“Poor dear Nita!”
“Kent’s a good sort,” said Miss Howe.
“What’s Hecuba to him now?” Mr. Flood’s smile glinted from one to
another.
“A very old friend,” said the blonde lady. “You heard what dear Nita
said to him.”
“‘Children together!’ I didn’t know that.” He was still smiling.
“And they always kept in touch,” put in Miss Howe.
“Trust Nita for that,” said the blonde lady.
Miss Howe nodded.
“She told me once that from the first she realized that he would do big
things.”
“So Nita kept in touch!” Mr. Flood laughed outright.
“But it’s only the last few years that she’s been able to produce him at
will, like a conjuror’s rabbit.”
“Since Madala’s advent, you mean,” said the blonde lady.
“‘Will you walk into my parlour?’ said Anita to the fly. ‘It’s a
literary parlour——’” murmured Mr. Flood. And then—“No. Kent’s not likely
to have walked in without a honey-pot in the parlour. Madala must have
been useful.”
“That’s what Miss Serle will never forgive her, _I_ think,” said the
Baxter girl.
“What?”
“That she was useful. Do _you_ believe in the other man?”
“The unknown influence?” His eyes narrowed. “H’m!”
“And yet of course there’s been someone.” The Baxter girl never quite
deserted Anita, even in her absence.
The blonde lady nodded.
“Of course. Nita’s always nearly right. The influence—the adventures—the
_mariage de convenance_—she’s got it all so pat—and the man too. She
knows well enough; yet she fights against it. She won’t have it. I
wonder why. ‘Very old friends’ I suppose.” She laughed again. “But of
course it was Kent. Can’t you see that’s why Nita hates her? What a
_Life_ it will be! I just long for it to come out. Nita’s a comedy.”
“A tragedy.”
“Nita? My dear Lila! What do you mean?”
“I’m only quoting,” said Miss Howe. And then—“But when she isn’t
actually annoying me I think I agree.”
“Who said it?” said the Baxter girl inquisitively.
“Madala. It’s the only thing I’ve ever heard her say of Anita. She never
discussed Anita. Now of Kent she would talk by the hour. Which proves to
me, you know, that the affair with him didn’t go very deep. Nita quoted
that description of Kent just now, but only so far as it served her. She
carefully forgot how it goes on. Here, where is it? Ah——
He brooded like a lover over his colour-box, and as she watched
him her thoughts flew to her own small brothers at home. Geoff
with his steam-engine, Jimmy sorting stamps—there, there was to
be found the same ruthlessness of absorption, achieving dignity
by its sheer intensity. She smiled over him and them.
“Keep your face still,” he ordered.
She obeyed instantly, flushing; and as she did so she thought to
herself—‘I could be afraid of that man,’ but a moment
afterwards—‘He _is_ like a small boy.’
“Now that may be Kent—oh, it is Kent, of course—but it’s not Madala’s
attitude to Kent. She was not in the least afraid of him.”
“Ah, but that later passage, the country passage—that’s pure Madala.”
“Yes. Just where it ceases to be Kent—‘He stoops, I suppose. He’s worn
out with work. He’s quite ordinary.’ That’s not Kent.”
“No, that’s true. One doesn’t know where to have her. She muddles her
trail,” said Mr. Flood.
“I call it weakness of touch not to let you know whom she drew from,”
said the Baxter girl.
“Ah, but she always insisted that she didn’t draw portraits.”
“Of course. They always do. If one believed _them_ one would never get
behind the scenes, and if one can’t get behind the scenes one might as
well be mere public and read for the story,” said the Baxter girl
indignantly.
“Well, you know,” Miss Howe sat turning over the pages of _The
Resting-place_ with careful, almost with caressing fingers, “I don’t
believe she meant to draw portraits. She had queer, old-fashioned
notions. I think she would have thought it—treacherous.”
“The portraits are there though, if you look close enough,” insisted the
Baxter girl.
“Yes, but they happened in spite of her. Anyone she was fond of she took
into her, in a sense: and when her gift descended upon her and demanded
expression, then, all unconsciously, she expressed them too. But gilded!
We find ourselves in her books, and we never knew before how lovable we
are. You’re right, Blanche, _she liked whate’er she looked on_. And
you’re right too, Jasper, _Grande amoureuse_, she was that. That
capacity for loving made her what she was. The technical facility was
her talent and her luck; but it was her own personality that turned it
into genius.”
“Then after all you admit the genius,” said the Baxter girl
triumphantly.
“No. No. No. My judgment says no. When I read her books in cold
blood—no. But we’ve been talking about her. It’s as if she were with us,
and when she’s with us my judgment goes! That’s the secret of Madala
Grey. She does what she likes with us. But the next generation, the
people who don’t know her, whether they’ll find in her books what we do,
is doubtful. Who wants a dried rose?”
“Yes, but Miss Serle—in the _Life_? Won’t she—preserve her?”
“Preserve—exactly! But not revive. No, I’d sooner pin my faith to _The
Spring Song_, although I haven’t seen it. It ought to be a revelation.
She eluded Nita, impishly. I’ve seen her do it. But there’s no doubt
that she gave Kent his chance.”
“Every chance. She’d deny it, I suppose.”
“Oh, she did.” Miss Howe laughed. “Have you ever seen her in a temper? I
have. I was a fool. I told her one day (you know how things come up)
just something of the gossip about Kent and her. I thought it only kind.
But you should have heard her. She was as healthily furious as a
schoolgirl. That was so comfortable about Madala. She hadn’t that
terrible aloofness of really big people. She didn’t withdraw into
dignity. She just stormed.” Miss Howe laughed again. “I can see her now,
raging up and down the room—‘Do you mean to say that people——? I never
heard of anything so monstrous! What has it got to do with them? Why
can’t they leave me alone? I’ve never done them any harm. I wouldn’t
have believed it, pretending they liked me, and letting me be friends
with them, and then saying hateful things behind my back. I’ll never
speak to them again—never! That they should go about twisting things—Why
can’t they mind their own business? And dragging in Kent like that! Oh,
it does make me so wild!’ ‘Oh, well, my dear,’ I said to her, ‘when two
people see as much of each other as you and Kent do, there’s bound to be
talk.’ At that she swung round on me. ‘But he’s my _friend_,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘that’s just it.’ ‘But I’m not expected to marry everyone
I’m fond of!’ ‘Are you fond of him, Madala?’ I asked her. ‘Yes,’ she
said directly, ‘I am. I’m awfully fond of him. I’d do anything for him,
bless his heart!’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘you needn’t be so upset. That’s all
that people mean. If you’re fond of him and he—he’s obviously in love
with you——’ But at that she caught me up in her quick way—‘In love? Oh,
you don’t understand him. Nobody understands Kent. He doesn’t understand
himself. Dear old Kent!’ Then she began walking up and down the room
again, but more quietly, and talking, half to herself, as if she had
forgotten I was there, justifying herself, justifying him. ‘Dear old
Kent! Poor old Kent! I’m awfully fond of Kent. So is he of me. But not
in the right way. He’s got, when he happens to think of it, a great
romantic idea of the woman he wants, of the wife he wants; but the truth
is, you know, that he doesn’t want a wife. He wants a mother, and a
sister, and a—a lover. A true lover. A patienter woman than I am. A
woman who’ll delight in him for his own sake, not for what he gives her.
A woman who’ll put him first and be content to come second with him.
He’ll always put his work first. He can’t help it. He’s an artist. Oh,
not _content_. I didn’t mean that. She must be too big for that—big
enough to know what she misses. But a wise woman, such a loving, hungry
woman. ‘Half a loaf,’ she’ll say to herself. But she’ll never have to
let him hear. He’s chivalrous. He’d be horrified at giving her half a
loaf. He’d say—“All or nothing!” But he couldn’t give her all. He
couldn’t spare it. So he’d give her nothing out of sheer respect for
her. That’s Kent. He’s got his dear queer theories of life—oh, they’re
all right as theories—but he fits people to them, instead of them to
people. Procrustes. He’d torture a woman from the kindest of motives.
It’s lack of imagination. Haven’t you noticed?’ ‘Considering he’s one of
the great imaginative artists of the day, Madala,’ I said to her,
‘that’s rather sweeping.’ ‘But that’s why,’ she said. ‘It’s just because
he’s a genius. He lives on himself, in himself. Kent’s an island.’ I
said—‘No chance of a bridge, Madala?’ She shook her head. ‘Not my job.’
I said I was sorry. I was, too. It would have been so ideal, that pair.
I wanted to argue it with her; but she wouldn’t listen. She said—‘If I
weren’t an artist too, then maybe—maybe. I’m very fond of Kent. But
no—I’d want too much. But, you know, there’s a woman somewhere, rather
like me—I hope he’ll marry her. I’d love her. She’d never be jealous of
me. She’d understand. She’s me without the writing, without the outlet.
She’ll pour it all into loving him. I hope she’s alive somewhere. He’d
be awfully happy. And if he had children—that’s what he needs. I can
just see him with children. But not my children. If I married——’ And
then she flushed up to the eyes in that way she had, as if she were
fifteen. ‘I—I’d like to be married for myself, for my faults, for the
bits I don’t tell anyone. Kent would hate my faults. I’d have to hide my
realest self.’ She stood staring out of the window. Then she said, still
in that rueful, childish voice—‘I would like to be liked.’ ‘But, my dear
girl,’ said I, ‘what nonsense you talk! If ever a woman had friends——’
She flung round at me again—‘If I’d not written _Eden Walls_ would Anita
have looked at me—or any of you?’ I said—‘That’s not a fair question.
Your books _are_ you, the quintessence, the very best of you.’ ‘But the
rest of me?’ she said, ‘but the _rest_ of me?’ I laughed at her. ‘Well,
what about the rest of you?’ Then she said, in a small voice—‘It feels
rather out of it sometimes, Lila.’”
“I say,” Mr. Flood twinkled at her, “are you going to present all this
to Anita? She’d be grateful.”
“Not she,” said Miss Howe sharply. “Too much fact would spoil her
theory. Let her spin her own web.”
“Agreed. There’s room for more than one biography, eh?” They laughed
together a little consciously.
“You know,” the blonde lady recalled them, “she must have been quite a
good actress. She always seemed perfectly contented.”
“Imagine Madala Grey discontented,” said the Baxter girl. “How could she
be?”
“Oh, Kent was at the root of that,” said Miss Howe, “for all her talk.”
Mr. Flood nodded.
“Yes, the lady did protest too much, if your report’s correct.”
“It’s the only explanation and, as you said, Blanche, in her heart Anita
knows it. After all, he’s a somebody. Madala wouldn’t be the only one
who’s found him attractive, eh?” She cocked an eyebrow.
“Don’t be scandalous, Lila,” said the blonde lady virtuously, and Mr.
Flood gave his little sniff of enjoyment.
“Oh, give me five minutes,” said Miss Howe cosily. “She’ll be down in
five minutes. I’ve been good all the evening. But I’m inclined to agree
with her, you know, that Madala was attracted, just because Madala
denied it so vehemently. Only Anita goes too far for me. She’s right, of
course, when she says of Kent—‘Not a marrying man!’ but not in the way
she means it. There are dark and awful things in the history of every
unmarried man, to Anita. She scents intrigue everywhere. I’m a spinster
myself, but I’m not such a spidery spinster. She may be partly right.
Some other man, some question-mark of a man, may have treated Madala
badly. But Kent didn’t. Kent isn’t that sort. Intrigue would bore him.
Still, he wasn’t a marrying man in those days, and I think Madala was
perfectly honest when she said—‘Just friends.’ But I think also, if you
ask me, that they were far too good friends. It’s not wise to be friends
with a man. You must be a woman first and let him know it. I don’t
believe in these platonic friendships. So I think that in time Madala
found out where they were making the mistake. And he didn’t, or
wouldn’t. Oh well!” she paused expressively, “he’s finding it out now.
He has been all the year. Didn’t you see his face when he came in
tonight? Madala shouldn’t have hurried. Poor Madala! Though I don’t
think it broke her heart, you know.”
“No.” The blonde lady nodded. “She was too serene, too placid, for real
passion. She could draw it well enough, but always from the outside.”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” said the Baxter girl. “Think of the end of
_Ploughed Fields_.”
“Let’s give her some credit for imagination, even if we don’t say
‘genius’! I agree with Blanche. Oh, perhaps her heart did crack just a
little——”