between her teeth, and a palette over her left thumb, as she opened the
studio door in answer to Patricia's mock-peremptory knock.
"Good!" she heartily cried. "Just the one I want. Don't take your hat
off for a minute, and turn round. I want to see just exactly how the
hair grows."
"All over the place, mostly," said Patricia, as she obediently turned.
The picture in progress stood upon the easel, and represented nothing
upon earth. A bloated something without form carried an eye upon its
cheekbone. The miracle had been achieved of showing a head upon three
sides of its common aspect. Patricia observed it with respect, although
she might have been moved to great laughter if she had found it in a
child's painting book. She looked crampedly from her stance, as she
waited, upon such part of the room as was to be seen. It was not a
large studio, but it was lofty, and although a bed stood in the farther
corner it was the best combined room she had ever seen. It would be
possible, she thought, to be quite happy here. The stained floor was
bare except for rugs at the fire and beside the bed, and a large easel
stood right under the glass roof. The studio was warm, and so lighted
that it appeared to stretch indefinitely into the dusky corners. The
only comfortable seats were a big deep armchair and a "podger" which
lay against the wall by the side of the fire. Patricia continued to
beam upon it as a home for one such as herself. She coveted the studio
with a pure and humane covetousness.
"Ye-es," presently came her friend's comment. "All right, thanks. Sit
down. Have a cigarette? Well, and you got home all right, did you? With
your gay companion."
"He _was_ gay!" jeered Patricia. "He hardly said a word."
Amy clucked her tongue. "Too bad!" she observed. "However, you'd have
got soaked otherwise. Anyway, it was better than having Dalrymple. Did
you ever see such an old toper? It was amazing. Monty won't have him
again."
"Oh!" It was a cry of disappointment.
"Oh, that won't matter." Amy was laying down her palette and searching
for matches as she spoke. There was cigarette ash all over the hearth
in front of her little gas fire, and ash was scattered across the
floor. The bed, covered with bright chintz, showed that she had lain
upon it during the afternoon. "You'll be invited without him another
time."
"Shall I?" It sent a spark of joy through Patricia to hear this. She
looked gratefully at Amy's white face and smooth hair. "Really?"
Amy shrugged with a conceited air of boredom. "You made an impression
last night," she announced. Patricia laughed gaily, and Amy continued:
"It's easy enough, and it comes naturally to you. Of course, Monty's
parties aren't what they were. He used to have a lot of decent people;
but he's peculiar, you know. He gets tired of people, and drops them.
It's the privilege you enjoy when you've got money. Only of course
you've got to keep on making fresh friends, and he's not as bright
as he used to be. He used to be able to talk. Now it isn't worth his
while; so he says nothing at all. He thinks it. He's sardonic."
"He looks that," agreed Patricia, trying to seem as expert and as
patronising as her friend. "But he looks interesting, as well; and
that's a great deal."
"Oho! I should think he was. And as clever as the devil. But he's a
beast."
"I don't mind that, so long as he isn't beastly to me," said Patricia.
"I don't mind what anybody does, so long as they are nice to me."
Amy laughed, and professionally flicked the ash from her cigarette with
a little finger. It was a laugh that held dryness.
"Oh, they'll all be nice to you," she observed. "No reason why they
should be anything else."
Patricia pondered upon that suggestion, and upon the strange gleam
in Amy's eye. She had so much affection to give, she thought, and she
had met so much kindness in others, that there really did not seem to
be anything but kindness in her whole life. Even Lucy, in her rough
way, was kind. Amy, of course, did not know that, and had not meant
to suggest it; but there were things which Patricia still did not
understand at sight, in spite of her self-confidence in that direction.
"No," she said. "There isn't, is there. Except that I'm poor; but
people don't notice that. Of course, Mr. Mayne was really very kind.
But he's rather unbending, I think. He's ... well, he seemed to me to
be rather out of place at Monty's."
So soon had she caught the trick of calling all persons by a Christian
name! Amy, from a greater experience, noticed the more naïve
satisfaction of Patricia at the habit, and was amused by it.
"Yes. And then there's Harry Greenlees, of course," she prompted, a
little inquisitively.
"Yes, Harry. He's awfully nice and amusing," said Patricia. She was
instinctively guarded.
"Quite," replied Amy, now very dry. She shot a glance at her friend
that hinted suspicion. "You see in that one evening you made three new
friends...."
There was a pause; and then Patricia, who knew nothing of suspicion,
went on:
"Amy ... do you know Rhoda Flower?"
"In a way. Not well. Just from seeing her at that sort of thing--and
hearing about her. She isn't any good."
"What sort of things do you hear?" Patricia had caught that note, at
least, and was stung by it to a question. Amy shrugged, since she had
no fact to communicate.
"Oh, nothing ... Nothing _really_. But of course they're always
together."
Patricia started slightly. They? Rhoda and Harry.
"Oh, yes," she said, as if merely in acquiescence. "I thought she was
pretty, and looked all right."
"Rhoda?" Amy laughed scornfully. "Yes, she's pretty. But she's a fool."
"How d'you mean? Not got any brains?"
"With Harry."
Patricia was puzzled. She just prevented herself from saying "But I
thought one did as one liked, without question, in Bohemia."
"What, ... what, is she in love with him?" she stammered, her eyes wide
open.
Amy shrugged, blowing cigarette smoke from her nostrils.
"Oho, I don't know," she said, in a particularly measured voice. "Who
knows? It's not the sort of thing one woman tells another unless she is
a friend. But she'll burn her fingers with him, you can see. She's not
experienced enough at the game. You've only got to look at him to see
he's after every fresh face."
It came like a flash to Patricia: Amy's jealous of me! She was aghast
and amused in the same instant.
"Oh, well," she cried, with masterly skill. "Who isn't?"
And then Amy and Patricia looked at each other, both smiling, but in
conflict as they had not hitherto been. Amy's face was sickly, and
there was an extraordinary glitter in Patricia's eyes. Patricia's
thoughts leapt quickly forward, skipping all reasons and shades of
interpretation. It was not merely of the impression which Patricia had
made upon Harry Greenlees that Amy was jealous: it was of Patricia
herself, of her power to attract, her intelligence, her freshness.
Patricia, even under her horror and her inclination to ridicule such
an attitude, was conscious of a sharp accession of complacency. She had
entered this new world; she had seen it to be good; she had triumphed
with the ease of mastery. It was her fate. She was confirmed in her
belief that there was a genuine irresistible _something_ in the world
called Patricia. Nothing was impossible to her. The chagrins of the
morning were obliterated.
v
Presently the two girls busied themselves in preparing a meal in the
small kitchen attached to the studio. It was not a feast; but it
satisfied them, and Patricia loved the sense of camping out. They ate
it off a small round table with a large coloured napkin used as a
tablecloth. The crockery was all odd, as Amy had purchased it from a
former tenant, and one plate bore upon it the name of a famous hotel.
They had an egg dish and some potted meat and some thin claret, with an
apple apiece to complete the meal and some coffee which was rather the
worse for wear. Amy smoked cigarettes continuously throughout, laying
them upon the edge of her plate during mastication. Her consumption of
cigarettes during the day was considerable, and she even smoked and
read in bed. Patricia made a note of this, as it seemed to be a part of
the bohemian life.
"I never noticed this plate before," she suddenly cried, alluding to
the one which had upon it the name of the hotel. "D'you suppose it was
stolen, or what?"
Amy shrugged, and wiped a small piece of clinging tobacco from her lip
with a forefinger.
"May have been," she said. "Or else its a throw-out. You get them cheap
in markets, I believe."
"I hope it was stolen," breathed Patricia. "Fancy eating off a stolen
plate! But you'd wonder how any body smuggled anything so large out of
an hotel. Awful if it fell!"
"You're perfectly ridiculous, Patricia," said Amy.
What strange eyes Amy had, thought Patricia. They were like big
blue-green marbles. They stood out a little. Or perhaps it was only
that her eyelashes were fair. Harry had beautiful eyelashes--long and
dark; and they made his eyes look charming. She hadn't noticed Edgar
Mayne's eyes.... Oh, yes, she had. They were kind and brown. Funny! The
thought of him made her smile; but she had at the same time a curious
warming of the heart.
"Isn't it strange," she remarked, thoughtfully, "that you can feel
perfectly----"
But what Patricia had been about to commend to Amy's notice was lost;
for at that moment there came a tapping at the studio door. Instantly
Patricia had one of those celebrated intuitions to which all young
women at times are liable. She felt sure that the person knocking was
Harry. It proved to be Jack Penton, who came in as though the place
were familiar to him, and stood frowning at the signs of their feast.
He was as smooth and insignificant as ever.
"Oh," he said, in his rasping voice. "You've had your meal."
"Nothing left for you," answered Amy, brusquely.
Jack's manner in reply was protestingly sullen, as if he had been
detected in a fault.
"I was going to ask you to come out to dinner," he grumbled.
"I don't think I _could_ eat anything more," smiled Patricia. "It's so
nice of you." That was her solace for him, a contribution to what she
felt might be a disappointment to so worthy a young man.
"Well...." He hesitated. "I've just got along. Erm.... Look here, I'll
go and get something to eat, and come back, if I may."
Amy agreed, and Jack was letting himself out when a notion occurred to
her.
"If you meet anybody, bring them with you," she called after him. And
when the door had clicked she turned to Patricia. "Don't go, whatever
you do...." She put her hand to her brow. "That young man.... He's
beginning to be a nuisance."
"What, Jack?" Patricia was full of sympathy for the absent. "But he's
most agreeable. I like him."
"Yes," responded Amy, with rather a morose air. "You don't have to put
up with him. He's moody. He's got a fearful temper, and he sulks. It's
the temperament that goes with that complexion. He's dark and sulky. He
hasn't got any notion of.... He's old-fashioned...."
"Do you mean he's in love with you?" asked Patricia. "That seems to be
what's the matter."
"Oho, it takes two to be in love," scornfully cried Amy. "And I'm not
in love with him."
"But he's your friend."
"That's just it. He won't recognise that men and women _can_ be
friends. He's a very decent fellow; but he's full of this sulky
jealousy, and he glowers and sulks whenever any other man comes near
me. Well, that's not my idea of friendship."
"Nor mine," echoed Patricia, trying to reconstruct her puzzled estimate
of their relations. "But couldn't you stop that? Surely, if you put it
clearly to him...."
Amy interrupted with a laugh that was almost shrill. Her manner was
coldly contemptuous.
"You _are_ priceless!" she cried. "You say the most wonderful things."
"Well, _I_ should."
"I wonder." Amy moved about, collecting the plates. "You see ... some
day I shall marry. And in a weak moment I said probably I'd marry him."
"Oh, Amy! Of _course_ he's jealous!" Swiftly, Patricia did the young
man justice.
"It didn't give him any right to be. I told him I'd changed my mind.
I've told him lots of times that probably I shan't marry him."
"But you keep him. Amy! You do encourage him." Patricia was stricken
afresh with a generous impulse of emotion on Jack's behalf. "I mean, by
not telling him straight out. Surely you can't keep a man waiting like
that? I wonder he doesn't _insist_."
"Jack insist!" Amy was again scornful. "Not he!"
There was a moment's pause. Innocently, Patricia ventured upon a
charitable interpretation.
"He must love you very much. But Amy, if you don't love him."
"What's love got to do with marriage?" asked Amy, with a sourly cynical
air.
"Hasn't it--everything?" Patricia was full of sincerity. She was too
absorbed in this study to help Amy to clear the table; but on finding
herself alone in the studio while the crockery was carried away to
the kitchen she mechanically shook the crumbs behind the gas-fire and
folded the napkin. This was the most astonishing moment of her day.
Presently Amy returned, and sat in the big armchair, while, seated
upon the podger and leaning back against the wall, Patricia smoked a
cigarette.
"You see, the sort of man one falls in love with doesn't make a good
husband," announced Amy, as patiently as if Patricia had been in fact a
child. She persisted in her attitude of superior wisdom in the world's
ways. "It's all very well; but a girl ought to be able to live with any
man she fancies, and then in the end marry the safe man for a ... well,
for life, if she likes."
Patricia's eyes were opened wide.
"I shouldn't like that," she said. "I don't think the man would,
either."
"Bless you, the men all _do_ it," cried Amy, contemptuously. "Don't
make any mistake about that."
"I don't believe it," said Patricia. "Do you mean that my father--or
_your_ father...?"
"Oh, I don't know. I meant, nowadays. Most of the people you saw last
night are living together or living with other people."
Patricia was aware of a chill.
"But _you've_ never," she urged. "I've never."
"No." Amy was obviously irritated by the personal application. "That's
just it. I say we _ought_ to be free to do what we like. Men do what
they like."
"D'you think Jack has lived with other girls?"
"My dear child, how do I know? I should hope he has."
"Hope! Amy, you do make me feel a prig."
"Perhaps you are one. Oh, I don't know. I'm sick of thinking, thinking,
thinking about it all. I never get any peace."
"Is there somebody you _want_ to live with?"
"No. I wish there was. Then I should _know_."
"I wonder if you would know," said Patricia, in a low voice. "Amy,
do you really know what love is? Because I don't. I've sometimes let
men kiss me, and it doesn't seem to matter in the least. I don't
particularly want to kiss them, or be kissed. I've never seen anything
in all the flirtation that goes on in dark corners. It's amusing once
or twice; but it becomes an awful bore. The men don't interest you. The
thought of living with any of them just turns me sick."
Amy listened with attention. Her eyes protruded. She tapped her foot
upon the floor.
"Yes, but you're not sensual," she said. "You're not an _artist_.
Experience is a thing every artist must have. Not a humdrum marriage,
and children, and washing books ... I must have experience--to do great
work...."
Patricia's eyes flew to the canvas, now covered, which stood upon the
easel.
"But ..." she began.
"You drive me perfectly mad!" cried Amy, suddenly beside herself with
impatience. "You ask questions. You're like a child. You don't know
what torment is. You don't know what it is to be bothered the whole
time with all this ... never to get away from it."
"It can't be very healthy," said Patricia. Amy showed her teeth in an
angry smile. She did not answer for several minutes, during which her
face became set in an expression of discontented egotism.
"Sometimes I think I'll marry Jack just to find out what marriage is
like," she said at last. "I could always leave him and go off on my
own."
"Poor Jack!" thought Patricia. She said aloud: "He wouldn't like that."
"Oho, he wouldn't be any worse off than he is now."
"He'd be prevented from marrying anybody else."
"If I left him I shouldn't mind what he did," explained Amy. "Of
course, he could divorce me."
Patricia thought she had never heard such confident expression of
selfishness. It was one thing, she felt, for her to be selfish, because
she really _was_ wonderful; but to hear Amy speaking as though she had
no need to consider others struck Patricia as almost abominable. She
was pleased with the word--it was almost abominable. There was a long
silence, while their thoughts ranged.
"I certainly don't think you ought to marry him," remarked Patricia.
"It wouldn't be fair. You _must_ consider him a little. His feelings, I
mean."
Amy stretched her legs out in front of her and nestled her head in the
corner of the chair. She lighted one cigarette from another, and slowly
took two or three puffs.
"You'll find that it's best not to consider other people," she said at
length. "They only become a nuisance. I'm kind to Jack, and _he's_ a
nuisance. I've told him he can go; but he won't go unless I definitely
say I won't marry him."
"He's very weak!" exclaimed Patricia, fiercely. "I'm ashamed of him."
"He's not at all weak. He wants something, and he's waiting for it,
that's all."
"If you feel like that, surely it shows that you mean to marry him in
the end."
"I wonder if I shall," murmured Amy. "Perhaps. Perhaps not...."
"I could give you a good shaking!" cried Patricia.
vi
To herself, she thought: "She thinks she's immoral, when she's only
conceited. How silly!" And with that she had her first glimpse of
Amy's soul. The rapid judgment of others which children possess was
still a faculty of Patricia's. Her self-knowledge was rather less.
This that Amy indicated was to her an unknown world; but after all
she had preserved her own liberty through a number of episodes common
to the period in which she lived. The superficial excitements of
dancing partners were not unknown to her, and she had the modern girl's
knowledge of things which of old were hidden. Only a quick intelligence
had saved her in the past, and she had been made exceptionally
confident by experience in her power to deal with whatever situations
might arise in her own life. Amy, who looked upon Patricia as a babe,
continued to brood upon her trials.
"The men I like," she presently admitted, with candour, "don't seem to
like me. The men who attract me. They go for the pretty, dolly woman."
"You're pretty," urged Patricia.
"They don't think so. What's left to me? People like Jack."
"But Amy.... It _can't_ be so...." The word Patricia sought was
"casual." "I mean, I thought one _knew_--that one either loved a man or
didn't." She was pathetically bewildered.
"That's in days when a girl only knew the man she married, and one or
two others. It's different now. You know a hundred men--who's to know
which is the best of them?"
"Is that how the men feel?" asked Patricia.
Amy stirred in discomfort. She was ill at ease.
"My dear girl, you don't understand," she said. "There's physical
attraction; and there's ... well, there's being pals with a man. But
the old ideas of such things are _gone_."
Patricia shook her head. She was hearing of something she did not
understand.
"I wish they weren't," was all she could find to say.
"They are!" fiercely cried Amy. "If I were a good girl, living at home,
I should marry Jack and be told I'd made a 'suitable match.' But I'm
not. I'm on my own. I'm going to have a life of my own. I'm going--I'm
not going to be any man's property. That's finished."
A blank misery seized Patricia.
"I wish you were happy," she murmured. "Oh, I do wish you were." It was
the only thing she could say, for she was not learned enough to arrive
at any truer explanation than her own unutterable thought of a few
minutes earlier.
Sombre dissatisfaction continued to cloud Amy's face.
"Yes," she said. "Of course, you don't understand. You _couldn't_.
You've got one of those simple little natures. You're content. You
don't know what suffering or temptation is. If a man says he loves you,
you're ready to believe him. You're ready to fall in his arms."
"Am I?" inquired Patricia, dangerously. Her indignation was rising.
Amy looked suspiciously at her, too self-absorbed to give more than
passing attention.
"You'll see. You're younger than I am. Perhaps you'll learn. Perhaps
you'll find out for yourself what suffering is," she admonished, almost
with a grim hopefulness.
There came again a sharp tapping at the studio door, and, as if bored
almost to lethargy, Amy slowly moved to answer the call. Patricia,
instantly alert to recall the injunction under which Jack Penton had
departed, imagined hastily that he might have brought another visitor.
And for Patricia at this time "another visitor" meant one only. She
started at the second voice. Surely it was Harry's. Standing now, she
faced the door, and could see beyond Amy to the figures of the two men
who entered. First came Jack. There followed Monty Rosenberg.
CHAPTER FOUR: THE REACTION
i
Monty came into the small studio very much as a tall man enters the
saloon of a yacht. His head was lowered, and he produced the impression
that all about him was very small. Patricia's first thought of Monty
was a disappointed: "Oh, he's fat!" But when his overcoat was laid
aside, and he was nearer, she saw that whatever he might become in the
future he was still on the slim side of corpulence.
"What a pleasant surprise," murmured Monty. His air caused Jack Penton
to appear callow. He was almost mocking to Amy. There was something in
the way he held his shoulders, and stood quite still, that made him
seem nearly as well-bred as a servant; and yet there was such ease in
his manner that Patricia felt he could never in all his life be for an
instant discomposed. She envied Monty. She was silent with envy, and
her slight shyness, which was expressed by such graceful unconscious
shrinking, was an added charm.
"What happened to Dalrymple, Monty?" demanded Amy, as her new guest
took the armchair, and smiled down upon Patricia.
"Oh, he went home." Monty had a soft voice, perfectly quiet and smooth;
and he almost always raised his inflexion at the end of the sentence,
as if he were inviting a response.
"He was drunk," said Amy.
"My dear Amy!" Monty cast a glance of pretended protest which included
Patricia, but seemed also to associate her in his protest. "There are
so many stages of drunkenness."
"A lot of the people were drunk last night. And not jollily drunk,
either. They were all white and puffily drunk." Amy was persistent. She
was determined--as ever--to speak the truth which was in her.
"How unpleasant," remarked Monty. "But you enjoyed yourself, didn't
you, Miss Quin? I hope you'll come again when there is a sober party."
"I'd love to," cried Patricia, sparkling. She was happy again, the
perplexities arising from her talk with Amy forgotten. "I thought it
was a wonderful party."