Gladys Ellington, as has been remarked, was not in the least
ill-natured, and never even hinted ill-natured things against anybody
unless she was certain to be undiscovered. So, as all the world knew,
since she was not "quite devoted," a phrase of her's, to her
mother-in-law, the merest elements of wisdom demanded of her that she
should be unreserved in her commendation of Madge's engagement.
Unreserved, in consequence, she was, even to her own husband. He also
was quite unreserved, but his unreserve was whiskered and red-faced like
himself, and bore not the slightest resemblance to his wife's voluble
raptures.
"Seems to me," he said, "that Madge has married him for his money. Don't
believe she loves him. Cold-blooded fish like that. Don't tell me. Hate
a girl marrying for money. American and so on. Good love match, like you
and me, Gladys. I hadn't a sou, you hadn't a penny. Same sort of thing,
eh?"
Lord Ellington usually ended his sentences with "Eh?" If he did not end
them with "Eh?" he ended them with "What?" The effect in either case was
the same, for, like Pilate, he did not wait for an answer. "Eh" or
"what," in fact, meant that he had not finished; if he had finished, he
ended up his period with "Don't tell me." As a consequence, perhaps,
nobody told him anything. All worked together for good here, because he
would not have understood it if they had. He was fond of his wife, and
slightly fonder of his dinner. Why she had married him was a mystery;
but there are so many mysteries of this kind that it is best to leave
them alone.
Gladys, on this occasion (a speech which had given rise to his, in so
far as any speech or connected thought would account for what Lord
Ellington would say next), had merely remarked that the engagement was
very, very nice.
"You seem to object to him," she said, "because he is rich. That is very
feeble. I never knew riches to be a bar to anything except the kingdom
of heaven, with which you, Ellington, are not immediately concerned. But
you are much more immediately concerned with South African mines. Now,
he is dining here to-night, and so is Madge. If you can't get something
out of him between the time we leave the room and you join us, I really
shall despair of you."
A heavy, jocular look came into Lord Ellington's face.
"You don't despair of me yet, Gladys?" he said.
"No, not quite. Very nearly, but not quite. Oh, Ellington, do wake up
for once to-night! Philip Home moves a finger in that dreadful office of
his in the City, somewhere E.C., and you and I are beggars, even worse
than now, or comparatively opulent. Ask him which finger he moves. If
only I were you, I could do it in two minutes. So I'll allow you ten.
Not more than that, because we've got the Reeves' box at the opera, and
Melba is singing."
"Lot of squawking," said he. "Why not sit at home? Who wants to hear
squawking? All in Italian too. Don't understand a word, nor do you. And
you don't know one note from another, nor do I. Don't tell me."
Gladys required all her tact, which is the polite word for evasion,
sometimes, in getting her way with her husband, and all her diplomacy,
which is the polite word for lying. If he got a notion into his head it
required something like the Lisbon earthquake to get it out; if, on the
other hand, a thing commoner with him, he had not a notion in his head,
it required a flash of lightning, followed by the steady application of
a steam-hammer to get it in. Also in talking to him it was almost as
difficult to concentrate one's own attention as it was to command his,
for the fact that he was being talked to produced in him, unless he was
dining, an irresistible tendency to make a quarter-deck of the room he
was in, up and down which he shuffled. When this became intolerable,
Gladys told him not to quarter-deck, but this she only did as a last
resort, because he attended rather more when he was quarter-decking than
when not.
"Never mind about the opera then," she said, "you needn't go unless you
like. But what is important is that since Madge is going to marry Philip
Home, we should reap all the advantages we can. Perhaps there is only
one, apart from having another very comfortable house to stay in, but
that is a big one. He can make some money for us."
This was only the second time she had mentioned this, and in consequence
she was rather agreeably surprised to find that her husband grasped it.
He even appeared to think about it, and suggested an amendment, though
the process required, it seemed to Gladys, miles of quarter-decking.
"Eh, what?" he said. "Something South African? Put in twopence and get
out fourpence, with a dividend in the interim? By Gad, yes! But you'd
better get it out of him, Gladys, not I. Lovely woman, you know; a man
tells everything to lovely woman. Don't tell me."
This had never occurred to Gladys, and she always respected anyone to
whom things occurred before they occurred to her.
"How very simple," she said, "and much better than my suggestion. I
suppose it was so simple that it never occurred to me."
Ellington chuckled, and as the conversation was over, sat down again to
read the evening paper, which had just come in. He read the morning
paper all the morning, and talked of it at lunch, and the evening paper
all evening, and talked of it at dinner; these two supplied him with his
mental daily bread. All the same, he never seemed well-informed even
about current events; he managed somehow to miss the point of all the
news he read, and could never distinguish between Kuroki and Kuropatkin.
Three days had passed since Madge had had her last sitting for her
portrait, and those three days had passed for her in a sort of dream of
disquietude which was not wholly pain. She had not seen Evelyn since,
and scarcely Philip, for he had been harder worked than usual, and last
night, when he was to have dined with them, had sent word that he could
not possibly get there in time. They were to go to the theatre
afterwards, and he said he would join them there. She had upbraided him
laughingly for his desertion of them, telling him that he put the
pleasure of business higher than the pleasure of her society. For retort
he had the fact that when he was not at work he was never anywhere else
but in her society, whereas two days ago, when he was free one morning,
she refused to ride with him because she was to give a sitting to
Evelyn. But the moment he had said this he was sorry for it, for Madge
had flushed, and turned from him, biting her lip. But though he was
sorry for the undesigned pain he had apparently given her, his heart
could not but sing to him. She could not bear such a word from him even
in jest.
But this had not been the cause of Madge's disquietude; Philip's remark
indeed had, so far as it alone was concerned, gone in at one ear but to
come out at the other. In its passage through it had touched something
that made her wince with sudden pain. But the pain passed, and a warmth,
a glow of some secret kind, remained. Disquieting it was, but not
painful, except that at intervals a sort of pity and remorse would stab
her, and at other times her heart, like Philip's, could not but sing to
her for the splendour of love which was beginning to dawn. She could not
help that dawn coming, and she could not help glorying in its light.
Of what should be the practical issue she did not at once think. It was
but three weeks ago that she had promised to marry Philip, and then her
honesty had made her tell him that she gave him liking, esteem,
affection, all that she was conscious that it was in her power to give.
And now, when she knew that she was possessed of more than these, and
that the new possession was not hers to give him, a long day of
indecision, this day on which in the evening they were to dine together
with Gladys Ellington, had been hers. But gradually, slowly, with
painful gropings after light, she had made up her mind.
She had no choice--her choice was already made, and all duty, all
obedience, all honour, called her to fulfil the promise she had made, to
fulfil it, too, in no niggardly lip-service sense of the word, but to
fulfil it loyally. She must turn her back to the dawn which had come too
late, she must never look there, she must for ever avert her eyes from
it. Above all, she must do all that lay in her power to prevent that
brightness growing. She must, in fact, not see Evelyn again of her own
free will.
Then the difficulties, each to be met and overcome, began to swarm thick
about her. First and foremost there was the portrait, for which she was
engaged to give him a sitting to-morrow. That, at any rate, as far as
this particular sitting was concerned, was easily managed, a note of
three lines expressing regret did that. This, however, was only a
temporary measure, it but put off for this one occasion the necessity of
meeting what lay before her. For she knew she must not sit to him again;
she dared not risk that, she must not give this strange new rapture in
her heart the food that would make it grow. Yet, again, she must not act
like a mad-woman, and what reasonable cause could she give for so
strange a freak? Perhaps if she went there with Philip, or if she took
her mother with her.
Yet that did not dispose of the question. Evelyn was one of her future
husband's warmest friends. In the ordinary course of things they must
often meet, but till she had conquered herself, made sure of herself,
such meetings were impossible. And how could she ever be sure of
herself, to whom had come this utterly unlooked for thing, a thing so
unlooked for that only a few weeks before she had consented to its being
dismissed as a practical impossibility?
Then came a thought which, for the very shame of it, was bracing. Not by
word or look or sign had Evelyn ever showed that he regarded her with
the faintest feeling that answered hers. She remembered well the rise of
the full moon on the terrace of Philip's house above Pangbourne, how he
had called attention to it, merely to point out that it was not in
drawing, how she herself on that occasion had noticed how different he
was to the ordinary moonlight-walker. No hint of sentiment, no sign of
the vaguest desire towards the most harmless flirtation had appeared in
him then, nor had any appeared since. While she was sitting to him, half
the time he scowled at her, the other half he bubbled with boyish
nonsense. For very shame she must turn her back on the dawn.
Dinner was to be early to-night, as the objective was Melba and the
opera, and her maid came in to tell her that dressing-time was already
overstepped. She got up, but paused for a moment at the window, looking
out from Buckingham Gate over the blue haze that overhung St. James'
Park, driving her resolution home. She half-pitied, half-spurned
herself, telling herself at one moment that it was hard that she had to
suffer thus, at another that she was despicable for thinking of
suffering when her road was so clearly marked for her. If what had
happened was not her fault, still less should there be any fault of hers
in what should happen. Clearly the future was in her own control; of
the future she could make what she would.
Her mother was not coming with her to-night; indeed, she seldom wasted
the golden evening hours at the opera, when there was a rubber of bridge
so certainly at her command, and Madge went into the drawing-room to
wish her good-night before she set off. Prosperity--and the last three
weeks seemed to Lady Ellington to be most prosperous--had always a
softening effect on her, and she was particularly gracious to her
daughter, since Madge was responsible for so large a part of these
auspicious events.
"So you're just off, dear," she said. "Dear me, you are rather late, and
I mustn't keep you. But give my love to Philip, and let him see you
home, and if I am in--you can ask them at the door--bring him in for a
few minutes. And don't forget your sitting with Mr. Dundas to-morrow."
"Ah, I have put that off," said Madge, "I am rather busy!"
"A pity, surely."
"Well, I have sent the note, I am afraid. Good-night, mother, in case I
am in first."
Philip had already arrived when she got to her cousin's house, and they
went down to dinner. Lord Ellington had got the news of the evening
feverishly mixed up in his head, and was disposed to mingle fragments of
Stock Exchange with it, forgetful, apparently, that this had been
relegated to his wife. But his natural incoherence redeemed the
situation, and when dinner was over it was already time to start for the
opera. While Gladys got her cloak, however, the two lovers had a few
private minutes, as the master of the house remained in the dining-room
when they went out. Philip had sent her that day a diamond pendant which
she was wearing now.
"It is too good of you, Philip," she said, "and I can't tell you how I
value it. It is most beautiful. But why should you always be sending me
things?"
Philip was usually serious, and always sincere.
"Because I can't help it," he said. "I must give you signs of what I
feel, and even these clumsy, material signs are something."
That sincerity touched the girl.
"I know what you feel," she said. "I want to have it never absent from
my mind. I want to think of nothing else but that."
This was sincere too, the outcome of this long day of thought. But
Philip came a little closer to her, and his voice vibrated as he spoke.
"That contents me utterly," he said--"that and the gift of yourself that
you made me."
She gave a long sigh.
"Oh, Philip!" she began. But the voice of Gladys called to her from the
passage outside the drawing-room.
"Come, Madge. Come, Mr. Home," she cried. "We are already so late, and I
can't bear to miss a note of _Bohême_."
Apparently to be present in the opera-house when _Bohême_ was going on
was sufficient for Gladys, and constituted not missing a note, for she
spent that small portion of the first act which still remained to be
performed after their arrival in an absorbed examination of the
occupants of the other boxes, and whispered communications as to the
result of her investigations to Madge. The fall of the curtain had the
effect of rendering these more audible.
"Yes, absolutely everybody is here; so good of you, dear Mr. Home, to
ask us to-night. Of course, it is the last night Melba sings, is it not?
How wonderful, is she not? That long last note quite thrilled me. So
sad, too, the last act, it always makes me cry! Oh! there is Madame
Odintseff, dearest Madge, did you ever see such ropes of pearls--cables
you might call them. Who is that she is talking to? I know her face
quite well. That's her daughter, yes, the sandy-coloured thing, rather
like a rabbit. They say she's engaged to Lord Hitchin, but I don't
believe it. Dear Madge, is it not brilliant? You look so well, dear,
to-night. If only Mr. Dundas could paint you as you are looking now! By
the way, how is the portrait getting on?"
Philip also had risen when the act ended, and was looking out over the
house. Here he joined in.
"Evelyn was absolutely jubilant when I saw him a few days ago," he said.
"And though he is usually jubilant over the last thing, I saw he thought
there was something extra-special about this. By-the-way, Madge, you are
sitting to him to-morrow afternoon, are you not? I shall try to look in;
my spate of work is over, I hope."
"Oh! I'm afraid I have had to put it off," said she. "I couldn't manage
it to-morrow."
She fingered her fan nervously for a moment.
"In fact, Philip," she said, "I am so dreadfully full of engagements for
the next week or two that I don't see how I can squeeze in another
sitting. I am so ashamed of myself, but I can't help it. I wish you
would go down to Mr. Dundas' studio to-morrow and tell him so."
Philip looked at her a moment in blank surprise.
"Ah, but you can't do that," he said; "a painter isn't like a tailor to
whom you say, 'I am not coming to try on; send it home as it is.'"
Madge lost her head a little; the burden of the hours of this day
pressed heavily on her.
"Ah! but that is what I want him to do," she cried. "It is a wonderful
portrait; he said so himself. There is a little background that must be
put in, but I needn't be there for that."
Gladys Ellington had turned her attention again to the house, and, with
her opera-glasses glued to her eyes, was spying and observing in all
directions. Philip cast one glance at her, and rightly considered
himself alone with Madge, for the other was blind and deaf to them.
"Madge, is anything wrong?" he asked gently.
"No, nothing is wrong," she said, recovering herself a little. "But I
ask you to do as I say. I can't bear sitting for that portrait any more,
and Mr. Dundas--he bores me."
That got said, also she managed to smile at him naturally.
"That is all, dear Philip," she added. "Pray don't let us talk of it any
more."
"And you wish me to tell Evelyn what you say?" he asked.
"Yes, anything, anything," she said. "I don't want to sit to him again.
But make it natural, if you can. Look at the portrait; tell him you
don't want it touched any more. Believe me, that is best."
She paused a moment.
"I am excited and rather overwrought to-night somehow," she said, "and
you mustn't indeed think that there is anything the matter. Indeed,
there is nothing. Tell me you believe that?"
"Why, dear, of course, if you tell me so," he said.
"I do tell you so."
As has been mentioned before, there were two Philips; one known only to
the four people who knew him best, the other the Philip who showed a
sterner and harder face to the world. And though, since he was with
Madge, the Philip of the inner sanctum, where only the intimates were
admitted, was in possession, yet the door of the sanctum, as it were,
opened for a moment, and the other Philip, quick as a lizard, glanced
in. His appearance was of the most momentary duration, but he did look
in.
She laid her hand on his arm as she said these last words, then left the
back of the box, where they had been standing, and took a chair next
Lady Ellington.
"How full it is!" she said. "Look at the stalls too; they are like an
ant-heap, covered with brilliant, crawling ants. How hard it is to
recognise people if one is above them. I'm sure there are a hundred
people I know, but the tops of heads are like nothing except the tops of
heads. How many bald heads too! What a blessing we don't go bald like
men. Who is that walking up the gangway now? I'm sure I know him. Ah!
it's Mr. Dundas."
The sudden stream of her talk stopped, as if a tap had been turned on.
Her eyes left the stalls and gazed vacantly over the boxes opposite. She
was conscious of wondering what would happen next--whether she would
speak, or her companion, or whether Philip would say something. Then it
seemed to her nobody would say anything any more; there was to be this
dreadful silence for ever. That possibility, at any rate, was soon
averted, for Gladys signalled violently to Evelyn, and spoke.
"Yes, he sees us," she said. "Mr. Home, do put the door of the box open,
it is so stuffy. And Mr. Dundas I am sure is coming up. He's such a
darling, isn't he?"
The greater part of her speech was justified by realities. Evelyn had
seen them; the heat was undeniable; also, in answer to the violent
signalling he had received, mere politeness, to say nothing of
inclination, would have made him come. But he had seen too who sat in
profile by Lady Ellington, and he took two and three steps in the stride
as he mounted the staircases. And before Madge had time to put into
execution her very unwise idea of asking Philip not to let him in, he
was at the door of the box.
"You lordly box-holder," he said to him, "just let me in. How are you,
Lady Ellington? Yes, I'm just back from the Hermitage, to-night only,
from three days in the forest with Merivale. How are you, Miss
Ellington? I had to come up to-night, or I shouldn't have been able to
keep the appointment to-morrow."
A sense of utter helplessness seized Madge; she could not even respond
by a word to his greeting, for his presence merely was the only thing
that mattered, the only thing she loved and dreaded. And he continued:
"Half-past two, isn't it?" he said. "I could have come up to-morrow, of
course, but it was necessary for me to have a morning's work at the
background before I troubled you again."
Then Gladys broke in.
"Too wonderful, isn't it?" she said, "the portrait, I mean. But, Mr.
Dundas, who is that just opposite with rubies? I'm sure you've painted
her. That great pink thing there, who must have come from the west coast
of Asia Minor. How naughty of me!"
But Evelyn apparently condoned the naughtiness; he mentioned the name of
the great pink thing, and turned to Madge again.
"But by half-past two I shall be ready," he said. "Please, if it is not
an impossible request, please be punctual. Art takes so long, you know.
Not that life is short. Nobody ever died too soon."
She turned to him, the diamond pendant that Philip had sent her that day
glittering on the smooth whiteness of her bosom.
"I am so sorry," she said, "and I know I ought to have let you know
before, Mr. Dundas. But I can't come to-morrow. I wrote you this evening
only, I did not know you were out of town, explaining--at least
saying--I could not come."
Philip--the real, intimate Philip--heard this. And it was he only, the
lover of this girl, who spoke in reply.
"We have settled that I shall come instead," he said. "So your time
won't be wasted, Evelyn. You have to paint me too, you know, and if you
want it to be characteristic, make a study of a telephone and a
tape-machine. Half-past two, I think you said."
There came a sudden hush over the crowded house as the lights went down.
Philip laid his hand on Evelyn's shoulder, as he sat in the front of the
box between the two ladies.
"Half-past two, then, to-morrow," he repeated.
The hint was plain enough, and Evelyn took it, and stumbled his way out
of the box to regain his seat in the stalls. What had happened, what
this all meant, he did not and could not know; he knew only what he was
left with, namely, that Madge for some reason would not sit to him
to-morrow. In his eager way he searched for a hundred motives, yet none
satisfied him, and he was forced to fall back on the obvious and simple
one, that she was busy. Nothing in the world could be more likely, his
whole practical self assured him of that; but he felt somehow as if
someone had leaned out of the window when he called at a house and had
shouted stentoriously to the servant who opened the door, "I am not at
home." He was bound to accept a thing which he did not believe.
Then he questioned himself as to whether the fault was his. Yet that was
scarcely possible, for it was not till after he had last seen her that
the knowledge of his love for her had dawned on him. It was impossible
that he could have made that betrayal of himself, for until she had gone
he had not known that there was anything to betray. He and she had
always been on terms of the frankest comradeship, yet to-night her
manner had somehow been subtly yet essentially different. All the good
comradeship had gone from it, the indefinable feeling of "being friends"
was no longer there. Was it that the "being friends" was no longer
sufficient for him, and did the change really lie in himself? He felt
sure it did not; Madge was different.
Evelyn was not of an analytical mind; his inferences were based usually
on instinct rather than reason, and reason was powerless to help him
here and his instinct drew no inference whatever. However, Philip was
coming to take her hour to-morrow, and he would try to find out
something about this. Indeed, perhaps there was nothing to find, for he
knew that now and for ever his own view of Madge would be coloured by
the super-sensitiveness of love. Then a suspicion altogether unworthy
crossed his mind. Was it possible that Philip had.... But, to do him
justice, he instantly dismissed it.
Gladys, like the stag at eve, had drunk her fill of the occupants of the
boxes, and turned her attention to the stage during the second act. Her
mind was rather like a sparrow, it hopped about with such extraordinary
briskness, and apparently found something to pick up everywhere. The
things it picked up, it is true, were of no particular consequence, but
they were things of a sort, and at the end of the act she announced
them.
"Opera is really the best way of carrying on life," she said. "You
always sing, and at any crisis you sing a tune--a real tune. And if the
crisis is really frightful, you make it the end of the act, pull the
curtain down, and have some slight refreshment in privacy, and put on
another frock. Mr. Home, is that Mrs. Israels there--that woman bound in
green? How nice to have a husband who is a magnate of South African
affairs! You can even afford to be bound in green; it doesn't matter how
you look if you are rich enough."
Philip looked where she pointed; it certainly was Mrs. Israels.
"Yes, that is she," he said; "but I had no idea they were as rich as her
appearance indicates."
Lady Ellington gave a little gasp of horror.
"Good gracious, I forgot you were a magnate too!" she cried. "How rude
of me! But, really, you are so unlike Mrs. Israels."
Then she sank her voice to a confidential whisper.
"Dear Mr. Home," she said, with all the brilliance of unpremeditated
invention, "do talk shop with me for one minute. Ellington told me he
had got a little sum of money--you know the sort of thing, not big
enough to be of any real use--ah, you mustn't tell him I asked you. He
would be furious, quite furious. Yes, and if you could just casually
mention some investment which might eventually cause it to be of some
use----"
Philip--she could not see him, as he was sitting behind her, with his
arm on the back of her chair--could not help frowning. He was delighted
to be of any use to his friends, but sometimes, as now, his help was
asked in a sideways, hole-and-corner manner. Why shouldn't her husband
know? He did not like intrigue at any time; purposeless intrigue was
even more tiresome. But he expunged the frown from his voice anyhow when
he answered:
"Yes, I can certainly recommend you an investment or two," he said, "but
I can promise you no certainty. I can only say that I hold a stake in
them myself. I suppose, as you have this--this sum of money, you will
take up your shares--pay for them, I mean!"
She gave a little laugh of surprise.
"You are too delicious!" she said. "You mean we can buy them without
paying for them, like a bill?"
He laughed.
"Well, I don't recommend that," he said. "But it can be done. However,
that is not my concern, as I'm not a broker. I will send you a note in
the morning."
"Too good of you!" she said. "And you won't tell my husband I asked
you?"
"Certainly not," said he, "though I really can't imagine why not."
The unreal Philip--the one, that is to say, that Madge did not know--had
had the door slammed pretty smartly in his face, and when the real
Philip went to Evelyn's studio the next afternoon he had not attempted
to put in another appearance. Evelyn, when he arrived, was working at
the background of Madge's portrait, and he yelled to the other to keep
his eyes off it.
"You musn't see it till it's done!" he cried. "Just turn your back,
there's a good chap, till I put it with its face to the wall. I had no
idea till I looked at it to-day how nearly it is finished. I do wish
Miss Ellington could have come this afternoon instead of you--which
sounds polite, but isn't--and I really think I might have made it the
last sitting. That sounds polite too. By the way, what an ass I am; I
never made another appointment with her last night!"
This was all sufficiently frank, for Evelyn had managed, with the
healthy optimism of which she had so much, to reason himself out of his
fantastic forebodings of the evening before. It was left, therefore, for
Philip, a task which was not at all to his taste, to put them all neatly
back again.
"I really doubt if she could have given you an appointment off-hand," he
said, still fencing a little. "She is really so frightfully busy I
hardly set eyes on her. Apparently, when you are to be married, you have
to buy as many things as if you were going to live on a desert island
for the rest of your life."
Evelyn checked for a moment at this; the healthy optimism weakened a
little.
"I must write and ask her," he said, "or go and try to find her in. I
must have the sitting soon; the thing won't be half so good if I have to
wait. It is all ready; it just wants her for an hour or two."
Philip was conscious of a most heartfelt wish that Madge had not
entrusted him with this errand, and he cudgelled his head to think how
least offensively to perform it. Then Madge's own suggestion came to his
aid.
"I wish you would let me see it," he said. "Pray do; I really mean it."
Evelyn hesitated; though he had been so peremptory in its removal
before, the impulse, he knew, was rather childish, it being but the
desire to let the finished thing be the first thing seen. Yet, on the
other hand, he so intensely believed in the portrait himself that he now
felt disinclined to defer the pleasure of showing it.
"Well, you mustn't criticise at all," he said, "not one word of that, or
I may begin to take your criticism into consideration, and I want to do
this just exactly as I see it, not as anybody else does. Do you
promise?"
"Certainly."
"Very well; stand back about three yards--three yards is about its
focus. Now!"
He turned the easel back into the room again, where it stood fronting
Philip. And the latter did not want to criticise at all; he felt not the
smallest temptation to do so. Indeed, it was idle to do so; the picture
was Madge, Madge seen by an unerring eye and recorded by an unerring
brush. It stood altogether away from criticism; a man might conceivably
reject the whole of it, if he happened not to care about Evelyn's art,
but he could not reject a part. As Evelyn had said to Merivale, he had
put there what he meant to put there, but nothing that he did not. It
was brilliant, superb, a master-work.
Philip looked at it a long minute in silence.
"It is your best," he said.
Evelyn laughed.
"It is my only picture," he said.
Then Philip saw an opportunity, which was as welcome as it was
unexpected.
"I beg you not to touch Madge's figure or face again," he said. "It is
absolutely finished; there is nothing more to be done to it. Please!"
Evelyn gave a snort of disgust.
"That is criticism," he said.
"Not at all; there is nothing to criticise. I mean it, really."
Now Philip was no bad judge, and Evelyn was well aware of that. He had
been as he painted, intensely anxious that Philip should like it, and
Philip more than liked it. The great pleasure that that knowledge gave
him was sufficient for the time to banish the forebodings that had begun
to creep back, and were in a way confirmed by Philip's wish that it
should not be touched.
"Oh, Philip, is it really good?" he said. "I feel that I know it is, but
I want so much that both you and she should think so."
"I can answer for myself," said the other.
With that the whole subject was dismissed for the time. Evelyn had given
no promise that he would not touch the figure again, but Philip on his
side was wise enough to dwell on that point no more, for he saw quite
well that a certain inkling of the true state of things had been
present, however dimly, to the other, and any further allusion would but
tend to disperse that dimness and make things clearer. So the new canvas
was produced, and Philip was put into pose after pose without satisfying
the artist.
"No, no," he cried; "if you stand like that, you look like an elderly
St. Sebastian, and, with your hand on the table, you look like a railway
director. Look here, walk out of the room, come in whistling, and sit
down. I am not going to paint you portrait, you are not going to be
photographed. Just pretend I'm not here."
This went better, and soon, with inarticulate gruntings, Evelyn began to
put in the lines of the figure with charcoal. At first he laboured, but
before long things began to go more smoothly; his own knitted brow
uncreased itself, and his hand began to work of itself. Then came a half
hour in which he talked, telling his sitter of his visit to the Hermit,
and the really charming days he had spent in the Forest. But that again
suggested a train of thought which caused silence again and a renewal of
the creased brow. But it was not at his sketch that he frowned.
Eventually he laid his tools down.
"I can't go on any more," he said. "Thanks very much! It's all right."
He wandered to the chimney-piece, lit a cigarette, and came back again.
"You mean Miss Ellington doesn't want to give me any more sittings,
don't you?" he said. "For it is childish to expect me to believe that
she can't spare one hour between now and the end of the month."
The childishness of that struck Philip too.
"But I ask you not to touch it any more, except of course the
background," he said. "Won't that content you?"
"Not in the least. It is not the real reason."
Philip was cornered, and knew it.
"It is a true one," he said rather lamely. "After seeing the picture, I
should have said it, I believe, in any case."
"But it's not the real reason," repeated Evelyn. "Of course, you need
not tell me the real reason, but you can't prevent my guessing. And you
can't prevent my guessing right."
"Ah, is this necessary?" asked Philip.
Evelyn flashed out at this.
"And is it fair on me?" he cried. "I disagree with you; I want another
sitting, and she really has no right to treat me like this. I'm not a
tradesman. She can't leave me because she chooses, like that, without
giving a reason."
Philip did not reply.
"Or perhaps she has given a reason," said Evelyn, with peculiarly
annoying penetration.
Indeed, these grown-up children, boys and girls still, except in years,
are wonderfully embarrassing, so Philip reflected--people who will ask
childish questions, who are yet sufficiently men and women to be able to
detect a faltering voice, an equivocation. Tact does not seem to exist
for them; if they want to know a thing they ask it straight out before
everybody. And, indeed, it is sometimes less embarrassing if there are
plenty of people there; one out of a number may begin talking, and with
the buzz of conversation drown the absence of a reply. But
alone--tactlessness in a _tête-à-tête_ is to fire at a large target; it
cannot help hitting.
This certainly had hit, and Philip knew it was useless to pretend
otherwise. And, as the just reply to tactlessness is truth, also
tactless, he let Evelyn have it.
"Yes, she gave a reason," he said, "since you will have it so. She said
she was bored with the sittings. And you may tell her I told you," he
added.
Evelyn had put his head a little on one side, an action common with him
when he was trying to catch an effect. He showed no symptom whatever of
annoyance, his face expressed only slightly amused incredulity.
"Bored with the sittings, or bored with me?" he asked.
Philip's exasperation increased. People in ordinary life did not ask
such questions. But since, such a question was asked, it deserved its
answer.
"Bored with you," he said. "I am sorry, but there it is; bored with
you."
"Thanks," said Evelyn. "And now, if you won't be bored with me, do get
back and stand for ten minutes more. I won't ask for longer than that. I
just want--ah, that's right, stop like that."
Philip, as recommended, "stopped like that," with a mixture of amusement
and annoyance in his mind. Evelyn was the most unaccountable fellow;
sometimes, if you but just rapped him on the knuckles, he would call out
that you had dealt a deathstroke at him; at other times, as now, you
might give him the most violent slap in the face, and he would treat it
like a piece of thistledown that floated by him. Of one thing, anyhow,
one could be certain, he would never pretend to feel an emotion that he
did not feel; he would, that is to say, never pump up indignation, and,
on the other hand, if he felt anything keenly, he might be trusted to
scream. Philip, therefore, as he "stopped like that," had the choice of
two conclusions open to him. The one was that Evelyn felt the same
antipathy to Madge as Madge apparently felt for him. The other was that
he did not believe Madge had said what he had reported her to have said.
But neither conclusion was very consoling; the second because, though
all men are liars, they do not like the recognition of this fact,
especially if they have spoken truly.
Yet the other choice was even less satisfactory, for he himself did not
believe that Evelyn was bored by Madge; nor, if he pressed the matter
home, did he really believe that Madge was bored by Evelyn. She had said
so, it is true, and he had therefore accepted it. But it did not seem
somehow likely; down at Pangbourne they had been the best of friends,
and they had been the best of friends, too, since. Yet--and here the
door was again slammed on the unreal Philip--yet she had said it, and
that was enough.
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