WHAT she wrote to him is no great matter.
Her letter, which he opened on coming down to breakfast the next
morning, filled many pages. It was a rhapsody of passionate love and
self-abasement, with frantic appeals for forgiveness. In its cowardice
there was something horribly piteous. Jimmie read it beneath the high
north window of the studio, his back turned towards Aline, who was
seated at the breakfast-table at the other end. For a long, long while
he stood there, quite still, holding the letter in his hand. Aline, in
wonder, stole up quietly and touched his arm. When he turned, she saw
that his face was ashen-grey, like a dead man's.
The shock left its mark upon him. Physically it accomplished the work of
ten years, wiping the youth from his face and setting in its stead the
seal of middle age. It is common enough for grief or illness to lay its
hand on the face of a woman no longer young and shrivel up her beauty
like a leaf and set her free, old and withered. But with a man, who has
no such beauty to be marred, the case is rare.
For a week he remained silent. The two women who loved him waited in
patience until the time should come for their comforting to be of use.
From the very first morning he let no change appear in his habits,
but set his palette as usual and went on with the new picture that was
nearing completion. In the afternoon he went for a walk. Aline, going
down to the studio, happened to look at his morning's work. For a moment
she was puzzled by what she saw, for she was familiar with his
methods. Gradually the solution dawned upon her. He had been painting
meaninglessly, incoherently, putting in splotches of colour that had
no relation to the tone of the picture, crudely accentuating outlines,
daubing here, there, and anywhere with an aimless brush. It was the work
of a child or a drunken man. Aline cast herself on the model-platform
and cried till she could cry no more. When he came back, he took a
turpentine rag and obliterated the whole picture. For days he worked
incessantly, trying in vain to repaint. Nothing would come right. The
elementary technique of his art seemed to have left him. Aline strove to
get him away. He resisted. He had to do his day's work, he said.
“But you're not well, dear,” she urged. “You will kill yourself if you
go on like this.”
“I've never heard of work killing a man,” he answered. Then after a
pause, “No. It's not work that kills.”
At last the sleep that had failed him returned, and he awoke one morning
free from the daze in the brain against which he had been obstinately
struggling. He rose and faced the world again with clear eyes. When
Aline entered the studio to summon him to lunch, she found him painting
at the unhappy picture with his accustomed sureness of touch. He leaned
back and surveyed his handiwork.
“It's going to be magnificent, is n't it? What a blessing I wiped out
the first attempt!”
“Yes, this is ever so much better, Jimmie,” the girl replied, with tears
very near her eyes. But her heart swelled with happy relief. The aching
strain of the past week was over. She had dreaded break-down, illness,
and permanent paralysis of his faculties. The man she knew and loved had
seemed to be dead and his place taken by a vacant-eyed simulacrum. Now
he had come to life again, and his first words sounded the eternal chord
of hope and faith.
From that day onwards he gave no sign of pain or preoccupation. Only the
stamp of middle age upon his face betrayed the suffering through which
he had passed. He concerned himself about Aline's marriage. Arrangements
had been made for it to take place on the same day as that of their
elders--a day, however, that Norma had never fixed. The recent
catastrophe had caused its indefinite postponement. Aline declared
herself to be in the same position as before, the responsibility of the
beloved's welfare being again thrust upon her shoulders. She pleaded
with her lover for delay, and young Merewether, disappointed though he
was, acquiesced with good grace. At last Jimmie called them before
him, and waving his old briar-root pipe, as he spoke, delivered his
ultimatum.
“My dear children,” said he, standing up before them, as they sat
together on the rusty sofa, “you have the two greatest and most glorious
things in a great and glorious world, youth and love. Don't despise
the one and waste the other. Get all the beauty you can out of life and
you'll shed it on other people. You'll shed it on me. That's why I want
you to marry as soon as ever you are ready. You'll let me come and look
at you sometimes, and if you are happy together, as God grant you will
be, that will be my great happiness--the greatest I think that earth has
in store for me. I have stood between you long enough--all that is over.
I shall miss my little girl, Tony. I should be an inhuman monster if I
didn't. But I should be a monster never before imagined by a disordered
brain if I found any pleasure in having her here to look after me when
she ought to be living her life in fulness. And that's the very end of
the matter. I speak selfishly. I can't help it. I have a great longing
for joy around me once more. Go upstairs and settle everything finally
between you.”
When they had gone, he sighed. “Yes,” he said to himself, “a great
longing for joy--and the sound of the steps of little children.” Then he
laughed, calling himself a fool, and went on with his painting.
A day or two afterwards Connie Deering, who had been a frequent visitor
since Norma's flight, walked into the studio while Jimmie was working.
“Don't let me disturb you. Please go on,” she cried in her bright, airy
way. “If you don't, I'll disappear. I've only come for a gossip.”
Jimmie drew a chair near the easel and resumed his brush. She
congratulated him on the picture. It was shaping beautifully. She had
been talking about it last night to Lord Hyston, who had promised to
call at the studio to inspect it. Lord Hyston was a well-known buyer of
modern work.
“He is stocking a castle in Wales, which he never goes near, with acres
of paint,” she said encouragingly. “So I don't see why you should n't
have a look in.”
“Is there a family ghost in the castle?”
“I believe there are two!”
“That's a blessing,” said Jimmie. “Some one, at any rate, will look at
the pictures.”
She watched him in silence for a minute or two. Then she came to the
important topic.
“So the two children have made up their minds at last.”
“Yes, they are to be married on the twenty-eighth of May.”
“Poor young things,” said Connie.
“Why poor?”
“I don't know,” she said 'with a sigh. “The subject of marriage always
makes me sad nowadays. I am growing old and pessimistic.”
“You are bewilderingly youthful,” replied Jimmie.
“Do you know how old I am?”
“I have forgotten how to do subtraction,” he said, thinking of his own
age.
“Yes. Of course you know. It's awful. And Aline is--what--seventeen?”
“Eighteen.”
“You'll be dreadfully lonely without her.”
“Lonely? Oh, no. I have my thoughts--and my memories.”
She looked at him fleetingly.
“I should have thought you would wish to escape from memories, Jimmie.”
“Why should I?”
“'The sorrow's crown of sorrows.'”
“I don't believe in it,” he said, turning towards her. “What has been
has been. A joy that once has been is imperishable. Remembering happier
things is a sorrow's crown of consolation. Thank God! I have had them to
remember.”
“Do you think she is finding consolation in memories?” She spoke with
sudden heat, for Norma's conduct had filled her heart with blazing
indignation.
“I hope so,” said Jimmie dreamily, after a pause. “But she has not so
many as I. She loved me deeply. She had her hour--but I had my day.”
“If I were you, I should want never to think of her again.”
“Not if you were I, my dear Connie,” he said gently. “If either of us
was in the wrong, it was not she.”
“Rubbish,” said Mrs. Deering.
“No. It is the truth. She was made for kings' palaces and not for this
sort of thing. I knew it was impossible from the first--but the joy
and wonder of it all blinded my eyes. She gave me the immortal part of
herself. It is mine for all eternity. I wrote to her a day or two ago--I
was not able at first. I could not sleep, you know; something seemed to
have gone wrong with my head.”
“You wrote to her?”
“To tell her not to be unhappy for my sake.”
“And you have forgiven her entirely?”
“Since our love is unchanged, how could I do otherwise?”
“But she has gone and thrown herself into the arms of another man--and
such a man!” said Connie, brusquely. A quiver of pain passed over his
face.
“Those are things of the flesh that the discipline of life teaches a man
to subdue. I think I am man enough for that. The others are things of
the spirit. If ever woman loved a man, she loved me. I thank God,” he
added in a low voice, “that she realised the impossibility before we
were married.”
“So do I; devoutly,” said Connie.
“It would have made all the difference.”
“Precisely,” said Connie.
“She would have been chained hand and foot to an intolerable existence.
She would have fretted and pined. Her life would have been an infinite
burden. Heaven's mercy saved her.”
“I was n't looking at it from her point of view at all,” exclaimed
Connie.
“Hers is the only one from which one can look at it,” he answered
gravely.
When she bade him good-bye some ten minutes later, she did not withdraw
the hand which he held. Her forget-me-not eyes grew pleading, and her
voice trembled a little.
“I wish I could comfort you, Jimmie--not only now, but in the lonely
years to come. But remember, dear, there is nothing on earth I would n't
give you or do for you--nothing on earth.”
It was not till long afterwards that he fully comprehended the
meaning of her words; and then she herself prettily vouchsafed the
interpretation. For immediate answer he kissed her on the cheek in the
brotherly fashion in which he had kissed her twice before.
“What greater comfort,” said he, “can I have than to hear you say that?
I am a truly enviable man, Connie. Love and affection are showered upon
me in full measure. Life is very, very sweet.”
The next two or three weeks brought pleasant surprises which
strengthened his conviction. One by one old friends sought him out,
and, some heartily, others shamefacedly, extended to him the hand of
brotherhood. His evening at the Langham Sketch Club had inaugurated the
new order of things. The Frewen-Smiths, whose New Year party had marked
the epoch between child and woman in Aline's life, invited the two
outcasts to dinner, and pointedly signified that they were the honoured
guests. Brother artists looked in casually on Sunday evenings. Their
wives called upon Aline, offering congratulations and wedding-gifts. A
lady whose portrait he had painted, and at whose house he had visited,
commissioned him to paint the portraits of her two children. The
ostracism had been removed. How this had been effected Jimmie could not
conjecture; and Tony Merewether and Connie Deering, who were the persons
primarily and independently responsible, did not enlighten him. By
Aline's wedding-day all the old circle had gathered round him, and a
whisper of the true story had been heard in Wiltshire House.
Thus the world began to smile upon him, as if to make amends for the
anguish it could not remedy. He took the smile as a proof of the world's
essential goodness. The great glory that for a day had made his life a
blaze of splendour had faded; the sun in his heaven had been eternally
eclipsed. But the lesser glory of the moon and stars remained undimmed;
the tenderness of twilight lost no tone of its beauty. He stood unshaken
in his faith, unchanged in himself--the strong, wise man looking upon
the earth and the fulness thereof with the unclouded eyes of a child.
The man whom he had most loved, the woman he had most worshipped, had
each failed him, had each brought upon him bitter and abiding sorrow.
They had passed like dead folks out of his daily life. Yet each retained
in his heart the once inhabited chambers. They were dear ghosts. His
incurable optimism in this wise brought about its consolation. For
optimism involves courage of a serene quality. Aline, with her swift
perception of him, had the opportunity of flashing this into an epigram.
There was a little gathering in the studio, and the talk ran on personal
bravery. Some one started the question: What would the perfectly brave
man do if attacked unarmed by a man-eating tiger?
“I know what Jimmie would do,” she cried. “He would try to pat the beast
on the head.”
There was laughter over the girl's unchallenged championship, but those
who had ears to hear found the saying true.
The night before the wedding the two sat up very late, spending their
last hours together, and Aline sat like a child on Jimmie's knee
and sobbed on his breast. The lover seemed a far-away abstraction, a
malevolent force rather than a personality, that was tearing her away
from the soil in which her life was rooted. Jimmie stroked her hair
and spoke brave words. But he had not realised till then the wrench of
parting. Till then, perhaps, neither had realised the strength of the
bond between them. They were both fervent natures, who felt intensely,
and their mutual affection had been a vital part of their lives. If
bright and gallant youth had not flashed across the girl's path and,
after the human way, had not caught her wondering maidenhood in strong
young arms; if deeper and more tragic passion had not swept away the
mature man, it is probable that this rare, pure love of theirs might
have insensibly changed into the greater need one of the other, and the
morrow's bells might have rung for these two. But as it was, no such
impulse stirred their exquisite relationship. They were father and
daughter without the barrier of paternity; brother and sister without
the ties of consanguinity; lovers without the lovers' throb; intimate,
passionate friends with the sweet and subtle magic of the sex's
difference.
“I can't bear leaving you,” she moaned. “I can't bear leaving the dear
beautiful life. I'll think of you every second of every minute of every
hour sitting here all alone, alone. I don't want to go. If you say the
word now, I'll remain and it shall be as it has been for ever and ever.”
“I shall miss you--terribly, my dear,” said he. “But I'll be the gainer
in the end. You'll give me Tony as a sort of younger brother. I am
getting to be an old man, darling--and soon I shall find the need of
_les jeunes_ in my painting life. You can't understand that yet. Tony
will bring around me the younger generation with new enthusiasms and
fresh impulses. It is to my very great good, dear. And if God gives you
children, I'll be the only grandfather they'll ever have, poor things,
and I'd like to have a child about me again. I have experience. I have
washed your chubby face and hands, _moi qui vous parle_, and undressed
you and put you to bed, my young lady who is about to be married.”
“Oh, Jimmie, I remember it--and I had to tell you how to do everything.”
“It seems the day before yesterday,” said Jimmie. “_Eheu fugaces!_”
The next day when she in her wedding-dress (a present from Connie
Deering) walked down the aisle on her husband's arm and stole a shy
glance at him, radiant, full of the promise and the pride of manhood,
and met the glad love in his eyes, she forgot all else in the throbbing
joy of her young life's completion. It was only afterwards when she was
changing her dress, with Connie Deering's assistance, in her own little
room, that she became again conscience-stricken.
“You _will_ look after Jimmie while I am away, _won't_ you?” she asked
tragically--they were going to the Isle of Wight for their honeymoon.
“I would look after him altogether if he would let me,” said Connie, in
an abrupt, emotional little outburst.
Aline drew a quick breath.
“What do you mean?”
Connie threw the simple travelling-hat, whose feathers she was daintily
touching, upon the bed.
“What do you think I mean?” she laughed nervously. “I'm not an old
woman. I'm as lonely as Jimmie will be--and--”
“What?”
“Oh!---only I've found out that I love Jimmie as much as a silly woman
can love anybody, if it's any satisfaction to you to know it--and
you may be quite sure I'll see that no harm comes to him during your
honeymoon, dear.”
The ensuing conversation nearly caused the bride to miss her train. But
no bride ever left her girlhood's room more luminously happy. On the
threshold she turned and threw her arms round Connie Deering's neck.
“I'll arrange it all when I come back,” she whispered.
And Aline kept her word.
THE END