A FULL STOP.
The padrona was not a woman given to little ailments,--headaches, or the
other visionary sufferings which are conventional names for those aches
of the heart or temper to which we are all liable; but yet on the
evening of this day she found herself unable for once to face her little
world. It was not so much that her eyes were red, for eyes that have had
to weep the bitterest of tears, and which have watched and toiled
through most of life’s serious experiences, soon recover their outward
serenity; but her heart was sore. It has been said so often, that most
people by this time must be sick of hearing it, that love is the grand
occupation of a woman’s life; and that, while in man it is subordinate
to a hundred other matters, in her existence it is the chief interest.
Whether this is or is not the case with the great majority of women, is
a question which must be decided according to the experience of the
observer; but we doubt much whether in any case it applies to women over
thirty,--and it certainly did not apply to the padrona. There were many
interests in her life; and love, as ordinarily so called, had no more to
do with it than if she had been a stockbroker. Nothing more annoying,
more out of place and harmony with her existence, could have happened
than this curious interpolation of misplaced passion. Being a woman, her
heart had melted over the foolish boy. She was fond of him, as she had
avowed. His soft, devoted, tender ways,--the deference and subdued
enthusiasm which women love,--had made his society a very pleasant
feature in her life, and perhaps she had not seen as she ought to have
done the dangers that might attend it. And now this sudden awakening all
at once,--the force and reality of his feelings,--the doubt lest she had
been to blame,--the compunctions over his pain, and even her sorrow at
the loss of him, which was not the least poignant part of it
all,--overwhelmed her. She went to her room as soon as the little ones
had gone to bed. These little ones should of themselves have been a
safeguard to her. A certain shame came over her when she looked at her
own daughter, who was almost old enough to be herself the chief figure
in some episode of the universal drama, and remembered what words had
been said, what wild ovations made to Alice’s mother. The padrona’s
friends were aghast when they were told that she was not well enough to
receive them. Miss Hadley, who had come round to the Square with a
mixture of jealousy and alarm on finding out that no sign of life had
that day been seen at Laurie’s windows, was driven almost out of her
senses with curiosity to know what it could have been that had given the
padrona a headache. ‘Gone to bed with a headache!’ Miss Hadley did not
believe it. She was angry not to be admitted,--not to judge with her own
eyes what it was. But Alice, who suspected nothing, watched her mother’s
rest like a young lioness. ‘I cannot let you go up; she will be better
to-morrow,’ said Alice; and Miss Hadley could not for shame ask the
child, as she longed to do it, if this mysterious headache had come on
after a visit from Laurie. ‘She has been working too hard,’ people who
were more charitable concluded without question, and congratulated
themselves that the pictures had been sent in, and that now, if ever, a
painter might draw breath for a moment. But the padrona had not gone to
bed. She heard them come and go away as she sat up in her room; and she
heard Jane Hadley’s voice, and trembled lest that enterprising woman
should seek her out even in her retirement. She could not have borne any
keen eye upon her that night. Alice was different, to whom her mother
was as far lifted above such vanities or such suspicions as if she had
been a saint in heaven. ‘I think it would kill Alice!’ the mother said
to herself with a shudder. And I believe she would rather have died
herself than betray to her woman-child what had happened;--although
nothing had happened, except that a foolish young man had mistaken
himself and her, and put love in the place of friendship. But her
thoughts were very soft towards poor Laurie,--poor, foolish fellow!--to
throw away all his love and fresh heart and feelings upon a woman old
enough to be his mother! Anybody else might have laughed at him for it,
or despised him; but Mrs. Severn did not despise him. It went to her
heart to think of that gift being thrown at her feet. And she was fond
of the boy,--poor Laurie!--and if all the world scorned him for his mad,
boyish fancy, at all events it was not her place to scorn.
At the same time, after the edge of her compunction and regret and soft
yearning over the poor boy that loved her had become a little blunted,
the padrona had reason enough to be put out and vexed by the disturbing
influence of this unlucky event. Love,--vulgarly so called,--was, as we
have said, as much out of her way as if she had been an elderly
stockbroker. Love,--of another kind,--was, it is true, her whole life
and strength; but yet no man, however steeled by the world, could have
been less disposed to any sentimental play of emotion than was this
woman. Before Laurie came that morning her mind had been full of a
hundred fancies, all pleasant of their kind. They were not thoughts of
the highest elevation, perhaps. One of them was the rude, material
reflection that she had her work secured and clear before her for a year
certain; her living secured; no doubt about the sale of a picture; no
sharp reminder of the precariousness of her profession to keep her
uneasy;--but her work safe and sure for twelve months. And then it was
pleasant work, and such as her soul loved. She had been commended by her
visitors,--some of whom were people whose praise was worth having,--as
she had never been before. Things were going well with her. The children
were well, and developing their characteristics every day. She could
look the world in the face and know that she was doing her best for
them. When all at once,--in a moment,--the bitter-sweet of this boy’s
love was thrown into the crystal fountain, and the surface that had been
so clear, reflecting the heavens, was in a moment troubled and turbid.
With a certain impatient pang she said to herself, as so many have said,
that there was always something to lessen one’s satisfaction, always
some twist in the web of life to obscure its colours at its best. And
poor foolish Laurie, who had thrown away the best he had for nothing!
Poor boy! how her heart ached for him! how it hurt her to think of his
pain! and there was little, very little comfort in the thought that he
was lost to her. His friendly talk, his ready heart-service, his
difficulties and errors, and even his weakness, which it had been so
pleasant to minister to, to reprove, and exhort, and accept,--that was
all over now. A gap and dreary void was suddenly made in her closest
surroundings,--a gap which was hard on him and hard on her, and yet
inevitable,--to be made at all hazards. The padrona was very much
downcast about the business altogether, and shed a few tears over it in
her solitude. Nothing could have prevented, nothing could mend
it,--except, perhaps, Time; and Time is a slow healer, whom it is hard
to trust when one’s wound is of to-day.
If such was the effect this incident had on the padrona, it may be
imagined what sort of a tempest it was which swept through Laurie’s mind
and spirit when he left her. He disappeared under the bitter waves. Not
only was there no sign of life in his windows, but, so far as he was
himself conscious, there was no sign left in life to represent what he
had done with that distracted, incoherent day. The chances are that he
did most of the ordinary things he was in the habit of doing,--was seen
at his club, and talked to his friends somewhat in his usual strain.
Indeed, I have heard a _mot_ attributed to Laurie, which could have been
spoken but on that special evening, if it was spoken at all. I do not
suppose he made any exhibition of himself to the outer world; but I can
only take up the tale at the moment when, worn out and weary, he got
back to his room in Charlotte Street, and came to the surface, as it
were, and looked himself in the face once more. The agitation of the
past three days had told upon him. He had been shaken by the strange
sweet shock of his discovery that he loved her; and now upon that came
the other discovery, involved in the first, that he had spent his
strength for naught, and wasted all his wealth of emotion on a dream. Of
course he had known all along it must be a dream; so he said to himself.
He had poured out his heart as a libation in her honour. What more had
he ever hoped it could be? And now he was empty and drained of both
strength and joy. His pain was even mingled with shame,--that shame of
the sensitive mind when it discovers that its hopes have been beyond
what ought to be hoped for. His cheeks burned when he remembered that he
had dreamed it was possible for this woman, so much higher placed than
himself in the dignity of life, so far before him in the road, to turn
and stoop from her natural position, and love him in her turn. He would
have dragged her down, taken her from her secure eminence, placed her in
a false position, exposed her to the jeers and laughter of the
world,--all for the satisfaction of his selfish craving! He would have
gone in the face of nature, ignored all the sobering and maturing
processes which had made her what she was, and drawn her back to that
rudimentary place in the world which her own daughter was ready to fill.
Was not this what he would have done had he had his will? A hot flush of
shame came over Laurie’s face in his solitude. He felt humiliated at
the thought of his own vanity, his own folly. When she had held out her
hands to him, when she had given him that kiss of everlasting dismissal,
nature had asserted itself. Youth is sweet; it has the best of
everything; it is the cream of existence; but yet when the grave soul of
maturity drops back to youth, and gives up its own place, and ignores
all its painful advantages, is there not a certain shame in it? Had the
padrona been able to make that sudden descent,--could she have done what
on his knees he would have prayed her to do,--then she would no longer
have been herself. This consciousness, unexpressed, flashed across his
mind in heat and shame, aggravating all his sufferings. That it could
not be was bad enough; but to be compelled to allow that it was best
that it should not be,--to feel that success for him would have been
humiliation and downfall for her,--was not that the hardest of all?
It would be vain to follow Laurie through that long, distracted
monologue, confused ‘In memoriam’ of the past, with jars and broken
tones of the future stealing into it, through which every soul
struggles, after one of those shocks and convulsions which are the
landmarks of life. To be stopped every moment while forming forlorn
plans of practicable life by mocking gleams of what might have been, by
bitter-sweet recollections of what has been,--does not everybody know
how it feels? Laurie’s life was snapped in two, or so, at least, it
seemed to him. What was he to do with it? Where was he to fasten the
torn end of the thread? Could he stay here and turn his back upon the
past, and work, and see her at intervals with eyes calmed out of all his
old passion? But when he came to think of it, it had been for her he had
come here. At the first, perhaps, when he had dreamed of that gigantic
Edith and of fame, had he been permitted to go on, he might have found
for himself a certain existence belonging to this place which could have
been carried on in it after the other ties were broken. But he had not
been allowed to go on; and Charlotte Street had become to him only a
kind of lodge to the Square, a place where he could retire to sleep and
muse in the intervals of the real life which was passed in her service
or presence. He exaggerated, poor fellow! as was natural. It seemed to
him at this moment as if in all his exertions, even for Suffolk, who was
his friend, it had been her work he was doing. One thing at least was
certain,--it would never have been done without her. She was mixed up
with every action, every thought, even fancy, that had ever come into
his mind. He had done nothing but at her bidding, or by her means, or
with her co-operation. His work had languished for months past. If he
had pretended to study, it was to please her. And how could life go on
here, when it had but one motive, and that motive was taken away from
it? There are moments in a man’s life when everything that is painful
surges up around him at once, rising, one billow after another, over his
devoted head. That very morning, moved by some premonition of fate, he
had been collecting his papers together, and putting his affairs in
order; and though so vulgar a fact had made little impression on him in
his state of excitement, still Laurie had been aware that his accounts
were not in his favour, and that it might be necessary one day to look
them full in the face, and put order in his life. He had gone on all the
same, without pausing to think, in his mad love. That was perfectly
true, though he was the same Laurie Renton who, six months ago, had put
away the girl’s little notes whom he had begun to think might have been
his wife. He had given up that hope then without a moment’s doubt or
thought of resistance; and yet now, in a still worse position, he had
rushed on blindly to make confession of his love and throw himself at
another woman’s feet. I cannot account for the inconsistency.
But now,--whatever shock he may sustain, howsoever his hopes may perish,
a man must go on living all the same. His life may be torn up by the
roots; he may be thrown, like a transplanted seedling, into any corner;
but yet the quivering tendrils must catch at the earth again, and
existence go on, however broken. Laurie was a man easily turned from his
ambitions, as has been seen; a man not too much given to thought,
easily satisfied, of a facile temper,--and with more power to work for
others than for himself; but still he had to live. Something had to be
done to reconcile natural difficulties, something decided upon for the
future tenor of existence. Nor was he even the sort of man who could
come to an abrupt stop, and stand upon it. His thoughts were discursive,
and rushed forward. Even in the bitterest chords of that knell of the
past there was the impatient whisper of the future. I think there can be
no doubt, on the whole, that what would have been best for him would
have been that government office, to which he would have been tied by
the blind hand of routine, and which would still have left him leisure
for his amateur tendencies. Had he been so fortunate as to possess such
a prop of actual occupation, Laurie would probably have removed from
Charlotte Street,--to which, indeed, he never need have come,--and gone
on steadily with his work, composing his quivering nerves and healing
his wounds. He would have gone on doing kindnesses to his neighbours,
pleasing himself with little pensive sketches, reading more than usual
perhaps; subdued, like a man who had gone through a bad illness; and by
degrees he would have come back, calmed and healed, and able to take up
his old friendship. But that was impossible now. A change of some kind
or other he must have been compelled to make, even had there been no
personal cause for change. He must work; he must spare; he must recall
himself to a sense of the probation on which he had entered six months
before with a light heart. And the natural thing to do was at the same
time the wisest thing. Rightly or wrongly, the artist, whoever he may
be, trusts in Italy as the country of renovation, the fountain of
strength. Laurie scarcely hesitated as to his alternative. He could stay
no longer where he was; his experiment had failed, his position had
become untenable. The readiest suggestion of all was that one in which
there still lay a certain consolation,--he would go to Rome.
He resolved upon this step before he went to bed, and on the next
morning he began to pack up. Miss Hadley, from the other side, watched
his open windows with a curiosity much quickened by her sister’s
surmises and doubts, and saw, to her amazement, the great canvas moved
from its position in the corner,--a step which she found it difficult to
understand. ‘I suppose he is going to take to his painting again,’ she
said to Jane, when she came home. Jane shook her head, with dubious
looks. The truth was she did not understand it. The most strange of all
possible orders had proceeded that morning from Mrs. Severn’s studio. It
was that she was extremely busy, and that no one was to be admitted. No
one! Miss Jane Hadley had her doubts that, though this was the audible
command, an exception had been made in Laurie’s favour, and that so
unusual a step was taken by the padrona in order to secure to herself,
without interruption, the society of her lover. Though Miss Hadley loved
her friend truly in her way, and had a respect for her, and even
believed in her, this was the evil thought which had crossed her mind;
and consequently she was disposed to scoff at her sister’s suggestions.
But there were soon other facts to report of a still more bewildering
character. A van came to Laurie’s door, and carried off the big canvas;
and a workman in a paper cap became visible to the elder sister’s
curious eyes in the centre of Laurie’s room, packing in a vast
packing-case the young man’s belongings. ‘He is going away!’ Miss Hadley
said, with dismay, when her sister came home. She could have cried as
she said it. He was as good as a play to the invalid who never stirred
out of her parlour. Laurie, with his kindly ways, had made himself a
place in her heart. He had taken off his hat as he came out every day to
the shadow of her cap between the curtains; he had waved his hand to her
from his balcony; he had never found fault with her investigations; and
when he bought the flowers for his window he had sent her some pots of
the earliest spring blossoms to cheer her. She, too, had grown fond of
Laurie. ‘He is going away!’ she said, with the corners of her mouth
drooping. ‘And the very best thing he could do,’ said Miss Jane
decidedly; upon which, though she was a very model of decorum, old Miss
Hadley felt for the minute as if she would have liked to fling her
tea-cup at her sister’s head.
It did not take long to make Laurie’s preparations for this sudden
change. He pushed them on with a certain feverish haste, glad to occupy
himself, and eager to put himself at a distance from the house he could
no longer go to as a privileged and perpetual guest. Somehow Charlotte
Street, though it had two ends like other streets, seemed to converge
from both upon the Square. It suggested the Square every time he looked
out upon it; indeed, all roads led to that door which was shut upon him,
which he knew must be shut. But he had not gone back to hear of the
extraordinary barricade raised by the padrona against the world in
general. Laurie had nobody to consult,--nothing to detain him now. He
did not even see one of the ‘set’ for more than a week, during which all
his preparations were made. The day on which by chance he met Suffolk in
the street was ten days later, when everything was settled. Suffolk
stopped eagerly, and turned with him, and took his arm.
‘What has become of you?’ he said; ‘and what did you mean by sending me
that canvas? After all, I wish you had gone on with it. We waited,
thinking you were coming to explain; and I have called twice, but you
were always out; and you look like a ghost,--what does it mean?’
‘It don’t mean anything,’ said Laurie, with as gay a look as he could
muster, ‘but that I’m off to Rome to-morrow; where, you’ll allow, a man
cannot carry canvases with him measuring ten feet by six. I meant to
have come to bid you good-bye to-night.’
‘Off to Rome!’ cried Suffolk, amazed, ‘without a word of warning? Why,
nobody knows of it, eh? not the padrona, nor any of us? What do you
mean, stealing a march upon your friends like this?’
‘My friends won’t mind it much,’ said Laurie. ‘No; I didn’t mean that. I
should like you to miss me. I rather grudge going, indeed, till I know
how they’ve hung the Saxon Maiden----’
‘Oh, confound the Saxon Maiden!’ said Suffolk; ‘it is you I want to know
about, running off like this without a word. It is not anything that has
happened, Laurie?’
‘What could happen?’ said Laurie, with a forced smile. ‘The fact is I am
doing nothing here. You all set upon me, you know, about that picture;
and I must do something. It is no use ignoring the fact. I am going in
for our old work in the Via Felice. And I shall be in time for the Holy
Week,--it is so late this year;’ he said, with a half laugh, at his own
vain attempt at deception,--quite vain, as he could see, in Suffolk’s
eyes.
‘But you don’t care for the Holy Week,’ said the painter. ‘I don’t
understand you, Laurie. What does the padrona say?’
‘The padrona approves,’ said Laurie. He got out the words without
faltering, but he could not bear any more allusion to her. ‘Paint
something on my poor canvas. I have got fond of it,’ he said. ‘I’d like
to see something on it worth looking at.’
‘I won’t touch it!’ cried Suffolk. ‘By George, I won’t! I’ll beat Helen
if she rubs out a line, whisking out and in. Laurie, think better of it.
I don’t know the set at the Felice now; they are not equal to our old
set. Stay, there’s a good fellow, and paint at home.’
‘I can’t,’ said Laurie; ‘I must not. I will not. And the worst is, you
must take me at my word, and not ask why.’
‘I will never say another syllable on the subject,’ said Suffolk,
humbly, and they walked half a mile, arm in arm, without uttering a
word. This was the first notice Laurie’s friends had of his new
resolution. When he had parted from Suffolk, he went straight, without
pause or hesitation, to Mrs. Severn’s door. It was Forrester who opened
it to him; and Forrester, being a privileged person, paused to look at
Laurie as soon as he had closed the door.
‘You’ve been ill, sir,’ said Forrester; ‘the whites is all green, and
the flesh tints yellow in your face, Mr. Renton. Master was asking about
you just yesterday. Don’t you say a word, sir. I can see as you’ve been
ill.’
‘I can’t answer for my complexion,’ said Laurie; ‘but I’m not ill now,
Forrester. I am going away, and I’ve been awfully busy. I want to see
Mrs. Severn. I won’t disturb your master to-day.’
‘Master’s out, sir,’ said the man, ‘unfortunately; he’s at that blessed
gallery, a hanging or a deciding on the poor gentlemen’s pictures. And a
nice temper he do come home in, to be sure! And Mrs. Severn’s----
engaged, sir,’ said Forrester, making a stand in front of the stair.
‘Engaged!’ said Laurie, aghast.
‘Them’s the words, Mr. Renton,’ said the old man. ‘She’s a designing
them twelve pictures, as far as I can hear. She’s busy, and can’t see
nobody. It’s more than a week since them orders was give. And folks is
astonished. It ain’t her way. But I can’t say but what I approve, Mr.
Renton,’ said Forrester, stoutly; ‘designing of a series is hard work.
They’ve all to hang together, and there’s harmony to be studied as well
as composition. And she ain’t going to repeat herself if she can help it
and, on the whole, I approve----’
‘That will do,’ said Laurie, putting him aside; ‘I will make my own way;
and I will tell Mrs. Severn you did your duty, and stopped me. This
could not include me.’
‘But, Mr. Renton!’ cried Forrester, making a step after him.
‘That is enough,--quite enough,’--said Laurie. ‘It could not include
me.’
But his heart beat heavily as he went up the familiar stair. She had
shut out all the world that she might make sure of shutting him
out,--‘Though she might have known I would not molest her!’ poor Laurie
said to himself, with a swelling heart. It was unkind of the padrona.
Had he not been going away it would have wounded him deeply. He went up
heavily, not with the half-stealthy eagerness of his last visit. It
would not have troubled him had he encountered a dozen Miss Hadleys. ‘I
must see Mrs. Severn alone;’ was what he would have said without
flinching had he met her; but, as it happened, there was no one at all
apprehensive or curious now. The order had been given, and the stream of
callers had stopped, and there was an end of it. He went up without any
haste, his foot sounding dully,--he thought,--through all the silent
house. She would hear him coming, and she would know.
‘Come in,’ said the padrona.
She was standing at her easel, drawing, with a little sketch before her,
putting in the outlines of her future picture. Somehow she looked
lonely, deserted, melancholy; as if the stream of life that had flowed
so warmly about her had met with some interruption. In fact, she had
felt the withdrawal of that daily current more than she could have told;
and she had missed Laurie; and her mind had been full of wondering.
Where was the poor boy? What was he doing? How was he bearing it? This
was the thought that was uppermost in her mind as she put in the
Sleeping Beauty. Somehow the picture was appropriate. Life seemed to
have ebbed from her too, though it was her own doing. She did not feel
quite sure sometimes that it was not a dream; and lo, all in a moment,
without any warning, he appeared standing at the door!
The chalk dropped out of the padrona’s fingers. She trembled in spite of
herself. It took her such an effort to master herself, and receive him
with the tranquillity which was indispensable, that for some moments she
did not say a word. Then she recovered herself, and let the chalk lie
where she had dropped it, and made a step or two forward to meet him. ‘I
am glad you have come,’ she said, holding out her hand. And it was quite
true, notwithstanding that she had given orders to exclude the world for
the sole purpose of excluding him, if he should come.
And thus they met, shaking hands with each other in the same room, under
circumstances quite unchanged, except----
‘I am going away,’ said Laurie. ‘I would not have come,--you know I
would not have annoyed you. You need not have told the servants to keep
everybody out. You might have trusted me.’
‘You know I do trust you, with all my heart,’ she said, ‘and that is why
I tell you I am glad you are come; I am very glad;’ and then she sat
down feeling somewhat breathless and giddy, and pointed him to a chair.
He sat down, too, not knowing very well what he was about; and again
there was a pause.
‘I am going away,’ he said, abruptly. ‘Looking over everything, I found
it would be better on the whole to go away----’
The padrona bowed her head, feeling her guilt;--it was her fault;--how
could she say she was sorry, or appeal against his decision as any other
friend would have done? It was she who was the cause.