THE WILES OF THE FOWLER
Within a week of taking up her residence at "Mon Bijou," Evarne started
her career at Florelli's. She proved very painstaking, and earnest--so
much so as to cause considerable surprise to the other students, who had
judged, from the luxury of her attire and appointments, that she was a
mere _dilettante_.
She was far and away the most elementary pupil in the studio, and truth
to tell did not find it particularly interesting to sit alone hour after
hour in a corner, covering reams of Michallet, and using up boxes of
charcoal in repeated struggles to depict gigantic plaster replicas of
detached features from Michael Angelo's "David," or innumerable casts of
torsos, of arms and legs, hands and feet, in all sizes and
attitudes--painfully suggestive of amputations.
For stimulus and encouragement she would peep into the two rooms where
the more advanced students were working from life, in one room from the
costume model, in the other from the nude. The mental atmosphere of
these rooms was so full of energy and enthusiasm that she would return
with fresh ardour to her limbs and features.
Not that she was able to devote all her time to the services of the
exigent Muses, nor, alas! could this pursuit arouse the keenest, most
engrossing thoughts and energies of which her nature was capable.
Interest in this, as in everything else in the wide universe, showed
pallid and feeble before the overwhelming and concentrated interest of
her love for Morris Kenyon. There was something almost tragic in such a
domination. Barely seventeen, her heart and mind should have been still
too youthful, too immature, to conceive and sustain such force of
emotion.
Morris had many friends in Naples, and both visited and entertained
considerably. Evarne, both by reason of her studies and her recent loss,
could be prevailed upon to take very little part in any fêtes. Still,
she started to learn Italian, and was soon able to express her will to
Bianca in all simple matters, and to amuse Morris by her courageous,
laughable efforts.
She fancied herself a perfect little diplomatist, and was blissfully
unaware that her affection for him was very soon betrayed to his
experienced eye by her every look--every word--every action. Under the
circumstances, silence on the momentous topic so uppermost in both minds
was naturally not maintained for long.
One night as she sat on a footstool at his feet, spoiling her eyesight
by delicate fancy work, not speaking much, but at intervals contentedly
humming a little song, a sudden impatience at further waste of time took
possession of him.
"Evarne," he said abruptly, and as the girl in all unconsciousness
stayed her needle and looked up inquiringly, he bent forward, and
without any warning pressed his lips to hers. Then, shaken from his
habitual calm, he placed his hands heavily upon her shoulders and gazed
intently into her eyes, his expression telling yet more than his
actions.
She remained motionless as if hypnotised, her face still uplifted.
"Evarne, sweetest little Evarne!" he murmured after a pause, in accents
tender and caressing. At the sound of his voice she dropped her head
slowly lower and yet lower, until it finally rested upon his knee. Still
she spoke nothing.
Slipping his arms around her, he forcibly drew her up until her head was
pillowed upon his breast. Then he kissed her again and again, kissed her
brow, her hair, her cheeks, her mouth.
"Darling, are you happy?" he breathed at length into her ear.
Upon this the girl released herself from his hold, and kneeling erect by
his side, looked with wide-open, excited, somewhat horrified eyes
straight into his. It was no highly-wrought sentiment either of love or
indignation that fell from her lips. Simply, yet emphatically, she
cried--
"Oh, we mustn't! we mustn't! We were both forgetting your wife!"
Morris was rather proud of his versatility, and cultivated the art of
being all things to all women. The last lady on whom he had temporarily
bestowed his affections had, like Evarne, been tactless and
inconsiderate enough to invoke the memory of the happily absent one at a
critical moment. To Evarne's predecessor he had lightly remarked, "Oh!
hang my wife, Birdie. She doesn't count." Birdie had giggled, called him
a "naughty man," and there had been an end to that topic.
To have addressed any such flippant answer to Evarne and her clamouring
conscience would have meant the end of all things. Morris unhesitatingly
took the one and only course that would serve his turn now. He adopted
the plan of apparent perfect frankness, not only regarding the legal
partner of his joys and woes, but concerning much else that he had
hitherto kept hidden.
With many a sign of great mental struggle, now flashing forth eloquent
glances, now veiling his eyes from her clear, searching gaze, he made
confession of his deception concerning Mrs. Kenyon's promised presence
at "Mon Bijou." He waxed alternately ardent and pathetic as he
discoursed upon the love he bore Evarne and all that it meant to him,
vowing that it was the intensity of his affection alone that had
prompted him to his falsehood. He abused himself so unsparingly, that
half-unconsciously she was moved to utter a pleading little cry of pity
and expostulation.
Thereupon he went on to explain in touching terms that he was but a
lonely, desolate man, rapidly becoming weary of life, embittered and
miserable, until her charm, her sweet goodness, aroused him, awoke
affection and brought fresh zest into his existence--and so on, and so
on.
"My wife, well, she was a nicely-brought-up, rather silly girl, pretty
enough once and good-natured too, but now soured and aged by permanent,
incurable illness. There is no bond of any kind between us. We have not
a thought in common. There are no children; she can never be either
companion or wife to me. Frail though she is, she has a marvellous
vitality, a wondrous clinging to life. Such unhappy existences--a curse
to themselves and others,--are always prolonged. Think of it, dearest,
think what it means to a man to be practically tied to a corpse, cut off
from all the joy of living."
Then he soared to lofty heights of moralising, told her--or at least
implied--that all his hopes of heaven rested upon her gentle influence
and affection. "I may seem to others but a hard, somewhat cynical man of
the world, yet I have got here"--and in true dramatic style he struck
his breast over the supposed region of a presumably panting heart--"I
have got here a longing for a true woman's disinterested, faithful
affection, such as many a sentimental stringer together of rhymes has
never experienced. Evarne, care for me a little; love me, darling. Let
me love you. It means everything to me."
All this sentiment quite overcame his sweet-natured listener. Morris had
made a studied though carefully veiled appeal, either by his looks or
his words, direct to her most generous instincts. If much of it was mere
acting--exaggerated and artificial--his passionate desire to gain her
love was real enough. It was no reproach to frank, unsuspicious,
inexperienced Evarne--already blinded by affection--that she could see
only the evident sincerity that inspired all this bombast.
A flood of tender pity and sympathy swelled in her breast; all
resentment at his deception, all hesitation and restraint, were swept
away. If the assurance of her deep love, her utter trust, did in very
truth mean happiness to him, it should be his. Rising to her feet
impulsively, she pressed his head with almost fierce force against her
bosom, murmuring, "I do love you, my dear one. Indeed, I do love you."
Then she bent over, and almost reverently pressed a long kiss upon his
brow.
So far, so good, and in mutual love confessed Evarne's ideal was
attained! It was rather incomprehensible that she could for one minute
have supposed that "finis" would be written in Morris's masculine
conception of the old, old story, at a similar point to where it
appeared in the poetical version that had been evolved from out her
imagination. Yet when, in the course of a very short time, the
inevitable discovery was made that he had never entertained the notion
of loving her as an "inspiration to a noble life," nor as a "kindred
soul," nor as his "good angel," but merely as a man always loves a
woman, and that he sought a return of affection in kind, it came as a
stunning revelation.
At first Morris had not been at all sure but that she would endeavour to
shake the dust of "Mon Bijou" from her feet without delay. In fact, he
always declared that, probably inspired by the vicinity of Capri, she
had given him to understand that he was on a moral level with the
defunct Tiberius. But for her own part her first recollections that were
at all clear and distinct were very different.
In all moments of mental disturbance her first desire was for solitude,
and in this crisis, bidding Morris not to follow her, she sped wildly
out into the dark garden. There, leaning for support against the pillar
of a statue, and gazing up at the serene masses of white clouds and the
tinted halo encircling the moon, breathing in the perfume of the earth
and its green growth, while a gentle breath of sea-breezes played with
her heavy hair, she gradually regained calmness.
Her Greek studies had taught her much--so much that she had believed
there was but little left for her to learn. Yet to us all is life an
untold tale--strange, unique, unguessed. What wisdom of sage, what
sensual raptures of pagan poet, had ever prompted her to anticipate the
exaltation, the triumph, that awoke at the realisation that she too had
her share in the resistless power of womanhood? She felt plunged into
full harmony with nature--felt herself knit to the great heart of woman
all the world over by the sentient cords of sex-sympathy.
Carried out of herself she flung back her head and gave utterance to
emotion by lifting up her voice in song--just full rich notes that
rolled forth unconsidered, all unhampered by words--a spontaneous
outpouring of glorification and the joy of victory. Pressing both hands
hard upon her bosom she felt the force with which it rose and fell
beneath her deep breathing, and strangely delighted, the girl laughed
triumphantly with the notes of her song.
A sudden step near by startled her into abrupt shamefaced silence:
Morris stood by her side. He had been seeking her in the garden and had
traced her by this wild song that broke the stillness of the night.
Unrestricted displays of feeling were entirely new to Evarne, her
previous uneventful routine having given scant cause for much excitement
of any sort. Now she felt keen abashment at her extraordinary show of
emotion, and was almost humiliated to realise that she was not alone.
"I told you not to follow me. I don't want you," she said quickly and
decidedly.
For a moment Morris was startled; then he understood the change that was
beginning to take place in her mind. No longer was she a simple child
addressing her guardian and benefactor, but a woman growing conscious of
her own power. Of course she would be whimsical, capricious, alternately
authoritative and submissive, wilful and yielding, like the rest of the
darlings.
"I meant to obey," he answered with ready meekness, "but can you blame
the impotence of mortal man's resolution when the siren calls?"
Sudden anger flashed over Evarne at this vague suggestion that she had
fled from him only to draw him to her side again by her voice.
"I'm not a siren, and I don't say one thing and mean another, though I
know you find it difficult to believe that of any woman," she replied
curtly, and with head erect walked back through the French window into
the brightly-lit room. Once safely out of sight, she darted rapidly
upstairs to the safety of her own room.
In a minute or two she heard her name called softly through the door,
then the pleading whisper--
"Evarne, I can have no rest unless I know you are not angry with me."
She was silent for a moment, but the delay was brief. No resentment
could endure before the music of that dear voice. She guessed right well
that a locked door between them was all-sufficient for Morris to endure,
so answered him generously, as her heart prompted--
"Rest, then; rest happily now and ever."
Within the peaceful sanctuary of her delicate green and white bedroom,
the chief amid her more normal thoughts and feelings resumed their sway.
Foremost came that imperative demand for self-approbation--that pride in
self--that made her ever the slave of what she held to be honourable.
The spirit of righteousness sprang up alert, quick to wage war against
the mere suggestion that under any provocation--any excuse of
overwhelming stress of love--she should permit herself to be stained by
dishonour.
Strong and self-confident, the girl at last sank to sleep. But her
slumber was light, and early next morning she was awake and thoughtful.
She acknowledged being glad to have experienced the sensations of last
night--glad to have been granted that period of exaltation, and to have
revelled in it to the full. It had made all life seem more
understandable and interesting--yet it had brought about no wondrous
change of personality! Evarne still remained herself; still good and
conscientious and new to the ways of love; a young philosopher, and
therefore indulgent to the natural frailties of mankind. She esteemed
Morris not one whit the less for having shown himself but human;
yet--realising that he could not make her his wife--her conscience and
her wishes united in the resolution that love 'twixt him and herself
must ever remain a thing ethereal--a poem--a fair dream--a sweet
sentiment blossoming only in the soul.
She went to Florelli's as usual, but her studies occupied a very
secondary place in her thoughts. All she meant to say to Morris--all he
might perhaps answer--all the beautiful sentiments she had to express
and which she was sure must appeal so irresistibly to him--all the lofty
ideals of her soul that she was going to impart to his--obtruded
themselves between her mind and her drawing.
As she dressed for dinner that evening an unexpected shyness crept over
her, and it was with quite an effort that she went downstairs. But all
imagined difficulties and embarrassments faded like snow before the
sunlight of his eyes. Her own danced for joy at being in his presence
again, yet there was a touch of stiffness and formality in her demeanour
that was new.
Morris listened more or less patiently to her dear little sermons, and
with difficulty resisted stopping her pretty lips with kisses. But she
was very much on her dignity that night, so assuring her that she was
nothing more than a sweet, refreshing baby, he merely delivered a sermon
on his own account, with a very different text.
That night the influence of the day's high meditation rendered her proof
against his sophistries, but as time passed their steady reiteration
began to make headway. Morris unswervingly bent all his powers to gain
control of the situation. The sport amused him. He had nothing to
distract his attention, and the prize was so well worth the winning that
time and trouble were as nothing. He attempted no sudden decisive
_coup_, feeling greater confidence in the weapons of gentle argument and
persuasion, patience and a discreet mingling of ardour and forbearance.