some language not his own; then the girl:
“No, no, Oliver. 'Dans l'amour il y a toujours un qui aime, et l'autre
qui se laisse aimer.'”
She was sitting in her father's chair, and on the window-sill they saw
a young man lolling, who rose and stood stock-still, with an almost
insolent expression on his broad, good-looking face. Lennan scrutinized
him with interest—about twenty-four he might be, rather dandified,
clean-shaved, with crisp dark hair and wide-set hazel eyes, and, as in
his photograph, a curious look of daring. His voice, when he vouchsafed
a greeting, was rather high and not unpleasant, with a touch of lazy
drawl.
They stayed but a few minutes, and going down those dimly lighted stairs
again, Sylvia remarked:
“How prettily she said good-bye—as if she were putting up her face to
be kissed! I think she's lovely. So does that young man. They go well
together.”
Rather abruptly Lennan answered:
“Ah! I suppose they do.”
VI
She came to them often after that, sometimes alone, twice with Johnny
Dromore, sometimes with young Oliver, who, under Sylvia's spell, soon
lost his stand-off air. And the statuette was begun. Then came Spring
in earnest, and that real business of life—the racing of horses 'on
the flat,' when Johnny Dromore's genius was no longer hampered by the
illegitimate risks of 'jumpin'.' He came to dine with them the day
before the first Newmarket meeting. He had a soft spot for Sylvia,
always saying to Lennan as he went away: “Charmin' woman—your
wife!” She, too, had a soft spot for him, having fathomed the utter
helplessness of this worldling's wisdom, and thinking him pathetic.
After he was gone that evening, she said:
“Ought we to have Nell to stay with us while you're finishing her? She
must be very lonely now her father's so much away.”
It was like Sylvia to think of that; but would it be pleasure or
vexation to have in the house this child with her quaint grown-upness,
her confiding ways, and those 'Perdita' eyes? In truth he did not know.
She came to them with touching alacrity—very like a dog, who, left at
home when the family goes for a holiday, takes at once to those who make
much of it.
And she was no trouble, too well accustomed to amuse herself; and always
quaint to watch, with her continual changes from child to woman of the
world. A new sensation, this—of a young creature in the house. Both he
and Sylvia had wanted children, without luck. Twice illness had stood
in the way. Was it, perhaps, just that little lack in her—that lack of
poignancy, which had prevented her from becoming a mother? An only child
herself, she had no nieces or nephews; Cicely's boys had always been at
school, and now were out in the world. Yes, a new sensation, and one in
which Lennan's restless feelings seemed to merge and vanish.
Outside the hours when Nell sat to him, he purposely saw but little of
her, leaving her to nestle under Sylvia's wing; and this she did, as
if she never wanted to come out. Thus he preserved his amusement at
her quaint warmths, and quainter calmness, his aesthetic pleasure in
watching her, whose strange, half-hypnotized, half-hypnotic gaze, had
a sort of dreamy and pathetic lovingness, as if she were brimful of
affections that had no outlet.
Every morning after 'sitting' she would stay an hour bent over her own
drawing, which made practically no progress; and he would often catch
her following his movements with those great eyes of hers, while the
sheep-dogs would lie perfectly still at her feet, blinking horribly—such
was her attraction. His birds also, a jackdaw and an owl, who had the
run of the studio, tolerated her as they tolerated no other female, save
the housekeeper. The jackdaw would perch on her and peck her dress; but
the owl merely engaged her in combats of mesmeric gazing, which never
ended in victory for either.
Now that she was with them, Oliver Dromore began to haunt the house,
coming at all hours, on very transparent excuses. She behaved to him
with extreme capriciousness, sometimes hardly speaking, sometimes
treating him like a brother; and in spite of all his nonchalance,
the poor youth would just sit glowering, or gazing out his adoration,
according to her mood.
One of these July evenings Lennan remembered beyond all others. He had
come, after a hard day's work, out from his studio into the courtyard
garden to smoke a cigarette and feel the sun on his cheek before it sank
behind the wall. A piano-organ far away was grinding out a waltz; and on
an hydrangea tub, under the drawing-room window, he sat down to listen.
Nothing was visible from there, save just the square patch of a quite
blue sky, and one soft plume of smoke from his own kitchen chimney;
nothing audible save that tune, and the never-ending street murmur.
Twice birds flew across—starlings. It was very peaceful, and his
thoughts went floating like the smoke of his cigarette, to meet
who-knew-what other thoughts—for thoughts, no doubt, had little swift
lives of their own; desired, found their mates, and, lightly blending,
sent forth offspring. Why not? All things were possible in this
wonder-house of a world. Even that waltz tune, floating away, would find
some melody to wed, and twine with, and produce a fresh chord that
might float in turn to catch the hum of a gnat or fly, and breed again.
Queer—how everything sought to entwine with something else! On one of
the pinkish blooms of the hydrangea he noted a bee—of all things, in
this hidden-away garden of tiles and gravel and plants in tubs! The
little furry, lonely thing was drowsily clinging there, as if it had
forgotten what it had come for—seduced, maybe, like himself, from labour
by these last rays of the sun. Its wings, close-furled, were glistening;
its eyes seemed closed. And the piano-organ played on, a tune of
yearning, waiting, yearning....
Then, through the window above his head, he heard Oliver Dromore—a voice
one could always tell, pitched high, with its slight drawl—pleading,
very softly at first, then insistent, imperious; and suddenly Nell's
answering voice:
“I won't, Oliver! I won't! I won't!”
He rose to go out of earshot. Then a door slammed, and he saw her at the
window above him, her waist on a level with his head; flushed, with her
grey eyes ominously bright, her full lips parted. And he said:
“What is it, Nell?”
She leaned down and caught his hand; her touch was fiery hot.
“He kissed me! I won't let him—I won't kiss him!”
Through his head went a medley of sayings to soothe children that are
hurt; but he felt unsteady, unlike himself. And suddenly she knelt, and
put her hot forehead against his lips.
It was as if she had really been a little child, wanting the place
kissed to make it well.
VII
After that strange outburst, Lennan considered long whether he should
speak to Oliver. But what could he say, from what standpoint say it,
and—with that feeling? Or should he speak to Dromore? Not very easy to
speak on such a subject to one off whose turf all spiritual matters
were so permanently warned. Nor somehow could he bring himself to tell
Sylvia; it would be like violating a confidence to speak of the child's
outburst and that quivering moment, when she had kneeled and put her hot
forehead to his lips for comfort. Such a disclosure was for Nell herself
to make, if she so wished.
And then young Oliver solved the difficulty by coming to the studio
himself next day. He entered with 'Dromore' composure, very
well groomed, in a silk hat, a cut-away black coat and charming
lemon-coloured gloves; what, indeed, the youth did, besides belonging to
the Yeomanry and hunting all the winter, seemed known only to himself.
He made no excuse for interrupting Lennan, and for some time sat
silently smoking his cigarette, and pulling the ears of the dogs. And
Lennan worked on, waiting. There was always something attractive to him
in this young man's broad, good-looking face, with its crisp dark hair,
and half-insolent good humour, now so clouded.
At last Oliver got up, and went over to the unfinished 'Girl on the
Magpie Horse.' Turning to it so that his face could not be seen, he
said:
“You and Mrs. Lennan have been awfully kind to me; I behaved rather like
a cad yesterday. I thought I'd better tell you. I want to marry Nell,
you know.”
Lennan was glad that the young man's face was so religiously averted.
He let his hands come to anchor on what he was working at before he
answered: “She's only a child, Oliver;” and then, watching his fingers
making an inept movement with the clay, was astonished at himself.
“She'll be eighteen this month,” he heard Oliver say. “If she once gets
out—amongst people—I don't know what I shall do. Old Johnny's no good to
look after her.”
The young man's face was very red; he was forgetting to hide it now.
Then it went white, and he said through clenched teeth: “She sends me
mad! I don't know how not to—If I don't get her, I shall shoot myself. I
shall, you know—I'm that sort. It's her eyes. They draw you right out
of yourself—and leave you—” And from his gloved hand the smoked-out
cigarette-end fell to the floor. “They say her mother was like that.
Poor old Johnny! D'you think I've got a chance, Mr. Lennan? I don't mean
now, this minute; I know she's too young.”
Lennan forced himself to answer.
“I dare say, my dear fellow, I dare say. Have you talked with my wife?”
Oliver shook his head.
“She's so good—I don't think she'd quite understand my sort of feeling.”
A queer little smile came up on Lennan's lips.
“Ah, well!” he said, “you must give the child time. Perhaps when she
comes back from Ireland, after the summer.”
The young man answered moodily:
“Yes. I've got the run of that, you know. And I shan't be able to keep
away.” He took up his hat. “I suppose I oughtn't to have come and
bored you about this, but Nell thinks such a lot of you; and, you being
different to most people—I thought you wouldn't mind.” He turned again
at the door. “It wasn't gas what I said just now—about not getting her.
Fellows say that sort of thing, but I mean it.”
He put on that shining hat and went.
And Lennan stood, staring at the statuette. So! Passion broke down even
the defences of Dromoredom. Passion! Strange hearts it chose to bloom
in!
'Being different to most people—I thought you wouldn't mind'! How had
this youth known that Sylvia would not understand passion so out of hand
as this? And what had made it clear that he (Lennan) would? Was there,
then, something in his face? There must be! Even Johnny Dromore—most
reticent of creatures—had confided to him that one hour of his astute
existence, when the wind had swept him out to sea!
Yes! And that statuette would never be any good, try as he might.
Oliver was right—it was her eyes! How they had smoked—in their childish
anger—if eyes could be said to smoke, and how they had drawn and pleaded
when she put her face to his in her still more childish entreaty! If
they were like this now, what would they be when the woman in her woke?
Just as well not to think of her too much! Just as well to work, and
take heed that he would soon be forty-seven! Just as well that next week
she would be gone to Ireland!
And the last evening before she went they took her to see “Carmen” at
the Opera. He remembered that she wore a nearly high white frock, and
a dark carnation in the ribbon tying her crinkly hair, that still hung
loose. How wonderfully entranced she sat, drunk on that opera that
he had seen a score of times; now touching his arm, now Sylvia's,
whispering questions: “Who's that?” “What's coming now?” The Carmen
roused her to adoration, but Don Jose was 'too fat in his funny little
coat,' till, in the maddened jealousy of the last act, he rose superior.
Then, quite lost in excitement, she clutched Lennan's arm; and her
gasp, when Carmen at last fell dead, made all their neighbours jump. Her
emotion was far more moving than that on the stage; he wanted badly
to stroke, and comfort her and say: “There, there, my dear, it's only
make-believe!” And, when it was over, and the excellent murdered lady
and her poor fat little lover appeared before the curtain, finally
forgetting that she was a woman of the world, she started forward in
her seat and clapped, and clapped. Fortunate that Johnny Dromore was not
there to see! But all things coming to an end, they had to get up and
go. And, as they made their way out to the hall, Lennan felt a hot
little finger crooked into his own, as if she simply must have something
to squeeze. He really did not know what to do with it. She seemed to
feel this half-heartedness, soon letting it go. All the way home in the
cab she was silent. With that same abstraction she ate her sandwiches
and drank her lemonade; took Sylvia's kiss, and, quite a woman of the
world once more, begged that they would not get up to see her off—for
she was to go at seven in the morning, to catch the Irish mail. Then,
holding out her hand to Lennan, she very gravely said:
“Thanks most awfully for taking me to-night. Good-bye!”
He stayed full half an hour at the window, smoking. No street lamp shone
just there, and the night was velvety black above the plane-trees. At
last, with a sigh, he shut up, and went tiptoe-ing upstairs in darkness.
Suddenly in the corridor the white wall seemed to move at him. A warmth,
a fragrance, a sound like a tiny sigh, and something soft was squeezed
into his hand. Then the wall moved back, and he stood listening—no
sound, no anything! But in his dressing-room he looked at the soft thing
in his hand. It was the carnation from her hair. What had possessed the
child to give him that? Carmen! Ah! Carmen! And gazing at the flower,
he held it away from him with a sort of terror; but its scent arose.
And suddenly he thrust it, all fresh as it was, into a candle-flame, and
held it, burning, writhing, till it blackened to velvet. Then his heart
smote him for so cruel a deed. It was still beautiful, but its scent was
gone. And turning to the window he flung it far out into the darkness.
VIII
Now that she was gone, it was curious how little they spoke of her,
considering how long she had been with them. And they had from her but
one letter written to Sylvia, very soon after she left, ending: “Dad
sends his best respects, please; and with my love to you and Mr. Lennan,
and all the beasts.—NELL.
“Oliver is coming here next week. We are going to some races.”
It was difficult, of course, to speak of her, with that episode of the
flower, too bizarre to be told—the sort of thing Sylvia would see out of
all proportion—as, indeed, any woman might. Yet—what had it really been,
but the uncontrolled impulse of an emotional child longing to express
feelings kindled by the excitement of that opera? What but a child's
feathery warmth, one of those flying peeps at the mystery of passion
that young things take? He could not give away that pretty foolishness.
And because he would not give it away, he was more than usually
affectionate to Sylvia.
They had made no holiday plans, and he eagerly fell in with her
suggestion that they should go down to Hayle. There, if anywhere, this
curious restlessness would leave him. They had not been down to the old
place for many years; indeed, since Gordy's death it was generally let.
They left London late in August. The day was closing in when they
arrived. Honeysuckle had long been improved away from that station
paling, against which he had stood twenty-nine years ago, watching the
train carrying Anna Stormer away. In the hired fly Sylvia pressed close
to him, and held his hand beneath the ancient dust-rug. Both felt the
same excitement at seeing again this old home. Not a single soul of the
past days would be there now—only the house and the trees, the owls
and the stars; the river, park, and logan stone! It was dark when they
arrived; just their bedroom and two sitting-rooms had been made ready,
with fires burning, though it was still high summer. The same old
execrable Heatherleys looked down from the black oak panellings. The
same scent of apples and old mice clung here and there about the
dark corridors with their unexpected stairways. It was all curiously
unchanged, as old houses are when they are let furnished.
Once in the night he woke. Through the wide-open, uncurtained windows
the night was simply alive with stars, such swarms of them swinging
and trembling up there; and, far away, rose the melancholy, velvet-soft
hooting of an owl.
Sylvia's voice, close to him, said:
“Mark, that night when your star caught in my hair? Do you remember?”
Yes, he remembered. And in his drowsy mind just roused from
dreams, there turned and turned the queer nonsensical refrain: “I
never—never—will desert Mr. Micawber....”
A pleasant month that—of reading, and walking with the dogs the country
round, of lying out long hours amongst the boulders or along the river
banks, watching beasts and birds.
The little old green-house temple of his early masterpieces was still
extant, used now to protect watering pots. But no vestige of impulse
towards work came to him down there. He was marking time; not restless,
not bored, just waiting—but for what, he had no notion. And Sylvia, at
any rate, was happy, blooming in these old haunts, losing her fairness
in the sun; even taking again to a sunbonnet, which made her look
extraordinarily young. The trout that poor old Gordy had so harried
were left undisturbed. No gun was fired; rabbits, pigeons, even the few
partridges enjoyed those first days of autumn unmolested. The bracken
and leaves turned very early, so that the park in the hazy September
sunlight had an almost golden hue. A gentle mellowness reigned over all
that holiday. And from Ireland came no further news, save one picture
postcard with the words: “This is our house.—NELL.”
In the last week of September they went back to London. And at once
there began in him again that restless, unreasonable aching—that sense
of being drawn away out of himself; so that he once more took to walking
the Park for hours, over grass already strewn with leaves, always
looking—craving—and for what?
At Dromore's the confidential man did not know when his master would be
back; he had gone to Scotland with Miss Nell after the St. Leger. Was
Lennan disappointed? Not so—relieved, rather. But his ache was there all
the time, feeding on its secrecy and loneliness, unmentionable feeling
that it was. Why had he not realized long ago that youth was over,
passion done with, autumn upon him? How never grasped the fact that
'Time steals away'? And, as before, the only refuge was in work. The
sheep—dogs and 'The Girl on the Magpie Horse' were finished. He began a
fantastic 'relief'—a nymph peering from behind a rock, and a wild-eyed
man creeping, through reeds, towards her. If he could put into the
nymph's face something of this lure of Youth and Life and Love that
was dragging at him, into the man's face the state of his own heart, it
might lay that feeling to rest. Anything to get it out of himself!
And he worked furiously, laboriously, all October, making no great
progress.... What could he expect when Life was all the time knocking
with that muffled tapping at his door?
It was on the Tuesday, after the close of the last Newmarket meeting,
and just getting dusk, when Life opened the door and walked in. She wore
a dark-red dress, a new one, and surely her face—her figure—were very
different from what he had remembered! They had quickened and become
poignant. She was no longer a child—that was at once plain. Cheeks,
mouth, neck, waist—all seemed fined, shaped; the crinkly, light-brown
hair was coiled up now under a velvet cap; only the great grey eyes
seemed quite the same. And at sight of her his heart gave a sort of dive
and flight, as if all its vague and wistful sensations had found their
goal.
Then, in sudden agitation, he realized that his last moment with this
girl—now a child no longer—had been a secret moment of warmth and of
emotion; a moment which to her might have meant, in her might have bred,
feelings that he had no inkling of. He tried to ignore that fighting and
diving of his heart, held out his hand, and murmured:
“Ah, Nell! Back at last! You've grown.” Then, with a sensation of every
limb gone weak, he felt her arms round his neck, and herself pressed
against him. There was time for the thought to flash through him: This
is terrible! He gave her a little convulsive squeeze—could a man do
less?—then just managed to push her gently away, trying with all his
might to think: She's a child! It's nothing more than after Carmen! She
doesn't know what I am feeling! But he was conscious of a mad desire to
clutch her to him. The touch of her had demolished all his vagueness,
made things only too plain, set him on fire.
He said uncertainly:
“Come to the fire, my child, and tell me all about it.”
If he did not keep to the notion that she was just a child, his head
would go. Perdita—'the lost one'! A good name for her, indeed, as she
stood there, her eyes shining in the firelight—more mesmeric than ever
they had been! And, to get away from the lure of those eyes, he bent
down and raked the grate, saying:
“Have you seen Sylvia?” But he knew that she had not, even before she
gave that impatient shrug. Then he pulled himself together, and said:
“What has happened to you, child?”
“I'm not a child.”
“No, we've both grown older. I was forty-seven the other day.”
She caught his hand—Heavens! how supple she was!—and murmured:
“You're not old a bit; you're quite young.” At his wits' end, with his
heart thumping, but still keeping his eyes away from her, he said:
“Where is Oliver?”
She dropped his hand at that.
“Oliver? I hate him!”
Afraid to trust himself near her, he had begun walking up and down. And
she stood, following him with her gaze—the firelight playing on her red
frock. What extraordinary stillness! What power she had developed in
these few months! Had he let her see that he felt that power? And had
all this come of one little moment in a dark corridor, of one flower
pressed into his hand? Why had he not spoken to her roughly then—told
her she was a romantic little fool? God knew what thoughts she had been
feeding on! But who could have supposed—who dreamed—? And again he fixed
his mind resolutely on that thought: She's a child—only a child!
“Come!” he said: “tell me all about your time in Ireland?”
“Oh! it was just dull—it's all been dull away from you.”
It came out without hesitancy or shame, and he could only murmur:
“Ah! you've missed your drawing!”
“Yes. Can I come to-morrow?”
That was the moment to have said: No! You are a foolish child, and I an
elderly idiot! But he had neither courage nor clearness of mind enough;
nor—the desire. And, without answering, he went towards the door to turn
up the light.
“Oh, no! please don't! It's so nice like this!”
The shadowy room, the bluish dusk painted on all the windows, the
fitful shining of the fire, the pallor and darkness of the dim casts and
bronzes, and that one glowing figure there before the hearth! And her
voice, a little piteous, went on:
“Aren't you glad I'm back? I can't see you properly out there.”
He went back into the glow, and she gave a little sigh of satisfaction.
Then her calm young voice said, ever so distinctly:
“Oliver wants me to marry him, and I won't, of course.”
He dared not say: Why not? He dared not say anything. It was too
dangerous. And then followed those amazing words: “You know why, don't
you? Of course you do.”
It was ridiculous, almost shameful to understand their meaning. And he
stood, staring in front of him, without a word; humility, dismay, pride,
and a sort of mad exultation, all mixed and seething within him in the
queerest pudding of emotion. But all he said was:
“Come, my child; we're neither of us quite ourselves to-night. Let's go
to the drawing-room.”
IX
Back in the darkness and solitude of the studio, when she was gone, he
sat down before the fire, his senses in a whirl. Why was he not just an
ordinary animal of a man that could enjoy what the gods had sent? It was
as if on a November day someone had pulled aside the sober curtains
of the sky and there in a chink had been April standing—thick white
blossom, a purple cloud, a rainbow, grass vivid green, light flaring
from one knew not where, and such a tingling passion of life on it
all as made the heart stand still! This, then, was the marvellous,
enchanting, maddening end of all that year of restlessness and wanting!
This bit of Spring suddenly given to him in the midst of Autumn. Her
lips, her eyes, her hair; her touching confidence; above all—quite
unbelievable—her love. Not really love perhaps, just childish fancy. But
on the wings of fancy this child would fly far, too far—all wistfulness
and warmth beneath that light veneer of absurd composure.
To live again—to plunge back into youth and beauty—to feel Spring once
more—to lose the sense of all being over, save just the sober jogtrot of
domestic bliss; to know, actually to know, ecstasy again, in the love of
a girl; to rediscover all that youth yearns for, and feels, and hopes,
and dreads, and loves. It was a prospect to turn the head even of a
decent man....
By just closing his eyes he could see her standing there with the
firelight glow on her red frock; could feel again that marvellous thrill
when she pressed herself against him in the half-innocent, seducing
moment when she first came in; could feel again her eyes drawing—drawing
him! She was a witch, a grey-eyed, brown-haired witch—even unto her love
of red. She had the witch's power of lighting fever in the veins. And he
simply wondered at himself, that he had not, as she stood there in
the firelight, knelt, and put his arms round her and pressed his face
against her waist. Why had he not? But he did not want to think; the
moment thought began he knew he must be torn this way and that, tossed
here and there between reason and desire, pity and passion. Every sense
struggled to keep him wrapped in the warmth and intoxication of this
discovery that he, in the full of Autumn, had awakened love in Spring.
It was amazing that she could have this feeling; yet there was no
mistake. Her manner to Sylvia just now had been almost dangerously
changed; there had been a queer cold impatience in her look, frightening
from one who but three months ago had been so affectionate. And, going
away, she had whispered, with that old trembling-up at him, as if
offering to be kissed: “I may come, mayn't I? And don't be angry with
me, please; I can't help it.” A monstrous thing at his age to let a
young girl love him—compromise her future! A monstrous thing by all
the canons of virtue and gentility! And yet—what future?—with that
nature—those eyes—that origin—with that father, and that home? But he
would not—simply must not think!
Nevertheless, he showed the signs of thought, and badly; for after
dinner Sylvia, putting her hand on his forehead, said:
“You're working too hard, Mark. You don't go out enough.”
He held those fingers fast. Sylvia! No, indeed he must not think! But he
took advantage of her words, and said that he would go out and get some
air.
He walked at a great pace—to keep thought away—till he reached the river
close to Westminster, and, moved by sudden impulse, seeking perhaps an
antidote, turned down into that little street under the big Wren church,
where he had never been since the summer night when he lost what
was then more to him than life. There SHE had lived; there was the
house—those windows which he had stolen past and gazed at with such
distress and longing. Who lived there now? Once more he seemed to see
that face out of the past, the dark hair, and dark soft eyes, and sweet
gravity; and it did not reproach him. For this new feeling was not a
love like that had been. Only once could a man feel the love that passed
all things, the love before which the world was but a spark in a draught
of wind; the love that, whatever dishonour, grief, and unrest it might
come through, alone had in it the heart of peace and joy and honour.
Fate had torn that love from him, nipped it off as a sharp wind nips off
a perfect flower. This new feeling was but a fever, a passionate fancy,
a grasping once more at Youth and Warmth. Ah, well! but it was real
enough! And, in one of those moments when a man stands outside himself,
seems to be lifted away and see his own life twirling, Lennan had a
vision of a shadow driven here and there; a straw going round and round;
a midge in the grip of a mad wind. Where was the home of this mighty
secret feeling that sprang so suddenly out of the dark, and caught you
by the throat? Why did it come now and not then, for this one and not
that other? What did man know of it, save that it made him spin and
hover—like a moth intoxicated by a light, or a bee by some dark sweet
flower; save that it made of him a distraught, humble, eager puppet of
its fancy? Had it not once already driven him even to the edge of death;
and must it now come on him again with its sweet madness, its drugging
scent? What was it? Why was it? Why these passionate obsessions that
could not decently be satisfied? Had civilization so outstripped man
that his nature was cramped into shoes too small—like the feet of a
Chinese woman? What was it? Why was it?
And faster than ever he walked away.
Pall Mall brought him back to that counterfeit presentment of the
real—reality. There, in St. James's Street, was Johnny Dromore's Club;
and, again moved by impulse, he pushed open its swing door. No need to
ask; for there was Dromore in the hall, on his way from dinner to the
card-room. The glossy tan of hard exercise and good living lay on his
cheeks as thick as clouted cream. His eyes had the peculiar shine of
superabundant vigour; a certain sub-festive air in face and voice and
movements suggested that he was going to make a night of it. And the
sardonic thought flashed through Lennan: Shall I tell him?
“Hallo, old chap! Awfully glad to see you! What you doin' with yourself?
Workin' hard? How's your wife? You been away? Been doin' anything
great?” And then the question that would have given him his chance, if
he had liked to be so cruel:
“Seen Nell?”
“Yes, she came round this afternoon.”
“What d'you think of her? Comin' on nicely, isn't she?”
That old query, half furtive and half proud, as much as to say: 'I know
she's not in the stud-book, but, d—n it, I sired her!' And then the old
sudden gloom, which lasted but a second, and gave way again to chaff.
Lennan stayed very few minutes. Never had he felt farther from his old
school-chum.
No. Whatever happened, Johnny Dromore must be left out. It was
a position he had earned with his goggling eyes, and his astute
philosophy; from it he should not be disturbed.
He passed along the railings of the Green Park. On the cold air of this
last October night a thin haze hung, and the acrid fragrance from
little bonfires of fallen leaves. What was there about that scent of
burned-leaf smoke that had always moved him so? Symbol of parting!—that
most mournful thing in all the world. For what would even death be, but
for parting? Sweet, long sleep, or new adventure. But, if a man loved
others—to leave them, or be left! Ah! and it was not death only that
brought partings!