those whoyou really like, of course; and they'd each have a house to
themselves--there'd be lots of houses, and no relations at all, unless
they promised they'd be pleasant, and if they weren't they'd have to
go."
"So you wouldn't have any relations?" said the artist. "Well, perhaps
you're right. We have tastes in common, I see."
"I'd have Harold," I said reflectively, "and Charlotte. They'd like it
awfully. The others are getting too old. Oh! and Martha--I'd have
Martha to cook and wash up and do things. You'd like Martha. She's
ever so much nicer than Aunt Eliza. She's my idea of a real lady."
"Then I'm sure I should like her," he replied heartily, "and when I
come to--what do you call this city of yours? Nephelo--something, did
you say!"
"I--I don't know," I replied timidly. "I'm afraid it hasn't got a
name--yet."
The artist gazed out over the downs. "'The poet says dear city of
Cecrops;'" he said softly to himself, "'and wilt not thou say, dear
city of Zeus?' That's from Marcus Aurelius," he went on, turning again
to his work. "You don't know him, I suppose; you will some day."
"Who's he?" I inquired.
"Oh, just another fellow who lived in Rome," he replied, dabbing away.
"O dear!" I cried, disconsolately. "What a lot of people seem to live
at Rome, and I've never even been there! But I think I'd like _my_
city best."
"And so would I," he replied with unction. "But Marcus Aurelius
wouldn't, you know."
"Then we won't invite him," I said: "will we?"
"_I_ won't if you won't," said he. And that point being settled, we
were silent for a while.
"Do you know," he said presently, "I've met one or two fellows from
time to time, who have been to a city like yours--perhaps it was the
same one. They won't talk much about it--only broken hints, now and
then; but they've been there sure enough. They don't seem to care
about anything in particular--and everything's the same to them, rough
or smooth; and sooner or later they slip off and disappear; and you
never see them again. Gone back, I suppose."
"Of course," said I. "Don't see what they ever came away for; _I_
wouldn't. To be told you've broken things when you haven't, and
stopped having tea with the servants in the kitchen, and not allowed
to have a dog to sleep with you. But _I've_ known people, too, who've
gone there."
The artist stared, but without incivility.
"Well, there's Lancelot," I went on. "The book says he died, but it
never seemed to read right, somehow. He just went away, like Arthur.
And Crusoe, when he got tired of wearing clothes and being
respectable. And all the nice men in the stories who don't marry the
Princess, 'cos only one man ever gets married in a book, you know.
They'll be there!"
"And the men who fail," he said, "who try like the rest, and toil, and
eat their hearts out, and somehow miss--or break down or get bowled
over in the mêlée--and get no Princess, nor even a second-class
kingdom--some of them'll be there, I hope?"
"Yes, if you like," I replied, not quite understanding him; "if
they're friends of yours, we'll ask 'em, of course."
"What a time we shall have!" said the artist reflectively; "and how
shocked old Marcus Aurelius will be!"
The shadows had lengthened uncannily, a tide of golden haze began to
flood the grey-green surface of the downs, and the artist put his
traps together, preparatory to a move. I felt very low: we would have
to part, it seemed, just as we were getting on so well together. Then
he stood up, and he was very straight and tall, and the sunset was in
his hair and beard as he stood there, high over me. He took my hand
like an equal. "I've enjoyed our conversation very much," he said.
"That was an interesting subject you started, and we haven't half
exhausted it. We shall meet again, I hope?"
"Of course we shall," I replied, surprised that there should be any
doubt about it.
"In Rome perhaps?" said he.
"Yes, in Rome," I answered; "or Piccy-the-other-place, or somewhere."
"Or else," said he, "in that other city--when we've found the way
there. And I'll look out for you, and you'll sing out as soon as you
see me. And we'll go down the street arm-in-arm, and into all the
shops, and then I'll choose my house, and you'll choose your house,
and we'll live there like princes and good fellows."
"Oh, but you'll stay in my house, won't you?" I cried; "I wouldn't ask
everybody; but I'll ask _you_."
He affected to consider a moment; then "Right!" he said: "I believe
you mean it, and I _will_ come and stay with you. I won't go to
anybody else, if they ask me ever so much. And I'll stay quite a long
time, too, and I won't be any trouble."
Upon this compact we parted, and I went down-heartedly from the man
who understood me, back to the house where I never could do anything
right. How was it that everything seemed natural and sensible to him,
which these uncles, vicars, and other grown-up men took for the merest
tomfoolery? Well, he would explain this, and many another thing, when
we met again. The Knight's Road! How it always brought consolation!
Was he possibly one of those vanished knights I had been looking for
so long? Perhaps he would be in armour next time--why not? He would
look well in armour, I thought. And I would take care to get there
first, and see the sunlight flash and play on his helmet and shield,
as he rode up the High Street of the Golden City.
Meantime, there only remained the finding it,--an easy matter.
Three Pictures
By Walter Sickert
I. The Old Bedford Music Hall
II. Portrait of Aubrey Beardsley
III. Ada Lundberg
[Illustration: The Old Bedford Music Hall]
[Illustration: Portrait of Aubrey Beardsley]
[Illustration: Ada Lundberg]
Betrothed
By Norman Gale
She is mine in the day,
She is mine in the dusk;
She is virgin as dawn,
And as fragrant as musk.
And the wood on the hill
Is the home where we meet--
O, the coming of eve,
It is marvellous sweet!
To my satisfied heart
She has flown like a dove;
All her kisses are taught
By the wisdom of love.
And whatever my grief
There is healing, and rest,
On the pear-blossom slope
Of her beautiful breast.
Thy Heart's Desire
By Netta Syrett
I
The tents were pitched in a little plain surrounded by hills. Right
and left there were stretches of tender vivid green where the young
corn was springing; further still, on either hand, the plain was
yellow with mustard-flower; but in the immediate foreground it was
bare and stony. A few thorny bushes pushed their straggling way
through the dry soil, ineffectively as far as the grace of the
landscape was concerned, for they merely served to emphasise the
barren aridness of the land that stretched before the tents, sloping
gradually to the distant hills.
The hills were uninteresting enough in themselves; they had no
grandeur of outline, no picturesqueness even, though at morning and
evening the sun, like a great magician, clothed them with beauty at a
touch.
They had begun to change, to soften, to blush rose-red in the evening
light, when a woman came to the entrance of the largest of the tents
and looked towards them. She leant against the support on one side of
the canvas flap, and putting back her head, rested that too against
it, while her eyes wandered over the plain and over the distant hills.
She was bareheaded, for the covering of the tent projected a few feet
to form an awning overhead. The gentle breeze which had risen with
sundown, stirred the soft brown tendrils of hair on her temples, and
fluttered her pink cotton gown a little. She stood very still, with
her arms hanging and her hands clasped loosely in front of her. There
was about her whole attitude an air of studied quiet which in some
vague fashion the slight clasp of her hands accentuated. Her face,
with its tightly, almost rigidly closed lips, would have been quite in
keeping with the impression of conscious calm which her entire
presence suggested, had it not been that when she raised her eyes a
strange contradiction to this idea was afforded. They were large grey
eyes, unusually bright and rather startling in effect, for they seemed
the only live thing about her. Gleaming from her still set face, there
was something almost alarming in their brilliancy. They softened with
a sudden glow of pleasure as they rested on the translucent green of
the wheat fields under the broad generous sunlight, and then wandered
to where the pure vivid yellow of the mustard-flower spread in waves
to the base of the hills, now mystically veiled in radiance. She stood
motionless watching their melting elusive changes from palpitating
rose to the transparent purple of amethyst. The stillness of evening
was broken by the monotonous, not unmusical creaking of a Persian
wheel at some little distance to the left of the tent. The well stood
in a little grove of trees: between their branches she could see, when
she turned her head, the coloured _saris_ of the village women, where
they stood in groups chattering as they drew the water, and the little
naked brown babies that toddled beside them or sprawled on the hard
ground beneath the trees. From the village of flat-roofed mud-houses
under the low hill at the back of the tents, other women were crossing
the plain towards the well, their terra-cotta water-jars poised easily
on their heads, casting long shadows on the sun-baked ground as they
came.
Presently, in the distance, from the direction of the sunlit hills
opposite, a little group of men came into sight. Far off, the
mustard-coloured jackets and the red turbans of the orderlies made
vivid splashes of colour on the dull plain. As they came nearer, the
guns slung across their shoulders, the cases of mathematical
instruments, the hammers and other heavy baggage they carried for the
Sahib, became visible. A little in front, at walking pace, rode the
Sahib himself, making notes as he came in a book he held before him.
The girl at the tent-entrance watched the advance of the little
company indifferently, it seemed; except for a slight tightening of
the muscles about her mouth, her face remained unchanged. While he was
still some little distance away, the man with the note-book raised his
head and smiled awkwardly as he saw her standing there. Awkwardness,
perhaps, best describes the whole man. He was badly put together,
loose-jointed, ungainly. The fact that he was tall profited him
nothing, for it merely emphasised the extreme ungracefulness of his
figure. His long pale face was made paler by a shock of coarse,
tow-coloured hair; his eyes even looked colourless, though they were
certainly the least uninteresting feature of his face, for they were
not devoid of expression. He had a way of slouching when he moved that
singularly intensified the general uncouthness of his appearance. "Are
you very tired?" asked his wife gently when he had dismounted close to
the tent. The question would have been an unnecessary one had it been
put to her instead of to her husband, for her voice had that peculiar
flat toneless sound for which extreme weariness is answerable.
"Well, no, my dear, not very," he replied, drawling out the words with
an exasperating air of delivering a final verdict, after deep
reflection on the subject.
The girl glanced once more at the fading colours on the hills. "Come
in and rest," she said, moving aside a little to let him pass.
She stood lingering a moment after he had entered the tent, as though
unwilling to leave the outer air; and before she turned to follow him
she drew a deep breath, and her hand went for one swift second to her
throat as though she felt stifled.
* * * * *
Later on that evening she sat in her tent sewing by the light of the
lamp that stood on her little table.
Opposite to her, her husband stretched his ungainly length in a
deck-chair, and turned over a pile of official notes. Every now and
then her eyes wandered from the gay silks of the table-cover she was
embroidering to the canvas walls which bounded the narrow space into
which their few household goods were crowded. Outside there was a deep
hush. The silence of the vast empty plain seemed to work its way
slowly, steadily in, towards the little patch of light set in its
midst. The girl felt it in every nerve; it was as though some
soft-footed, noiseless, shapeless creature, whose presence she only
dimly divined, was approaching nearer--_nearer_. The heavy outer
stillness was in some way made more terrifying by the rustle of the
papers her husband was reading, by the creaking of his chair as he
moved, and by the little fidgeting grunts and half exclamations which
from time to time broke from him. His wife's hand shook at every
unintelligible mutter from him, and the slight habitual contraction
between her eyes deepened.
All at once she threw her work down on to the table. "For Heaven's
sake----_please_, John, _talk_!" she cried. Her eyes, for the moment's
space in which they met the startled ones of her husband, had a wild
hunted look, but it was gone almost before his slow brain had time to
note that it had been there--and was vaguely disturbing. She laughed a
little, unsteadily.
"Did I startle you? I'm sorry. I----" she laughed again. "I believe
I'm a little nervous. When one is all day alone----" She paused
without finishing the sentence. The man's face changed suddenly. A
wave of tenderness swept over it, and at the same time an expression
of half-incredulous delight shone in his pale eyes.
"Poor little girl, are you really lonely?" he said. Even the real
feeling in his tone failed to rob his voice of its peculiarly
irritating grating quality. He rose awkwardly and moved to his wife's
side.
Involuntarily she shrank a little, and the hand which he had stretched
out to touch her hair sank to his side. She recovered herself
immediately and turned her face up to his, though she did not raise
her eyes; but he did not kiss her. Instead, he stood in an embarrassed
fashion a moment by her side, and then went back to his seat.
There was silence again for some time. The man lay back in his chair,
gazing at his big clumsy shoes, as though he hoped for some
inspiration from that quarter, while his wife worked with nervous
haste.
"Don't let me keep you from reading, John," she said, and her voice
had regained its usual gentle tone.
"No, my dear; I'm just thinking of something to say to you, but I
don't seem----"
She smiled a little. In spite of herself, her lip curled faintly.
"Don't worry about it--it was stupid of me to expect it. I mean----"
she added hastily, immediately repenting the sarcasm. She glanced
furtively at him, but his face was quite unmoved. Evidently he had not
noticed it, and she smiled faintly again.
"Oh, Kathie, I knew there was _something_ I'd forgotten to tell you,
my dear; there's a man coming down here. I don't know whether----"
She looked up sharply. "A man coming _here_? What for?" she
interrupted breathlessly.
"Sent to help me about this oil-boring business, my dear."
He had lighted his pipe, and was smoking placidly, taking long whiffs
between his words.
"Well?" impatiently questioned his wife, fixing her bright eyes on his
face.
"Well--that's all, my dear."
She checked an exclamation. "But don't you know anything about
him--his name? where he comes from? what he is like?" She was leaning
forward against the table, her needle with a long end of yellow silk
drawn halfway through her work, held in her upraised hand, her whole
attitude one of quivering excitement and expectancy.
The man took his pipe from his mouth deliberately, with a look of slow
wonder.
"Why Kathie, you seem quite anxious. I didn't know you'd be so
interested, my dear. Well,"--another long pull at his pipe--"his
name's Brook--_Brookfield_, I think." He paused again. "This pipe
don't draw well a bit; there's something wrong with it, I shouldn't
wonder," he added, taking it out and examining the bowl as though
struck with the brilliance of the idea.
The woman opposite put down her work and clenched her hands under the
table.
"Go on, John," she said presently in a tense vibrating voice--"his
name is Brookfield. Well, where does he come from?"
"Straight from home, my dear, I believe." He fumbled in his pocket,
and after some time extricated a pencil with which he began to poke
the tobacco in the bowl in an ineffectual aimless fashion, becoming
completely engrossed in the occupation apparently. There was another
long pause. The woman went on working, or feigning to work, for her
hands were trembling a good deal.
After some moments she raised her head again. "John, will you mind
attending to me one moment, and answering these questions as quickly
as you can?" The emphasis on the last word was so faint as to be
almost as imperceptible as the touch of exasperated contempt which she
could not absolutely banish from her tone.
Her husband, looking up, met her clear bright gaze and reddened like a
schoolboy.
"Whereabouts '_from home_' does he come?" she asked in a studiedly
gentle fashion.
"Well, from London, I think," he replied, almost briskly for him,
though he stammered and tripped over the words. "He's a University
chap; I used to hear he was clever--I don't know about that, I'm sure;
he used to chaff me, I remember, but----"
"Chaff _you_? You have met him then?"
"Yes, my dear"--he was fast relapsing into his slow drawl again--"that
is, I went to school with him, but it's a long time ago.
Brookfield--yes, that must be his name."
She waited a moment, then "When is he coming?" she inquired abruptly.
"Let me see--to-day's----"
"_Monday_," the word came swiftly between her set teeth.
"Ah, yes,--Monday--well," reflectively, "_next_ Monday, my dear."
Mrs. Drayton rose, and began to pace softly the narrow passage between
the table and the tent-wall, her hands clasped loosely behind her.
"How long have you known this?" she said, stopping abruptly. "Oh,
John, you _needn't_ consider; it's quite a simple question. To-day?
Yesterday?"
Her foot moved restlessly on the ground as she waited.
"I think it was the day before yesterday," he replied.
"Then why in Heaven's name didn't you tell me before?" she broke out
fiercely.
"My dear, it slipped my memory. If I'd thought you would be
interested----"
"Interested?" She laughed shortly. "It _is_ rather interesting to hear
that after six months of this"--she made a quick comprehensive gesture
with her hand--"one will have some one to speak to--some one. It is
the hand of Providence; it comes just in time to save me from----" She
checked herself abruptly.
He sat staring up at her stupidly, without a word.
"It's all right, John," she said, with a quick change of tone,
gathering up her work quietly as she spoke. "I'm not mad--yet.
You--you must get used to these little outbreaks," she added after a
moment, smiling faintly, "and to do me justice, I don't _often_
trouble you with them, do I? I'm just a little tired, or it's the heat
or--something. No--don't touch me," she cried, shrinking back, for he
had risen slowly and was coming towards her.
She had lost command over her voice, and the shrill note of horror in
it was unmistakable. The man heard it, and shrank in his turn.
"I'm so sorry, John," she murmured, raising her great bright eyes to
his face. They had not lost their goaded expression, though they were
full of tears. "I'm awfully sorry, but I'm just nervous and stupid,
and I can't bear _any one_ to touch me when I'm nervous."
II
"Here's Broomhurst, my dear! I made a mistake in his name after all, I
find. I told you _Brookfield_, I believe, didn't I? Well, it isn't
Brookfield, he says; it's Broomhurst."
Mrs. Drayton had walked some little distance across the plain to meet
and welcome the expected guest. She stood quietly waiting while her
husband stammered over his incoherent sentences, and then put out her
hand.
"We are very glad to see you," she said with a quick glance at the
newcomer's face as she spoke.
As they walked together towards the tent, after the first greetings,
she felt his keen eyes upon her before he turned to her husband.
"I'm afraid Mrs. Drayton finds the climate trying?" he asked. "Perhaps
she ought not to have come so far in this heat?"
"Kathie is often pale. You _do_ look white to-day, my dear," he
observed, turning anxiously towards his wife.
"Do I?" she replied. The unsteadiness of her tone was hardly
appreciable, but it was not lost on Broomhurst's quick ears. "Oh, I
don't think so. I _feel_ very well."
"I'll come and see if they've fixed you up all right," said Drayton,
following his companion towards the new tent that had been pitched at
some little distance from the large one.
"We shall see you at dinner then?" Mrs. Drayton observed in reply to
Broomhurst's smile as they parted.
She entered the tent slowly, and moving up to the table, already laid
for dinner, began to rearrange the things upon it in a purposeless
mechanical fashion.
After a moment she sank down upon a seat opposite the open entrance,
and put her hand to her head.
"What is the matter with me?" she thought wearily. "All the week I've
been looking forward to seeing this man--_any_ man, _any one_ to take
off the edge of this." She shuddered. Even in thought she hesitated to
analyse the feeling that possessed her. "Well, he's here, and I think
I feel _worse_." Her eyes travelled towards the hills she had been
used to watch at this hour, and rested on them with a vague unseeing
gaze.
"Tired, Kathie? A penny for your thoughts, my dear," said her husband,
coming in presently to find her still sitting there.
"I'm thinking what a curious world this is, and what an ironical vein
of humour the gods who look after it must possess," she replied with a
mirthless laugh, rising as she spoke.
John looked puzzled.
"Funny my having known Broomhurst before, you mean?" he said
doubtfully.
* * * * *
"I was fishing down at Lynmouth this time last year," Broomhurst said
at dinner. "You know Lynmouth, Mrs. Drayton? Do you never imagine you
hear the gurgling of the stream? I am tantalised already by the sound
of it rushing through the beautiful green gloom of those
woods--_aren't_ they lovely? And _I_ haven't been in this burnt-up
spot as many hours as you've had months of it."
She smiled a little.
"You must learn to possess your soul in patience," she said, and
glanced inconsequently from Broomhurst to her husband, and then
dropped her eyes and was silent a moment.
John was obviously, and a little audibly, enjoying his dinner. He sat
with his chair pushed close to the table, and his elbows awkwardly
raised, swallowing his soup in gulps. He grasped his spoon tightly in
his bony hand so that its swollen joints stood out larger and uglier
than ever, his wife thought.
Her eyes wandered to Broomhurst's hands. They were well shaped, and
though not small, there was a look of refinement about them; he had a
way of touching things delicately, a little lingeringly, she noticed.
There was an air of distinction about his clear-cut, clean-shaven
face, possibly intensified by contrast with Drayton's blurred
features; and it was, perhaps, also by contrast with the grey cuffs
that showed beneath John's ill-cut drab suit that the linen Broomhurst
wore seemed to her particularly spotless.
Broomhurst's thoughts, for his part, were a good deal occupied with
his hostess.
She was pretty, he thought, or perhaps it was that, with the wide dry
lonely plain as a setting, her fragile delicacy of appearance was
invested with a certain flower-like charm.
"The silence here seems rather strange, rather appalling at first,
when one is fresh from a town," he pursued, after a moment's pause,
"but I suppose you're used to it; eh, Drayton? How do _you_ find life
here, Mrs. Drayton?" he asked a little curiously, turning to her as he
spoke.
She hesitated a second. "Oh, much the same as I should find it
anywhere else, I expect," she replied; "after all, one carries the
possibilities of a happy life about with one--don't you think so? The
Garden of Eden wouldn't necessarily make my life any happier, or less
happy, than a howling wilderness like this. It depends on oneself
entirely."
"Given the right Adam and Eve, the desert blossoms like the rose, in
fact," Broomhurst answered lightly, with a smiling glance inclusive of
husband and wife; "you two don't feel as though you'd been driven out
of Paradise evidently."