Laura, in the days that followed, could not make up her mind about
Oliver: did not know what had come over him. She had always intended him
to like her, though there was something in his temperament that must
always prevent her from heartily liking him in her turn, good friends as
they were; but she wished sometimes that he were less enthusiastic a
champion. He was not satisfied with liking her: he published her abroad.
He paid attention to her every trivial remark: she had known him to stop
Justin himself in the middle of a sentence to listen to what she said.
It was getting beyond a joke, you know.... And ever since that unlucky
morning in the studio, he had raved about her work, calling heaven and
earth and Justin to observe as remarkable a talent as ever lay snug and
shameless in its napkin.
He worried at her, always before Justin, to tell him her plans and when
she said she had none, explained to her with much picturesque detail
exactly what she ought to be doing for the next five years. The only
effect of his eloquence upon Laura was to intensify that inexplicable
sensation of panic that stole over her at the thought of overleaping the
gulf that daily yawned wider between her and her art; but Justin seems
to have listened with some respect. At any rate, he had taken to
arranging sketching expeditions for them. The plunge once taken, Laura
had been too weak to refuse. She had, after all, her paints, an elbow
length down her trunk. She had never been so torn in her life as she now
was between this definite creative instinct of hers and the other
stronger instinct that forbade it, the stronger instinct that she did
not remotely understand.
They would all drive out together to some nook of the hills, and she and
Oliver would be left to their devices while Mrs. Cloud and Justin
explored the village and picked up curios and ordered lunch and came
back at last to see and criticize what they had done. One day Justin
startled her. He took her aside.
“I say, Laura,” he began solemnly and she racked her brains to remember
if she had done anything wrong. “I say you know—if you want to go back
to Paris—to train—if you feel you’ve got it in you——”
A future opened map-like in her mind, gorgeous, triumphant, like a
bird’s-eye view of an oriental city, hers, who knew, for the conquering.
And again that other, unknown instinct was a mist that blotted it out.
Through her thoughts she heard him—
“Of course I’m no judge, but Oliver says—I’ve been talking to Oliver—and
you know, Laura, you’ve only got to tell me——” (Mrs. Cloud would have
liked to be there just then to listen to Justin and love him. Any woman,
Laura herself, might have loved Justin then, he was so portentous and
fatherly) “—because, you know, Laura, if there’s any difficulty—your
grandfather—if you’re worried about ways and means—you know what I
mean——”
She flushed.
“Well, you needn’t, you know. It could be arranged. I—Mother—Mother
could fix it up for you.”
Now did you ever hear of anything more kind?... He had actually bothered
his head ... but that, you see, was the sort of person Justin was....
She had always known, of course, that he was not as other men,
but—wasn’t it kind?... She was almost reverently amazed at the
extraordinary, the unparallelled benevolence of this unique Justin. She
did not know how she was to thank him, because, when you tried, he
always jerked away from you like a pony. And yet it was indispensable to
her peace of mind that he should be most gratefully thanked. Thanked,
and at the same time convinced, beyond any possibility of argument, that
she could not go back to Paris, that she could not be an artist, that
she did not care about painting and that Oliver—but it is not necessary
for me to tell you all that Laura refrained from saying about Oliver.
Indeed I have not the capacity. She was something of a specialist in
adjectives.
But she contrived, in the latter end, to settle things to her
satisfaction. Looking back she hardly knew how she had done it; for a
young man, generously in love with his own scheme for benefiting his
neighbour, is apt to be obstinate. Perhaps the fact that she was
arguing, though neither of them knew it, not with him but with her own
puzzled and protesting self, had something to do with her success. She
was bound to convince herself.
She said—oh, she said that she had no real talent.
She said that Justin must realize by now what an exaggerated,
unreliable—er—dear, Oliver was.
She said, with a sigh, that she only wished he were right; but that she
had watched herself for two years now—
She said that she had given up the idea altogether.
She said that her eyes weren’t very strong.
She said that she was homesick.
She said that all that, however, did not lessen his kindness, that she
hadn’t believed anybody could be so kind, that it was quite impossible
to thank him properly: and then stopped, because she really did find it
impossible.
She was perfectly sincere in every word she said, and not once, not once
did she remember the good offices of the directresses and Monsieur La
Motte.
There remained Oliver. She must set herself to the danaïd task of
bottling-up Oliver.
She felt it to be a hopeless business. Convincing Justin was like
battering down a wall, laborious, but it could be done; but convincing
Oliver was like wrestling with running water. He did not resist you, he
simply slipped through your fingers. He had good manners: he waited
courteously while you expressed yourself; but he never listened. Just as
his eyes moved incessantly while he talked to you, so you felt that his
mind was, all the time, eagerly working at what he meant to go on saying
when you had done. It was easier to send a boat up a torrent than to
lodge a thought of your own in that fluent, brimming soul.
Perhaps she did not try hard, or if she did, for love of the argument
rather than the man. She was still young enough to believe that argument
is a kind of spy-glass into a neighbour’s mind instead of a cracked
mirror that distorts your own. Growing bored, she had lapsed into a mere
listener, except when he annoyed her. But he, finding her passivity even
more provocative than her temper, could not leave her alone, and when
she refused Justin’s proposals and he heard of it, fell upon her with
enthusiastic indignation.
“You know, I can’t make you out!” Oliver prided himself on understanding
women. “What made you stuff up Justin with all that rot? You’re not a
fool. You know what you can do. ‘No real talent!’ What are you driving
at? That’s what I want to know.”
Laura studied her morning’s work. It was slight enough. The sky was
white, the hills were blue, and cypresses pierced the all-pervading haze
of the olive groves; but Italy—Italy—was warm in every loving line of
it. She realized, as she looked at it, how nearly Oliver was justified;
but her only answer was a queer little fleeting smile. Sometimes it was
difficult to resist Oliver. She knew exactly how he felt. She believed
that that was why he annoyed her—she saw in him all the tendencies she
tried to repress in herself. Here, but for the grace of—she hardly knew
what—went Laura Valentine! It made her brusque with him and impatient,
yet always, as I say, with a queer accompanying smile that Oliver
misinterpreted. He misinterpreted it now. He thought she wanted
encouraging. He warmed to her.
“My dear girl! You’ve got to believe in yourself. One must. I do. People
won’t give you sixpences for your stuff if you insist it’s not worth
tuppence—and after all, one’s out for sixpences! You’ve got to be sure
of yourself—so sure that you never even think of it. I am. But to sit
there as you do and brood over whether you’re any good——”
Again that queer smile came and went as Laura worked and listened, and
again it had its effect, its odd, exciting effect upon Oliver. He felt
generous, affectionate, expansive. He felt that he would do anything to
help the dear girl....
“Should _I_ be likely to back you up?” he demanded—“if I weren’t sure?
Haven’t I wallowed in art students? But you—” he flung out dramatic
hands—“look at those two things! Isn’t your stuff up to mine? Of course!
And d’you know why? The technique—excuse my saying so——” (the artist in
him, the realest thing in him, was coming out again) “the technique
is—oh, unlawful! utterly! but——” his hand came down heavily on her
shoulder—“Oh, damn you, woman, there’s religion in it!” cried Oliver.
“I’ll never get that. Oh, I don’t mean Church of England.”
Laura was no longer staring at her drawing. He was interesting her at
last.
“What is it you put in?”
He shook at her impatiently as he stood behind her. There was real
passion in his voice.
“I don’t know.” She was honestly puzzled. “I’m not bad, I know. But
you—you imagine a lot.” And then, consolingly, “I shouldn’t worry. You
just see—in ten years you’ll be at the top. I’m sure of it. But I shall
fizzle out. I’m bored with it already—this medium, anyhow. Oh, don’t you
see?” She followed up her thoughts as, exploring, one follows strange
footfalls in the dark of a passage—“Don’t you feel what the difference
is? You—a man—a man has got to put himself into only one thing, painting
or music or whatever it is. But a girl can put herself into whatever
happens along. He has a gift for painting. She has just a gift. Oh,
don’t you see? Isn’t it interesting? I never thought of it before.
That’s the difference between men and women. You’re born craftsmen; but
we—it’s not the craft we care about. It’s just something in us—the
religion, as you say—that’s got to get out somewhere—anywhere. We could
be just as religious over cooking a dinner.”
Oliver writhed.
“Oh, but we could. Look here—I’m doing this for my grandfather. He’s
never been able to afford to come to Italy. So it’s got to be good—to
please him. If I did it like yours, to be sold, without knowing to whom
it was going—well, I couldn’t do it. It wouldn’t be worth doing for its
own sake. I shouldn’t enjoy it. You can’t understand that, can you?
That’s because you’re an artist and I’m not, and never shall be,
religion or no religion.”
Her brilliant face was very close to his as she sat and talked to him
over her shoulder: she always lit up like a little Christmas tree when
she was excited. He thought, with a touch of heady self-congratulation,
that she had never talked to him like this before (forgetting how little
chance he usually gave her). He did not realize how impersonal were her
speculations, he marvelled merely that she should be so charming to him.
“There must be some reason!” cried his eager vanity.
“Religion?” He hesitated, smiling. “I believe I know a better word.”
She questioned him with a movement of her head.
“Love.” He wondered how she would take it.
“Why—” she began doubtfully, “why, of course——” And then, “Oh, Oliver, I
believe you’re perfectly right!”
She laughed abstractedly, fingering her chalks. The suggestion had taken
her fancy. It cleared up a hundred-and-one points for her. It explained
so many failures and successes. Why, of course.... it was not the brains
... it was the being fond of people that counted, that made you able to
do things, to look pretty, to be tidy, and paint, and get on with
irritating people, like Oliver and Aunt Adela ... because you did it to
please some one you were fond of.... It must be ghastly not to be fond
of any one ... one would miss such a lot.... Oliver, for instance, was
quite decent really, when you got to know him ... but she would never
have bothered if it hadn’t been to please Justin ... a shame.... Poor
Oliver!...
And so ended, a little guiltily, by smiling up at him.
And then, you know, he kissed her.
For myself, I don’t blame Oliver. _In the spring_—and after all, they
had been discussing love. Besides, as he said to her some hectic moments
later when, in sheer breathlessness, she allowed him to speak, where was
the harm? Most girls liked that sort of thing. He felt ill-used. She was
old enough to play the game ... to observe the rules that every girl,
every human being, ought to know.... She was a little fool ... nothing
in her after all ... nothing whatever....
For Laura, after one paralysed, open-mouthed moment, had risen in her
wrath (literally risen—she sent the easels flying) and overwhelmed him:
and while she told him, with impassioned accuracy, what she thought of
him, and Oliver rose from the wreck to answer, for characteristically
his first concern had been his canvas, she scrubbed her outraged cheek
with her pocket-handkerchief; or it may have been her paint-rag, for
there was little, in those days, to choose between them.
And that, curiously, infuriated Oliver. Mere angry words he was
accustomed to discount, but all the irresistible apologies he had
premeditated, all his assumption of _savoir-faire_, melted before the
spectacle of that all too genuine disgust. There remained the raw
juvenile, wanting to say: “Yah! suppose you think that’s funny!” like a
small boy quarrelling with his sister.
What he said, however, and with intense dignity, was—
“You’re only making yourself streaky. That rag’s thick with cadmium.”
Then he exploded. “Look here, Laura, I’m not a disease!”
“I don’t care what you are,” she blazed. “I don’t want to discuss it. I
don’t want to speak to you at all. If you’re so eaten up with conceit
that I can’t be nice to you——Oh, you don’t suppose,” she adjured him,
“that I should ever have bothered to be nice to you—to _you_—except to
please the Clouds? I don’t like you. I never did like you. I don’t want
to like you. Only you’re Justin’s friend, so I have to be polite to
you.”
“I suppose that’s what you call it?” he enquired bitterly: and, for an
instant, she stared at him blankly, all her dignity endangered by a
spasm of untimely mirth. She controlled it in a flash, and hardening
from hot anger into cold, sat down again on her stool, picked up her
scattered chalks and ignored him for a full quarter of an hour. But if
there had been, at that critical moment, a twinkle in Oliver’s eye, I
believe that she might have been jockeyed into forgiveness. It was
always fatally easy to make Laura laugh.
But Oliver Weathersby Seton, jester to the world at large, had yet to
learn that there was anything to laugh at in Oliver Weathersby Seton. He
sat wrapped in offence, vexed indeed with himself, but, because his
vanity was in shreds, doubly and trebly vexed with the unaccommodating
Laura. He thought that he had never happened on so typical a
_bourgeoise_ ... it just showed how appearances could deceive even a man
of his experience.... He would have vouched for a temperament ... it
showed in every clean-cut line of her.... Yet here she was, kicking up a
fuss like a vicar’s daughter!... He wondered where it would end?... He
believed she was capable of blurting out the whole idiotic business to
Mrs. Cloud ... exaggerating, of course.... Well, it couldn’t be
helped.... Or could it?... A row with Justin would be a beastly
nuisance.... If he’d dreamed she’d take it like that ... such a pretty
girl too.... What a waste! Lord! what a waste!...
Thus Oliver to himself in the pregnant silence that had fallen upon
them; while at his elbow Laura, erect, impassive, attending awfully to
her work and nothing else whatever, had also her thoughts.
What a thing, what an appalling thing to happen to one! Oliver must be
crazy.... Suppose any one.... Suppose Justin—she turned cold at the mere
idea—suppose Justin came to know of it.... Her ears began to burn. He
would think that she—Laura—was the sort of girl who got herself made
love to.... She could imagine his face and the shrug of his
shoulders.... And she could never explain—there was never any chance of
explaining things to Justin: you were summed up—judged—and irrevocable
sentence passed—for a word, a luckless phrase, a nervous gaucherie ...
and you never knew exactly what you had done.... Hopeless to dream of
explaining.... She supposed Oliver would be sure to tell Justin?... they
were such friends....
She flushed darkly. If Oliver were such a beast as to tell Justin....
Oh, but surely Oliver wouldn’t dream of telling Justin?...
Yet she grew more and more miserable.
Suppose Oliver did tell Justin?... Suppose Justin were absolutely
disgusted?... Of course she couldn’t ask Oliver not to tell Justin ...
quite impossible.... It was Oliver’s business to apologize to her....
She never intended to speak to him again except before the Clouds....
But if, by a few words, without being nice in the least.... She had a
perfect right, if she chose, to ask him—to tell him—to order him, that
is, not to tell Justin....
She turned to him, her chin high, catching her breath a little.
“Oliver!”
“Er—yes,” said Oliver.
“I want to say—I merely want to say—whatever I think of you myself—I
shan’t—I don’t want you—it doesn’t seem to me necessary—to bother Mrs.
Cloud.”
“Certainly not!” said Oliver fervently.
There was a pause.
“Or—or anybody,” she added lamely.
“No—no.” He agreed with her.
Again they paused, relenting imperceptibly to each other in their mutual
relief.
But Laura wanted to be quite sure.
“So that’s settled,” she said. And then, like a woman, “Oh, Oliver, why
were you hateful?”
He flung out his hands.
“Lord knows!” He fidgeted. Suddenly he looked up at her with a boy’s
grin. “I say—let’s chuck it, Laura?”
“Oh, well——” she said grudgingly. “Oh, well——” And then in most casual
afterthought as she turned to her boxes (it was time to pack up: she
could see Mrs. Cloud and Justin far away down the road) “And—Oliver? You
won’t tell Justin, of course?”
At that word a great light broke upon Oliver, a light so dazzling that
quite literally he stood and blinked, and still stood, staring at
Laura’s unconscious back, while it lit up and flooded and overflowed
every nook and corner of his memory.
So that was why!... So that, a dozen times and more, had been why!... He
shook with sudden laughter as he kicked himself for a fool and laughed
again. He felt a new man. Here was wine for his vanity, oil for his
insulted heart. It wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate him.... It was
simply that her eyes were otherwise occupied.... Oh, _well_ then!... He
hoped he was enough man of the world to understand the situation....
With gusto he adopted the rôle of kindly cynic.
Bless their hearts, he wouldn’t interfere.... But what a pair of
innocents!... Did they think all the world as blind as they were
themselves?... “Of course you won’t tell Justin?”... The dear girl!...
Oliver, you perceive, was his jaunty self again.
But (and, you know, I like Oliver) all he said to Laura and with the
utmost gravity was——
“All right! I won’t if you won’t.”
“Oh, I won’t,” she assured him.
“Then I won’t,” said Oliver.
And that is why Justin never knew.
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