His mother came to see René in his bed. She said:
"You won't come again."
"How do you know that?"
"I feel it. You've been very good and you have made me very happy."
"Then I'll come again."
"I don't want you to come again. You'll never be the same. George is
always the same."
René remembered how his father had said she had done her best to keep
them from ever being men.
"All right, mother. I wouldn't like it to be a pain for you to see
me."
She smiled.
"It always is pain, René, dear, because I had to let you go."
He drew her down to him and kissed her. She said:
"An old woman like me."
He whispered:
"There'll always be some music that I can never hear without thinking
of you."
"Yes," she said. "You were always the one to listen. And your father
liked it too--some things."
"I'll think of that too."
"Yes. Think kindly of your father. We both did try."
And she crept away. René called after her, but she did not hear him.
He wished to keep her with him, to try to find some word that should
comfort her. But he knew at once that the word would elude him, that
there was nothing to say, that he and she were lost to each other, and
must go their ways. All his efforts, all his hopes could wake no
response in her. The mention of his father made him know how dearly
she had loved the man, and he began to perceive the subtle force of
love, how it can live in defiance of the will, and even through the
failing of desire; how it uses even differences, even ruptures to bind
and sustain; and how even the most selfish souls are knit with others,
though it be to the destruction of every pleasant joy. He saw how
little love needs consciousness, and how desperately men stand in need
of it. Else are they consumed in love, and never for a moment do their
lives take form and color before they sink to dust again, not wholly
created before they are destroyed. Ideas of Kilner's came rushing back
to René's mind, his description of his vision, the slow insistence on
being given expression and form in paint, his own helplessness against
the tyranny of what his eyes had seen and his imagination mastered.
René began to understand that, to lose sense of time, to find in
himself also a vision that had possessed him always. Only, unlike
Kilner, he could not trace it back to any moment of ecstasy, any keen
appreciation of some natural beauty, or the play of light. Light! That
was the creating idea. Kilner responded to the light of the sun, René
to the light of the imagination, the light of the sun wrought upon by
men's minds, so that their life also had its sun to bring fertility,
and make the body a spirit and love an intellectual thing; the light
of the sun stored through all the generations to dissipate the terrors
of life and the power of death, to concentrate upon all beloved
objects and show them in their loveliness as visions urging to
creation. And in his love of woman man seeks no reflection of his
light but the flash of hers, that her beauty may not perish.
René in his joy began to sing to himself. It was the song Cathleen had
sung in the woods. He could see her again as she was there in the
green haze of the woods, in the dappled light, mysterious and wild.
From that he deliberately turned away to fix his gaze on the humorous
reality, because there was nothing that he did not desire to sweep
into his joy. He lit a match and gazed round the little, cheaply
furnished room, the ugly toilet service, the yellow dressing-table,
the silly patterned wall-paper of pallid roses, the execrable pictures
on the wall. His eyes were dazzled by the light, and they ached. Came
darkness again, and he hummed to himself as he thought of the morrow
and the train, with its wheels humming along the rails, taking him
nearer the goal of his desire.
. . . . . .
In the morning George shook him warmly by the hand when he came down,
again as he was putting on his coat, and again, twice, as he set out
for business.
"Good luck," he said. "Good luck, old man. Elsie really has loved
having you, and I'm sorry you're leaving dear, old, dirty Thrigsby."
"Good-by," said René. "I'll let you know what happens to me, if
anything does. I don't think I shall stay in London."
"Good-by, then. By George, I shall be late!" And he set off at a run.
René only had ten minutes more. Most of that was taken up with seeing
the children off to the kindergarten they attended. Mrs. Fourmy had
stayed in her bed. He went up to see her. She clung to him, but spoke
no word, and he was too deeply moved to speak. She looked old and
frail and very small in her bed. At last she said:
"You're glad to go?"
"Yes."
Her eyes looked hunger and reproach. She turned her face away.
"Good-by."
"Good-by, mother. George is a good fellow, isn't he?"
"Oh, yes. And I find the children a great comfort." She said that in a
perfectly toneless voice. The contrast between it and what she had
looked only a moment before shocked René. He mastered himself and
kissed her and hurried away.
Elsie said:
"It has been a treat. You really are a sight for sore eyes, René. I
never thought you would grow into such a handsome man. I do wish
George didn't have to go to that office. It makes him so pasty."
"Let me know when you have a birthday," said René, "and you shall have
another tailor-made."
"It's next week," said Elsie innocently.
"Right you are. You shall have it."
. . . . . .
At last he was in the train. No sleep this time. Derby, Leicester,
Nottingham, the hills by Elstree, London. A taxi took him hot speed to
the hostel. Cathleen was not yet back from her work. Lotta met him
with a grave face. She had had a terrible time with Ann, who had
alternated between a dog-like gratitude to herself and harsh defiance
of Cathleen and all the other young women of the hostel. The situation
had been impossible. To appease her she was allowed to see his letter,
and after a few hours' brooding on it--not without tears--she had
demanded the twenty pounds. With that, apparently, she had cabled to
Joe and Rita and another friend in Canada, had packed up her boxes,
stolen away early in the morning, and got on board at Southampton,
whither she had been traced.
"Poor little Ann," said René.
"I told you she had courage."
"She has that. To go out to a new life----"
"Our interference must have been intolerable to a spirit like hers.
But what could we do? Even from you----"
"It is horrible that disasters should interfere with human
comradeship."
"It is horrible, but they do interfere."
"Does Cathleen know?"
"Yes. I told her last night."
"Well?"
"It seemed to bring home to her for the first time how terrible and
ugly it was. You don't mind my saying that, but the past always does
cast its shadow."
"Yes. It can be dispelled."
"Only with time."
"Yes."
Lotta said:
"I like the way you face things. There is no one like you for
that--except Cathleen. . . . Where will you live now?"
"For the time being, with Kilner, I think."
"I found him a little studio in Hampstead. He is delighted and happy
with it."
"I'll go there now, if you don't mind."
Lotta gave him the direction, and in a few minutes by Tube he was with
Kilner, whom he found hard at work at a new Adam and Eve, squaring the
composition on to the canvas.
"It's pouring money," said Kilner. "Your twenty pounds came one day
and the next I heard that two drawings of mine had been sold, a head
of Old Lunt and a half-length of Martin patting a horse's rump. . . .
Casey's been up here every day asking for you."
"Casey? What does he want? Money? I'm not a millionaire."
"The poor devil has to leave London. It's eating up the little piece
of his lung left by South Africa."
"That's bad."
"Seen anybody?"
"Only Miss Cleethorpe."
"She's a fine woman. I think I shall marry her. She's twenty years
older than I am, but that is just about enough to bring a woman within
reach of an artist."
"But----"
"Oh! she began it. We've already been down to her cottage in the
country--I like that too. You'll have to fork out for a wedding
present."
"I'll cancel your debts. But, are you really?"
"Fourmy," said Kilner, "you're an incorrigible romantic. I'm a
realist, and like love's young dream to remain a dream. Life is a
long, slow, dreary business, and I want a woman I can live with.
. . ."
"Did you say that to Lotta?"
"Not in so many words, but in effect."
"Well, I'm----"
"You're not a bit glad. You're horrified. Common-sense is and always
will be sordid to you. Lotta and I cooked chestnuts over a fire. We
shall go on cooking chestnuts till we die. How's Ann?"
"Gone."
"I thought that would happen. You and I busted her between us--her
pride, her joy in living, her rather slovenly habits of mind. You
didn't know you were doing it. I did. I'm an awful swine. I told Lotta
all about it--as we were cooking chestnuts. She refused to believe
me."
There was a tap at the door, and Casey appeared. He rushed excitedly
at René, and began to pour out an excited tale of how he had found the
very thing, a livery yard at Rickham, thirty miles out of London to
the northwest.
"Our station," said Kilner. "Lotta's and mine."
"It's a busy little town, but it needs brisking up, like you say, Mr.
Fourmy; it needs motor-cars and a garage. That yard's the very thing,
only a hundred yards from the station. There are people with cars
living near, but they have to go five miles for repairs, and the
trades-people can't have cars, because there is no one to look after
them. It's _the_ chance. I've got an option on the yard till next
week. Will you take it up? I've got a map. See?"
He produced his map and showed the geographical advantages of Rickham.
It had already good water and electric light. Its train service had
been enormously improved, and it only needed the country round to be
opened up. "Don't you see, Mr. Fourmy, it's your idea?"
René had half-forgotten it. Casey explained, and showed the ring of
little country towns round London, how they had come to life again, as
markets, as centers, and how in many of them factories were being
built and all kinds of people were coming out from London to live in
or near them.
Kilner was interested, and said to René:
"So you think that is how things are going to work themselves out?
It's an attractive idea, the country for food, a ring of industrial
centers, and the exchanges in the middle of it all. Some sort of shape
and design instead of the muddle we're in. It might even make room for
the artist."
Casey said:
"When I heard you'd come in for some money I couldn't rest until I'd
found what I wanted, and there it is. Will you come in?"
"I'll go down and look at it," said René. "I'm quite certain I can't
live in your Thrigsby or your Londons any more, and I couldn't live in
the country without doing the work of the country."
"Can't see you as a farmer," said Kilner.
René promised to go with Casey the next day.
. . . . . .
He was enchanted with Rickham and with the yard. It had a small
Georgian house attached to it, and the stables were built round a
quadrangle with a gallery leading to rooms above them. Through the
stables was a walled garden, and beyond that again a bowling green by
the edge of a stream. The whole was freehold and wonderfully cheap.
Rickham apparently was not yet awake to its glorious future in the
English democracy in spite of its two cinemas, and the strong
Liberalism of its opinions. It had one church and fifteen chapels, a
Salvation Army barracks, and a public house every twenty yards. On the
hill behind it villas were being erected, and along the valley little
houses were being built for workpeople. On either side of the river
just outside the old town the tall chimneys of factories were rising
by the steel skeletons of new workshops. Clearly there was some truth
in what Casey said. They undertook to buy the stables and walked into
a lawyer's office to give instructions.
So certain had Casey been that René would come in with him that he had
already engaged mechanics in London, and written up to various firms
to apply for agencies. They were bombarded with applications from the
local builders to carry out the necessary alterations, and on the
advice of their solicitor arranged a contract. Before any work was
begun Casey insisted on having an illuminated sign, "Garage," fixed
above the gate, and below it, the name of the firm, "Casey & Fourmy."
"Looks like business, that," he said, as they stood in the street and
surveyed it with satisfaction. "Give the town something to talk about.
No advertisement like talk."