ART AND NATURE
The early days of June, all of them of the same quality of golden
weather, were hardly over, before our wanderer from Ohio found himself
on terms of quite pleasant familiarity with the celibate vicar
of Nevilton, whose relations with his friend Gladys so immensely
interested him.
The conscientious vicar had sought him out, on the very day after his
visit to the mill copse and the artist had found the priest more to his
fancy than he had imagined possible.
The American’s painting had begun in serious earnest. A studio had been
constructed for him in one of the sheds near the conservatory, a place
much more full of light and air and pleasant garden smells, than would
have been the lumber-room referred to by Mrs. Romer, adjoining the
chaste slumbers of the laborious Lily. Here for several long mornings
he had worked at high pressure and in a vein of imaginative expansion.
Something of the seething sap of these incomparable days seemed to
pass into his blood. He plunged into a bold and original series of
Dionysic “impressions,” seeking to represent, in accordance with his
new vision, those legendary episodes in the life of the divine Wanderer
which seemed most capable of lending themselves to a half-realistic,
half-fantastic transmutation, of the people and places immediately
around him. He sought to introduce into these pictures the very impetus
and pressure of the exuberant earth-force, as he felt it stirring and
fermenting in his own veins, and in those of the persons and animals
about him. He strove to clothe the shadowy poetic outline of the
classical story with fragments and morsels of actual experience as one
by one his imaginative intellect absorbed them.
Here, too, under the sycamores and elms of Nevilton, the old
world-madness followed the alternations of sun and moon, with the same
tragic swiftness and the same ambiguous beauty, as when, with tossing
arms and bared throats, the virgins of Thessaly flung themselves into
the dew-starred thickets.
Dangelis began by making cautious and tentative use of such village
children as he found it possible to lay hands upon, as models in his
work, but this method did not prove very satisfactory.
The children, when their alarm and inquisitiveness wore off, grew tired
and turbulent; and on more than one occasion the artist had to submit
to astonishing visits from confused and angry parents who called him
a “foreigner” and a “Yankee,” and qualified these appellations with
epithets so astoundingly gross, that Dangelis was driven to wonder from
what simple city-bred fancy the illusion of rural innocence had first
proceeded.
At length, as the days went on, the bold idea came into his head of
persuading Gladys herself to act as his model.
His relations with her had firmly established themselves now on the
secure ground of playful camaraderie, and he knew enough of her to feel
tolerably certain that he had only to broach such a scheme, to have it
welcomed with enthusiastic ardour.
He made the suggestion one evening as they walked home together after
her spiritual lesson. “I find that last picture of mine extremely
difficult to manage,” he said.
“Why! I think it’s the best of them all!” cried Gladys. “You’ve got a
lovely look of longing in the eyes of your queer god; and the sail of
Theseus’ ship, as you see it against the blue sea, is wonderful. The
little bushes and things, too, you’ve put in; I like them particularly.
They remind me of that wood down by the mill, where I caught the
thrush. I suppose you’ve forgotten all about that day,” she added,
giving him a quick sidelong glance.
The artist seized his opportunity. “They would remind you still more
of our wood,” he said eagerly, “if you let me put you in as Ariadne!
Do, Gladys,”--he had called her Gladys for some days--“you will make
a simply adorable Ariadne. As she is now, she is wooden, grotesque,
archaic--nothing but drapery and white ankles!”
The girl had flushed with pleasure as soon as she caught the drift of
his request. Now she glanced mischievously and mockingly at him.
“_My_ ankles,” she murmured laughing, “are not so very, very beautiful!”
“Please be serious, Gladys,” he said, “I am really quite in earnest. It
will just make the difference between a masterpiece and a fiasco.”
“You are very conceited,” she retorted teasingly, “but I suppose I
oughtn’t to say that, ought I, as my precious ankles are to be a part
of this masterpiece?”
She ran in front of him down the drive, and, as if to give him an
exhibition of her goddess-like agility, caught at an overhanging bough
and swung herself backwards and forwards.
“What fun!” she cried, as he approached. “Of course I’ll do it, Mr.
Dangelis.” Then, with a sudden change of tone and a very malign
expression, as she let the branch swing back and resumed her place
at his side, “Mr. Clavering must see me posing for you. He must say
whether he thinks I’m good enough for Ariadne.”
The artist looked a shade disconcerted by this unexpected turn to the
project, but he was too anxious to make sure of his model to raise any
premature objections. “But you must please understand,” was all he
said, “that I am very much in earnest about this picture. If anybody
but myself _does_ see you, there must be no teasing and fooling.”
“Oh, I long for him to see me!” cried the girl. “I can just imagine his
face, I can just imagine it!”
The artist frowned. “This is not a joke, Gladys. Mind you, if I do let
Clavering into our secret, it’ll be only on condition that you promise
not to flirt with him. I shall want you to stay very still,--just as I
put you.”
Dangelis had never indicated before quite so plainly his blunt and
unvarnished view of her relations with her spiritual adviser, and
he now looked rather nervously at her to see how she received this
intimation.
“I _love_ teasing Mr. Clavering!” she cried savagely, “I should like
to tease him so much, that he never, never, would forget it!”
This extreme expression of feeling was a surprise, and by no means a
pleasant one, to Ralph Dangelis.
“Why do you want so much to upset our friend?” he enquired.
“I suppose,” she answered, still instinctively playing up to his idea
of her naiveté and childishness, “it is because he thinks himself so
good and so perfectly safe from falling in love with anyone--and that
annoys me.”
“Ha!” chuckled Dangelis, “so that’s it, is it?” and he paced in
thoughtful silence by her side until they reached the house.
The morning that followed this conversation was as warm as the
preceding ones, but a strong southern wind had risen, with a remote
touch of the sea in its gusty violence. The trees in the park, as the
artist and his girl-friend watched them from the terrace, while Mr.
Romer, who had now returned from town worked in his study, and Lacrima
helped Mrs. Romer to “do the flowers,” swayed and rustled ominously in
the eddying gusts.
Clouds of dust kept blowing across the gates from the surface of the
drive and the delphiniums bent low on their long stalks. The wind was
of that peculiar character which, though hot and full of balmy scents,
conveys a feeling of uneasiness and troubled expectation. It suggested
thunder and with and beyond that, something threatening, calamitous and
fatal.
Gladys was preoccupied and gloomy that morning. She was growing a
little, just a little, tired of the American’s conversation. Even the
excitement of arranging about the purchase in Yeoborough of suitable
materials for her Ariadne costume did not serve to lift the shadow from
her brow.
She was getting tired of her rôle as the naive, impetuous and childish
innocent; and though mentally still quite resolved upon following her
mother’s frequent and unblushing hints, and doing her best to “catch”
this æsthetic master of a million dollars, the burden of the task was
proving considerably irksome.
Ralph’s growing tendency to take her into his confidence in the matter
of the philosophy of his art, she found peculiarly annoying.
Philosophy of any kind was detestable to Gladys, and this particular
sort of philosophy especially depressed her, by reducing the attraction
of physical beauty to a kind of dispassionate analysis, against the
chilling virtue of which all her amorous wiles hopelessly collapsed.
It was becoming increasingly difficult, too, to secure her furtive
interviews with Luke--interviews in which her cynical sensuality,
suppressed in the society of the American, was allowed full swing.
Her thoughts, at this very moment, turned passionately and vehemently
towards the young stone-carver, who had achieved, at last, the enviable
triumph of seriously ruffling and disturbing her egoistic self-reliance.
Unused to suffering the least thwarting in what she desired, it fretted
and chafed her intolerably to be forced to go on playing her coquettish
part with this good-natured but inaccessible admirer, while all the
time her soul yearned so desperately for the shameless kisses that
made her forget everything in the world but the ecstacy of passion.
It was all very well to plan this posing as Ariadne and to listen to
Dangelis discoursing on the beauty of pagan myths. The artist might
talk endlessly about dryads and fauns. The faun she longed to be
pursued by, this wind-swept morning, was now engaged in hammering
Leonian stone, in her father’s dusty work-shops.
She knew, she told herself, far better than the cleverest citizen
of Ohio, what a real Greek god was like, both in his kindness and
his unkindness; and her nerves quivered with irritation, as the hot
southern wind blew upon her, to think that she would only be able,
and even then for a miserably few minutes, to steal off to her true
Dionysus, after submitting for a whole long day to this æsthetic
foolery.
“It must have been a wind like this,” remarked Dangelis, quite
unobservant of his companion’s moroseness, “which rocked the doomed
palace of the blaspheming Pentheus and drove him forth to his fate.” He
paused a moment, pondering, and then added, “I shall paint a picture of
this, Gladys. I shall bring in Tiresias and the other old men, feeling
the madness coming upon them.”
“I know all about that,” the girl felt compelled to answer. “They
danced, didn’t they? They couldn’t help dancing, though they were so
old and weak?”
Dangelis hardly required this encouragement, to launch into a long
discourse upon the subject of Dionysian madness, its true symbolic
meaning, its religious significance, its survival in modern times.
He quite forgot, as he gave himself up to this interesting topic, his
recent resolution to exclude drastically from his work all these more
definitely intellectualized symbols.
His companion’s answers to this harangue became, by degrees, so
obviously forced and perfunctory, that even the good-tempered westerner
found himself a little relieved when the appearance of Lacrima upon the
scene gave him a different audience.
When Lacrima appeared, Gladys slipped away and Dangelis was left to do
what he could to overcome the Italian’s habitual shyness.
“One of these days,” he said, looking with a kindly smile into the
girl’s frightened eyes, “I’m going to ask you, Miss Traffio, to take me
to see your friend Mr. Quincunx.”
Lacrima started violently. This was the last name she expected to hear
mentioned on the Nevilton terrace.
“I--I--” she stammered, “I should be very glad to take you. I didn’t
know they had told you about him.”
“Oh, they only told me--you can guess the kind of thing!--that he’s a
queer fellow who lives by himself in a cottage in Dead Man’s Lane, and
does nothing but dig in his garden and talk to old women over the wall.
He’s evidently one of these odd out-of-the-way characters, that your
English--Oh, I beg your pardon!--your European villages produce. Mr.
Clavering told me he is the only man in the place he never goes to see.
Apparently he once insulted the good vicar.”
“He didn’t insult him!” cried Lacrima with flashing eyes. “He only
asked him not to walk on his potatoes. Mr. Clavering is too touchy.”
“Well--anyway, do take me, sometime, to see this interesting person.
Why shouldn’t we go this afternoon? This wind seems to have driven
all the ideas out of my head, as well as made your cousin extremely
bad-tempered! So do take me to see your friend, Miss Traffio! We might
go now--this moment--why not?”
Lacrima shook her head, but she looked grateful and not displeased. As
a matter of fact she was particularly anxious to introduce the American
to Mr. Quincunx. In that vague subtle way which is a peculiarity,
not only of the Pariah-type, but of human nature in general, she was
anxious that Dangelis should be given at least a passing glimpse of
another view of the Romer family from that which he seemed to have
imbibed.
It was not that she was definitely plotting against her cousin or
trying to undermine her position with her artist-friend, but she felt a
natural human desire that this sympathetic and good-tempered man should
be put, to some extent at least, upon his guard.
She was, at any rate, not at all unwilling to initiate him into the
mysteries of Mr. Quincunx’ mind, hoping, perhaps, in an obscure sort
of way, that such an initiation would throw her own position, in this
strange household, into a light more evocative of considerate interest.
She had been so often made conscious of late that in his absorption
in Gladys he had swept her brusquely aside as a dull and tiresome
spoil-sport, that it was not without a certain feminine eagerness that
she embraced the thought of his being compelled to listen to what she
well knew Mr. Quincunx would have to say upon the matter.
It was also an agreeable thought that in doing justice to the
originality and depth of the recluse’s intelligence, the American
would be driven to recognize the essentially unintellectual tone of
conversation at Nevilton House.
She instinctively felt sure that the same generous and comprehensive
sympathy that led him to condone the vulgar lapses of these “new
people,” would lead him to embrace with more than toleration the
eccentricities and aberration of the forlorn relative of the Lords of
Glastonbury.
With these thoughts passing rapidly through her brain, Lacrima found
herself, after a little further hesitation, agreeing demurely to the
American’s proposal to visit the tenant of Dead Man’s Lane before
the end of the day. She left it uncertain at what precise hour they
should go--probably between tea and dinner--because she was anxious,
for her own sake, dreading her cousin’s anger, to make the adventure
synchronize, if possible, with the latter’s assignation with Luke,
trusting that the good turn she thus did her, by removing her artistic
admirer at a critical juncture, would propitiate the fair-haired
tyrant’s wrath.
This matter having been satisfactorily settled, the Italian began
to feel, as she observed the artist’s bold and challenging glance
embracing her from head to foot, while he continued to this new and
more attentive listener his interrupted monologue, that species of shy
and nervous restraint which invariably embarrassed her when left alone
in his society.
Inexperienced at detecting the difference between æsthetic interest and
emotional interest, and associating the latter with nothing but what
was brutal and gross, Lacrima experienced a disconcerting sort of shame
when under the scrutiny of his eyes.
Her timid comments upon his observations showed, however, so much more
subtle insight into his meaning than Gladys had ever displayed, that
it was with a genuine sense of regret that he accepted at last some
trifling excuse she offered and let her wander away. Feeling restless
and in need of distraction he returned to the house and sought the
society of Mrs. Romer.
He discovered this good lady seated in the housekeeper’s room, perusing
an illustrated paper and commenting upon its contents to the portly
Mrs. Murphy. The latter discreetly withdrew on the appearance of the
guest of the house, and Dangelis entered into conversation with his
hostess.
“Maurice Quincunx!” she cried, as soon as her visitor mentioned the
recluse’s queer name, “you don’t mean to say that Lacrima’s going to
take you to see _him_? Well--of all the nonsensical ideas I ever heard!
You’d better not tell Mortimer where you’re going. He’s just now very
angry with Maurice. It won’t please him at all, her taking you there.
Maurice is related to me, you know, not to Mr. Romer. Mr. Romer has
never liked him, and lately--but there! I needn’t go into all that.
We used to see quite a lot of him in the old days, when we first came
to Nevilton. I like to have someone about, you know, and Maurice was
somebody to talk to, when Mr. Romer was away; but lately things have
been quite different. It is all very sad and very tiresome, you know,
but what can a person do?”
This was the nearest approach to a hint of divergence between the
master and mistress of Nevilton that Dangelis had ever been witness to,
and even this may have been misleading, for the shrewd little eyes,
out of which the lady peered at him, over her spectacles, were more
expressive of mild malignity than of moral indignation.
“But what kind of person is this Mr. Quincunx?” enquired the American.
“I confess I can’t, so far, get any clear vision of his personality.
Won’t you tell me something more definite about him, something that
will ‘give me a line on him,’ as we say in the States?”
Mrs. Romer looked a trifle bewildered. It seemed that the personality
of Mr. Quincunx was not a topic that excited her conversational powers.
“I never really cared for him,” she finally remarked. “He used to talk
so unnaturally. He’d come over here, you know, almost every day--when
Gladys was a little girl,--and talk and talk and talk. I used to
think sometimes he wasn’t quite right here,”--the good lady tapped
her forehead with her fore-finger,--“but in some things he was very
sensible. I don’t mean that he spoke loud or shouted or was noisy.
Sometimes he didn’t say very much; but even when he didn’t speak, his
listening was like talking. Gladys used to be quite fond of him when
she was a little girl. He used to play hide-and-seek with her in the
garden. I think he helped me to keep her out of mischief more than
any of her governesses did. Once, you know, he beat Tom Raggles--the
miller’s son--because he followed her across the park--beat him over
the head, they say, with an iron pick. The lying wretch of a lad swore
that she had encouraged him, and we were driven to hush the matter up,
but I believe Mr. Quincunx had to see the inspector in Yeoborough.”
Beyond this somewhat obscure incident, Dangelis found it impossible
to draw from Mrs. Romer any intelligible answer to his questions. The
figure of the evasive tenant of the cottage in Dead Man’s Lane remained
as misty as ever.
A little irritated by the ill success of his psychological
investigations, the artist, conscious that he was wasting the morning,
began, out of sheer capricious wilfulness, to expound his æsthetic
ideas to this third interlocutor.
His nerves were in a morbid and unbalanced state, due partly to a lapse
in his creative energy, and partly to the fact that in the depths of
his mind he was engaged in a half-conscious struggle to suppress and
keep in its proper place the insidious physical attraction which Gladys
had already begun to exert upon him.
But the destiny of poor Dangelis, this inauspicious morning, was, it
seemed, to become a bore and a pedant to everyone he encountered; for
the lady had hardly listened for two minutes to his discourse when she
also left him, with some suitable apology, and went off to perform more
practical household duties. “What did this worthy Quincunx talk about,
that you used to find so tiresome?” the artist flung after her, as she
left the room.
Mrs. Romer turned on the threshold. “He talked of nothing but the
bible,” she said. “The bible and our blessed Lord. You can’t blame me,
Mr. Dangelis, for objecting to that sort of thing, can you? I call it
blasphemy, nothing short of blasphemy!”
Dangelis wondered, as he strolled out again into the air, intending to
seek solace for his irritable nerves in a solitary walk, whether, if it
were blasphemy in Nevilton House to refer to the Redeemer of men, and a
nuisance and a bore to refer to heathen idolatries, what kind of topic
it might be that the place’s mental atmosphere demanded.
He came to the conclusion, as he proceeded down the west drive, that
the Romer family was more stimulating to watch, than edifying to
converse with.
After tea that evening, as Lacrima had hoped, Gladys announced her
intention of going down to the mill to sketch. This--to Lacrima’s
initiated ears--meant an assignation with Luke, and she glanced quickly
at Dangelis, with a shy smile, to indicate that their projected visit
was possible. As soon as her cousin had departed they set out. Their
expedition seemed likely to prove a complete success. They found
Mr. Quincunx in one of his gayest moods. Had he been expecting the
appearance of the American he would probably have worked himself up
into a miserable state of nervous apprehension; but the introduction
thus suddenly thrust upon him, the genial simplicity of the Westerner’s
manners and his honest openness of speech disarmed him completely. In a
mood of this kind the recluse became a charming companion.
Dangelis was immensely delighted with him. His original remarks, and
the quaint chuckling bursts of sardonic laughter which accompanied
his irresistible sallies, struck the artist as something completely
different from what he had expected. He had looked to see a listless
preoccupied mystic, ready to flood him with dreamy and wearisome
monologues upon “the simple life,” and in place of this he found
an entertaining and gracious gentleman, full of delicious malice,
and uttering quip after quip of sly, half-innocent, half-subtle,
Rabelaisean humour, in the most natural manner in the world.
Not quite able to bring his affability to the point of inviting them
into his kitchen, Mr. Quincunx carried out, into a sheltered corner,
three rickety chairs and a small deal table. Here, protected from the
gusty wind, he offered them cups of exquisitely prepared cocoa and
little oatmeal biscuits. He asked the American question after question
about his life in the remote continent, putting into his enquiries such
naive and childlike eagerness, that Dangelis congratulated himself upon
having at last discovered an Englishman who was not superior to the
charming vice of curiosity. Had the artist possessed less of that large
and careless aplomb which makes the utmost of every situation and never
teases itself with criticism, he might have regarded the recluse’s
effusiveness as too deprecatory and propitiatory in its tone. This,
however, never occurred to him and he swallowed the solitary’s flattery
with joy and gratitude, especially as it followed so quickly upon the
conversational deficiencies of Nevilton House.
“I live in the mud here,” said Mr. Quincunx, “and that makes it so
excellent of you two people from the upper world to slip down into the
mud with me.”
“I think you live very happily and very sensibly, Maurice!” cried
Lacrima, looking with tender affection upon her friend. “I wish we
could all live as you do.”
The recluse waved his hand. “There must be lions and antelopes in the
world,” he said, “as well as frogs and toads. I expect this friend of
yours, who has seen the great cities, is at this moment wishing he were
in a café in New York or Paris, rather than sitting on a shaky chair
drinking my bad cocoa.”
“That’s not very complimentary to me, is it, Mr. Dangelis?” said
Lacrima.
“Mr. Quincunx is much to be envied,” remarked the American. “He is
living the sort of life that every man of sense would wish to live.
It’s outrageous, the way we let ourselves become slave to objects and
circumstances and people.”
Lacrima, anxious in the depths of her heart to give the American
the benefit of Mr. Quincunx’s insight into character, turned the
conversation in the direction of the rumored political contest between
Romer and Wone. She was not quite pleased with the result of this
manœuvre, however, as it at once diminished the solitary’s high spirits
and led to his adoption of the familiar querulous tone of peevish
carping.
Mr. Quincunx spoke of his remoteness from the life around him. He
referred with bitter sarcasm to the obsequious worship of power from
which every inhabitant of the village of Nevilton suffered.
“I laugh,” he said, “when our good socialist Wone gives vent to his
eloquent protestations. Really, in his heart, he is liable to just the
same cringing to power as all the rest. Let Romer make overtures to
him,--only he despises him too much to do that,--and you’d soon see how
quickly he’d swing round! Give him a position of power, Dangelis--I
expect you know from your experience in your own country how this works
out,--and you would soon find him just as tyrannical, just as obdurate.”
“I think you’re quite wrong, Maurice,” cried Lacrima impetuously. “Mr.
Wone is not an educated man as you are, but he’s entirely sincere.
You’ve only to listen to him to understand his sincerity.”
A grievous shadow of irritation and pique crossed the recluse’s face.
Nothing annoyed him more than this kind of direct opposition. He waved
the objection aside. Lacrima’s outburst of honest feeling had already
undone the subtle purpose with which she had brought the American. Her
evasive Balaam was, it appeared, inclined, out of pure wilfulness, to
bless rather than curse their grand enemy.
“It’s all injured vanity,” Mr. Quincunx went on, throwing at his
luckless girl-friend a look of quite disproportioned anger. “It’s all
his outraged power-instinct that drives him to take up this pose. I
know what I’m talking about, for I often argue with him. Whenever
I dispute the smallest point of his theories, he bursts out like a
demon and despises me as a downright fool. He’d have got me turned
out of the Social Meetings, because I contradicted him there, if our
worthy clergyman hadn’t intervened. You’ve no idea how deep this
power-instinct goes. You must remember, Mr. Dangelis, you see a village
like ours entirely from the outside and you think it beautiful, and the
people charming and gentle. I tell you it’s a nest of rattlesnakes!
It’s a narrow, poisonous cage, full of deadly vindictiveness and
concentrated malice. Of course we know what human nature is, wherever
you find it, but if you want to find it at its very worst, come to
Nevilton!”
“But you yourself,” protested the artist, “are you not one of these
same people? I understand that you--”
Mr. Quincunx rose to his feet, his expressive nostrils quivering with
anger. “I don’t allow anyone to say that of me!” he cried “I may have
my faults, but I’m as different from all these rats, as a guillemot is
different from a cormorant!”
He sat down again and his voice took almost a pleading tone. “You know
I’m different. You must know I’m different! How could I see all these
things as clearly as I do if it wasn’t so? I’ve undergone what that
German calls ‘the Great Renunciation.’ I’ve escaped the will to live.
I neither care to acquire myself this accursed power--or to revolt, in
jealous envy, against those who possess it.”
He relapsed into silence and contemplated his garden and its enclosing
hedge, with a look of profound melancholy. Dangelis had been
considerably distracted during the latter part of this discourse by his
artistic interest in the delicate lines of Lacrima’s figure and the
wistful sadness of her expression. It was borne in upon him that he
had somewhat neglected this shy cousin of his exuberant young friend.
He promised himself to see more of the Italian, as occasion served.
Perhaps--if only Gladys would agree to it--he might make use of her,
also, in his Dionysian impressions.
“Surely,” he remarked, speaking with the surface of his intelligence,
and pondering all the while upon the secret of Lacrima’s charm,
“whatever this man may be, he’s not a hypocrite,--is he? From all I
hear he’s pathetically in earnest.”
“Of course we know he’s in earnest,” answered Maurice. “What I maintain
is, that it is his personal vindictiveness that creates his opinions.
I believe he would derive genuine pleasure from seeing Nevilton House
burnt to the ground, and every one of the people in it reduced to
ashes!”
“That proves his sincerity,” answered the American, keeping his gaze
fixed so intently upon Lacrima that the girl began to be embarrassed.
“He takes the view-point, no doubt, that if the present oligarchy in
England were entirely destroyed, a new and happier epoch would begin at
once.”
“I’m sure Mr. Wone is opposed to every kind of violence,” threw in
Lacrima.
“Nonsense!” cried Mr. Quincunx abruptly. “He may not like violence
because he’s afraid of it reacting on himself. But what he wants to do
is to humiliate everyone above him, to disturb them, to prod them, to
harass and distress them, and if possible to bring them down to his own
level. He’s got his thumb on Lacrima’s friends over there,”--he waved
his hand in the direction of Nevilton House,--“because they happen
to be at the top of the tree at this moment. But if you or I were
there, it would be just the same. It’s all jealousy. That’s what it
is,--jealousy and envy! He wants to make every one who’s prosperous and
eats meat, and drinks champagne, know what it is to live a dog’s life,
as he has known it himself! I understand his feelings very well. We
poor toads, who live in the mud, get extraordinary pleasure when any of
you grand gentlemen slip by accident into our dirty pond. He sees such
people enjoying themselves and being happy and he wants to stick a few
pins into them!”
“But why not, my good sir?” answered the American. “Why shouldn’t Wone
use all his energy to crush Romer, just as Romer uses all his energy to
crush Wone?”
Lacrima sighed. “I don’t think either of you make this world seem a
very nice place,” she observed.
“A nice place?” cried Mr. Quincunx. “It’s a place poisoned at the
root--a place full of gall and wormwood!”
“In my humble opinion,” said the American, “it’s a splendid world. I
love to see these little struggles and contests going on. I love to see
the delicious inconsistencies and self-deceptions that we’re all guilty
of. I play the game myself, and I love to see others play it. It’s the
only thing I do love, except--” he added after a pause--“except my
pictures.”
“I loathe the game,” retorted the recluse, “and I find it impossible to
live with people who do not loathe it too.”
“Well--all I can say, my friend,” observed Dangelis, “is that this
business of ‘renouncing,’ of which you talk, doesn’t appeal to me. It
strikes me as a backing down and scurrying away, from the splendid
adventure of being alive at all. What are you alive for,” he added,
“if you are going to condemn the natural combative instinct of men and
women as evil and horrible? They are the instincts by which we live.
They are the motives that propel the whole universe.”
“Mr. Wone would say,” interposed Lacrima, “and I’m not sure that I
don’t agree with him, that the real secret of the universe is deeper
than all these unhappy struggles. I don’t like the unctuous way he puts
these things, but he may be right all the same.”
“There’s no secret of the universe, Miss Traffio,” the American
threw in. “There are many things we don’t understand. But no one
principle,--not even the principle of love itself, can be allowed to
monopolize the whole field. Life, I always feel, is better interpreted
by Art than by anything else, and Art is equally interested in every
kind of energy.”
Lacrima’s face clouded, and her hands fell wearily upon her lap.
“Some sorts of energy,” she observed, in a low voice, “are brutal and
dreadful. If Art expresses that kind, I’m afraid I don’t care for Art.”
The American gave her a quick, puzzled glance. There was a sorrowful
intensity about her tone which he found difficult to understand.
“What I meant was,” he said, “that logically we can only do one of two
things,--either join in the game and fight fiercely and craftily for
our own hand, or take a convenient drop of poison and end the whole
affair.”
The melancholy eyes of Mr. Quincunx opened very wide at this, and a
fluttering smile twitched the corners of his mouth.
“We poor dogs,” he said, “who are not wanted in this world, and don’t
believe in any other, are just the people who are most unwilling to
finish ourselves off in the way you suggest. We can’t help a sort of
sneaking hope, that somehow or another, through no effort of our own,
things will become better for us. The same cowardice that makes us draw
back from life, makes us draw back from the thought of death. Can’t you
understand that,--you American citizen?”
Dangelis looked from one to another of his companions. He could not
help thinking in his heart of the gay animated crowds, who, at that
very moment, in the streets of Toledo, Ohio, were pouring along the
side-walks and flooding the picture shows. These quaint Europeans, for
all their historic surroundings, were certainly lacking in the joy of
life.
“I can’t conceive,” remarked Mr. Quincunx suddenly, and with that
amazing candour which distinguished him, “how a person as artistic and
sensitive as you are, can stay with those people over there. Anyone can
see that you’re as different from them as light from darkness.”
“My dear sir,” replied the American, interrupting a feeble little
protest which Lacrima was beginning to make at the indiscretion of her
friend, “I may or may not understand your wonder. The point is, that
my whole principle of life is to deal boldly and freely with every kind
of person. Can’t you see that I like to look on at the spectacle of Mr.
Romer’s energy and prosperity, just as I like to look on at the revolt
against these things in the mind of our friend Wone. I tell you it
tickles my fancy to touch this human pantomime on every possible side.
The more unjust Romer is towards Wone, the more I am amused. And the
more unjust Wone is towards Romer, the more I am amused. It is out of
the clash of these opposite injustices that nature,--how shall I put
it?--that nature expands and grows.”
Mr. Quincunx gazed at the utterer of these antinomian sentiments, with
humorous interest. Dangelis gathered, from the twitching of his heavy
moustache, that he was chuckling like a goblin. The queer fellow had
a way of emerging out of his melancholy, at certain moments, like a
badger out of his hole; and at such times he would bring the most ideal
or speculative conversation down with a jerk to the very bed-rock of
reality.
“What’s amusing you so?” enquired the citizen of Ohio.
“I was only thinking,” chuckled Mr. Quincunx, stroking his beard,
and glancing sardonically at Lacrima, “that the real reason of your
enjoying yourself at Nevilton House, is quite a different one from any
you have mentioned.”
Dangelis was for the moment quite confused. “Confound the fellow!” he
muttered to himself, “I’m curst if I’m sorry he’s under the thumb of
our friend Romer!”
His equanimity was soon restored, however, and he covered his confusion
by assuming a light and flippant air.
“Ha! ha!” he exclaimed, “so you’re thinking I’ve been caught by
this young lady’s cousin? Well! I don’t mind confessing that we get
on beautifully together. But as for anything else, I think Miss
Traffio will bear witness that I am quite as devoted to the mother
as the daughter. But Gladys Romer must be admitted a very attractive
girl,--mustn’t she Miss Traffio? I suppose our friend here is not
so stern an ascetic as to refuse an artist like me the pleasure of
admiring such adorable suppleness as your cousin possesses; such
a--such a--” he waved his hand vaguely in the air, “such a free and
flexible sort of grace?”
Mr. Quincunx picked up a rough ash stick which lay on the ground and
prodded the earth. His face showed signs of growing once more convulsed
with indecent merriment.
“Why do you use all those long words?” he said. “We country dogs go
more straight to the point in these matters. Flexible grace! Can’t you
confess that you’re bitten by the old Satan, which we all have in us?
Adorable suppleness! Why can’t you say a buxom wench, a roguish wench,
a playful wanton wench? We country fellows don’t understand your subtle
artistic expressions. But we know what it is when an honest foreigner
like yourself goes walking and talking with a person like Madame
Gladys!”
Glancing apprehensively at the American’s face Lacrima saw that her
friend’s rudeness had made him, this time, seriously angry.
She rose from her chair. “We must be getting back,” she said, “or
we shall be late. I hope you and Mr. Dangelis will know more of one
another, before he has to leave Nevilton. I’m sure you’ll find that
you’ve quite a lot in common, when you really begin to understand each
other.”
The gravity and earnestness with which she uttered these words made
both her companions feel a little ashamed.
“After all,” thought the artist, “he is a typical Englishman.”
“After all,” thought Mr. Quincunx, “I’ve always been told that
Americans treat women as if they were made of tissue-paper.”
Their parting from the recluse at his garden gate was friendly and
natural. Mr. Quincunx reverted to his politest manner, and the artist’s
good temper seemed quite restored.
In retrospect, after the passing of a couple of days, spent by Dangelis
in preparing the accessories of his Ariadne picture, and by Gladys in
unpacking certain mysterious parcels telegraphed for to London, the
American found himself recalling his visit to Dead Man’s Cottage with
none but amiable feelings. The third morning which followed this visit,
dawned upon Nevilton with peculiar propitiousness. The air was windless
and full of delicious fragrance. The bright clear sunshine seemed to
penetrate every portion of the spacious Elizabethan mansion and to turn
its corridors and halls, filled with freshly plucked flowers, into a
sort of colossal garden house.
Dangelis rose that morning with a more than normal desire to plunge
into his work. He was considerably annoyed, however, to find that
Gladys had actually arranged to have Mr. Clavering invited to lunch and
had gone so far as to add a pencilled scrawl of her own--she herself
laughingly confessed as much--to her mother’s formal note, begging him
to appear in the middle of the forenoon, as she had a “surprise” in
store for him.
The American’s anxiety to begin work as soon as possible with his
attractive model, made him suffer miseries of impatience, while Gladys
amused herself with her Ariadne draperies, making Lacrima dress and
undress her twenty times, behind the screens of the studio.
She appeared at last, however, and the artist, looking up at her from
his canvas, was for the moment staggered by her beauty. The instinctive
taste of her cousin’s Latin fingers was shown in the exquisite skill
with which the classical folds of the dress she wore accentuated the
natural charm of her young form.
The stuff of which her chief garment was made was of a deep gentian
blue and the contrast between this color and the dazzling whiteness of
her neck and arms was enough to ravish not only the æsthetic soul in
the man but his more human senses also. Her bare feet were encased in
white sandals, bound by slender leathern straps, which were twisted
round her legs almost as high as the knee. A thin metal band, of
burnished bronze, was clasped about her head and over and under this,
her magnificent sun-coloured hair flowed, in easy and natural waves,
to where it was caught up, in a Grecian knot, above the nape of her
neck. Save for this band round her head she wore no clasps or jewelry
of any kind, and the softness of her flesh was made more emphatic by
the somewhat rough and coarse texture of her loosely folded drapery.
Dangelis was so lost in admiration of this delicious apparition, that
he hardly noticed Lacrima’s timid farewell, as the Italian slipped away
into the garden and left them together. It was indeed not till Gladys
had descended from the little wooden platform and coyly approached the
side of his easel, that the artist recovered himself.
“Upon my soul, but you look perfectly wonderful!” he cried
enthusiastically. “Quick! Let’s to business. I want to get well
started, before we have any interruption.”
He led her back to the platform, and made her lean in a semi-recumbent
position upon a cushioned bench which he had prepared for the purpose.
He took a long time to satisfy himself as to her precise pose, but at
last, with a lucky flash of inspiration, and not without assistance
from Gladys herself, whose want of æsthetic feeling was compensated for
in this case by the profoundest of all feminine instincts, he found for
her the inevitable, the supremely effective, position. It was with a
thrill of exquisite sweetness, pervading both soul and senses, that he
began painting her. He felt as though this were one of the few flawless
and unalloyed moments of his life. Everything in him and about him
seemed to vibrate and quiver in response to the breath of beauty and
youth. Penetrated by the delicate glow of a passion which was free, at
present, from the sting of sensual craving, he felt as though all the
accumulative impressions, of a long procession of harmonious days, were
summed up and focussed in this fortunate hour. The loveliness of the
young girl, as he transferred it, curve by curve, shadow by shadow, to
his canvas, seemed expressive of a reserved secret of enchantment,
until this moment withheld and concealed from him. The ravishing
contours of her lithe figure seemed to open up, to his magnetized
imagination, vistas and corridors of emotion, such as he had never
even dreamed of experiencing. She was more than a supremely lovely
girl. She was the very epitome and incarnation of all those sunward
striving forces and impulses, which, rising from the creative heart
of the universe, struggle upwards through the resisting darkness. She
was a Sun-child, a creature of air and earth and fire, a daughter of
Circe and Dionysus; and as he drained the so frankly offered philtre of
her intoxicating beauty, and flung his whole soul’s response to it in
glowing color upon the canvas, he felt that he would never again thus
catch the fates asleep, or thus plunge his hands into the nectar of the
supreme gods.
The world presented itself to him at that moment, while he swept his
brush with fierce passionate energy across the canvas, as bathed in
translucent and unclouded ether. Everything it contained, of weakness
and decadence, of gloom and misgiving, seemed to be transfigured,
illuminated, swallowed up. He felt as though, in thus touching the very
secret of divine joy, held in the lap of the abysmal mothers, nothing
but energy and beauty and creative force would ever concern or occupy
him again. All else,--all scruples, all questions, all problems, all
renunciations--seemed but irrelevant and negligible vapour, compared
with this glorious and sunlit stream of life. He worked on feverishly
at his task. By degrees, and in so incredibly a short time that
Gladys herself was astonished when he told her she could rest and
stretch herself a little, the figure of the Ariadne he had seen in his
imagination limned itself against the expectant background. He was
preparing to resume his labour, and Gladys, after a boyish scramble
into the neighbouring conservatory, and an eager return to the artist’s
side with a handful of early strawberries, was just re-mounting the
platform, when the door of the studio opened and Hugh Clavering entered.
He had been almost inclined,--in so morbid a condition were
his nerves--to knock at the door before coming in, but a lucky
after-thought had reminded him that such an action would have been
scandalously inappropriate.
Assuming an air of boyish familiarity, which harmonized better perhaps
with her leather-bound ankles than with her girlish figure, Gladys
jumped down at once from the little stage and ran gaily to welcome him.
She held out her hand, and then, raising both her arms to her head
and smoothing back her bright hair beneath its circlet of bronze, she
inquired of him, in a soft low murmur, whether he thought she looked
“nice.”
Clavering was struck dumb. He had all those shivering sensations of
trembling agitation which are described with such realistic emphasis
in the fragmentary poem of Sappho. The playful girl, her fair cheeks
flushed with excitement and a treacherous light in her blue eyes,
swung herself upon the rough oak table that stood in the middle of
the room, and sat there, smiling coyly at him, dangling her sandalled
feet. She still held in her hand the strawberries she had picked; and
as, with childish gusto, she put one after another of these between
her lips, she looked at him with an indescribable air of mischievous,
challenging defiance.
“So this is the pagan thing,” thought the poor priest, “that it is my
duty to initiate into the religion of sacrifice!”
He could not prevent the passing through his brain of a grotesque and
fantastic vision in which he saw himself, like a second hermit of the
Thebaid, leading this equivocal modern Thaïs to the waters of Jordan.
Certainly the association of such a mocking white-armed darling of
errant gods with the ceremony of confirmation was an image somewhat
difficult to embrace! The impatient artist, apologizing profusely to
the embarrassed visitor, soon dragged off his model to her couch on the
platform, and it fell to the lot of the infatuated priest to subside in
paralyzed helplessness, on a modest seat at the back of the room. What
thoughts, what wild unpermitted thoughts, chased one another in strange
procession through his soul, as he stared at the beautiful heathen
figure thus presented to his gaze!
The movements of the artist, the heavy stream of sunlight falling
aslant the room, the sweet exotic smells borne in from the window
opening on the conservatory, seemed all to float and waver about him,
as though they were things felt by a deep-sea diver beneath a weight
of humming waters. He gave himself up completely to what that moment
brought.
Faith, piety, sacrifice, devotion, became for him mere words and
phrases--broken, fragmentary, unmeaning--sounds heard in the
shadow-land of sleep, vague and indistinct like the murmur of drowned
bells under a brimming tide.
It may well be believed that the langourously reclining model was not
in the least oblivious to the effect she produced. This was, indeed,
one of Gladys’ supreme moments, and she let no single drop of its
honeyed distillation pass undrained. She permitted her heavy-lidded
blue eyes, suffused with a soft dreamy mist, to rest tenderly on her
impassioned lover; and as if in response to the desperate longing in
his look, a light-fluttering, half-wistful smile crossed her parted
lips, like a ripple upon a shadowy stream.
The girl’s vivid consciousness of the ecstasy of power was indeed,
in spite of her apparent lethargic passivity, never more insanely
aroused. Lurking beneath the dreamy sweetness of the look with which
she responded to Clavering’s magnetized gaze, were furtive depths of
Circean remorselessness. Under her gentian-blue robe her youthful
breast trembled with exultant pleasure, and she felt as though, with
every delicious breath she drew, she were drinking to the dregs the
very wine of the immortals.
“I must give Mr. Clavering some strawberries!” she suddenly cried,
jumping to her feet, and breaking both the emotional and the æsthetic
spell as if they were gossamer-threads. “He looks bored and tired.”
In vain the disconcerted artist uttered an imploring groan of dismay,
as thus, at the critical moment, his model betrayed him. In vain the
bewildered priest professed his complete innocence of any wish for
strawberries.
The wayward girl clambered once more through the conservatory window,
at the risk of spoiling her Olympian attire, and returning with a
handful of fruit, tripped coquettishly up to both of them in turn and
insisted on their dividing the spoil.
Had either of the two men been in a mood for classical reminiscences,
the famous image of Circe feeding her transformed lovers might have
been irresistibly evoked. They were all three thus occupied,--the
girl in the highest spirits, and both men feeling a little sulky and
embarrassed, when, to the general consternation, the door began slowly
to open, and a withered female figure, clad in a ragged shawl and a
still more dilapidated skirt made its entry into the room.
“Why, it’s Witch-Bessie!” cried Gladys, involuntarily clutching at
Clavering’s arm. “Wicked old thing! She gave me quite a start. Well,
Bessie, what do you want here? Don’t you know the way to the back door?
You mustn’t come round to the front like this. What do you want?”
Each of the model’s companions made a characteristic movement. Dangelis
began feeling in his pocket for some suitable coin, and Clavering
raised his hand with an half-reproachful, half-conciliatory, and
altogether pastoral gesture, as if at the same time threatening and
welcoming a lost sheep of his flock.
But Witch-Bessie had only eyes for Gladys. She stared in petrified
amazement at the gentian-blue robe and the boyish sandals.
“Send her away!” whispered the girl to Mr. Clavering. “Tell her to go
to the back door. They’ll give her food and things there.”
The cadaverous stare of the old woman relaxed at last. Fixing her
colourless eyes on the two men, and pointing at Gladys with her skinny
hand, she cried, in a shrill, querulous voice, that rang unpleasantly
through the studio, “What be she then, touzled up in like of this?
What be she then, with her Jezebel face and her shameless looks? Round
to back door, is it, ’ee ’d have me sent? I do know who you be, well
enough, Master Clavering, and I do guess this gentleman be him as they
say does bide here; but what be she, tricketed up in them outlandish
clothes, like a Gypoo from Roger-town Fair? Be she Miss Gladys Romer,
or baint she?”
“Come, Bessie,” said Clavering in propitiatory tone. “Do as the young
lady says and go round to the back. I’ll go with you if you like. I
expect they’ll have plenty of scraps for you in that big kitchen.”
He laid his hand on the old woman’s shoulder and tried to usher her
out. But she turned on him angrily. “Scraps!” she cried. “Scraps thee
own self! What does the like of a pair of gentlemen such as ye be,
flitter-mousing and flandering round, with a hussy like she?”
She turned furiously upon Gladys, waving aside with a snort of contempt
the silver coin which Dangelis, with a vague notion that “typical
English beggars” should be cajoled with gifts, sought to press into her
hand.
“’Twas to speak a bit of my mind to ’ee, not to beg at your blarsted
back door that I did come this fine morning! Us that do travel by
night and by day hears precious strange things sometimes. What for, my
fine lady, did ye go and swear to policeman Frank, down in Nevilton,
that ’twas I took your God-darned pigeons? Your dad may be a swinking
magistrate, what can send poor folks to gaol for snaring rabbities,
or putting a partridge in the pot to make the cabbage tasty, but what
right does that give a hussy like thee to send policeman Frank swearing
he’ll lock up old Bessie? It don’t suit wi’ I, this kind of flummery;
so I do tell ’ee plain and straight. It don’t suit wi’ I!”
“Come, clear out of this, my good woman!” cried the indignant
clergyman, seizing the trembling old creature by the arm.
“Don’t hurt her! Don’t hurt her!” exclaimed Gladys. “She’ll put the
evil eye on me. She did it to Nance Purvis and she’s been mad ever
since.”
“It’s a lie!” whimpered the old woman, struggling feebly as Clavering
pulled her towards the door.
“It’s your own dad and Nance’s dad with their ugly ways what have
driven that poor lass moon-crazy. Mark Purvis do whip her with withy
sticks--all the country knows it. Darn ’ee, for a black devil’s spawn,
and no blessed minister, pulling and harrying an old woman!”
This last ejaculation was addressed to the furious Mr. Clavering, who
was now thrusting her by bodily force through the open door. With
one final effort Witch-Bessie broke loose from him and turned on the
threshold. “Ye _shall_ have the evil eye, since ye’ve called for it,”
she shrieked, making a wild gesture in the air, in the direction of
the shrinking Ariadne. “And what if I let these two gentlemen know
with whom it was ye were out walking the other night? I did see ’ee,
and I do know what I did see! I’m a pigeon-stealer am I, ye flaunting
flandering Gypoo? Let me tell these dear gentlemen how as--” Her voice
died suddenly away in an incoherent splutter, as the vicar of Nevilton,
with his hand upon her mouth, swung her out of the door.
Gladys sank down upon a chair pale and trembling.
As soon, however, as the old woman’s departure seemed final, she began
to recover her equanimity. She gave vent to a rather forced and uneasy
laugh. “Silly old thing!” she exclaimed. “This comes of mother’s
getting rid of the dogs. She never used to come here when we had the
dogs. They scented her out in a minute. I wish we had them now to let
loose at her! They’d make her skip.”
“I do hope, my dear child,” said Dangelis anxiously, “that she has not
really frightened you? What a terrible old creature! I’ve always longed
to see a typical English witch, but bless my heart if I want to see
another!”
“She’s gone now,” announced Mr. Clavering, returning hot and
breathless. “I saw her half-way down the drive. She’ll be out of sight
directly. I expect you don’t want to see any more of her, else, if you
come out here a step or two, you can see her slinking away.”
Gladys thanked him warmly for his energetic defence of her, but denied
having the least wish to witness her enemy’s retreat.
“It must be getting near lunch time,” she said. “If you don’t mind
waiting a moment, I’ll change my dress.” And she tripped off behind the
screens.