Man generalizes, woman defines.
Woman—she will nurse Tom through small-pox, flirt outrageously with
Dick, and sell her soul for Harry and enjoy doing it; but refer to them,
Tom, Dick and Harry, with collective benevolence as ‘humanity,’ and she
yawns. She is not an altruist. She does not love in the lump. She lives
her seventy odd years for the sake of—how many people? There would be a
question for her fellow-man! If he whittle down the tally of his dear
folk, his allies, his indispensables, just at which notch will his knife
blunt, will his hand shake and refuse service? How many loves could he
deny to save—how many? But you cannot imagine woman discomposed by such
a problem.
He and she sit over the fire she has built, and she listens with
breathless interest to his schemes for the betterment of the world,
while the rest of its inhabitants drift in and out of her indifferent
ken like the snow-flakes’ indistinguishable millions drifting past her
window-panes. Yet this indifference is less selfishness than an armour
assumed. Like any hermit crab she must borrow a shell for her excursions
because she knows herself a soft-bodied creature, impressed so easily by
all the other people of the world who, she asserts passionately, never
can or shall impress her. She is, nevertheless, vaguely enlightened when
she returns, changed a little in spite of herself, her armour dinted,
taught at least where it was weakest, if her fellow-man acclaim the
improvement. Then there was, after all, she supposes, if she be eighteen
and Laura, some use in all those other people who did not interest her
... educational.... That, looking back might have been the use and
excuse for Oliver Seton. He had certainly taught her a lesson or two for
which she had been anything but grateful at the time. A stupid man....
She could still go pink, years later, when she thought, as she seldom
did, of him and his stupidity. Poor Oliver!
From the first she was prejudiced against him. The travelling companions
had been in Florence ten soft blue days, and Florence, with her palaces
and wistaria and agate-coloured river, welcomed them, was kind, almost
as kind as Mrs. Cloud, whose thrice-blessed headaches came on regularly
every other day or so at nine in the morning, and were always over by
tea-time. You might almost imagine that Florence and Mrs. Cloud, those
two beautiful old women, had talked things over.
“Delighted, my dear! Just you leave them to me. You’ll stay at home, of
course?”
“I suppose I’d better——”
“Young folk, my dear!”
“Oh, I do so like to hear them talking,” says Mrs. Cloud wistfully.
“So do I—always did. I remember listening, just such a spring as this it
was—the almonds blossomed early—and—‘Sandro,’ she says, like a
bird—‘Sandro!’ and throws a tulip to him over the garden wall. You know
my little wild tulips?”
Mrs. Cloud knows them.
“Dear, dear, how it brings things back! But I shut all my eyes. Two was
company even then. Why, you yourself, only yesterday——”
Mrs. Cloud has such a pretty laugh.
“He brought you an armful of those very same tulips—my tulips. Do you
remember?”
“I remember——” says Mrs. Cloud.
Justin and Laura, of course, were no match for those conspirators,
Florence and Mrs. Cloud and Mrs. Cloud’s headaches; though Justin was
all anxiety and eau-de-cologne, and Laura was sure she ought to stay at
home as nurse. It appeared, however, that what Mrs. Cloud needed was
Absolute Quiet—and I am afraid that when the novelty wore off Absolute
Quiet was her portion, for Florence more than kept her promises, and, as
Justin said, he didn’t want his mother to overtire herself. Of course it
was the travelling—because she never used to have these headaches.
Dear Mrs. Cloud! If ever there were a woman without guile——And yet, you
know, I cannot quite believe in Mrs. Cloud’s headaches.
But Justin and Laura believed in them implicitly, and brought her back
menthol and aspirin from the English chemist’s, and, that she might know
what they had been doing, all the fat little catalogues that Justin
carried, as it were card-cases, when he paid his calls upon Florence.
For Justin was never happy without a catalogue. It annoyed him sometimes
that Laura had such a trick of pronouncing upon pictures without looking
at the labels first. She had stood him out once that Sandro’s Simonetta
was nevertheless by some one else—who it was she did not care, and she
never remembered names. He looked it up and proved her wrong, and then,
you know, she turned out to be right after all—one of those unsettling
footnotes. “Then why have it labelled ‘Botticelli’?” he demanded, and
Laura laughed. What did it matter as long as the picture were there? But
it worried Justin. He liked things done decently and in order. Laura’s
irreverences upset him. And yet, one morning, when Mrs. Cloud’s headache
was more genuine than usual and Laura did stay behind, he found Florence
dull, as dull as the world when he had travelled round it. He came home
to lunch inclined to think that they might as well be moving on—what
about Verona? It took an afternoon’s prowl in back streets, two
arguments with Laura, and a sixteenth-century cabinet, an absolute
find—dirt cheap—the very thing for his eggs—completely to restore him.
But you can understand, if you are ever to understand Laura at all, how
deliriously beneath her sedateness she was enjoying herself: can guess
at her dismay when Justin addressed her one morning—
“I say! ’member Oliver?”
“Oliver? Oliver?” She frowned uncertainly. The name was as familiar as
the pink clouds of almond blossom in the courtyard below, that reminded
her every day of the tree under Justin’s window-seat. You could reach
out and pull in a twig to sniff as you read Justin’s books ... the
Rackhams—the _Arabian Nights_. Oh, of course....
“You mean to say you don’t remember Oliver?” Justin was opening his eyes
widely at her over the letter he was reading. He always opened his eyes
where most people would lift an eyebrow, which gave his simplest
question an air of reproachful surprise that put you quite unnecessarily
on the defensive. If you didn’t know the answer you felt guilty. But
Laura was able to run back across the years to Justin with a laugh.
“Does he—is he the one that will call you Camaralzaman?”
Justin laughed too.
“Rum kid you were. Yes. He always enquires after the harem. He won’t
know you again.”
Laura’s eyebrows were under no disabilities.
“Oh, because he’s here,” he answered them. “This letter’s been trotting
after me for weeks. Wish I’d known. We might have been bummelling about
together all this time,” he concluded regretfully.
“So we might!” Her tone matched his to a nicety.
“We must look him up first thing. Mother, you’ve got to come. You
remember Oliver? It’s funny we’ve not run into him. He’s copying at the
Uffizi.”
“Oh! He paints!” Laura ruffled up into the comically aggressive interest
that an artist or a gamecock or a pretty woman will always display when
a fellow professional is mentioned. “Is he any good?”
“‘Is he any good!’” Justin ruffled in his turn. He was always easily
moved on behalf of his dearest friend of the hour and he had your plain
man’s instinctive and unbounded admiration for the creative gift. He had
also his naïve conviction that its obverse, the critical faculty, must
nevertheless be in himself. “Of course, I don’t pretend to know anything
about _painting_,” Justin would prepare you, “but I know what I _like_,
you know!” But thus guided he was certainly safer than most, for he had
an enviable habit of liking the right things. It was as if he proved all
art with the touchstone of his own unconscious honesty. Now Laura could
not help persuading herself to like what Justin liked because Justin
liked it. She had resigned herself to admiring Oliver, though she was
sure that she never should, before Justin had finished his eulogy.
“Whom is he under?” she demanded.
“Oh, he’s on his own now, of course. I tell you he’s a big pot. He was
at the Slade though, I believe.”
“Oh? Oh, I knew some Slade people in Paris.” And then, because she could
not help it—“Their paint’s awfully muddy.”
Justin was deep in his letter again, but he came to the surface for a
moment to say paternally—
“Oh, of course! You sketch yourself a bit, don’t you? You must get him
to give you some tips.”
And she with a letter in her pocket at that moment, a cordial letter, an
almost anxiously enquiring letter, from Monsieur La Motte! But
naturally, or, if you were a man, oddly enough, it was not Justin but
Oliver Seton whom she wanted to shake.
“Is he really nice? Did _you_ like him?” she asked Mrs. Cloud when
Justin had left the room. He never sat out other people’s breakfast.
Mrs. Cloud wore her quaintly unhappy look. She disliked discussing any
one whom she could not whole-heartedly praise. But Laura had a way of
dragging Mrs. Cloud’s opinions out of her that Mrs. Cloud, always
resisting, nevertheless enjoyed almost as much as she enjoyed her son’s
invariable assumption that they must be the same as his own.
“He’s a very clever young man. And we must be pleasant to him, Laura,
for Justin’s sake.”
“Ah, I thought you didn’t,” said Laura, with satisfaction. “Now what
exactly is it—conceit?”
But Mrs. Cloud said that Laura must finish her coffee, because the poor
waiter was obviously wanting to clear away.
Now it must be confessed that if Mrs. Cloud and Laura shared a prejudice
against that rising young artist, Oliver Weathersby Seton, the fault was
as little theirs as his. Mrs. Cloud could have forgiven the
inconsequence of his manner (she was not to know that he was
‘Weathercock Seton’ to his intimates), and Laura would have admitted
that her memory of a long boy who laughed at her and talked with his
hands was pleasant enough, if Justin, in the openness of his heart, had
not held forth quite so energetically upon his temperamental friend.
Oliver was so brilliant, so impulsive, so affectionate, the quaintest of
companions, the jolliest of merry-andrews! Justin could not help
admiring a character so different from his own in pace if not in
quality: and the more he dwelt upon it, the more deeply interested in
his own admiration he grew, until he worked himself up in the course of
the morning from a moderate sense of friendship to a state of enthusiasm
as gratifying to himself—for his temperate nature enjoyed a rousing—as
it was depressing to his womenfolk. There is no doubt that excessive
praise of other people is hard to bear.
There was time enough, however, while they lost themselves and each
other in the honeycomb of the Uffizi, and met again unexpectedly as they
hunted down Oliver, for Laura to be firm with herself, to scout this
ridiculous notion of sticking up her chin at him. Mrs. Cloud was
right.... Of course she must make herself perfectly charming to Justin’s
friend ... because, though she was certain to disapprove of him, it was
absolutely necessary that he should approve of her.... Suppose he didn’t
like her ... said sneery things about her to Justin!... Justin was so
easily influenced.... Was he? She pulled herself up short. Was he? She
had never thought of that before. Yet here she was taking it for
granted!... And it was perfectly true.... He was as hard as nails ...
you could not persuade him to anything face to face ... but you could
drop a notion into his ear, and in a week it would leaven the lump of
him.... She knew it. She had always known it. She wondered how she knew?
She trailed out of that room (she had lost the Clouds again) to find
herself in a long remote corridor that she had not seen before. In a
corner to her right a man stood and painted.
Was this Oliver? She could not see his face, but she thought it
probable. He was young, and though his clothes were Latin Quarter
French, he wore them like an Englishman, an Englishman pretending that
he was not in fancy dress.
She drew nearer. She was herself too hardened to an audience to be chary
of watching him, but she was amused and faintly contemptuous when she
saw how instantly he was embarrassed. He had been absorbed in his work,
his good work, as she critically admitted. Justin was right—the man
could paint. She had never seen a better copy, unless, indeed, it had
too vigorous a life of its own. She sympathized. This was no commission.
She guessed him a penitent, at her own trick of subduing the artistic
flesh. She observed that he had pet brushes. If this were Oliver, she
might like him after all....
And then, as I told you, he became aware of her, and began, like any
child, to show off. He did not turn: he remained elaborately
unconscious; but he intensified himself. She could not help laughing.
The breathless pause, the poised brush, the accurate dab, the hasty
retreat and long absorbed stare, the frantic rattle through his
paint-box for the unnecessary tube, it was all familiar comedy: she had
played it herself in her first nervous week at the Louvre. But he, at
twenty-five—if he were Oliver he must be quite twenty-five—could not
possibly be nervous any more.... It was pose, pure pose, very funny to
watch.... So that was Oliver! She shrugged her shoulders and strolled
on.
She would, perhaps, have had her expressive mouth more under control had
she realized that a dark canvas and a sheet of glass are an excellent
substitute for a mirror.
She glanced at her watch. She and Justin had their established
rendezvous, but it was early yet. If this were Oliver, Justin and his
mother would find him sooner or later.... It would have saved time if
Oliver had had the sense to say what he was copying.... Justin, with an
indulgent smile, had said that the omission was just like Oliver—“Head
in the clouds as usual. You know what these geniuses are.” Genius!...
What would Justin have said if any one else had sent them trapesing up
and down these endless rooms? She, Laura, did not mind for herself, of
course, but poor Mrs. Cloud would be done up.... Even she was not sorry
to rest for a moment....
She sat down thankfully on a student’s deserted stool. It was a warm,
lax day and she was, in truth, a little dazed and overborne by the
bright colours and echoing rooms and the familiar, indescribable odour
that is the breath of painted pictures, crowded hundreds of pictures,
hundreds of years old. She had only to shut her eyes to be in Paris ...
in her painting apron....
She shut them.
She did not actually drowse. She was aware of the discomfort of her hard
seat, of herself perched stiffly upon it, and of the eternal, far-away
confusion of footsteps that ticked and tapped and clattered as if the
great building were the home of all the timepieces in the world; but she
was indifferent, bound by that pleasant, trancelike numbness that will
overtake you sometimes in church, or in the corner seat of an express.
Not an inch of her wanted to stir again: she would murder any one who
disturbed her in the next hundred years, if murder were not so energetic
a business. Her mind dwelt with infinite contentment on a memory it had
preserved of a donor’s robe that had caught her eye, shining out of some
dreary acre of canvas like a geranium in a slum window. The colour made
her purr as she thought of it. The sun, who never waited for the
blinds’-man to finish his lunch, had arrived at the unprotected window
behind her, and was kissing the back of her neck. She was as contented
as a cat, and it was unforgivable of some one, some brawler at the other
end of the world, to knock over a paint-box and scrape back a stool and
come tearing past her like a wind, shouting—
“Here! Hi! Here, I say! Cloud! Justin, old man! Well now, isn’t this
jolly?”
She opened her eyes and rubbed them crossly, as a child does when you
rouse it too suddenly from sleep. What was the fuss now? Oh, there were
the Clouds at last ... and the man—her eyes sulked up the room to where
the painter had been standing—then the man _was_ Oliver....
What an unnecessary noise he was making!... And that was the third time
he had shaken hands with Justin ... both hands.... So affected.... His
hair was too thin to wear fluffed out, just like all the little
students.... Now he was shaking hands again!... She wondered that Justin
stood it. But Justin was looking so pleased....
She did not go up to them. She sat still on her stool and watched with a
disapproval that grew like a beanstalk. He, Oliver, was handsome, she
supposed, if you admired the type that cried out for gold ear-rings and
a razor.... She didn’t.... The man wasn’t still a moment.... He talked
with his whole body.... She could hear scraps: “My dearest fellow——Well,
I was going on, but now you’ve come——Piece of luck——Tell you what old
man——Oh, my dear soul——” One of these Italianate, epithetical people....
She knew she shouldn’t get on with him.... She wondered how much longer
Justin would be content to stand there, beaming and button-holed.
And then Mrs. Cloud caught sight of her, and this Oliver person had
given her a quick amused look and said something to Justin as they all
moved up the gallery towards her and she came down to them.
There were introductions. Oliver gave her the prolonged and peculiarly
earnest handshake which implied that his whole eager nature leaped to
welcome the friend of his friend, and turning back to Justin instantly
forgot all about her. He exhibited his copy to them, and told them how
good it was, and what a great many people whom they did not know had
said about it. His vanity was so fresh and real, so unadulterated by
false modesty, that Laura should have humoured him. But she was too
young, I suppose, to find it charming. It is curious how intolerant
youth always remains of that youthfullest of sins. She listened,
however, with merciless attention, as he talked them out of the gallery
and down the staircase and along the street to a restaurant. When they
all sat down together to lunch he was still talking, and Mrs. Cloud had
said but half-a-dozen words and Laura not one.
It was not until the meal was nearly over that he became aware, with the
uncanny sensitiveness of the egoist, that his circle was incomplete,
that some one, somewhere, was not fully appreciating him. It could not
be Mrs. Cloud ... because he openly adored Mrs. Cloud, and had always
been grievous that she would not let him paint her.... (How should he
dream, when admiringly he had tried to tease her into consent, that the
pretty faint colour in her cheek was not a flush of pleasure, that Mrs.
Cloud was one of those rare women who honestly believe themselves to be
plain.) He did not quite understand her, he admitted; but he knew he was
a favourite, because she always welcomed him so kindly.... It could not
be Mrs. Cloud who was obstructing him.... Remained the girl with the red
hair, and, as she lifted them, the eyes....
At once he turned to her with that intimate abruptness, that serene
assumption of her interest in him that was, Laura began to understand,
his chief charm for Justin, who always needed helping over his
preliminaries. Justin, she observed through her lashes, waited, smiling,
for her answer, sure that she, too, must be finding this Oliver
irresistible. It would certainly have soothed her to realize that he was
anticipating with equal satisfaction her own effect upon Oliver; but she
never dreamed that he was proud of her. How should she, when he did not
know it himself? Yet he must have been, for he found himself distinctly
irritated when he heard Laura tell Oliver that she thought Florence was
very nice. He felt that she was not doing herself justice.
“Nice!!” Oliver rose like a trout to that fly.
“Don’t you?” Laura looked surprised.
He drew eloquent breath.
“‘Nice!’ Dear lady, we’re speaking of Florence—Buondelmonte’s
Florence—Dante’s Florence—_Fiorenza, dentro dalla cerchia antica_——Don’t
you realize? _They_ walked and talked out in that square. From where we
sit we can see Savonarola burn. This isn’t a town. It’s Florence,
watering her flowers with heart’s blood these thousand years.”
“That’s right, old man,” Justin encouraged him.
“But it’s a nice place _now_, don’t you think?” said Laura.
Mrs. Cloud drank some coffee hurriedly.
“And I never dreamed the shops would be so good. Ripping hats!” Laura’s
candid eyes assured Oliver how pleased she was to join with him in
praising Florence.
But Justin protested: he felt that Laura was being unusual. He had never
seen her in such mood before, and he didn’t like it.
“Laura, you’ve not been in once since we came!”
“Oh, but I’ve wanted to.” She answered him with the smile and the look
that was his due: and then, “There’s a hat in that street where we got
the cabinet—with thistles on it—a dream——”
The change of tone as she spoke to him was too subtle for Justin’s ear;
but Oliver looked across at her with sudden curiosity.
“Why—why——” he began.
“Florence even provides for donkeys, doesn’t she, Mr. Seton?” Laura
nodded to him with the ingenuous air that he was beginning to suspect.
But Justin interrupted.
“I think,” he meditated paternally, “it’s rather rot for you to go
mistering Oliver. He knew you when you were a kid—isn’t it, Mother?” He
turned to Mrs. Cloud and so missed Laura’s frown.
But Oliver was quicker.
“I say, Justin!” he exclaimed, “she doesn’t want to. She doesn’t like
me. Quick! Look at her! Did you ever see anything so hostile?”
Justin turned to the inspection. And Laura, naturally, grew scarlet. She
was furious. It was so perfectly true.... She couldn’t bear the man....
A type she detested.... A caricature of herself.... But if she didn’t
like him, it was no business of his to find it out.... It was cheek to
challenge her in that way ... to make her look a fool.... She wouldn’t
stand it....
Here Oliver, watching her delightedly, fanned the flame.
“There—the colour—d’you see? Now isn’t that interesting? Because
everybody likes me, don’t they, Justin? don’t they, Mrs. Cloud? And now,
I remember, you sniffed at my stuff this morning. I saw you in the
glass. Now why, Miss Valentine, now why?”
“Oh, what nonsense!” That, of course, is what she should have said.
That, she knew perfectly well, is what she should have said. But the
politenesses had gone from her. She answered like the furious child she
was.
“You pose,” said Miss Valentine.
“I swear I don’t!” Oliver sat up.
“I say, Laura!” Justin warned her.
“He does, Justin. I watched him before you came. Oh, you know you do.”
She faced Oliver accusingly. “You were varnishing: you didn’t want all
that gamboge. Now, did you?”
Suddenly Oliver, who was sweet-tempered, began to laugh guiltily.
“I believe she’s right! Justin—I believe she’s right!”
“Yes—and knocking over your easel to look excited, and—” she thought she
might as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb—“and shaking hands four
times running and saying to me that I didn’t like you—like that. When
you’re a little boy it’s being _enfant terrible_ and funny, but when
you’re grown-up it’s just pose.”
“Now, look here—Laura!” Oliver planted his elbows squarely on the table.
“Yes—Oliver!” She met his twinkling eyes stubbornly.
“If you please, what did you call Florence just now?”
“It _is_ a very nice place,” she defended herself. There might or might
not have been a dimpling of the austere lines of her mouth.
“And you talked about hat-shops.”
The dimple was unmistakable. There were even signs of a second one.
“You know what I’m driving at?” he insisted.
“Oh, yes,” said Laura.
“Well, then—wasn’t it?”
“Wasn’t it what?” said Justin.
She looked from one to another.
“Pose!” said Laura as meekly as you please.
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