MISS BROOKE received him with the same cheery frankness as of yore, gave
him a quick hand-shake, and installed him in his old place on the
knobby-springed ottoman beneath the hanging book-shelves. The little
table was laid, as usual, for after-dinner coffee, and the small copper
kettle was boiling over a spirit-lamp. She was the first to speak.
"You were right, Paul. I have been thinking a good deal, and I have come
to agree with you that we ought to have a last talk together. I am
sensible that I am a thoroughly unscrupulous person--please don't
contradict me, I mean it in sober earnest--but I am not without my
redeeming moments, and so it happens I feel I ought to make my apology
to you before we part. Apology! That is a very weak word to use after my
immoral behaviour towards you. I mean to talk to you very openly, in
fact, I am going to confess the whole extent of my misconduct. Only I
want you to believe that to do so will hurt me if possible even more
than you. I really do want your sympathy very badly, Paul, although I
know I don't deserve it."
Her beautiful face was grave, and her voice a shade anxious. In her eyes
was an expression of sincerity that compelled acceptance.
"I know you will make me understand everything, Lisa," he said.
"You must withhold your judgment till I have finished. I am going to be
absolutely candid, though I am not sure whether I have ever succeeded
in telling the truth about things, the whole truth, and nothing but the
truth, even to myself. One shrinks from laying bare the causes and
motives of one's thoughts and conduct, even when no other eye is
looking. But I should feel myself quite vile now if I concealed the
least thing from you."
"One can over-accentuate the baseness of one's motives as well as cover
it up," he suggested.
"It is very kind of you, Paul, to try and spare me. But please save up
your mercy; I warn you I shall be sadly in need of it later on. To come
to facts now, Paul, I have tried to victimise you from the beginning. I
have dissembled and told you lies throughout. I have systematically
acted a part. I have never loved you."
He tried to make some articulation, but not a muscle moved. He sat as
if turned to stone.
"That first evening we met I knew I had turned your head, and I could
see at once you were inexperienced with women as surely as if the fact
had been branded upon you. I had heard somebody point you out and say
you were worth fifteen thousand pounds a year, and, as afterwards you
yourself told me you were rich, any doubt I might have had on the point
was removed. My own poverty had just been painfully brought home to me,
for I had been forced to leave Paris for want of money at the very
moment my ambition began to look reasonable. I was feeling particularly
bitter about it as there was no certainty at all of my being able to
come back here. Poppa's savings had all gone in starting me with a good
stock of dresses and keeping me here two years. He had hoped to be able
to do more for me, but he could only send me my passage-money. Fifteen
or even ten thousand pounds a year is a great temptation to a poor girl.
Chance had never yet thrown in my way a really rich suitor, and there
was I, at the moment of meeting him, almost on the eve of departure,
with very little money in my pocket and indebted to the kindness of a
lady for her invitation to stay the month in London. She had taken my
room for me as she could not accommodate me at her own house. You see
how poor I was! I set myself puzzling in the coolest possible way as to
how I could get you. Instinct as well as the ease with which I had
bewitched you told me there were romantic possibilities in you, of which
you had scarcely any suspicion and which might easily be played upon.
And a plan formed at once in my mind in the ultimate success of which I
had the fullest confidence. To put the idea into your head that we meet
again here in a year's time was to appeal to your romantic side. That is
why I mentioned the Beaux Arts to you--your love for architecture made
my game easy. I was now determined that nothing should stand in the way
of my returning to Paris, that poppa somehow must raise the necessary
money--even if he ran into debt. Happily he was able to send me back and
to see his way clear to keep me going as long as I chose to stay."
Miss Brooke paused a moment and poured out Paul's coffee, which,
however, he let stand untouched.
"Everything turned out just as I had calculated," she continued, after
taking a sip at her own. "You had carried me in your mind the whole
time, and you had been waiting for me and counting on my coming. So far
I was delighted. For a time all went smoothly. You were mine
completely. But then an unforeseen force began suddenly to act on the
position. My old enthusiasm for my work came back, and with it my old
mad ambitions. Do you know what first gave me those mad ambitions? You
shall hear in a moment. Anyway, my old intolerance against anything like
dependence rose up in me. I wanted to make a great name and a great deal
of money, all by myself. A picture by a great master--we admired it
together at the salon--had just sold for thirty thousand dollars, and
that inflamed me. No woman painter has yet existed of absolutely the
first rank; one and all have been influenced, more or less, by a man. I
wanted to be the first woman whose work should be absolutely great,
absolutely original. I wanted the honour for America, for I am proud of
being an American woman. But you were on the spot, and I had only to
move my little finger to get you. You were an eternal temptation. Don't
you think I knew you were jealous of Charlie? He has been in love with
me ever since I first came here; but, poor devil, he only just manages
to get along, and is only too glad if he's not behindhand with his
studio rent. The reason I allowed him to hang round so much was partly
because he had become a habit of mine, and partly to help me not to be
tempted to give you too much of my company.
"I really wanted to fight against the temptation of your money, but more
for my own sake than yours. In the first place I did not love you. And
in the second, I could read your nature like a book. Your ideas and mine
would never go together. I wanted a husband who would be content with
such moments of love as I could spare him out of my career; to whom I
could go for love when I wanted love; who would be content to live out
his own life and leave me to work out mine. I do not want to be kept by
my husband--rather than that I should prefer to keep him. All my rooted
independence had sprung up as by magic the moment I took up my brush and
palette again and looked at the model. Your notions were far too
primitive for me. You would have allowed me to go on with my art as a
concession--to do credit to your name, perhaps. You would have looked
upon my pictures as sacred, to be hung in your house and worshipped by
you before your guests; I should have wanted to sell them, to convert
them into dollars.
"Do you wonder now I was strong enough to hesitate? I was only too glad
when Dora said she was going to carry me off to Perros-Guirec. It would
take me away from you and--temptation. Then you sent me those flowers. I
was touched. Not by the flowers, but by the train of thought they set
going. The ghost of my conscience came up, suggesting I should be
treating you badly, seeing 'you had 'em so bad.' And then you had, say,
ten thousand pounds a year! That, I suppose, had something to do with
the rising of the phantom. So I determined to take you to Dora's--of
course, she replied at once she would be pleased to welcome you--and I
made up my mind, half to amuse myself, that I would make you propose in
the cab on the way to her. I could read you through and through, and
knew your every thought. So far I had kept you at a perceptible
distance, now it pleased me to draw you close to me, and to see you obey
without my uttering a single word of command. I told you about my old
engagement just then because it gave me a sensation of daring. I
calculated on stirring the romance and chivalry in you still more
deeply. The experiment was risky--but it succeeded. You responded like a
good ship to its helm. Then for the first time since I had known you,
Paul, I suffered remorse--real remorse. Why it came just then I have
never been able to make out, but all of a sudden I was dreadfully sorry
for you.
"I saw clearly that even if I _had_ loved you, our lives could never
harmonise; that after the first honeymoon cooings, the conflict of wills
and ideas would inevitably set in, and we should both be utterly and
hopelessly miserable. But I did _not_ love you, and I felt myself in a
terrible dilemma. You were on the point of speaking, and the only thing
I could think of to stop you, and to stop you for always, was to tell
you my early flirtations. I was hoping to play on your prejudices and
set you against me. I was true to myself then; I was throwing away--how
many thousands a year?
"But I caused you suffering to no purpose, and, as I realised nothing
would make you desist, the temptation of all those thousands came upon
me again. I argued I was the stronger personality of the two, and I
should be able to manage you--easily. Curious how I accentuated the
'easily,' and twisted my arguments to suit it. There was little to do--I
just pulled the wire and the puppet worked. You'll forgive me for
calling you a puppet, Paul, but you were one, you know.
"Perhaps now you will begin to understand how I felt the next morning. I
really liked you, Paul, and I had done you so great a wrong from the
very moment of our first meeting. I had not cried for more than three
years, Paul, but I cried then. The situation was desperate, and there
was nothing for it but to apply a desperate remedy.
"I have not told you all. I have purposely kept back something to the
end. If I had mingled it with the rest it would have been lost, and as
it is my only claim on your sympathy, I have kept it for use by itself.
It is unfortunate that even here I have to begin with the confession of
another lie, but I have already confessed to so many, I am hoping that
one more won't make me sink any lower in your estimation. Besides, my
motive in telling it was good. I refer to my old engagement The fact was
true, but the details I gave you were false. I had intended telling you
the truth, but somehow it stuck on my lips. I felt I ought never to have
used so sacred an experience for such a purpose. I _had_ to invent a lie
as I went on. But I cut it as short as I could.
"I did love the man as, it seemed to me, no woman could have loved a man
before. He was almost penniless, but I did not mind that. I would have
married him, and he would not have interfered with my ambitions. He
would have been content to have me live away from him whilst I worked
according to my own spirit, and developed the gifts he was the first to
discover in me. For he was a painter, too; had starved to get a training
in Europe, had starved while getting it. To help us get a start I was
content at first to absorb myself in his work. That was a fatal mistake.
I can scarcely trace out how it came about--and to linger on it makes me
suffer terribly--but with the lapse of time I ceased to exist for him as
a creature of flesh and blood. I suddenly realised that I had become a
mere inspiration to him--it was only the artist in me he worshipped. All
his heart and soul went into his work--he was no longer a man, but a
mere mind wielding a brush. I can see him how absorbed before his
canvas, tall and thin with his scholar's stoop--for Nesbit _was_ a
scholar! But it had to end at last. I cried bitterly for many a night
after. I had a letter from him one fine day----"
"Announcing his engagement and asking you to congratulate him?" broke
from Paul's lips. His eyes were too dry for tears.
"It is the only letter of his I haven't burnt. He is famous now, but the
first picture he ever sold went to buy my turquoise necklace to match
the comb I had from my mother. His example was a noble one--the first
picture I am offered money for shall go to poppa instead. But he would
never take the gift back, and now I value it as his. It has always given
me great joy to wear it--in fact, that is my one great joy apart from my
work."
"You still love him! You have loved him all through!" cried Paul.
Her face softened. "You see I have quite an extraordinary vein of
sentiment in me. I am not sure whether I am not ashamed of it."
"Tell me, Lisa--if I may still call you Lisa--all those flirtations you
told me about were true?"
"What a quaint question! You haven't drunk your coffee." He gulped down
the cold contents of the tiny cup at one draught, for his mouth was
parched.
"They all happened just as I told you, and I haven't told you a
quarter."
"And do you mind my asking you another quaint question? Have you and
Charlie ever kissed?"
"I have always liked to have nice men kiss me. It is a mania with me,
and I shall go on doing so till the end of the chapter."
"All the same, Lisa, I love you still. Is there no hope for me? I have
no prejudices. I want you, Lisa, just as you are. Your life shall be
perfectly free--your career your own."
"You are good, Paul, and I have played with you precisely as a cat
plays with a mouse. You will have observed I have a good deal of the cat
in me. Believe me, I am in earnest when I say I am quite unworthy of
your love----"
"No, Lisa," he began.
"Listen, Paul. I want you to understand how much I love my lost darling.
If he were to leave his wife and child, now and come to me and say he
loved me, I would go with him to the end of the earth. No, no, Paul. My
hope is only in my work. I know I shall realise my ambition. Some day
you will marry a better woman than I am. And if," she continued, with a
smile, "you care to write and let me know, be sure I shall congratulate
you right heartily. Now tell me I have your sympathy, and then let us
say good-bye."
"I love you, Lisa. Is that not sufficient proof of my sympathy? I shall
leave Paris to-night."
"Come, Paul, kiss me! For the first time and last!"
He brushed her lips so lightly that he scarce had the consciousness of
doing so; then he staggered from the room.