AS Paul rang at the address Miss Brooke had scribbled down on his
programme, his dominating thought was that American millionaire's
daughters chose rather shabby houses to stay in. Though the name of the
street had surprised him when he had first read it, he had yet conceived
it possible she might be staying at some kind of private hotel; but he
had not anticipated a dusty card with the word "apartments." He took it
for granted her mother was with her, and, though he had not formed any
clear conception of Mrs. Brooke, she looming mistily in his mind as a
handsome, stately personage that had decidedly to be taken into the
reckoning, he had wondered how she would receive him.
A maid-servant ushered him up two flights of stairs into a front room
and announced his name. As he entered he was conscious of three persons
sitting at the far end where a bright fire burned, and was somewhat
startled to recognise the long lithe figure, the dark face and hair, and
the piercing black eyes of the American Miss Brooke had danced with. A
peculiar shade of expression flitted across the man's face, telling Paul
the recognition was mutual. At the same time Paul was assuming that the
bonneted and cloaked mature-looking lady was no other than Mrs. Brooke
herself, and he wondered why she should receive callers when so
obviously dressed for going out. Miss Brooke rose to greet him with a
pleasant smile of welcome. In a simple dress with wide sleeves that
fitted tight round the wrists, her short front hair, evenly divided,
falling over her temples in rippling masses, she seemed less phantasmal
and fairylike, less remote from this world--a being more humanly sweet
and that one might dare to woo.
But unfortunately in that moment he became aware of the huge bulk of a
high bed against the wall on his right, and a tall screen that cut off a
corner of the room struck him as having the air of concealing something.
Though he kept control over himself physically, his mind grew perfectly
vacant. He did not dare to think--it seemed vain to make any
surmise--but bowed to the bonneted lady as he heard Miss Brooke say:
"Katharine, let me introduce my friend, Mr. Middleton--Mrs. Potter."
Paul had seldom felt so many emotions at one time. Added to his surprise
at the expected Mrs. Brooke changing at the last moment into a Mrs.
Potter, and to his bewilderment at being received in a bedroom, was a
thrill of pleasure at Miss Brooke's reference to him as "my friend." He
had, too, a sense of gratified curiosity at learning the next moment
that the man's name was Pemberton; it was convenient, moreover, to have
a definite symbol by which to refer to him in thought.
"I think the water's boiling, dear," said Mrs. Potter. "Doesn't it mean
'boiling' when steam comes out of the spout like that?"
"Not yet, Katharine. Half a minute more. You are just in nice time, Mr.
Middleton, to get your cup of tea at its best." And Miss Brooke busied
herself cutting up a big lemon into thin slices at a little table that
was laid with a pretty Japanese tea-set.
"Lisa's tea is quite wonderful," chimed in Mrs. Potter. "I always spoil
mine--I can never quite tell when the water boils. That's my pet
stupidity."
For a moment Paul watched the artistic copper kettle as it sang its
pleasant song. Mrs. Potter already struck him as an obviously cheerful
personality, and he felt absurdly grateful to her for mentioning Miss
Brooke's first name. He had not yet given up Mrs. Brooke, expecting her
to enter the room very soon now; and he found it hard not to fix his
gaze noticeably on the bed, half-surprised that everybody else ignored
it, seeming totally unconscious that any such piece of furniture was
there at all.
Mr. Pemberton took little part in the somewhat banal but good-humoured
conversation that now sprang up, but drummed idly with his fingers on
the settee on which he was lounging. Now and again a monosyllabic drawl
fell languidly from him, and Paul read into this demeanour annoyance at
his presence.
Mrs. Potter, he soon learnt--for the lady was loquacious--was a widow
and a journalist on a three months' stay in Europe, of which she was
passing a month in London, endeavouring to make as much copy out of it
as possible. She related with glee, and without any apparent qualms of
conscience, how she had "fixed up" accounts of various great society
functions, writing her copy in the first person.
"Lisa is so good and helpful to me. I impose on her dreadfully. I should
never have been able to get them fixed up without her. And then her
spelling is so perfect--she runs over my copy and puts it right in a
jiffy."
"Lemon or cream, Mr. Middleton, please?" asked Miss Brooke. "Two lumps
of sugar or one? What, none at all! Oh, yes, everybody thinks these cups
sweetly pretty. I'm taking them home with me as a souvenir."
"What shall I do without you in Paris?" broke in Mrs. Potter again. "I
shall be lost there. Can't I coax you to come back with me, Lisa dear?"
"Can't disappoint poppa," said Miss Brooke laconically.
"You'll have me to come to," drawled Mr. Pemberton.
"You'll be handy for some things, but your spelling's worse than mine,"
said Mrs. Potter; and somewhat irrelevantly went on to suppose that Paul
must know Paris well.
Paul, alas! had only two visits to boast of, one of a week's, the other
of two weeks' duration, both in the company of his mother. Whereupon a
sound, as of a suppressed snigger, came from the direction of Pemberton.
Something like the truth had begun to dawn on Paul's mind, and he knew
better now than to continue to expect Mrs. Brooke to appear. He had
sufficiently gathered from the conversation that Miss Brooke was on her
way home from Paris to America, and that she was going to travel alone,
and had taken London _en route_, probably armed with letters of
introduction. Most likely, he argued, she must have considered the one
room sufficient for her needs, and had not anticipated callers. Or
perhaps Americans, for all he knew, did not mind receiving callers in a
bedroom. This, he concluded, was probably the case, as no one seemed in
the least _gene_, despite that the bed was such a palpable fact, and
stood there in massive unblushingness. Otherwise an atmosphere of
feminine daintiness seemed to surround Miss Brooke, transforming even
this lodging-house bedroom.
However, he did not grasp the facts without an almost overwhelming sense
of pain.
His romance had been rudely shattered at one blast, and he felt his
breath draw heavily when he first comprehended Miss Brooke was on the
point of leaving London. A sense of helplessness came upon him as he
realised he could do nothing but just get through with his call. There
seemed not the slightest chance now of his telling her about the career
he purposed for himself. He had dreamed, too, of her showing him her
verses, perhaps some of her sketches. But the presence of the others
stood in the way. He would have liked to hate them both, but being
forced to like Mrs. Potter, he had to bestow a double amount of dislike
on Mr. Pemberton, which he was very glad to do. And then he wanted to
know the exact relation between Mr. Pemberton and Miss Brooke. From a
hint the "fellow" had dropped, it was clear he lived in Paris--where
Miss Brooke had been living. Was he a relative? Who was he? Why was he
in London? How came he to be at Mrs. Saxon's dance? For a moment Paul
thought of asking Mrs. Saxon about him, and also about Miss Brooke, but
he put the idea from him as underhand and unworthy.
Meanwhile the conversation went on, pleasant and banal. Mrs. Potter
deluged Paul with questions about the London season and English painters
and the Academy. She narrated the comicalities of her shopping
expeditions, various little misadventures that had arisen from the
different usage of everyday words by the two nations. By imperceptible
stages along a tortuous and varied route they drifted on to the subject
of love, and Mrs. Potter, still keeping the talk almost all to herself,
related several touching romances of her friends' lives. Once or twice
Paul's gloom was lightened by the smile of Miss Brooke that met his look
each time he turned his face towards her. A lien, invisible to the
others, seemed to be established between them.
At length Mrs. Potter, drawing Mr. Pemberton's attention to the hour,
rose to go, and the two left together. Despite some mad idea of
declaring himself to Miss Brooke there and then, which had occurred to
him, Paul had also risen, but to his astonishment Miss Brooke drew her
chair closer to the fire, and motioned him to take a seat in the
opposite chimney corner. He obeyed as if hypnotised. "What would my
mother think of this?" he asked himself, and awaited developments. As
for Miss Brooke, at no moment did she seem aware of the slightest
unconventionality in the situation.
"Katharine is so sweet," she began thoughtfully. "You can't imagine how
pleased I was when she wrote she was coming. Charlie is piloting her
about a little. He is so good-natured."
"Charlie is, I presume, Mr. Pemberton."
"Why, of course. And he'll be of so much use to her in Paris. He has a
studio there. But I hope she won't fall in love with him," she added
laughingly. "Katharine is so romantic; she is always in love with some
man or other."
Though he knew as a general biological fact that women fall in love with
men, Paul, despite all the love-stories he had read, had never yet been
able to grasp it and admit it to himself as a fact of actual life.
Somehow, he had always felt that the onus of falling in love and of
courtship rested on men, and that it was very good and condescending of
women to allow themselves to be loved at all. But Miss Brooke's way of
talking seemed to take it for granted that it was a perfectly natural
and proper thing for a woman to be in love, that romance was a thing a
woman might own to without any shame; making him realise more distinctly
than ever before that women were not so entirely passive and
passionless. But all this he rather felt than thought, and it did not
interfere with the sentence that was on the tip of his tongue; the
outcome of his sense of disappointment and desolation at her threatened
departure out of his life, which was only mitigated by the reflection
that Pemberton was being left behind.
"And now you are going home!"
The words were obviously equivalent to a sigh of regret.
"But not for good, I hope," said Miss Brooke; and Paul's universe
changed at once into a wonderful enchanted garden. "Of course, it will
be very nice to be at home with poppa and mamma again, but I should not
be leaving Paris from choice. I was making such progress at school that
my professor was quite angry I couldn't stay. But perhaps I shall be
back in a year's time. I certainly shall if everything goes well."
"I do hope it's nothing serious that calls you away, and that keeps you
from your studies so long a time," exclaimed Paul fervently.
"From my point of view it's certainly serious," smiled Miss Brooke,
good-humouredly. "As I've already tried to make you believe, I am a very
greedy person, with a fondness for dollars, and the whole trouble is
that they keep out of reach. Poor hardworked poppa can't send me any
more money just now, but he'll be getting a bigger salary next year, and
I shall be able to go back and paint a masterpiece for the Salon. In the
meanwhile I shall have to amuse myself as best I can sketching about the
place, and watching poppa getting through big batches of couples. He's a
minister--you know the cloth's hereditary in our family--and marries off
people wholesale."
Till that moment Miss Brooke had been the railway king's daughter. For
Paul to find now that she was a comparatively poor girl, whose anxiety
to earn money by making her mark in art was no mere jesting pretence,
involved a complete readjustment of his mental focus. But its
instantaneity made the operation a violent one, especially as he strove
hard not to exhibit any external signs of discomposure. At the same time
a good deal that had bewildered him was explained, though there were
points yet on which he needed enlightenment. And with all his
astonishment went an unbounded admiration for the cheerful way in which
she accepted her position, the lover's keen lookout for every scrap of
virtue in the beloved seizing on this greedily for commendation. What a
splendid, plucky girl she was! The glamour of his romance was
heightened. Mere millionaires and all that appertained to them seemed
suddenly prosaic.
Into what a bizarre misconception had he fallen! She herself was not to
blame. If his mind had not been clogged up by what Thorn had told him
beforehand he would not so persistently have misunderstood her
references to money; but how should he have thought of challenging what
he knew only now to have been a mere speculative rumour? There had been
nothing in her appearance and personality to belie that rumour, and, as
obviously she was not called upon to contradict statements about herself
she had never heard, such manifestations of the truth as had since
become visible to him had only served to mystify him.
The way, too, she had taken certain things for granted as perfectly
natural and proper, somewhat astonished him, to wit, her inviting him to
call here, her reception of him in a bedroom, and his presence alone
with her now. These facts contravened the ideas in which he had been
brought up, and he could only suppose that American ideas probably
differed from English. This surmise seemed, on the whole, corroborated
by the glimpse he had had that day into the spirit of the American
independent woman--a type entirely new to him--as exemplified both by
Mrs. Potter and Miss Brooke.
He asked how soon she was leaving, and learnt she was sailing on the
Saturday, so that barely two days of London remained to her. He did not
like the idea at all, as he had formed the hope he might somehow see her
again before her departure.
"My berth is taken," explained Miss Brooke, perhaps amused by his
evident discontent. "Some boxes have gone on. Besides, I could not stay
here any longer. Dollars are getting scarce. I'm going to have some more
tea--won't you join me?"
"Willingly." He wanted to stay longer, and tea, by filling the time
plausibly, would help to lessen his constraint at the original position
in which he found himself.
"I am so pleased you were able to call!" went on Miss Brooke, as she
poured out the beverage. "You haven't forgotten your promise to tell me
all about your work--and your Utopia as well," she added, smiling, and
handing him his cup.
Her sweetness as she spoke enchanted him. When he himself had been
hesitating on the brink of the chasm, with what ease had she taken him
across it at one leap! Soon he found himself telling her how he had come
to abandon his father's ideas and plan out his life his own way, with as
much emotion as if he were relating his inmost secrets to an affianced
wife. And certainly no affianced wife could have listened with a graver
attention, or more sympathetic demeanour.
"Has it ever occurred to you to study architecture at Paris?" she asked.
"The Beaux Art School is, I think, one of the finest in the world, and
you could scarcely get a more artistic atmosphere."
The effect of her remark was as that of an electric spark that fuses
many elements into one new whole. He was conscious of a struggling
chaotic mass of thought, followed by a clear perception of the
conditions of his existence in all its bearings. And in a flash he had
made up his mind to plunge into the delicious indefiniteness of what
offered itself. A soft purple haze floated before him as in a dream, and
an odour of incense and a harmony of sweet sounds seemed to steal upon
him. And the haze, parting a moment, allowed him a glimpse of a magic
city in its depths. And in that city, he knew, were "Lisa" and himself.
That was to be the future! The awakening of the man in him was complete.
By an abrupt mastercoup he would wrench himself away from the
influences that had well-nigh reduced him to a puppet. His reply to Miss
Brooke now would be the beginning of the necessary forward impulse.
"The idea has not come to me, though, of course, I should have had to
consider the question of a formal course before very long. But I like
the suggestion very much."
"Lots of the boys take the course there," added Miss Brooke. "There are,
of course, many more American than English boys, but you'll find them
all a sociable set."
He asked for details about the student life, and Miss Brooke tried to
give him some notion of it. In this way quite half an hour slipped by,
during which Paul became worked up to a high pitch of enthusiasm and
took care to leave no doubt in Miss Brooke's mind that his decision was
finally taken.
"Charlie, too, might be useful to you," said Miss Brooke, as Paul rose
to take his leave. "I'm sure he'd be delighted to be of service to you.
And how nice, too, if we were to meet there again! Perhaps we shall."
Her face gleamed as with the pleasure of anticipation.
"I shall always bear the hope with me," said Paul gravely; and, wishing
her a pleasant crossing, he bade her "good-bye."
"Let us say '_Au revoir_' rather," and once again she pressed his hand,
which was more than he had dared hope for.
But what had "Charlie" to do with Miss Brooke? he asked himself a
thousand times that evening.