"Climb high, love high, what matter! Still . . .
Feet, feelings, must descend the hill."
--Browning.
On a certain afternoon of early March, Quita Lenox stood at her easel,
in the small room she had fitted up as a studio, palette in one hand,
long-handled brush in the other, two broken lines of irritation between
her brows.
The verandah door stood wide; and through it the breath of spring came
in to her, velvet soft, compact of a hundred nameless scents, mingled
with the paramount scent of roses. For March is India's rose month:
and in the midst of so much that is unlovely, the roses of Dera Ishmael
Khan are things to marvel at, and thank Heaven for. Quita's rambling
compound was packed with them, from the plebeian Cabbage, to the lordly
Marechal Neil. Three golden buds of the latter drooped over the white
ribbon bow at her waist: and a bowl of dark red ones stood on the
untidy table behind her.
But even the subtle-sweet influence of the day failed to sooth the
creases out of her forehead. For the panel picture on her easel would
not 'behave'; her scattered ideas refused to range themselves: and the
fount of inspiration seemed dried up within her: trifles insignificant
enough to the 'lay' mind: but for the artist, whether of pencil, or
brush, or chisel, they spell despair. All the morning she had wrestled
with the picture half defiantly, as it were against the stream. Such
work is seldom satisfactory; and since lunch she had been engaged in
blotting it all out ruthlessly, bit by bit.
The refractory creation of her spirit was a small panel in oils: a
subject picture, more or less symbolical, such as she did not often
attempt:--a broken hillside, of Himalayan character: bare blocks of
granite, dripping with recent rain, their dark corners and interstices
alight with shy wild flowers and ferns: a stone-set path zigzagging
among them, and half-way up the path, the figures of a man and woman:
the man ahead, upon a jutting ledge of rock, half turning with
down-stretched hand to draw the woman up after him, his vigorous form
backed by a sky of driving cloud. Of the woman's face, as she lifted
it to his, nothing could be seen save the outline of cheek and brow.
Her bowed shoulders and the lines of her figure expressed effort,
tinged with weariness. Below her, the topmost half of a deodar sprang
upward, a suggestion of wind in its drooping bows: and through torn
grey cloud, a sun-ray, striking across the two figures, waked coppery
gleams in the woman's dark hair, and points of brightness on drenched
rock and fern.
All these things were as yet conveyed rather than expressed: the
figures, in particular, being still little more than studies suggesting
both the strain and exhilaration of ascent. On a strip of cardboard
propped above the canvas, four lines were scribbled in pencil.
"Does the road wind up-hill all the way?
Yes, to the very end.
Will the day's journey take the whole long day?
From morn till night, my friend."
Quita read and pondered the words for the hundredth time: but the hint
of melancholy in them only increased her vague feeling of annoyance,
and the lines deepened between her brows.
It was her first serious attempt at a picture after four months of
idleness, and 'amateur scribblings'--so she designated them in her
letters to Michael; and for the time being brain and hand seemed to
have lost their cunning. She needed the stimulant of criticism, of
discussion, to oil the wheels and set the machine going afresh. If
only Michael were here, how they would have argued and squabbled, to
their souls' content, over values, and proportions and effects of light
and shade; and what a fine day's work would have sprung from it all!
"I really think I must get him down here for a week or two," she
thought. "Just to give me a fillip in the right direction."
Fired by the notion, she made one or two ineffectual dabs at the
woman's draperies: then, flinging down brush and palette, sank into a
deep, cushioned chair sacred to her husband, as a small table bearing
ash-tray, pipes, and a pile of corrected proofs, bore witness. She
glanced through them lazily, with softened eyes: then, as if drawn by a
magnet, her gaze returned to the picture.
"Horrid depressing thing!" the reflected. "And yet . . how attractive!
The general character of it is rather like Eldred himself. I suppose I
could produce nothing that wasn't at this stage! They are both up-hill
subjects, certainly; worth tackling; and not to be mastered in a day."
But for all that she was little used to wrestling with her art. The
touch of genius in her was of the spontaneous, rather than of the
painstaking order; and a remembered word of Michael's rose up to
disconcert her. "Succumb to your womanhood and there is an end of your
Art." Irritating man! What business had he to make random shots so
near to the truth. Yet it was not the whole truth; and hers was the
chance to prove it.
Certainly for the past six months and more, she had succumbed
unreservedly to her womanhood; had endured without a pang the temporary
eclipse of her art. What need to strive after the presentation, the
expression of life, when she had penetrated to the core of it: was
living it buoyantly, fervently, with every faculty of heart and spirit?
By nature a being of extremes, she was apt to fling all her energies in
one direction at a time: and in these last months of so-called idleness
she had been mastering the rudiments of the finest and most complex of
all arts,--the art of living in closest human relationship with 'a
creature of equal, if of unlike frailties'; an art that must be
mastered afresh, year by year: because life, as we know it, is rooted
in change; and if a husband and wife are not imperceptibly growing
towards one another, they are almost infallibly growing in the other
direction. But for the artist woman self-surrender is no natural
instinct: it is a talent to be consciously acquired, if she ever
acquire it at all: and although Quita had, in some sort, been through
the fire, she was still a novice in those 'profound and painless
lessons of love,' that can only be taught in the incomparable school of
marriage.
Meanwhile, she was learning her husband,--in his own phrase,--like a
new language; and enjoying the process, despite its undeniable
difficulty. For the man was by temperament inarticulate, and a
solitary: propensities aggravated by six years of bitterness, and
stifled passion. Let his love be never so deep and true, the spell of
isolation, the spirit that drives men into the wilderness, was as
strong in him as the need to share thought and feeling with the heart
nearest her own was in his wife. At no time could he have been classed
among the frankly unthinking men who slip into marriage as composedly
as they slip into a new suit of clothes: and at five-and-thirty, the
complete readjustment of life and habit demanded by this exquisite yet
exacting bond could not be arrived at without some degree of conscious
strain and compromise.
The past few weeks had revealed to both, more or less clearly, the 'sea
of contrarieties' through which they were called upon to steer without
capsizing; had brought them to that critical turning-point when the
first rapture of passion in possession subsides imperceptibly, into an
emotion deeper and more stable; when the insignificant outer world
resumes its normal proportions; and individuality reasserts itself,
often with disconcerting results!
Hence Quita's revived zeal to finish a picture begun and flung aside
months ago; and Eldred's unusually prompt response to a request from an
Editor friend in England for a set of articles on Tibet, whose holy of
holies had not then been unveiled and described for the benefit of
man's insatiable curiosity.
He was in his study now, finishing the first of them in time for the
homeward mail: unconsciously enjoying a return to the familiar
occupation. The writing of it had engrossed more of his mind and
leisure during the last week than Quita chose to consider quite
admissible in those early days. Her own absorption in her picture was
quite another matter, be it understood! And, in truth, she would
gladly have had him in the studio, ensconced in his own chair, and
available for argument or love-making according to her mood. Hitherto
she had resisted temptations to invade his study when she knew him to
be at work. But this afternoon a vague spirit of unrest had gotten
hold of her, making the thought of his diligence, and complacent
detachment from her, peculiarly exasperating; and before long
exasperation drove her to the door of his sanctum.
It stood ajar: and pushing it open, she went softly in. His back was
towards her, and his concentration so complete that he was not aware of
her till she stood at his elbow. Then he started and looked up with a
smothered exclamation of doubtful character.
"Hullo, my lady, I thought this was against regulations! What's up?"
She perched lightly on the arm of his chair.
"Nothing's up. I'm rather 'down,' that's all; or I wouldn't have
infringed your territorial rights! _Do_ leave off being a model of
industry, and come into the studio."
"But, my dear girl, . . why?"
"Because I want you. Isn't that reason enough? There'll be plenty of
time to finish grinding out dry-as-dust facts about Tibet after tea."
"I'm afraid not. I told Desmond I'd get down to the tent-pegging
early. Is it really anything important, lass?" he added, controlling
his impatience with an effort.
"Oh dear, no, not the least in the world!" She was on her feet now:
head erect: dignity incarnate. "Unless it is important to do what your
wife asks you with good grace. But I believe little illusions of that
kind are warranted not to outlast four months of marriage."
He brought his hand sharply down on the table.
"Quita, you are talking childish nonsense. Why the dickens can't you
leave me in peace till I'm through? I shan't be much longer now: and
you can lecture me on the whole duty of husbands all the evening, if
you've a mind to."
"Indeed I've not. Duty never gets a word in edgeways, while Love is
master of the house. If it ever comes to 'duty' between you and me, I
shall pack my kit and go, I promise you. It's the reality or nothing
for me.--But don't hurry your work on my account, _mon ami_," she
added, on her way to the door. "I shall probably drive over to
Honor's, and leave you in peace till dinner-time. In fact, you have my
permission to dine at mess for a change, if it would amuse you."
And as he turned quickly with remonstrance on his lips, the door closed
behind her. With a sigh that ended in a smile, he took up his pen
again: wishing her back the moment she was out of reach. For beneath
his surface equanimity, the man in him was still thrilling under the
emotion and astonishment of absolute possession; under the hallowing
sense of permanence that at once calmed and exalted the fever heat of
passion.
But Quita returned to her studio feeling more out of tune than ever.
It was her own foolish fault, of course, for interrupting him: a form
of knowledge that has never yet made for consolation. And while she
stood alone before her picture, wondering whether she really would
order the trap and go over to the Desmonds, footsteps in the verandah
heralded Honor's appearance in the doorway:--a glowing Honor, looking
remarkably young and fresh in a long, loose alpaca coat, and a shady
Leghorn in which roses nodded: the peach-bloom of health back in her
cheeks, the old buoyant stateliness in her step and carriage.
Quita flew to her with a little cry.
"Honor, you dear woman! How engaging of you to turn up, just when I
was wanting you, and feeling too lazy to go and find you."
The kiss that passed between them was a real one; not the perfunctory
peck of greeting that usurps its name. For, as flowers most exquisite
spring from strangely unpromising soil, so had those two weeks of
isolation and heart-hunger on the unloveliest hill-top of Northern
India generated an enduring friendship between these two women, so
unlike in outward seeming: a deeper thing than the facile feminine
interchange of Christian names and kisses.
"Come your ways in, you patent radiator of happiness!" And Quita would
have thrust her friend into Eldred's chair: but Honor, catching sight
of the picture, went eagerly up to it.
"My dear, how remarkable! When did you begin it?"
"Ages ago, in Dalhousie; and now I want to finish it. But the lamp of
inspiration won't burn. I'm afraid the wick's gone mouldy from disuse."
But Honor was reading the lines above the canvas.
"Ah, I see! Christina Rossetti," she said. "Quita, you must finish
this. It's going to be very good. I love that little poem."
"Yes, you would. I've always rebelled against it. But last year when
everything seemed such a struggle, the lines haunted me so, that I
tried to get rid of them by turning them into a picture; and that's the
result. Rather like Eldred and me! He's always dragging me up on to
higher ground: yet he's so divinely unconscious of it all the time."
"Dear fellow!" Honor said softly. "But _he_ hasn't done all the
lifting. You've made a new man of him, Quita."
"Have I?" Sudden seriousness shadowed her eyes. "It was the least I
could do, . . considering all things. Only . . I wish he wasn't quite
so inward; so in love with his own company."
"You'll change that, in time."
"Do you think so? I wonder."
She bent in speaking to look through three or four small canvases that
stood with their faces to the wall.
"I want to show you the pair to my Up-Hill picture. It's another
Rossetti, _Amor Mundi_; and the contrast pleases me. I've taken the
opening lines:
"'Oh where are you going, with your love-locks flowing,
On the west wind blowing, along this valley track?'
'The down-hill path is easy; come with me, an' it please ye;
We shall escape the up-hill, by never turning back.'
So they two went together, in glowing August weather,
The honey-breathing heather lay to their left and right . .'
There now, can't you see them going down and down . . . ?"
With a quick turn of the wrist she brought the picture into view, and
set it on the table in a good light.
"Can't you feel the soft wind against their faces, . . the ease, the
swiftness, and the thrill of it all; the thrill of yielding to earth
and the beauty of earth, of giving up for a while one's futile
strugglings to reach the moon?"
Honor stood silent, gazing at the picture with rapt interest. To this
deep-hearted passionate woman, whose sympathies stretched upward and
downward along the whole gamut of human feeling, its appeal was far
stronger than Quita--in whom passion was mainly an imaginative
quality--was likely to realise. For the small picture was heavy with
heat and colour, and the glamour of high mid-summer; the sky's blue
intensity glowing between masses of white thunderous cloud; the
hillsides clothed in their August splendour of purple, and pink, and
green: and down the white track that sloped to the valley a man and a
woman, hand in hand, the woman leading, appeared to be coming straight
out of the picture. Her flying hair, and the sweep of her draperies,
showed the speed of their going; and the ecstasy of it shone in the
faces of both.
"It's a powerful little poem," Quita exclaimed. "As they go on they
meet with grisly portents, the track gets steeper, and they are afraid.
But by that time it is 'too steep for hill-mounting, and too late for
cost-counting; the down-hill path is easy, but there's no turning
back.'"
Honor gave a little shiver.
"It's a wonderful bit of work," she said. "But is it always the man
who leads up, and the woman who leads down, Quita?"
"No. By no manner of means! I happened to see it so in those two
instances. Probably the sainted Christina saw it the other way
round.--But come and sit in Eldred's chair now, and let's get back to
realities."
"Realities? Why, my dear, your pictures touch the height and depth of
the biggest realities. I never knew you did that sort of thing."
"I don't as a rule. But those poems possessed me."
"Well, I can only say, go on and do more."
"I will . . if I can." And gently pushing Honor into the chair, she
settled herself on the carpet, and flung an arm over her friend's knee.
"It's high time I started work again. I've been idling far too long."
Honor smiled. "Don't be in a hurry to put an end to it, dear. It's
one of the divinest and most profitable kinds of idling you will ever
know. You are building up your future in these first months together."
Quita's sigh was a little anxious, though not sad.
"Are we? Well, I hope we've got the foundations right," she said,
looking thoughtfully up into the other's face. Something in its veiled
brilliance caught her attention, and bent her flexible mind in another
direction. "Do you know, Honor," she went on, "you've blossomed out
amazingly just lately. Your eyes are shining like two stars, as if you
had some heavenly secret hidden behind them."
"It's an open secret, and a very human one!" Honor answered, smiling.
"You are well on the way to discovering it for yourself."
With a low sound, Quita captured the hand lying near her own.
"Oh, you utter woman!" she murmured. "Is it still so beautiful . . .
after three years?"
Honor's colour deepened. "It's more beautiful. Much more beautiful.
Because now . . there are two of them."
There was a moment of silence, while Quita fidgeted with the great
square sapphire on her friend's wedding-finger.
"You'll think me dreadful," she said at last. "But I'm not quite sure
that I see the logic of that. For the present, at all events, I only
want Eldred, and these . . my spirit children," she indicated her
pictures with a little nervous laugh. "You must make allowances for
the artist woman, Honor. She so seldom feels and does the things she
ought to feel and do!"
"That's just why she is apt to be so refreshing!--But believe me,
Quita, the most perfect marriage is not quite perfect till it becomes
'the trio perfect,' three persons and one love. That's not fantastic
idealism but simple fact. Besides," she hesitated and caressed a stray
tendril of Quita's hair, "doesn't it seem to you a bigger thing, on the
whole, to make men and women to the best of one's power, than to make
books or pictures, even fine ones?"
"Yes, in some ways . . it does. And for that very reason I doubt
whether I am fitted to make them. It's a gift, an art, like everything
else. Not the creating of them, of course. That's a privilege, or a
fatality, as the case may be! But the moulding of them, after they are
created. You can't deny that they complicate things: and even at this
stage, I find marriage a far more complicated affair than I imagined it
to be. Didn't you?"
Honor's smile was sufficient evidence to the contrary. But she was
old-fashioned enough to have a difficulty in talking about the hidden
poem of her life.
"Perhaps we were exceptions, Theo and I," she said at last. "We knew
one another . . intimately, before starting; and to live with him,
and . . in him, seemed to come as natural as breathing. But then, my
dear, I'm simply a wife and a mother: not a woman of genius, like you."
"Aren't you, indeed? Don't pulverise me with sarcasms, please! In my
opinion this exquisite passion of yours for being 'simply a wife and a
mother' is in itself a kind of genius: perhaps the highest there is.
You see and feel the essential beauty of both relations so vividly that
you make one see and feel it also; just as certain other kinds of women
make one half-ashamed of being a woman at all! Yours is the
temperament that gives, Honor, . . gives royally; and is always sure of
return because it looks for none. While as for me, my present
complications are the natural outcome,--multiplied by six years,--of my
long-ago blindness and folly, that sprang from my capacity for taking,
without a thought of giving in return. You see, Eldred and I have both
an ample time to crystallise in different directions: and the years we
let slip may be trusted to exact their debt to the uttermost
farthing.--Ah, there he is!"
The words were a mere throb of the heart. She was on her feet when the
man entered: and Honor, watching her face, thought she had never seen
it so nearly beautiful. She herself rose also, with a prompt excuse
for departure.
"I haven't even _seen_ Theo since breakfast," she said as they shook
hands. "Tent-pegging days are hopeless: and I promised to go down
early. Don't trouble to come out with me, please."
But Lenox insisted: and on his return found Quita back at her canvas,
to all appearance working diligently at a difficult bit of detail in
one corner. She greeted him with lifted brows.
"Finished your article already?"
"No."
"Then what on earth are you doing, loafing about in here? I'm busy. I
want to get this bit done before I go out."
"Do you though?" but instead of retreating, he came closer,
deliberately confiscated palette and brushes, and drew her into his
arms.
"Shall I send Desmond a 'chit,' to say 'I have married a wife, and
therefore I cannot come'?"
"Yes,--do. He'll forgive you."
"And shall we go for a long ride across country, when I'm through with
my work: and look in at the tent-pegging later?"
For answer she leaned against him with a sigh of content.