"Oh it was all right; it was only awkward for me because you didn't
know," he replied.
"I did know; that's why I came."
"How do you mean? My letter couldn't have reached you."
"I don't know anything about your letter," Julia cast about her for a
chair and then seated herself on the edge of a sofa with her eyes on the
floor.
"She sat to me yesterday; she was there all the morning; but I didn't
write to tell you. I went at her with great energy and, absurd as it may
seem to you, found myself very tired afterwards. Besides, in the evening
I went to see her act."
"Does she act?" asked Mrs. Dallow.
"She's an actress: it's her profession. Don't you remember her that day
at Peter's in Paris? She's already a celebrity; she has great talent;
she's engaged at a theatre here and is making a sensation. As I tell
you, I saw her last night."
"You needn't tell me," Julia returned, looking up at him with a face of
which the intense, the tragic sadness startled him.
He had been standing before her, but at this he instantly sat down
close, taking her passive hand. "I want to, please; otherwise it must
seem so odd to you. I knew she was coming when I wrote to you the day
before yesterday. But I didn't tell you then because I didn't know how
it would turn out, and I didn't want to exult in advance over a poor
little attempt that might come to nothing. Moreover, it was no use
speaking of the matter at all unless I told you exactly how it had come
about," Nick went on, explaining kindly and copiously. "It was the
result of a visit unexpectedly paid me by Gabriel Nash."
"That man--the man who spoke to me?" Her memory of him shuddered into
life.
"He did what he thought would please you, but I daresay it didn't. You
met him in Paris and didn't like him; so I judged best to hold my tongue
about him."
"Do _you_ like him?"
"Very much."
"Great heaven!" Julia ejaculated, almost under her breath.
"The reason I was annoyed was because, somehow, when you came in, I
suddenly had the air of having got out of those visits and shut myself
up in town to do something that I had kept from you. And I have been
very unhappy till I could explain."
"You don't explain--you can't explain," Mrs Dallow declared, turning on
her companion eyes which, in spite of her studied stillness, expressed
deep excitement. "I knew it--I knew everything; that's why I came."
"It was a sort of second-sight--what they call a brainwave," Nick
smiled.
"I felt uneasy, I felt a kind of call; it came suddenly, yesterday. It
was irresistible; nothing could have kept me this morning."
"That's very serious, but it's still more delightful. You mustn't go
away again," said Nick. "We must stick together--forever and ever."
He put his arm round her, but she detached herself as soon as she felt
its pressure. She rose quickly, moving away, while, mystified, he sat
looking up at her as she had looked a few moments before at him. "I've
thought it all over; I've been thinking of it all day," she began.
"That's why I didn't come in."
"Don't think of it too much; it isn't worth it."
"You like it more than anything else. You do--you can't deny it," she
went on.
"My dear child, what are you talking about?" Nick asked, gently...
"That's what you like--doing what you were this morning; with women
lolling, with their things off, to be painted, and people like that
man."
Nick slowly got up, hesitating. "My dear Julia, apart from the surprise
this morning, do you object to the living model?"
"Not a bit, for you."
"What's the inconvenience then, since in my studio they're only for me?"
"You love it, you revel in it; that's what you want--the only thing you
want!" Julia broke out.
"To have models, lolling undressed women, do you mean?"
"That's what I felt, what I knew," she went on--"what came over me and
haunted me yesterday so that I couldn't throw it off. It seemed to me
that if I could see it with my eyes and have the perfect proof I should
feel better, I should be quiet. And now I _am_ quiet--after a struggle
of some hours, I confess. I _have_ seen; the whole thing's before me and
I'm satisfied."
"I'm not--to me neither the whole thing nor half of it is before me.
What exactly are you talking about?" Nick demanded.
"About what you were doing this morning. That's your innermost
preference, that's your secret passion."
"A feeble scratch at something serious? Yes, it was almost serious," he
said. "But it was an accident, this morning and yesterday: I got on less
wretchedly than I intended."
"I'm sure you've immense talent," Julia returned with a dreariness that
was almost droll.
"No, no, I might have had. I've plucked it up: it's too late for it to
flower. My dear Julia, I'm perfectly incompetent and perfectly
resigned."
"Yes, you looked so this morning, when you hung over her. Oh she'll
bring back your talent!"
"She's an obliging and even an intelligent creature, and I've no doubt
she would if she could," Nick conceded. "But I've received from you all
the help any woman's destined to give me. No one can do for me again
what you've done."
"I shouldn't try it again; I acted in ignorance. Oh I've thought it all
out!" Julia declared. And then with a strange face of anguish resting on
his own: "Before it's too late--before it's too late!"
"Too late for what?"
"For you to be free--for you to be free. And for me--for me to be free
too. You hate everything I like!" she flashed out. "Don't pretend, don't
pretend!" she went on as a sound of protest broke from him.
"I thought you so awfully _wanted_ me to paint," he gasped, flushed and
staring.
"I do--I do. That's why you must be free, why we must part?"
"Why we must part--?"
"Oh I've turned it well over. I've faced the hard truth. It wouldn't do
at all!" Julia rang out.
"I like the way you talk of it--as if it were a trimming for your
dress!" Nick retorted with bitterness. "Won't it do for you to be loved
and cherished as well as any woman in England?"
She turned away from him, closing her eyes as not to see something
dangerous. "You mustn't give anything up for me. I should feel it all
the while and I should hate it. I'm not afraid of the truth, but you
are."
"The truth, dear Julia? I only want to know it," Nick insisted. "It
seems to me in fact just what I've got hold of. When two persons are
united by the tenderest affection and are sane and generous and just, no
difficulties that occur in the union their life makes for them are
insurmountable, no problems are insoluble."
She appeared for a moment to reflect upon this: it was spoken in a tone
that might have touched her. Yet at the end of the moment, lifting her
eyes, she brought out: "I hate art, as you call it. I thought I did, I
knew I did; but till this morning I didn't know how much."
"Bless your dear soul, _that_ wasn't art," Nick pleaded. "The real thing
will be a thousand miles away from us; it will never come into the
house, _soyez tranquille_. It knows where to look in and where to flee
shrieking. Why then should you worry?"
"Because I want to understand, I want to know what I'm doing. You're an
artist: you are, you are!" Julia cried, accusing him passionately.
"My poor Julia, it isn't so easy as that, nor a character one can take
on from one day to the other. There are all sorts of things; one must be
caught young and put through the mill--one must see things as they are.
There are very few professions that goes with. There would be sacrifices
I never can make."
"Well then, there are sacrifices for both of us, and I can't make them
either. I daresay it's all right for you, but for me it would be a
terrible mistake. When I think I'm doing a certain thing I mustn't do
just the opposite," she kept on as for true lucidity. "There are things
I've thought of, the things I like best; and they're not what you mean.
It would be a great deception, and it's not the way I see my life, and
it would be misery if we don't understand."
He looked at her with eyes not lighted by her words. "If we don't
understand what?"
"That we're utterly different--that you're doing it all for _me_."
"And is that an objection to me--what I do for you?" he asked.
"You do too much. You're awfully good, you're generous, you're a dear,
oh yes--a dear. But that doesn't make me believe in it. I didn't at
bottom, from the first--that's why I made you wait, why I gave you your
freedom. Oh I've suspected you," Julia continued, "I had my ideas. It's
all right for you, but it won't do for me: I'm different altogether. Why
should it always be put upon me when I hate it? What have I done? I was
drenched with it before." These last words, as they broke forth, were
attended with a quick blush; so that Nick could as quickly discern in
them the uncalculated betrayal of an old irritation, an old shame
almost--her late husband's flat, inglorious taste for pretty things, his
indifference to every chance to play a public part. This had been the
humiliation of her youth, and it was indeed a perversity of fate that a
new alliance should contain for her even an oblique demand for the same
spirit of accommodation, impose on her the secret bitterness of the same
concessions. As Nick stood there before her, struggling sincerely with
the force that he now felt to be strong in her, the intense resolution
to break with him, a force matured in a few hours, he read a riddle that
hitherto had baffled him, saw a great mystery become simple. A personal
passion for him had all but thrown her into his arms (the sort of thing
that even a vain man--and Nick was not especially vain--might hesitate
to recognise the strength of); held in check at moments, with a strain
of the cord that he could still feel vibrate, by her deep, her rare
ambition, and arrested at the last only just in time to save her
calculations. His present glimpse of the immense extent of these
calculations didn't make him think her cold or poor; there was in fact a
positive strange heat in them and they struck him rather as grand and
high. The fact that she could drop him even while she longed for
him--drop him because it was now fixed in her mind that he wouldn't
after all serve her resolve to be associated, so far as a woman could,
with great affairs; that she could postpone, and postpone to an
uncertainty, the satisfaction of an aching tenderness and plan for the
long run--this exhibition of will and courage, of the larger scheme that
possessed her, commanded his admiration on the spot. He paid the heavy
price of the man of imagination; he was capable of far excursions of the
spirit, disloyalties to habit and even to faith, he was open to rare
communications. He ached, on his side, for the moment, to convince her
that he would achieve what he wouldn't, for the vision of his future she
had tried to entertain shone before him as a bribe and a challenge. It
struck him there was nothing he couldn't work for enough with her to be
so worked with by her. Presently he said:
"You want to be sure the man you marry will be prime minister of
England. But how can you be really sure with any one?"
"I can be really sure some men won't!" Julia returned.
"The only safe thing perhaps would be to-marry Mr. Macgeorge," he
suggested.
"Possibly not even him."
"You're a prime minister yourself," Nick made answer. "To hold fast to
you as I hold, to be determined to be of your party--isn't that
political enough, since you're the incarnation of politics?"
"Ah how you hate them!" she wailed again. "I saw that when I saw you
this morning. The whole place reeked of your aversion."
"My dear child, the greatest statesmen have had their distractions. What
do you make of my hereditary talent? That's a tremendous force."
"It wouldn't carry you far." Then she terribly added, "You must be a
great artist." He tossed his head at the involuntary contempt of this,
but she went on: "It's beautiful of you to want to give up anything, and
I like you for it. I shall always like you. We shall be friends, and I
shall always take an interest--!"
But he stopped her there, made a movement which interrupted her phrase,
and she suffered him to hold her hand as if she were not afraid of him
now. "It isn't only for you," he argued gently; "you're a great deal,
but you're not everything. Innumerable vows and pledges repose upon my
head. I'm inextricably committed and dedicated. I was brought up in the
temple like an infant Samuel; my father was a high-priest and I'm a
child of the Lord. And then the life itself--when _you_ speak of it I
feel stirred to my depths; it's like a herald's trumpet. Fight _with_
me, Julia--not against me! Be on my side and we shall do everything. It
is uplifting to be a great man before the people--to be loved by them,
to be followed by them. An artist isn't--never, never. Why _should_ he
be? Don't forget how clever I am."
"Oh if it wasn't for that!" she panted, pale with the effort to resist
his tone. Then she put it to him: "Do you pretend that if I were to die
to-morrow you'd stay in the House?"
"If you were to die? God knows! But you do singularly little justice to
my incentives," he pursued. "My political career's everything to my
mother."