ALINE sat in the studio, the picture of housewifely concern, mending
Jimmie's socks. It was not the unoffending garments that brought the
expression into her face, but her glance at the old Dutch clock--so
old and crotchety that unless it were tilted to one side it would not
consent to go--whose hands had come with an asthmatic whir to the hour
of eleven. And Jimmie had not yet come down to breakfast. She had called
him an hour ago. His cheery response had been her sanction for putting
the meal into preparation, and now the bacon would be uneatable. She
sighed. Taking care of Jimmie was no light responsibility. Not that he
would complain; far from it. He would eat the bacon raw or calcined if
she set it before him. But that would not be for his good, and hence the
responsibility. In slipping from her grasp and doing the things he ought
not to do, he was an eel or a twelve-year-old schoolboy. Last night,
for instance, instead of finishing off some urgent work for an art
periodical, he had assured her in his superlative manner that it was of
no consequence, and had wasted his evening with her at the Earl's Court
Exhibition. It had been warm and lovely, and the band and the bright
crowd had set her young pulses throbbing, and they had sat at a little
table, and Jimmie had given her some celestial liquid which she had
sucked through a straw, and altogether, to use her own unsophisticated
dialect, it had been perfectly heavenly. But it was wrong of Jimmie to
have sacrificed himself for her pleasure, and to have deceived her into
accepting it. For at three or four o'clock she had heard him tiptoeing
softly past her door on his way to bed, and the finished work she
had found on his table this morning betrayed his occupation. Even the
consolation of scolding him for oversleep and a spoiled breakfast was
thus denied. She spread out her hand in the sock so as to gauge the
extent of a hole, and, contemplating it, sighed again.
The studio was a vast room distempered in bluish grey, and Aline,
sitting solitary at the far end, in the line of a broad quivering beam
of light that streamed through a lofty window running the whole width
of the north-east side, looked like a little brown saint in a bare
conventual hall. For an ascetic simplicity was the studio's key-note.
No curtains, draperies, screens, Japaneseries, no artistic scheme of
decoration, no rare toys of furniture filled the place with luxurious
inspiration. Here and there about the walls hung a sketch by a brother
artist; of his own unsold pictures and studies some were hung, others
stacked together on the floor. An old, rusty, leather drawing-room suite
distributed about the studio afforded sitting accommodation. There was
the big easel bearing the subject-picture on which he now was at work,
with a smaller easel carrying the study by its side. On the model-stand
a draped lay figure sprawled grotesquely. A long deal table was the
untidy home of piles of papers, books, colours, brushes, artistic
properties. A smaller table at the end where Aline sat was laid for
breakfast. It was one of Jimmie's eccentricities to breakfast in the
studio. The dining-room for dinner--he yielded to the convention; for
lunch, perhaps; for breakfast, no. All his intimate life had been
passed in the studio; the prim little drawing-room he scarcely entered
half-a-dozen times in the year.
Aline was contemplating the hole in the sock when the door opened.
She sprang to her feet, advanced a step, and then halted with a little
exclamation.
“Oh, it's you!”
“Yes. Are you disappointed?” asked the smiling youth who had appeared
instead of the expected Jimmie.
“I can get over it. How are you, Tony?”
Mr. Anthony Merewether gave her the superfluous assurance that he was in
good health. He had the pleasant boyish face and clean-limbed figure of
the young Englishman upon whom cares sit lightly. Aline resumed her work
demurely. The young man seated himself near by.
“How is Jimmie?”
“Whom are you calling 'Jimmie'?” asked Aline. “Mr. Padgate, if you
please.”
“You call him Jimmie.”
“I've called him so ever since I could speak. I think it was one of the
first three words I learned. When you can say the same, you can call him
Jimmie.”
“Well, how is Mr. Padgate?” the snubbed youth asked with due humility.
“You can never tell how a man is before breakfast. Why are n't you at
work?”
He bowed to her sagacity, and in answer to her question explained the
purport of his visit. He was going to spend the day sketching up the
river. Would she put on her hat and come with him?
“A fine lot of sketching you'd do, if I did,” said Aline.
The young man vowed with fervour that as soon as he had settled down to
a view he would work furiously and would not exchange a remark with her.
“Which would be very amusing for me,” retorted Aline. “No, I can't come.
I'm far too busy. I've got to hunt up a model for the new picture.”
Tony leant back in his chair, dispirited, and began to protest. She
laughed at his woeful face, and half yielding, questioned him about
trains. He overwhelmed her with a rush of figures, then paused to give
her time to recover. His eyes wandered to the breakfast-table, where lay
Jimmie's unopened correspondence. One letter lay apart from the others.
Tony took it up idly.
“Here's a letter come to the wrong house.”
“No; it is quite right,” said Aline.
“Who is David Rendell, Esquire?”
“Mr. Rendell is a friend of Jimmie's, I believe.”
“I have never heard of him. What's he like?”
“I don't know. Jimmie never speaks of him,” replied Aline.
“That's odd.”
The young man threw the letter on the table and returned to the subject
of the outing. She must accompany him. He felt a perfect watercolour
working itself up within him. One of those dreamy bits of backwater. He
had a title for it already, “The Heart of Summer.” The difference her
presence in the punt would make to the picture would be that between
life and deadness.
The girl fluttered a shy, pleased glance at him. But she loved to tease;
besides, had she not but lately awakened to the sweet novelty of her
young womanhood?
“Perhaps Jimmie won't let me go.”
Tony sprang to his feet. “Jimmie won't let you go!” he exclaimed in
indignant echo. “Did he ever deny you a pleasure since you were born?”
Her eyes sparkled at his tribute to the adored one's excellences.
“That's just where it is, you see, Tony. His very goodness to me won't
let me do things sometimes.”
The servant hurried in with the breakfast-tray and the news that the
master was coming down. Aline anxiously inspected the bacon. To her
relief it was freshly cooked. In a minute or two a voice humming an air
was heard outside, and Jimmie entered, smilingly content with existence.
“Hallo, Tony, what are you doing here, wasting the morning light? Have
some breakfast? Why haven't you laid a place for him?”
Tony declined the invitation, and explained his presence. Jimmie rubbed
his hands.
“A day on the river! The very thing for Aline. It will do her good.”
“I did n't say I was going, Jimmie.”
“Not going? Rubbish. Put on your things and be off at once.”
“How can I until I have given you your breakfast? And then there's the
model--you would never be able to engage her by yourself. And you must
have her to-morrow.”
“I know I'm helpless, dear, but I can engage a model.”
“And waste your time. Besides, you won't be able to find the address.”
“There are cab-horses, dear, with unerring instinct.”
“Your breakfast is getting cold, Jimmie,” said Aline, not condescending
to notice the outrage of her economic principles.
Eventually Jimmie had his way. Tony Merewether was summarily dismissed,
but bidden to return in an hour's time, when Aline would be graciously
pleased to be ready. She poured out Jimmie's coffee, and sat at the side
of the table, watching him eat. He turned to his letters, picked up the
one addressed to “David Rendell.” Aline noticed a shade of displeasure
cross his face.
“Who is Mr. Rendell, Jimmie?” asked Aline.
“A man I know, dear,” he replied, putting the envelope in his pocket. He
went on with his breakfast meditatively for a few moments, then opened
his other letters. He threw a couple of bills across the table. His face
had regained its serenity.
“See that these ill-mannered people are paid, Aline.”
“What with, dear?”
“Money, my child, money. What!” he exclaimed, noting a familiar
expression on her face. “Are we running short? Send them telegrams to
say we'll pay next week. Something is bound to come in by then.”
“Mrs. Bullingdon ought to send the cheque for her portrait,” said Aline.
“Of course she will. And there's something due from Hyam. What a thing
it is to have great expectations! Here's one from Renshaw,” he said,
opening another letter. “'Dear Padgate'--Dear Padgate!” He put his hands
on the table and looked across at Aline. “Now, what on earth can I have
done to offend him? I've been 'Dear Jimmie' for the last twelve years.”
Aline shook her young head pityingly. “Don't you know yet that it is
always 'Dear Padgate' when they want to borrow money of you?”
Jimmie glanced at the letter and then across the table again.
“Dear me,” he said thoughtfully. “Your knowledge of the world at your
tender age is surprising. He does want money. Poor old chap! It is
really quite touching. 'For the love of God lend me four pounds ten to
carry me on to the end of the quarter.'”
“That's two months off. Mr. Renshaw will have to be more economical than
usual,” said Aline, drily. “I am afraid he drinks dreadfully, Jimmie.”
“Hush, dear!” he said, becoming grave. “A man's infirmities are his
infirmities, and we are not called upon to be his judges. How much have
we in the house altogether?” he asked with a sudden return to his bright
manner.
“Ten pounds three and sixpence.”
“Why, that's a fortune. Of course we can help Renshaw. Wire him his four
pounds ten when you go out.”
“But, Jimmie----” expostulated this royal person's minister of finance.
“Do what I say, my dear,” said Jimmie, quietly.
That note in his voice always brought about instant submission, fetched
her down from heights of pitying protection to the prostrate humility
of a little girl saying “Yes, Jimmie,” as to a directing providence. She
did not know from which of the two positions, the height or the depth,
she loved him the more. As a matter of fact, the two ranges of emotion
were perfect complements one of the other, the sex in her finding
satisfaction of its two imperious cravings, to shelter and to worship.
The Renshaw incident was closed, locked up as it were in her heart by
the little snap of the “Yes, Jimmie.” One or two other letters were
discussed gaily. The last to be opened was a note from Mrs. Deering.
“Come to lunch on Sunday and bring Aline. I am asking your friend Norma
Hardacre.” Aline clapped her hands. She had been longing to see that
beautiful Miss Hardacre again. Of course Jimmie would go? He smiled.
“Another unconscious sitting for the portrait,” he said. His glance
wandered to a strainer that stood with its face to the wall, at a
further end of the room, and he became absent-minded. Lately he had been
dreaming a boy's shadowy dreams, too sweet as yet for him to seek to
give them form in his waking hours. A warm touch on his hand brought him
back to diurnal things. It was the coffee-pot held by Aline.
“I have asked you twice if you would have more coffee,” she laughed.
“I suppose I'm the happiest being in existence,” he said irrelevantly.
Aline poured out the coffee. “You have n't got much to make you happy,
poor dear!” she remarked, when the operation was concluded.
His retort was checked by a violent peal at the front door-bell and a
thundering knock.
“That's Morland,” cried Jimmie. “He is like the day of doom--always
heralds his approach by an earthquake.”
Morland it was, in riding tweeds, a whip in his hand. He pointed an
upbraiding finger at the half-eaten breakfast. The sloth of these
painters! Aline flew to the loved one's protection. Jimmie had not gone
to bed till four. The poor dear had to sleep.
“I did n't get to bed till four, either,” said Morland, with the
healthy, sport-loving man's contempt for people who require sleep, “but
I was up at eight and was riding in the Park at nine. Then I thought I'd
come up here. I've got some news for you.”
Aline escaped. Morland's air of health and prosperity overpowered her.
She did not dare whisper detraction of him to Jimmie, in whose eyes he
was incomparable, but to Tony Merewether she had made known her wish
that he did not look always so provokingly clean, so eternally satisfied
with himself. All the colour of his mind had gone into his face, was her
uncharitable epigram. Aline, it will be observed, saw no advantage in a
tongue perpetually tipped with honey.
“What is your news?” asked Jimmie, as soon as they were alone.
“I have done it at last,” said Morland.
“What?”
“Proposed. I'm engaged. I'm going to be married.”
Jimmie's honest face beamed pleasure. He wrung Morland's hand. The best
news he had heard for a long time. When had he taken the plunge into the
pool of happiness?
“Last night.”
“And you have come straight to tell me? It is like you. I am touched, it
is good to know you carry me in your heart like that.”
Morland laughed. “My dear old Jimmie--”
“I am so glad. I never suspected anything of the kind. Well, she's an
amazingly lucky young woman whoever she is. When can I have a timid peep
at the divinity?”
“Whenever you like--why, don't you know who it is?”
“Lord, no, man; how should I?”
“It's Norma Hardacre.”
“Norma Hardacre!” The echo came from Jimmie as from a hollow cave, and
was followed by a silence no less cavernous. The world was suddenly
reduced to an empty shell, black, meaningless.
“Yes,” said Morland, with a short laugh. He carefully selected, cut,
and lit a cigar, then turned his back and examined the half-finished
picture. He felt the Briton's shamefacedness in the novelty of the
position of affianced lover. The echo that in Jimmie's ears had sounded
so forlorn was to him a mere exclamation of surprise. His solicitude as
to the cigar and his inspection of the picture saved him by lucky chance
from seeing Jimmie's face, which wore the blank, piteous look of a child
that has had its most cherished possession snatched out of its hand and
thrown into the fire. Such episodes in life cannot be measured by time
as it is reckoned in the physical universe. To Jimmie, standing amid the
chaos of his dreams, indefinite hours seemed to have passed since he had
spoken. For indefinite hours he seemed to grope towards reconstruction.
He lived intensely in the soul's realm, where time is not, was swept
through infinite phases of emotion; finally awoke to a consciousness
of renunciation, full and generous. Perhaps a minute and a half had
elapsed. He crossed swiftly to Morland and clapped him on the shoulder.
“The woman among all women I could have wished for you.”
His voice quavered a little; but Morland, turning round, saw nothing in
Jimmie's eyes but the honest gladness he had taken for granted he should
find there. The earnest scrutiny he missed. He laughed again.
“There are not many in London to touch her,” he said in his
self-satisfied way.
“Is there one?”
“You seem more royalist than--well, than Morland King,” said the happy
lover, chuckling at his joke. “I wish I had the artist's command
of superlatives as you have, Jimmie. It would come in deuced handy
sometimes. Now if, for instance, you wanted to describe the reddest
thing that ever was, you would find some hyperbolic image for it,
whereas I could only say it was damned red. See what I mean?”
“It does n't matter what you say, but what you feel,” said Jimmie.
“Perhaps we hyperbolic people fritter away emotions in the mere frenzy
of expressing them. The mute man often has deeper feelings.”
“Oh, I'm not going to set up as an unerupted volcano,” laughed Morland.
“I'm only the average man that has got the girl he has set his heart
on--and of course I think her in many ways a paragon, otherwise I should
n't have set my heart on her. There are plenty to pick from, God knows.
And they let you know it too, by Jove. You're lucky enough to live out
of what is called Society, so you can't realise how they shy themselves
at you. Sometimes one has to be simply a brute and dump 'em down hard.
That's what I liked about Norma Hardacre. She required no dumping.”
“I should think not,” said Jimmie.
“There's one thing that pleases me immensely,” Morland remarked, “and
that is the fancy she has taken for you. It's genuine. I've never heard
her talk of any one else as she does of you. She is not given to gush,
as you may have observed.”
“It's a very deep pleasure to me to hear it,” said Jimmie, looking
bravely in the eyes of the happy man. “My opinion of Miss Hardacre I
have told you already.”
Morland waved his cigar as a sign of acceptance of the tribute to the
lady.
“I was thinking of myself,” he said. “There are a good many men I shall
have to drop more or less when I'm married. Norma would n't have 'em
in the house. There are others that will have to be on probation. Now I
shouldn't have liked you to be on probation--to run the risk of my
wife not approving of you--caring to see you--you know what I mean. But
you're different from anybody else, Jimmie. I'm not given to talking
sentiment--but we've grown up together--and somehow, in spite of our
being thrown in different worlds, you have got to be a part of my life.
There!” he concluded with a sigh of relief, putting on his hat and
holding out his hand, “I've said it!”
The brightening of Jimmie's eyes gave token of a heart keenly touched.
Deeply rooted indeed must be the affection that could have impelled
Morland to so unusual a demonstration of feeling. His nature was as
responsive as a harp set in the wind. His counterpart in woman would
have felt the tears well into her eyes. A man is allowed but a breath, a
moisture, that makes the eyes bright. Morland had said the final word of
sentiment; equally, utterly true of himself. Morland was equally a part
of his life. It were folly to discuss the reasons. Loyal friendships
between men are often the divinest of paradoxes.
The touch upon Jimmie's heart was magnetic. It soothed pain. It set free
a flood of generous emotion, even thanksgiving that he was thus allowed
vicarious joy in infinite perfections. It was vouchsafed him to be happy
in the happiness of two dear to him. This much he said to Morland, with
what intensity of meaning the fortunate lover was a myriad leagues from
suspecting.
“I'll see you safely mounted,” said Jimmie, opening the studio door.
Then suddenly like a cold wind a memory buffeted him. He shut the door
again.
“I forgot. I have a letter for you. It came this morning.”
Morland took the letter addressed to “David Rendell” which Jimmie drew
from his pocket, and uttered an angry exclamation.
“I thought this infernal business was over and done with.”
He tore open the envelope, read the contents, then tilted his hat to
the back of his head, and sitting down on one of the dilapidated
straight-backed chairs of the leather suite, looked at Jimmie in
great perplexity. In justice to the man it must be said that anger had
vanished.
“I suppose you know what these letters mean that you have been taking in
for me?”
“I have never permitted myself to speculate,” said Jimmie. “You asked me
to do you a very great service. It was a little one. You are not a man
to do anything dishonourable. I concluded you had your reasons, which it
would have been impertinent of me to inquire into.”
“It's the usual thing,” said Morland, with a self-incriminatory shrug. “A
girl.”
“A love affair was obvious.”
Morland spat out an exclamation of impatient disgust for himself and
rose to his feet.
“Heaven knows how it began--she was poor and lonely--almost a lady--and
she had beauty and manners and that sort of thing above her class.”
“They always have,” said Jimmie, with a pained expression. “You need n't
tell me the story. It's about the miserablest on God's earth, is n't it
now?”
“I suppose so. Upon my soul, I'm not a beast, Jimmie!”
The unwonted rarefied air of sentiment that he had been breathing for
the last twelve hours had, as it were, intoxicated him. Had the letter
reached him the day before, he would have left the story connected
with it in the cold-storage depository where men are wont to keep such
things. No one would have dreamed of its existence. But now he felt an
exaggerated remorse, a craving for confession, and yet he made the naked
remorseful human's instinctive clutch at palliatives.
“Upon my soul, I'm not a beast, Jimmie. I swear I loved her at first.
You know what it is. You yourself loved a little girl in Paris--you told
me about it--did n't you?”
Jimmie set his teeth, and said, “Yes.”
Morland went on.
“Some women have ways with them, you know. They turn you into one of
those toy thermometers--you hold the bulb, and the spirit in it rises
and bubbles. She got hold of me that way--I bubbled, I suppose--it
was n't her fault, she was sweet and innocent. It was her nature. You
artistic people call the damned thing a temperament, I believe. Anyhow
I was in earnest at the beginning. Then--one always does--I found it was
only a passing fancy.”
“And like a passing cab it has splashed you with mud. How does the
matter stand now?”
“Read this,” said Morland, handing him the letter.
“Dearest,” it ran, “the time is coming when you can be very good to me.
Jenny.” That was all. Jimmie, holding the paper in front of him, looked
up distressfully at Morland.
“'The time is coming when you can be very good to me.' How confoundedly
pathetic! Poor little girl! Oh, damn it, Morland, you are going to be
good to her, are n't you?”
“I'll do all I can. Of course I'll do all I can. I tell you I'm not a
beast. Heaps of other men would n't care a hang about it. They would
tell her to go to the devil. I'm not that sort.”
“I know you're not,” said Jimmie.
Morland lit another cigar with the air of a man whose virtues deserve
some reward.
“The letter can only have one interpretation. Have you known of it?”
“Never dreamed of it.”
“Was there any question of marriage?”
“None whatever. Difference of position and all the rest of it. She quite
understood. In fact, it was like your Quartier Latin affair.”
Jimmie winced. “It was n't the Quartier Latin--and I was going to marry
her--only she died before--oh, don't mind me, Morland. What's going to
be done now?” Morland shrugged his shoulders again, having palliated
himself into a more normal condition. His conscience, to speak by the
book, was clothed and in its right mind.
“It's infernally hard lines it should come just at this time. You see,
I've heaps of things to think about. My position--Parliament--I'm going
to contest Cosford in the autumn. If the constituency gets hold of any
scandal, I'm ruined. You know the Alpine heights of morality of a
British constituency--and there's always some moral scavenger about. And
then there's Norma--”
“Yes, there's Norma,” said Jimmie, seriously.
“It's unpleasant, you see. If she should know--”
“It would break her heart,” said Jimmie.
Morland started and looked at Jimmie stupidly, his mental faculties
for the second paralysed, incapable of grappling with the idea. Was it
scathing sarcasm or sheer idiocy? Recovering his wits, he realised
that Jimmie was whole-heartedly, childishly sincere. With an effort he
controlled a rebellious risible muscle at the corner of his lip.
“It would give her great pain,” he said in grave acquiescence.
“It's a miserable business,” said Jimmie.
Morland paced the studio. Suddenly he stopped.
“Should there be any unpleasantness over this, can I rely on your help
to pull me through?”
“You know you can,” said Jimmie.
Morland looked relieved.
“May I write a note?”
Jimmie pointed to a corner of the long deal table.
“You'll find over there all the materials for mending a broken
butterfly,” he said sadly.