by Edith Nesbit
She would not think of the morning. Not now, with this fire of impotent resentment burning in her, would she take out those memories and look at them. Those were not thoughts to be dragged through the litter of unbleached cotton cuttings. She worked on doggedly, completed the tale of hot heavy little garments, gathered up the pieces into the waste-paper basket and put away the roll.
Not till the paint had been washed from her hands, and the crumbled print dress exchanged for a quite respectable muslin did she consciously allow the morning’s memories to come out and meet her eyes. Then she went down to the arbour where she had shelled peas only that morning.
“It seems years and years ago,” she said. And sitting there, she slowly and carefully went over everything. What he had said, what she had said. There were some things she could not quite remember. But she remembered enough. “Brother artists” were the words she said oftenest to herself, but the words that sank themselves were, “young and innocent and beautiful like — like—”
“But he couldn’t have meant me, of course,” she told herself.
And on Monday she would see him again, — and he would give her a lesson!
Sunday was incredibly wearisome. Her Sunday-school class had never been so tiresome nor so soaked in hair-oil. In church she was shocked to find herself watching, from her pew in the chancel, the entry of late comers — of whom He was not one. No afternoon had ever been half so long. She wrote up her diary. Thursday and Friday were quickly chronicled. At “Saturday” she paused long, pen in hand, and then wrote very quickly: “I went out sketching and met a gentleman, an artist. He was very kind and is going to teach me to paint and he is going to paint my portrait. I do not like him particularly. He is rather old, and not really good-looking. I shall not tell father, because he is simply hateful to me. I am going to meet this artist at 6 to-morrow. It will be dreadful having to get up so early. I almost wish I hadn’t said I would go. It will be such a bother.”
Then she hid the diary in a drawer, under her confirmation dress and veil, and locked the drawer carefully.
He was not at church in the evening either. He had thought of it, but decided that it was too much trouble to get into decent clothes.
“I shall see her soon enough,” he thought, “curse my impulsive generosity! Six o’clock, forsooth, and all to please a clergyman’s daughter.”
She came back from church with tired steps.
“I do hope I’m not going to be ill,” she said. “I feel so odd, just as if I hadn’t had anything to eat for days, — and yet I’m not a bit hungry either. I daresay I shan’t wake up in time to get there by six.”
She was awake before five.
She woke with a flutter of the heart. What was it? Had anything happened? Was anyone ill? Then she recognized that she was not unhappy. And she felt more than ever as though it were days since she had had anything to eat.
“Oh, dear,” said Betty, jumping out of bed. “I’m going out, to meet Him, and have a drawing-lesson!”
She dressed quickly. It was too soon to start. Not for anything must she be first at the rendezvous, even though it were only for a drawing-lesson. That “only” pulled her up sharply.
When she was dressed she dug out the diary and wrote:
“This is terrible. Is it possible that I have fallen in love with him? I don’t know. ‘Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?’ It is a most frightful tragedy to happen to one, and at my age too. What a long life of loneliness stretches in front of me! For of course he could never care for me. And if this is love — well, it will be once and forever with me, I know.
“That’s my nature, I’m afraid. But I’m not, — I can’t be. But I never felt so unlike myself. I feel a sort of calm exultation, as if something very wonderful was very near me. Dear Diary, what a comfort it is to have you to tell everything to!”
It seemed to her that she must certainly be late. She had to creep down the front stairs so very slowly and softly in order that she might not awaken her step-father. She had so carefully and silently to unfasten a window and creep out, to close the window again, without noise, lest the maids should hear and come running to see why their young mistress was out of her bed at that hour. She had to go on tiptoe through the shrubbery and out through the church yard. One could climb its wall, and get into the Park that way, so as not to meet labourers on the road who would stare to see her alone so early and perhaps follow her.
Once in the park she was safe. Her shoes and her skirts were wet with dew. She made haste. She did not want to keep him waiting.
But she was first at the rendezvous, after all.
She sat down on the carpet of pine needles. How pretty the early morning was. The sunlight was quite different from the evening sunlight, so much lighter and brighter. And the shadows were different. She tried to settle on a point of view for her sketch, the sketch he was to help her with.
Her thoughts went back to what she had written in her diary. If that should be true she must be very, very careful. He must never guess it, never. She would be very cold and distant and polite. Not hail-fellow well-met with a “brother artist,” like she had been yesterday. It was all very difficult indeed. Even if it really did turn out to be true, if the wonderful thing had happened to her, if she really was in love she would not try a bit to make him like her. That would be forward and “horrid.” She would never try to attract any man. Those things must come of themselves or not at all.
She arranged her skirt in more effective folds, and wondered how it would look as one came up the woodland path. She thought it would look rather picturesque. It was a nice heliotrope colour. It would look like a giant Parma violet against the dark green background. She hoped her hair was tidy. And that her hat was not very crooked. However little one desires to attract, one may at least wish one’s hat to be straight.
She looked for the twentieth time at her watch, the serviceable silver watch that had been her mother’s. Half-past six, and he had not come.
Well, when he did come she would pretend she had only just got there. Or how would it be if she gave up being a Parma violet and went a little way down the path and then turned back when she heard him coming? She walked away a dozen yards and stood waiting. But he did not come. Was it possible that he was not coming? Was he ill — lying uncared for at the Peal of Bells in the village, with no one to smooth his pillow or put eau-de-cologne on his head?
She walked a hundred yards or so towards the village on the spur of this thought.
Or perhaps he had come by another way to the trysting place? That thought drove her back. He was not there.
Well, she would not stay any longer. She would just go away, and come back ever so much later, and let him have a taste of waiting. She had had her share, she told herself, as she almost ran from the spot. She stopped suddenly. But suppose he did not wait? She went slowly back.
She sat down again, schooled herself to patience.
What an idiot she had been! Like any school-girl. Of course he had never meant to come. Why should he? That page in her diary called out to her to come home and burn it. Care for him indeed! Not she! Why she hadn’t exchanged ten words with the man!
“But I knew it was all nonsense when I wrote it,” she said. “I only just put it down to see what it would look like.”
Mr. Eustace Vernon roused himself, and yawned.
“It’s got to be done, I suppose. Buck up, — you’ll feel better after your bath! Jove! Seven o’clock. Will she have waited? She’s a keen player if she has. It’s just worth trying, I suppose.”
The church clock struck the half-hour as he turned into the wood. Something palely violet came towards him.
“So you are here,” he said. “Where’s the pink frock?”
“It’s — it’s going to the wash,” said a stiff and stifled voice. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get here at six. I hope you didn’t wait long?”
“Not very long,” he said, smiling; “but — Great Heavens, what on earth i
s the matter?”
“Nothing,” she said.
“But you’ve been — you are—”
“I’m not,” she said defiantly,—”besides, I’ve got neuralgia. It always makes me look like that.”
“My Aunt!” he thought. “Then she was here at six and — she’s been crying because I wasn’t and — oh, where are we?” “I’m so sorry you’ve got neuralgia,” he said gently, “but I’m awfully glad you didn’t get here at six. Because my watch was wrong and I’ve only just got here, and I should never have forgiven myself if you’d waited for me a single minute. Is the neuralgia better now?”
“Yes,” she said, smiling faintly, “much better. It was rather sharp while it lasted, though.”
“Yes,” he said, “I see it was. I am so glad you did come. But I was so certain you wouldn’t that I didn’t bring any of my traps. So we can’t begin the picture to-day. Will you start a sketch, or is your neuralgia too bad?”
He knew it would be: and it was.
So they merely sat on the pine carpet and talked till it was time for her to go back to the late Rectory breakfast. They told each other their names that day. Betty talked very carefully. It was most important that he should think well of her. Her manner had changed, as she had promised herself it should do if she found she cared for him. Now she was with him she knew, of course, that she did not care at all. What had made her so wretched — no, so angry that she had actually cried, was simply the idea that she had been made a fool of. That she had kept the tryst and he hadn’t. Now he had come she was quite calm. She did not care in the least.
He was saying to himself: “I’m not often wrong, but I was off the line yesterday. All that doesn’t count. We take a fresh deal and start fair. She doesn’t know the game, mais elle a des moyens. She’s never played the game before. And she cried because I didn’t turn up. And so I’m the first — think of it, if you please — absolutely the first one! Well: it doesn’t detract from the interest of the game. It’s quite a different game and requires more skill. But not more than I have, perhaps.”
They parted with another tryst set for the next morning. The brother artist note had been skilfully kept vibrating.
Betty was sure that she should never have any feeling for him but mere friendliness. She was glad of that. It must be dreadful to be really in love. So unsettling.
CHAPTER III. VOLUNTARY.
Mr. Eustace Vernon is not by any error to be imagined as a villain of the deepest dye, coldly planning to bring misery to a simple village maiden for his own selfish pleasure. Not at all. As he himself would have put it, he meant no harm to the girl. He was a master of two arts, and to these he had devoted himself wholly. One was the art of painting. But one cannot paint for all the hours there are. In the intervals of painting Vernon always sought to exercise his other art. One is limited, of course, by the possibilities, but he liked to have always at least one love affair on hand. And just now there were none — none at least possessing the one charm that irresistibly drew him — newness. The one or two affairs that dragged on merely meant letter writing, and he hated writing letters almost as much as he hated reading them.
The country had been unfortunately barren of interest until his eyes fell on that sketching figure in the pink dress. For he respected one of his arts no less than the other, and would as soon have thought of painting a vulgar picture as of undertaking a vulgar love-affair. He was no pavement artist. Nor did he degrade his art by caricatures drawn in hotel bars. Dairy maids did not delight him, and the mood was rare with him in which one finds anything to say to a little milliner. He wanted the means, not the end, and was at one with the unknown sage who said: “The love of pleasure spoils the pleasure of love.”
There is a gift, less rare than is supposed, of wiping the slate clean of memories, and beginning all over again: a certain virginity of soul that makes each new kiss the first kiss, each new love the only love. This gift was Vernon’s, and he had cultivated it so earnestly, so delicately, that except in certain moods when he lost his temper, and with it his control of his impulses, he was able to bring even to a conservatory flirtation something of the fresh emotion of a schoolboy in love.
Betty’s awkwardnesses, which he took for advances, had chilled him a little, though less than they would have done had not one of the evil-tempered moods been on him.
He had dreaded lest the affair should advance too quickly. His own taste was for the first steps in an affair of the heart, the delicate doubts, the planned misunderstandings. He did not question his own ability to conduct the affair capably from start to finish, but he hated to skip the dainty preliminaries. He had feared that with Betty he should have to skip them, for he knew that it is only in their first love affairs that women have the patience to watch the flower unfold itself. He himself was of infinite patience in that pastime. He bit his lip and struck with his cane at the buttercup heads. He had made a wretched beginning, with his “good and sweet.” his “young and innocent and beautiful like — like.” If the girl had been a shade less innocent the whole business would have been muffed — muffed hopelessly.
To-morrow he would be there early. A ship of promise should be — not launched — that was weeks away. The first timbers should be felled to build a ship to carry him, and her too, of course, a little way towards the enchanted islands.
He knew the sea well, and it would be pleasant to steer on it one to whom it was all new — all, all.
“Dear little girl,” he said, “I don’t suppose she has ever even thought of love.”
He was not in love with her, but he meant to be. He carefully thought of her all that day, of her hair, her eyes, her hands; her hands were really beautiful — small, dimpled and well-shaped — not the hands he loved best, those were long and very slender, — but still beautiful. And before he went to bed he wrote a little poem, to encourage himself:
Yes. I have loved before; I know
This longing that invades my days,
This shape that haunts life’s busy ways
I know since long and long ago.
This starry mystery of delight
That floats across my eager eyes,
This pain that makes earth Paradise,
These magic songs of day and night,
I know them for the things they are:
A passing pain, a longing fleet,
A shape that soon I shall not meet,
A fading dream of veil and star.
Yet, even as my lips proclaim
The wisdom that the years have lent,
Your absence is joy’s banishment
And life’s one music is your name.
I love you to the heart’s hid core:
Those other loves? How can one learn
From marshlights how the great fires burn?
Ah, no — I never loved before!
When he read it through he entitled it, “The Veil of Maya,” so that it might pretend to have no personal application.
After that more than ever rankled the memory of that first morning.
“How could I?” he asked himself. “I must indeed have been in a gross mood. One seems sometimes to act outside oneself altogether. Temporary possession by some brutal ancestor perhaps. Well, it’s not too late.”
Next morning he worked at his picture, in the rabbit-warren, but his head found itself turning towards the way by which on that first day she had gone. She must know that on a day like this he would not be wasting the light, — that he would be working. She would be wanting to see him again. Would she come out? He wished she would. But he hoped she wouldn’t. It would have meant another readjustment of ideas. He need not have been anxious. She did not come.
He worked steadily, masterfully. He always worked best at the beginning of a love affair. All of him seemed somehow more alive, more awake, more alert and competent. His mood was growing quickly to what he meant it to be. He was what actors call a quick study. Soon he would be able to play perfectly, without so much as a tho
ught to the “book,” the part of Paul to this child’s Virginia.
Had Virginia, he wondered, any relations besides the step-father whom she so light-heartedly consented to hoodwink? Relations who might interfere and pray and meddle and spoil things?
However ashamed we may be of our relations they cannot forever be concealed. It must be owned that Betty was not the lonely orphan she sometimes pretended to herself to be. She had aunts — an accident that may happen to the best of us.
A year or two before Betty was born, a certain youth of good birth left Harrow and went to Ealing where he was received in a family in the capacity of Crammer’s pup. The family was the Crammer and his daughter, a hard-headed, tight-mouthed, black-haired young woman who knew exactly what she wanted, and who meant to get it. Poverty had taught her to know what she wanted. Nature, and the folly of youth — not her own youth — taught her how to get it. There were several pups. She selected the most eligible, secretly married him, and to the day of her death spoke and thought of the marriage as a love-match. He was a dreamy youth, who wrote verses and called the Crammer’s daughter his Egeria. She was too clever not to be kind to him, and he adored her and believed in her to the end, which came before his twenty-first birthday. He broke his neck out hunting, and died before Betty was born.
His people, exasperated at the news of the marriage, threatened to try to invalidate it on the score of the false swearing that had been needed to get the boy of nineteen married to the woman of twenty-four. Egeria was frightened. She compromised for an annuity of two hundred pounds, to be continued to her child.
The passion of this woman’s life was power. One cannot be very powerful with just two hundred a year, and a doubtful position as the widow of a boy whose relations are prepared to dispute one’s marriage. Mrs. Desmond spent three years in thought, and in caring severely for the wants of her child. Then she bought four handsome dresses, and some impressive bonnets, went to a Hydropathic Establishment, and looked about her. Of the eligible men there Mr. Cecil Underwood seemed, on enquiry, to be the most eligible. So she married him. He resisted but little, for his parish needed a clergywoman sadly. The two hundred pounds was a welcome addition to an income depleted by the purchase of rare editions, and at the moment crippled by his recent acquisition of the Omiliac of Vincentius in its original oak boards and leather strings; and, above all, he saw in the three-year-old Betty the child he might have had if things had gone otherwise with him and another when they both were young.