He couldn’t help talking about it. He began at breakfast the next
morning, to his aunt.
“I’ve come across a very sad case,” he said. “Girl I used to know some
time ago. And now she’s married to an artist--rather prominent in the
past, but now he’s going blind. And they’re as poor as possible. What
can you do to help, in a case like that?”
Mrs. Allanby reflected.
“Aren’t there societies, dear, to help needy artists?”
“They don’t want charity!” he said, with his quick frown.
“What _do_ they want?”
He regretted having brought up the subject now. But his aunt could not
be stopped.
“Can’t the wife do something to help? Perhaps Ah could get someone
interested in the case. If you’ll give me the name and address,
Nick....”
“No! That’s not what I meant. I wanted you to think of some way that _I_
could do something for them.”
“I don’t suppose they’d care where the help came from, dear boy....”
“But _I_ would!” he said, angrily.
“_You_ would?” she said, and then was silent, with a tact a shade too
obvious. He was heartily sorry he had ever mentioned the thing.
His food seemed to choke him, when he thought of Rosaleen in want. He
felt gross, decadent, pampered, when he thought of her running through
the streets in her slippers, carrying immense packages. He began,
ridiculously, to deprive himself of things. It somehow gave him
consolation to make himself less comfortable.
He wrote to her again, and enclosed a larger cheque. (He the prudent,
the practical!)
“Dear Rosaleen:
“You must let me help you. If you won’t think of yourself, think of
others. You will wear yourself out, living like this. Tell me how I
can be of service.”
This letter, too, was never answered, and when four days had gone by, he
decided to go down there and see for himself how things were going. It
was a bright, quiet Sunday and he had contemplated asking her to go for
a walk, so that they could have a serious talk. But he found Lawrence
sitting alone in the studio.
“Rosaleen’s gone out,” he said. “I’m alone, and you can’t imagine how I
dislike being alone. Sit down and talk to me, won’t you? Of course I
quite realise that I’m not the magnet, and so on, but nevertheless....
Eh?”
In common decency, Nick was obliged to comply.
“Do you know,” Lawrence went on, “one of the worst things about this
thing is the monstrous jealousy it brings out. I’m jealous of Rosaleen.
Not as a husband, you understand; I’m not capable of that. I’ve never
been able to understand it. Why distress oneself so inordinately for the
frail creatures? Why not expect the worst? No, I’m jealous of her
because she can see and I can’t. And she doesn’t need to see.... I hate
her for it, sometimes.... Good God!... I’m growing worse and worse.
Everything is hazy now, as if there were a film over my eyes.
It--maddens me. I’m always trying to brush it away....”
He groaned, and drew his hand across his forehead.
“Let me grumble, young man!” he said. “Try to listen to me with a little
human compassion. Try to think what it means--not to _see_.”
“Yes,” said Landry. “I knew two or three chaps in the army....”
“Oh, asses! Young, healthy lustful animals, filled with their illusion
that they’ve saved the world with their blindness. But _me_! What
comfort have I? Landry, if I were God Himself, I couldn’t invent
anything more exquisitely hideous than that--to make an _artist_ blind!
An artist, who lives--who feeds himself on colour, whose ecstasy is in a
line, whose heart and soul are only to be reached through his eyes....
What an idea, eh?”
“Yes,” said Landry. “It must be pretty bad.”
But still he couldn’t help feeling more sorry for those young chaps he
had known, blinded in the war, who had had to renounce all the pleasant
ways of life. A fellow like Lawrence, with a brain, a fellow who could
_talk_, didn’t, somehow, seem as pitiful to him as those inarticulate,
suffering boys. Lawrence was queer, he was eccentric, and he no doubt
had queer and eccentric consolations unknown to those others. He
sympathised with Lawrence; certainly. But his mind strayed to Rosaleen.
Where had she gone? And with whom? He thought about it with growing
uneasiness. At last he took the bull by the horns.
“Where has Rosaleen gone?” he asked, in a tone as Bohemian and casual as
he could make it.
“With a new man,” said Lawrence. “A gentlemanly illustrator. Ah,
well!... What can one expect?”
Just as Lawrence was beginning one of his terrible dissertations on
cooking, there was a knock at the door, and a curly haired young man
entered. He asked for Rosaleen without ceremony.
“Out with Brindell, taking a walk,” said Lawrence. “Sit down, Matthews,
and have a drink!”
His manner was a curious blend of contempt and a terribly anxious
hospitality. He despised these two young men, but he wished above all
things to keep them there to talk to. Ambrose Matthews was a little more
to his liking than Landry; he was able to see his point of view, and to
discuss in all its subtle intricacies the anguish of the unfortunate
artist. This never failed to astound Landry. He didn’t see what possible
comfort it could be to Lawrence to dissect his sufferings, to describe
so vividly as to re-live his most horrible moments.
“I should think you’d rather try to forget it,” he observed, rather
bluntly.
Ambrose Matthews explained.
“My dear fellow, that’s the worst possible course. To repress, to
conceal, and all that sort of thing.... What we need is to drag
everything out into the sunlight. There the weeds will perish and the
hardy plants thrive.”
“Sunlight doesn’t kill weeds,” said Lawrence. “I don’t talk for the
benefit of my psyche, or my subconscious self, or my soul; I talk
because it interests me.”
Landry got up.
“I’ll have to be getting along!” he said. “Will you tell Rosaleen I’m
sorry I missed her?... Is there anything I can do for you before I go?”
“You might run in next door and get me a package of cigarettes,” said
Lawrence. “I’ve begun to smoke.”
Resentful and sulky, Landry did this, and when he returned with them, he
found Ambrose Matthews waiting for him.
“I’ll walk a part of the way with you,” he said, and, as was his habit,
took his companion’s arm.
“You haven’t seen Rosaleen’s latest, have you?” he asked.
“Latest what?” demanded Landry, stiffly.
“Latest--I don’t know what to call us. Latest One to Be Borrowed From.
He’s the fifth, to my knowledge. And why do we do it? She’s not even
grateful. It’s an interesting case.”
Landry withdrew his arm, under the pretext of lighting a cigarette.
“Not so interesting for _her_,” he said. “Poor girl!”
“It’s a sort of perverted sex instinct,” said Ambrose. “Her training has
been so repressive that she’s afraid to accept love, so she substitutes
money----”
“Rot!” said Landry, violently. “It’s nothing but an ‘instinct’ to get
something to eat for herself and her husband.”
Then Ambrose said that it was perhaps a perverted maternal instinct.
“She ought to have had children,” he said. “As it is, she lavishes on
him the maternal love she would have given to them.”
“She’s not perverted at all,” said Landry. “What you choose to call
perverted is what _I_ call--good.”