ABOUT a week later they arrived in Paris. Gwen had never been there
before, and her curiosity to see everything was insatiable and
unresting.
She often seemed to herself as if she were caught in the whirl of a mad
intoxicating race with fate; it was glorious; it stimulated her like a
draught of wine; it filled her veins with fire; it was as if the spirit
of the world had got into her spirit and shot streams of the strength of
immortality through all her being.
She was as a god to herself, and fate was as a thing of naught. This was
in her times of exaltation however; but even in these early days there
came moments of reaction in their due season. Fortunately she knew the
symptoms of their approach, and could hide herself away from her
husband’s eyes. Her room could tell strange tales whenever Gwen shut
herself in and threw up the sponge till the next round.
Then there came shame into that proud face, fear into those fearless
eyes, a stoop into those stoopless shoulders. She neither ranted nor
raved, she dared not; if she had once raised her voice, she knew quite
well she must shriek, and howl forth the terror and disgust and dismay
with which the possible ending to this race with fate filled her.
Sometimes she would pull off her shoes and stockings, and go barefooted
to and fro the length of the long polished floor with its strips of
Eastern carpet—the cool slippery surface soothing the fever of her
flying feet. Invariably she would pull off her guard and wedding-ring
and lay them with curious gentle wistfulness down on the table. Once
when she did this, she drew a deep breath, threw out her arms and
laughed.
“I am free, free!” she cried, “my body is my own again, and my soul, and
my brain! I am myself again, Gwen Waring, a self-respecting creature,
with no man’s brand on me—”
In a few minutes she came back and looked at the golden bands.
“What is the use of lying?” she said, “that mends nothing, and only
degrades me. I am not free; whatever happens, whatever could possibly
happen, I shall never any more be what I was! Good God! And yet women
take marriage as they do a box at the Opera!”
But it was not in the strong nature of her, wholesome what there was of
it awake, to lose courage often, and her powers of recuperation were
superb. Half an hour after she was striding wildly through the room, she
came down as unruffled and more untranslatable than ever, to propose
some expedition.
Strange looked at his watch. “Too late for that, suppose we go and see
Brydon?”
“Oh, yes, let us go,” she said eagerly.
He looked at her, and knew all about it.
For a minute he felt an overmastering desire to shake her, and make her
eyes speak plain English, he was getting tired of their hieroglyphics.
He was buttoning her glove at the time and involuntarily he gave the
button a cross twist and twitched it out.
“Oh, hang it, is the glove rotten or are my methods? Will it matter?” he
asked.
“Oh, not at all, my sleeve will cover it.”
It was a diabolical lottery altogether, and the soul of the man groaned
within him. It was even worse than he had anticipated in the first hot
glamour of love. He freely confessed this, but he had sworn to himself,
in his foolish raptures, that he would face hell for the girl, and he
was not the man to eat his words.
They walked to Brydon’s.
Gwen took a great delight in going in and out among the streets, and a
shamefaced pleasure in listening to her husband’s stories of every twist
and turning in them.
“There is no one like him for a companion!” she often confessed to
herself angrily, “no one I know that comes near him. What made me marry
him, what? Even this part of him I can’t accept and enjoy without
disgust and self-loathing.”
At last they got to the little street that Brydon lived in, and climbed
to the fourth flat of a tall house.
When Brydon saw Strange he reddened with delight, but when he was
presented to Gwen, he paled suddenly and his eyes fell.
“You could have knocked me down with a feather!” he explained
afterwards, to his chosen comrade.
It was a superb compliment to her, and her husband laughed as he saw it.
And then a queer wonder took hold of him as to the sort of ending this
good humoured half-impersonal pride he took in her conquests would have,
then this evolved another wonder which dealt with the birth of a strong
woman’s passion.
Strange pulled himself up and thrust this out of his mind with a rough
shove.
“On the whole, what’s the result so far, Charlie?” he asked, when that
young man had established his wife in a big cane chair, softening the
light from one side and strengthening it from another in a lingering,
absorbed way, as with half-closed eyes he furtively drank in the fulness
of her beauty.
The question stripped the glamour from him at a rush, he flopped limply
down on to a seat.
“If only you hadn’t asked that question for three more months, but now,
now, it is cruel! Just imagine a fellow, free all his life to ride his
own nag, a sorry jade it might be, but anyway fit enough for him, and
his own; just fancy him strapped on to a small donkey belonging to
another fellow, that it would be more than his life was worth to prod
into a gallop, and to have to peg along on this beast week in, week out,
along the same old road! Oh Lord, the grind, it’s awful, awful, digging
one’s heels into that confounded ass—Oh!—”
He jumped up with a guilty start. “Lady Strange, I beg your pardon, I
forget what ladies are like, and Strange is such a comfortable fellow to
growl to, bad language slips out before one can catch it, at the very
sight of him.”
“Don’t apologize to me, especially if my husband is the cause of your
offence,” said Gwen kindly.
She had a fancy to be kind to this boy, if she had confessed it to
herself, it was with a distinct view of getting to know a side of her
husband, that Brydon knew all about and she nothing. She was making a
study of him in spite of herself, and liked to collect evidence.
Meantime Strange had been looking carefully through some of Brydon’s
sketches, scattered everywhere.
“You’ll draw as well as you colour, old man, and that is more than I
ever expected of you. What does Legrun say?”
“He says he’ll say nothing until I have unlearned every cursed mannerism
I have picked up in England, that den of bad taste. Then
‘_peut-être_—who knows?’
“But the fellow rages just as much against his own rapid methods, as he
does against those we’ve been born and bred in. How dare we think to get
an effect with a few strokes like he does, he, who has worked,
_parbleu!_ who has sweated, who has prayed, who has blasphemed, who has
torn the heart out of his body to arrive at this ease, this divine
confidence—‘the head of us should be punched!’ he is great in English.
We must take twenty strokes to one of his; we must do with pain, with
tears, what is but ‘_delices_’ to him—details—we must know them as the
‘_bon Dieu_’ knows them, before we venture to omit or even to suggest
one! Then he ups and splutters out some delicious blasphemy on some
unwary youth’s head.
“Look at me, the ghost of a creature, stalking mournfully on eggs, with
furtive fear in all my lineaments. And this is an artist’s training!
Good Lord, when I remember how I sat in that garret in Bland Street and
thought of fame and myself in a new suit, dancing a war-dance before my
masterpiece on the line, with duchesses squabbling for the first shake
of my hand!—Lady Strange, I am going to make some tea.”
“I wish you would,” said Gwen laughing, “we walked, and I am so
thirsty.”
“Hu!” said Brydon, examining his milk-jug when he had filled his kettle
and set it on the little charcoal stove, “every drop gone! I won’t be
two minutes. The old lady on the first flat and I are affinities to a
certain extent; in return for sundry packets of English tea, she keeps
me in milk at odd times. Strange, will you shepherd the kettle?”
“I wonder if his cups are clean?” said Strange rummaging them out of a
cupboard over the stove, “look, an inch thick with dust, and the
handles! That fellow moons too much to be very cleanly. Look at the
tea-cloth, Lord! Have you a clean handkerchief, Gwen?”
Gwen’s brows contracted slightly. She was a dainty person and
unpractical, and teacups in connection with handkerchiefs gave her an
uncomfortable feeling of impropriety.
She gave him a handkerchief however, with a small gasp of disgust, and
watched his doings with a faint, half-scornful interest.
“How particular you are!” she said, “I had no idea you could trouble
yourself about such things.”
“I can’t stand dirt in man or beast.”
“How did you stand travelling—in Algeria, for example?”
“Ah! there—there were compensations, the game was worth the candle, and
if civilization has produced nothing better—give the devil his due—it
has produced clean skins and clean eating. I fancy I was originally
designed for an inspector of nuisances,” he continued, running Gwen’s
lovely morsel of cambric on the end of a pointed stick in and out the
handle of a cup.
Gwen noticed with some wonder the curiously delicate way in which he did
it, “The thing would have smashed long ago in any other man’s hand,” she
thought. “He treats women like that, he is very gentle, but he is the
master, he holds them in his hand and does as he likes with them. And I
have no doubt whatever, that there are at this minute hundreds of women
who would like it. Why doesn’t that handle break and cut him—there is no
legal bond between them?” This struck her grim sense of humour, and she
had to bite her lips to keep in a wild laugh.
“Yes, as a nuisance man I should have been a success,” he went on,
“whereas, as a British landowner!” he gave an expressive shrug. “Gwen,
how do you think you’ll stand a flat clay country, overrun with
woolly-brained squires and their dames and daughters?”
It was a horrid thought. Gwen gave a swift little turn to put it away
from her; her dress caught in a stretched canvas put up face inwards
against the wall, and brought it down with a muffled crash.
Strange came forward to help her put it up, and, with a hand of each of
them on it, they paused suddenly and started, and with a quick turn of
his hand Strange set it this time face outwards in its place, and looked
into it with eager excitement, while Gwen’s face grew cold and still,
with a touch of sternness on it.
While they were looking, the door burst open and Brydon came in with the
milk and a soft paper parcel—looking like cakes.
“Strange, how did you find it?” he cried, “I never meant you to see it.
Lady Strange, it is only a sketch.”
“I beg your pardon,” she said, “my dress caught in it and knocked it
down, and as we raised it we saw the face, then, I suppose, curiosity
did the rest.”
“When did you see my wife, Brydon?” said Strange, still absorbed in the
picture.
“In church, the day she was married. I know I should have been in Paris,
but I wanted to make this sketch. I want, when I know well enough how to
do it,” he said, turning to her humbly, “to make a picture of you, Lady
Strange, and to give it to Strange, and this is just the idea for it.”
“I am sure my husband must appreciate your kindness,” she said half
absently.
Perhaps she might have put a little more warmth into her voice if she
had seen the fallen face of the boy as he turned to look to his kettle.
She had, however, already more to occupy her than she wanted.
The sketch was a stroke of genius. It was a gracious, graceful girl,
standing before the altar in her shimmering marriage robes, in actual
flesh and blood, the great soul of a woman shining out from the violet
eyes; the tender strength of the mouth, the resolute pose of the rounded
chin, the russet gold of the hair—the whole lived and thought. One held
one’s breath to catch the regular soft rhythm of hers, the very hand
held out for its ring was palpitating with life.
Naturally, the whole thing would have filled the soul of a dilettante
with unutterable disgust, being as glaringly full of faults of detail as
it well could be, but an artist with half an eye in his head would have
put all these by in a place by themselves to be dealt with later, and
would have gone mad over the truth that remained.
It was the girl’s figure alone that made the picture; the man she stood
before, was a mere blur of an idea, as were all the surroundings.
Strange’s eyes, as he watched the woman, were brimful of a terrible joy,
and of a more terrible sadness.
As for Gwen, she fell to criticizing the details in a way that made
Brydon’s flesh creep on his bones.
“This is not the original sketch,” she said suddenly, stopping short in
a sweeping criticism, “I wish you would show us that.”
“It is very bad, you would like it still less than you do this.”
“I might like it less as a picture, but, as a likeness, more, perhaps.
Do show it to me.”
The mere suspicion of entreaty she threw into her voice had never yet
been rejected by any man, and soft-hearted Brydon was not going to be
the first to run counter to her inclinations, so altogether against his
will he pulled the sketch, about half the size of the other one, out
from among a number of others, and put it in a good light where she
could examine it at her ease.
“Ah!” she said, “yes, that’s me, myself! What induced you to idealize?
It was unjust towards me and dishonest to yourself.”
“It was neither, it was prophetic,” said Strange in a low voice only
audible to her.
She glanced at him for a second with curling scornful lips.
“Was it impossible then to make a decent picture of me as I look now?”
she asked with a laugh, turning to Brydon, who was blushing furiously
and wishing he could swallow himself.
“No fellow living could do justice to you,” he blurted out painfully,
“however you may look! but I was trying to paint a bride, and there in
that first study you didn’t look just like one—from my own confounded
fault, no doubt, so I tried the other.”
“You have certainly succeeded in producing your bride,” she remarked
with a curious, absent smile.
To give her her due, she did not know how cruel her own pain made her.
Her husband did, however; he winced as he put the two sketches side by
side to compare them. He had the delicate sensitive respect of most
strong men for feelings and other frail nervous things of that sort.
Gwen came and stood beside her husband, and looked from one to the other
of the sketches.
“Now in this first one,” she said, “the girl looks as if she were
pre-ordained to the _rôle_ of bride; in this other one, as you observe,
she does _not_, but she is me. I am so sorry to disillusion you of your
idea.”
“You have not,” said Brydon softly, “only showed her many-sidedness.”
“I can get my wedding dress over,” said Gwen, with a touch of malice
about her mouth, “shall I, and give you a few sittings in the character
of bride?”
“No, thank you, Lady Strange,” said the boy, with admirable coolness, “I
shall stick to the ideal for my picture, I will work hard on it. And
when it is finished, will you have it, Strange?”
“Will I? The deuce I will! It would be a magnificent present without
another stroke of work in it.”
“What will you call it, Humphrey?” asked his wife.
“I shall call it ‘The Incognita’.”
“Mr. Brydon, tea is getting cold all this time, and I am so thirsty,”
she said with serene imperiousness, turning from the sketches and going
over to the little table. “I hope you are as good at making tea as you
are at making brides,” she went on mockingly. “Sugar? Yes, please, two
lumps, and—galette? How delicious! I do like French cake.”
“Lady Strange, you said you would sit to me as a bride, did you mean
it?”
“I did,” she said amusedly.
The ungainly-looking boy with his great saving clauses of eyes and his
queer red blushes and open admiration of herself, gave her a sensation
of interest.
“Would you sit just once in that dress—or any other you like? You don’t
know how good of you it would be.”
“Is it such a boon then when I require such an amount of idealization?”
“Lady Strange!” he murmured reproachfully, with ludicrous woe.
“Ah, well, then, I will sit for you—where—here?”
“Oh, not here! Did you think I would have the cheek to ask you to climb
these steps to sit for me? Anywhere you arrange for me to come.”
“Then come to our hotel, but I know my husband intends to ask you to
dine with us to-day so we can then settle the time.”
“Thank you more than awfully!” he cried with most unaffected fervour,
“it’s such a boon for a fellow like me to get a lady; we can get more or
less colour and lovely flesh, you know, to paint from in the cheap
models, but then they are _grisette_ to the very marrow. Besides, it is
not safe with Legrun even to experiment on them. We must learn to draw
before we go about libelling even models, he says, ‘Poor devils, they
have enough to put up without that!’ So you can see what an inestimable
benefit you are bestowing on me. Strange, do you notice my walls? Not a
rag to break the monotony.”
“I do; I thought the sternness of Art had come on you prematurely.”
“No, but Legrun did. I brought all the old rags from the old shop and
renewed the stock here, and those four walls were one delicate glimmer
of colour, when, as Satan himself arranged it, who should come shambling
and blaspheming up the stairs one blessed Sabbath day but Legrun, who
insists upon having our addresses. I thought he’d have a fit when he sat
down gasping and glaring at the walls. ‘My good lad,’ he roared at last,
‘how old are you?’ ‘Nineteen,’ says I, shaking like a jelly fish. ‘I
thought you were nine,’ he yelled, ‘and making a doll’s house; clean
down that filth, clean it from the decent lime-washed walls that never
injured you, and remember—remember, boy, that Art is serious, severe,
stern, grave, terrible,’ he shrieked, waving his arms like a maniac, and
spitting horribly, ‘it will stand no tricks, no mockings, _parbleu_!
Rags!—Filth!—with the disease shock full in them! Gur! Guz! Hu! Never no
more let me see such sights!’ and he raged down the stairs into the
street, spitting, and scraping his throat,—he lives in an awful funk of
infection,—and so I had to strip off my rags and leave the walls to
their native nakedness.”
“You can have your revenge when you set up on your own account. Gwen, it
is nearly six o’clock.”
“Yes, we must go. We’ll see you at dinner, Mr. Brydon?”
“Will you walk or drive, Gwen?”
“I will drive,” she said, and there was a dull, tired tone in her voice.