Mrs. Quentin, in the late spring afternoon, had turned in at the doors
of the Metropolitan Museum. She had been walking in the Park, in a
solitude oppressed by the ever-present sense of her son's trouble, and
had suddenly remembered that some one had added a Beltraffio to the
collection. It was an old habit of Mrs. Quentin's to seek in the
enjoyment of the beautiful the distraction that most of her
acquaintances appeared to find in each other's company. She had few
friends, and their society was welcome to her only in her more
superficial moods; but she could drug anxiety with a picture as some
women can soothe it with a bonnet.
During the six months that had elapsed since her visit to Miss Fenno
she had been conscious of a pain of which she had supposed herself no
longer capable: as a man will continue to feel the ache of an amputated
arm. She had fancied that all her centres of feeling had been
transferred to Alan; but she now found herself subject to a kind of
dual suffering, in which her individual pang was the keener in that it
divided her from her son's. Alan had surprised her: she had not
foreseen that he would take a sentimental rebuff so hard. His
disappointment took the uncommunicative form of a sterner application
to work. He threw himself into the concerns of the _Radiator_ with an
aggressiveness that almost betrayed itself in the paper. Mrs. Quentin
never read the _Radiator_, but from the glimpses of it reflected in the
other journals she gathered that it was at least not being subjected to
the moral reconstruction which had been one of Miss Fenno's
alternatives.
Mrs. Quentin never spoke to her son of what had happened. She was
superior to the cheap satisfaction of avenging his injury by
depreciating its cause. She knew that in sentimental sorrows such
consolations are as salt in the wound. The avoidance of a subject so
vividly present to both could not but affect the closeness of their
relation. An invisible presence hampered their liberty of speech and
thought. The girl was always between them; and to hide the sense of her
intrusion they began to be less frequently together. It was then that
Mrs. Quentin measured the extent of her isolation. Had she ever dared
to forecast such a situation, she would have proceeded on the
conventional theory that her son's suffering must draw her nearer to
him; and this was precisely the relief that was denied her. Alan's
uncommunicativeness extended below the level of speech, and his mother,
reduced to the helplessness of dead-reckoning, had not even the solace
of adapting her sympathy to his needs. She did not know what he felt:
his course was incalculable to her. She sometimes wondered if she had
become as incomprehensible to him; and it was to find a moment's refuge
from the dogging misery of such conjectures that she had now turned in
at the Museum.
The long line of mellow canvases seemed to receive her into the rich
calm of an autumn twilight. She might have been walking in an enchanted
wood where the footfall of care never sounded. So deep was the sense of
seclusion that, as she turned from her prolonged communion with the new
Beltraffio, it was a surprise to find she was not alone.
A young lady who had risen from the central ottoman stood in suspended
flight as Mrs. Quentin faced her. The older woman was the first to
regain her self-possession.
"Miss Fenno!" she said.
The girl advanced with a blush. As it faded, Mrs. Quentin noticed a
change in her. There had always been something bright and bannerlike in
her aspect, but now her look drooped, and she hung at half-mast, as it
were. Mrs. Quentin, in the embarrassment of surprising a secret that
its possessor was doubtless unconscious of betraying, reverted
hurriedly to the Beltraffio.
"I came to see this," she said. "It's very beautiful."
Miss Fenno's eye travelled incuriously over the mystic blue reaches of
the landscape. "I suppose so," she assented; adding, after another
tentative pause, "You come here often, don't you?"
"Very often," Mrs. Quentin answered. "I find pictures a great help."
"A help?"
"A rest, I mean...if one is tired or out of sorts."
"Ah," Miss Fenno murmured, looking down.
"This Beltraffio is new, you know," Mrs. Quentin continued. "What a
wonderful background, isn't it? Is he a painter who interests you?"
The girl glanced again at the dusky canvas, as though in a final
endeavor to extract from it a clue to the consolations of art. "I don't
know," she said at length; "I'm afraid I don't understand pictures."
She moved nearer to Mrs. Quentin and held out her hand.
"You're going?"
"Yes."
Mrs. Quentin looked at her. "Let me drive you home," she said,
impulsively. She was feeling, with a shock of surprise, that it gave
her, after all, no pleasure to see how much the girl had suffered.