I'll never let you inside the house again until you go down on your
knees and beg Jimmie's pardon,” cried Aline.
She stood, a slim incarnation of outraged womanhood, with her hand on
the knob of the open door. A scared but stubborn youth hesitated on the
threshold. Few men, least of all lovers, like being turned out.
“I don't believe you care a hang for me!” he said.
“I don't,” she retorted bravely, but with tremulous lip. “Not a hang, as
you call it. I dislike you exceedingly and I don't want to see you any
more. I'll never speak to anybody who believes such things of Jimmie.”
“But, my good child,” expostulated Tony Merewether, “they are facts; he
never has denied them.”
“He could if he liked.”
“How do you know?”
“How do I know?” Aline repeated scornfully. “That just shows how far we
are apart. There's not the slightest reason for talking any more. You
have insulted Jimmie and you are going on insulting him. I can't stand
by this door forever. I want you to go.”
“Oh, very well, I'll go,” said the young fellow. “But you've behaved
damnably to me, Aline--simply damnably.” He strode down the passage
and slammed the front door behind him. Aline turned back into the prim
little drawing-room where the interview had taken place, and after an
attempt to remain composed and dignified, suddenly broke into tears. She
could struggle no more against the cruelty of man and the hopelessness
of life. It had been a stormy interview. Tony Merewether had come, as
her natural protector, to insist upon immediate marriage. A small legacy
recently bequeathed to him would enable them to marry with reasonable
prudence. Why should they wait? Aline pleaded for time. How could she
leave her beloved Jimmie in his blackest hour?
“It's just because I don't think it quite right for you to live here any
longer, that I want you to come away at once,” Tony had said.
“Not right to live here? What on earth do you mean?” The luckless lover
tried to explain. Aline regarded him icily, and in his confusion and
discomfiture he lost the careful wrappings which he had prepared for his
words.
“You think that Jimmie is not a fit person for me to associate with?”
she had asked in a dangerous tone.
“Yes, since you choose to put it that way,” he had replied, nettled.
He believed that women liked a man of spirit and generally yielded to
a show of masterfulness. He was very young. Taking up his parable with
greater confidence, he showed her the social and moral necessity of
immediate recourse to his respectable protection. Naturally he admired
her loyalty, he signified, with a magnanimous wave of the hand; but
there were certain things girls did not quite comprehend; a man's
judgment had to be trusted. He invited her to surrender entirely to his
wisdom. The end of it all was his ignominious dismissal. She would not
see him until he had begged Jimmie's pardon on his knees.
But now she buried her face in the sofa-cushions and sobbed. It was her
first poignant disillusion. Tony, whom she loved with all her heart, was
just like everybody else, incapable of pure faith, ready to believe the
worst. He was cruel, uncharitable. She would never speak to him
again. And the sweet shy dream of her young life was over. It was very
tragical.
Jimmie's step coming up the studio stairs caused her to spring from the
sofa and frantically dry her eyes before the mirror. The steps advanced
along the passage, and soon Jimmie's head appeared at the door.
“Where have you hidden the little watercolour box?” he asked cheerily.
“In the cupboard. On the second shelf,” she replied, without turning
round.
He caught sight of the reflection of a tear-stained face, and came and
stood by her side.
“Why, you've been crying!”
“I suppose I have,” she admitted with affectionate defiance, looking up
into his face. “Why should n't I, if I like? It's not a crime.”
“It's worse--it's a blunder,” he quoted with a smile. “It can't do any
one any good, and it makes your pretty nose red. That will spoil your
good looks.”
“I wish it would. My looks will never matter to anybody,” she said
desperately.
He put his arm round her shoulders, just as he had done since she could
remember.
“What has happened to distress you--more than usual?” he added.
She was silent for a moment, and hung her head.
“I've broken off with Tony,” she said in a low voice.
“You'll mend it up with Tony at once, my dear.”
“I'll never marry him,” declared Aline.
“You'll write and tell him that you'll marry him at the very first
opportunity. There are reasons why you should, Aline, grave reasons.”
“You wouldn't have me marry any one I dislike intensely?” she flashed.
“Wouldn't you do it to please me, even though you hated him violently?
I have been going to speak to you about this. It's high time you were
married, dear, and I particularly wish it. So make friends with Tony as
soon as ever you can.”
“I never want to see Tony again--until he has gone on his bended knees
to you,” said Aline, with a quivering lip. “I don't want to breathe the
same air with any one who does n't think of you as I do.”
This was the first allusion that the girl had made to unhappy things,
since they had become common knowledge a month ago. She had conveyed to
him by increased tenderness and devotion that she loved him all the more
for his suffering, and it had been easy for him to perceive that the
main facts of the story were not unknown to her. But hitherto there had
been absolute silence on the part of each. He had been greatly
puzzled as to the proper course he should take. An interview with Tony
Merewether that morning had decided him. It had been short, coldly
courteous on the young fellow's side, who merely asked and obtained
consent to marry Aline forthwith, and wistfully dignified on Jimmie's.
He sat down on the arm of a chair and took her hand, deeply moved by her
passionate faith in him.
“Listen, dear. I am a dishonoured man and it is n't right that you
should live with me any longer. Tony, dear good fellow, is no more to
blame for what he thinks of me than the crazy wronged man who shot me.
But the only way for you to make him think better is to marry him. No,
don't interrupt. Stand quietly and let me talk to you. I've been making
plans and I should be tremendously upset if there was any difficulty.
I'm going to give up the house and studio.”
Aline regarded him in frightened amazement, and then looked round as
if the familiar walls and furniture were in danger of incontinent
disappearance.
“What?” she gasped.
“I shall give it up and wander about painting abroad, so it's absolutely
necessary that you should marry Tony. Otherwise I don't know what on
earth I should do with you.”
He swung her hand and looked smilingly into her eyes.
“You see I really am in a hurry to get rid of you,” he added.
Aline gazed at him for a long time, gradually recovering from her
stupefaction. Then she withdrew her hand from his clasp and laughed.
“You are talking unadulterated rubbish, Jimmie,” she said.
Upon this declaration she took her stand, and no protest or argument
could move her. She withstood triumphantly a siege of several days.
Jimmie tried to exert his quasiparental authority. But the submissive
little girl, who had always yielded when Jimmie claimed obedience, had
given place to a calmly inflexible woman. Jimmie swore that he would not
commit the crime of spoiling her life's happiness. She replied, with a
toss of her head and a pang of her heart, that her life's happiness had
nothing to do with Tony Merewether, and that if it did, the crime would
lie at his door and not at Jimmie's.
“As for leaving you alone in the wide world, I would just as soon think
of deserting a new-born baby in the street,” she said. “You are not fit
to be by yourself. And whether you like it or not, Jimmie, I must stay
and look after you.”
At last, by the underhand methods which women often employ for the
greater comfort of men, she cajoled him into an admission. The plan of
giving up the house had, as its sole object, the forcing of her hand.
Victorious, she allowed herself to shed tears over his goodness. Just
for her miserable sake he had proposed to turn himself into a homeless
wanderer over the face of Europe.
“Do tell me, Jimmie,” she said, “how it feels to be an angel!”
He laughed in his old bright way.
“Very uncomfortable when a tyrannical young woman cuts your wings off.”
“But I do it for your good, Jimmie,” she retorted. “If I did n't, you
would be flying about helplessly.”
Thus the clouds that lay around them were lit with tender jesting.
During this passage through the darkness he never faltered, serene in
his faith, having found triumphant vindication thereof in the devotion
of Aline. That he had made a sacrifice greater than any human being had
a right to demand of another, he knew full well; he had been driven on
to more perilous reefs than he had contemplated; the man whom he had
imagined Morland to be would have thrown all planks of safety to the
waves in order to rescue him. He felt acutely the pain of his shipwreck;
but he did not glorify himself as a martyr: he was satisfied that it was
for the worshipped woman's happiness, and that in itself was a reward.
His catholic sympathy even found extenuating circumstances in Morland's
conduct. Once when Aline inveighed against his desertion, he said in the
grave manner in which he delivered himself of his moral maxims:
“We ought never to judge a human being's actions until we know his
motives.”
Aline thought the actions were quite sufficient for a working
philosophy, but she did not say so. Jimmie half guessed the motives and
judged leniently. Though he had lost much that made life sweet to him,
his heart remained unchanged, his laugh rang true through the house; and
were it not for the loneliness and the dismal blight in her own little
soul, Aline would not have realised that any calamitous event had
happened.
One other of Jimmie's friends maintained relations with him. This was
Connie Deering. She had gone abroad soon after the disaster, and moved
by various feelings for which she rather forbade her impulsive self to
account, had written one or two oddly expressed letters. In the first
one she had touched lightly upon the difficult subject. She would not
have believed a word of it, if she had not heard it from his own lips.
If he would write to her and say that it was all a lie, she would accept
his word implicitly. He was either a god or a devil--a remark that
filled Jimmie with considerable alarm. A shrewd brain was inside the
pretty butterfly head. In his reply he ignored the question, an example
which Connie followed in her second letter. This consisted mainly in a
rambling account of the beauty of Stresa and the comforts and excellent
cuisine of the hotel by the lake; but a postscript informed him that
Norma was travelling about with her for an indefinite period, and that
she had heard nothing of Morland, who having easily won his election
was now probably busy with the beginning of the autumn session. Jimmie,
unversed in the postscriptal ways of women, accepted the information as
merely the literal statement of facts. A wiser man would have grasped
the delicate implication that the relations between the affianced pair
were so strained that an interval of separation had seemed desirable.
The unshaken faith of the man in the ultimate righteousness of things
kept him serene; but the young girl who had no special faith, save in
the perfect righteousness of Jimmie and the dastardly unrighteousness of
the world in general and of Mr. Anthony Merewether in particular, found
it difficult to live in these high altitudes of philosophy. Indeed she
was a very miserable little girl when Jimmie was not by, and pined,
and cried her heart out, and grew thin and pale and sharp-tempered,
and filled her guardian with much concern. At last Jimmie took heroic
measures. Without Aline's knowledge he summoned Tony Merewether to an
interview. The young man came. Jimmie received him in the studio, begged
him to take a seat, and rang the bell. The middle-aged housekeeper ran
down in some perturbation at the unusual summons, for it was Jimmie's
habit to shout up the stairs, generally to Aline, for anything he
wanted. She received his instructions. Miss Aline would oblige him by
coming down at once. During the interval of waiting he talked to
Mr. Merewether of indifferent things, flattering himself on a sudden
development of the diplomatic faculty. Aline ran into the room, and
stopped short at the sight of the young man, uttering a little cry of
indignant surprise. Jimmie cleared his throat, but the oration that
he had prepared was never delivered. Aline marched straight up to the
offending lover.
“I don't see you on your knees,” she said.
Tony, who was entirely unexpectant of this uncompromising attitude,
having taken it for granted that by some means or other the way had been
made smooth for him, retorted somewhat sharply:
“You're not likely to.”
“Then I wonder,” said Aline, “at your audacity in coming to this house.”
She turned and marched back to the door, her little figure very erect
and her dark eyes blazing. Jimmie intercepted her.
“Tony came at my request, my child.”
For the first and only time in her life she cast a look of anger upon
Jimmie.
“Let me pass, please,” she said, like an outraged princess; and waving
Jimmie aside, she made the exit of offended majesty.
The two men looked stupidly at each other. Their position was
ignominious.
“I did it for the best, my boy,” said Jimmie, taking up a pipe which
he began to fill mechanically. He was just the kind creature of happier
days. The young fellow's heart was touched. After a minute's silence he
committed a passionate indiscretion.
“I wish to God you would tell me there is something hidden beneath this
ghastly story, and that it's quite different from what it appears to
be!”
Jimmie drew himself up and looked the young man between the eyes.
“That's a question I discuss with no human being,” said he.
“I beg your pardon,” said Tony Merewether, in sincere apology. “I would
not have taken such a liberty if it had n't been a matter of life and
death for me. Perhaps you think I ought to do more or less as Aline asks
me; but she is too precious to purchase with an infernal lie. I'm hanged
if I'll do it, and I don't think you're the man to misunderstand my
frankness.”
Jimmie had lit his pipe during the foregoing speech. He drew two or
three meditative puffs.
“Have as little to do with lies, my boy, as ever you can,” said he. “And
cheer up, all is sure to come right in the end.”
He was sunk in reflection for a long time after the young man had gone,
and again for a long time after Aline had done remorseful penance
for her loss of temper. Then he went out for a walk and brought back
something in his pocket. At dinner-time he was unusually preoccupied.
When the meal was over, he fished up a black bottle from beneath
the table, and going to the sideboard, came back with a couple of
wineglasses. Aline watched him as though he were performing some rite in
black magic.
“This is rich fruity port,” said he, filling the glasses. “Evans, the
grocer, told me I should get nothing like it at the price in London. You
are to drink it. It will do you good.”
Aline, still penitent, obeyed meekly.
“How could you be so extravagant, Jimmie?” she said in mild protest. “It
must have cost quite three shillings.”
“And sixpence,” said Jimmie, unabashed. He lifted up his glass. “Now
here's to our _Wanderjahr_, or as much of it as we can run to.”
“Whatever do you mean, Jimmie?”
“I mean my dear,” said he, “that we are going to take a knapsack, a
tambourine and a flute, and appropriate ribbons for our costumes, and
beg our way through southern Europe.”
He explained and developed his plan, the result of his meditations,
in his laughing picturesque way. They were doing nothing but eating
expensive fog in November London. A diet of sunshine and garlic would
be cheaper. They would walk under the olive-trees and drift about on
lagoons, and whisper with dead ages in the moonlit gloom of crumbling
palaces. They would go over hills on donkeys. They would steep their
souls in Perugino, Del Sarto, Giorgione. They would teach the gaunt
Italian flea to respect British Keating's powder. They would fraternise
with the beautiful maidens of Arles and sit on the top of Giotto's
Campanile. They would do all kinds of impossible things. Afford it? Of
course they could. Had he not received his just dues from the princess
and sold two pictures a week or two ago? At this point he fell thinking
for a couple of dreamy minutes.
“I meant to give you a carriage, dear,” he said at last in mild apology.
“I'm afraid it will have to be a third-class one.”
“A fourth or fifth would be good enough for me,” cried Aline. “Or I
could walk all the way with you. Don't I know you have planned it out
just for my sake?”
“Rubbish, my dear,” said Jimmie, holding the precious wine to the light.
“I'm taking you because I don't see how I can leave you behind. You have
no idea what an abominable nuisance you'll be.”
Aline laughed a joyous laugh which did Jimmie good to hear, and came
behind his chair and put her arms about his neck, behaving foolishly as
a young girl penetrated with the sense of the loved one's goodness is
privileged to do. What she said is of infinitesimal importance, but it
lifted care from Jimmie's heart and made him as happy as a child. Like
two children, they discussed the project; and Aline fetching from
the top shelf of the bookcase in Jimmie's bedroom a forlorn, dusty,
yellow-paged Continental Bradshaw, twenty years old, they looked up
phantom trains that had long ceased running, speculated on the merits
of dead-and-gone hotels, and plunged into the fairyland of anachronistic
information.
A few days were enough for Jimmie's simple arrangements; and then began
the pilgrimage of these two, each bearing a burden, a heart-ache, a pain
from which there was no escaping, but each bearing it with a certain
splendour of courage that made life beautiful to the other. For the girl
suffered keenly, as Jimmie knew. She had given a passionate heart for
good and all to the handsome young fellow who had refused to bow the
knee to the man whom he had every reason to consider a blackguard. They
had come together, youth to youth, as naturally as two young birds in
the first mating-season; but, fortunately or unfortunately for Aline,
she was not a bird, but a human being of unalterable affections and
indomitable character. She had the glorious faith, _quia incredibile_,
in Jimmie, and rather than swerve aside from it she would have walked
on knife edges all the rest of her days. So she scorned the pain, and
scorned herself for feeling it when she saw the serenity with which he
bore his cross. Dimly she felt that if the truth were known he would
stand forth heroically, not infamously. She had revered him as a child
does its father; but in that sweet and pure relationship of theirs, she
had also watched him with the minute, jealous solicitude that a mother
devotes to an only child who is incapable of looking after itself.
Nothing in his character had escaped her. She knew both his strength
and his enchanting weaknesses. To her trained eyes, he was all but
transparent; and of late her quickened vision had read in letters of
fire across his heart, “The desire of the moth for the star.”
So they travelled through the world, hand in hand, as it were, and drank
together of its beauty. They were memorable journeyings. Sleeping-cars
and palatial hotels and the luxuries of modern travel were not for them.
Aline, who knew that Jimmie, as far as he himself was concerned, would
have slept upon wood quite as cheerfully as upon feathers, but for
her sake would have royally commanded down, held the purse-strings and
dictated the expenditure. They had long, wonderful third-class journeys,
stopping at every wayside station, at each having some picturesque
change of company in the ever-crowded, evil-smelling, wooden-seated
compartment. She laughed at Jimmie's fears as to her discomfort;
protested with energetic sincerity that this was the only way in the
world to travel with enjoyment. It was a never-failing interest to see
Jimmie disarm the suspicion of peasants by his sympathetic knowledge of
their interests, to listen to his arguments with the chance-met curé,
perspiring and polite, or the mild young soldier in a brass helmet a
size too big for him. In France she understood what they were saying,
and maintained a proper protectorate over Jimmie by means of a rough and
ready acquaintance with the vernacular. But in Italy she was dumb, could
only regard Jimmie in open-mouthed astonishment and admiration. He
spoke Italian. She had known him all her life and never suspected this
accomplishment. It required some tact to keep him in his proper position
as interpreter and restrain him from acting on his own initiative. In
the towns they put up at little humble hostelries in by-streets and in
country-places at rough inns, eating rude fare and drinking sour wine
with great content. The more they economised the longer would the
idyllic vagabondage last.
Through southern France and northern Italy they wandered without fixed
plans, going from place to place as humour seized them, seeking the
sunshine. At last it seemed to be their normal existence. London with
its pain and its passion grew remote like the remembered anguish of a
dream. Few communications reached them. The local newspaper gave them
all the tidings they needed of the great world. It was a life free
from vexation. The decaying splendour of the larger cities with their
treasure-houses of painting and sculpture and their majestic palaces
profoundly stirred the young girl's imagination and widened her
conceptions and sympathies. But she loved best to arrive by a crazy,
old-world diligence at some little townlet built on a sunny hillside,
whose crumbling walls were the haunts of lizards and birds and strange
wild-flowers; and having rested and eaten at the dark little _albergo_,
smelling of wine and garlic and all Italian smells, to saunter out with
Jimmie through the narrow, ill-paved, clattering streets alive with
brown children and dark-eyed mothers, and men sitting on doorsteps
violently gesticulating and screaming over the game of _morra_, and to
explore the impossible place from end to end. A step or two when they
desired it would bring them to the sudden peace of the mediaeval church,
with its memories of Romanesque tradition and faint stirrings of
Gothic curiously reflecting the faith of its builders; the rough,
weather-beaten casket of one flawless gem of art, a Virgin smiling
over the child on her lap at many generations of worshippers, superbly
eternal and yet quaintly woman. And then they would pass out of the
chilly streets and down the declivitous pathways below the town and sit
together on the hillside, in a sun-baked spot sheltered from the wind.
This Aline, vaguely conscious of the Infinite, called “hanging on the
edge of Nowhere.”
One day, on such a hillside Jimmie had been painting three brown-faced
children whom he had cajoled into posing for him, while Aline looked on
dreamily. The urchins, dismissed with a few halfpennies, bowed polite
thanks, the two boys taking off their caps with the air of ragged
princes, and scampered away like rabbits out of sight.
“There!” cried Jimmie, throwing down his brush and holding out the
little panel at arm's length. “I have never done anything so good in all
my life! Have n't I got it? Is n't it better than ten cathedralfuls of
sermons? Is n't it the quintessence of happiness, the perfect trust in
the sweet earth to yield them its goodness? Could any one after seeing
that dare say the world was only a dank and dismal prison where men do
nothing but sit and hear each other groan? Look at it, Aline. What do
you think of it?”
“It's just lovely, Jimmie,” said Aline.
“If I painted a pink hippopotamus standing on its head, you would say it
was lovely. Why did n't you tell me that arm was out of drawing?”
He took up his brush and made the necessary correction. Aline laughed.
“Do you know one of the few things I can remember my father saying was
about you?”
“God bless my soul,” said Jimmie. “I had almost forgotten you ever had a
father--dear old chap! What did he say?”
“I remember him telling you that one day you would die of incurable
optimism. For years I used to think it was some horrible disease, and I
used to whisper in my prayers, 'O God, please cure Jimmie of optimism,'
and sometimes lie awake at nights thinking of it.”
“Well, do you think your prayer has been answered?” asked Jimmie,
amused.
She shifted herself a little nearer him and put her hand on his knee.
“Thank goodness, no. You've got it as bad as ever--and I believe I've
caught it.” Then, between a sob and a laugh, she added:
“Oh, Jimmie dear, your stupid old head could never tell you what you
have done for me since we have been abroad. If I had stayed at home I
think I should have died of--of--of malignant pessimism. You will never,
never, never understand.”
“And will you ever understand what you have done for me, my child?” said
Jimmie, gravely. “We won't talk about these things. They are best in our
hearts.”