by Edith Nesbit
“What do you mean?” he asked anxiously. He had never been able wholly to approve Miss Julia Desmond. She smoked cigarettes, and he could not think that this would have been respectable in any other woman. Of course, she was different from any other woman, but still — . Then the Reverend Cecil could not deem it womanly to explore, unchaperoned, the less well-known quarters of four continents, to penetrate even to regions where skirts were considered improper and side-saddles were unknown. Even the nearness of Miss Desmond’s fiftieth birthday hardly lessened at all the poignancy of his disapproval. Besides, she had not always been fifty, and she had always, in his recollection of her, smoked cigarettes, and travelled alone. Yet he had a certain well-founded respect for her judgment, and for that fine luminous common-sense of hers which had more than once shewn him his own mistakes. On the rare occasions when he and she had differed he had always realized, later, that she had been in the right. And she was “gentlemanly” enough never once to have said: “I told you so!”
“What do you mean?” he asked again, for she was silent, her hands in the pockets of her long coat, her sensible brown shoes sticking straight out in front of her chair.
“If you really want to know, I’ll tell you,” she said, “but I hate to interfere in other people’s business. You see, I know how deeply she has felt this, and of course I know you have too, so I wondered whether you hadn’t thought of some little plan for — for altering the circumstances a little, so that everything will blow over and settle down, so that when you and she come together again you’ll be better friends than ever.”
“Come together again,” he repeated, and the paper-knife was still restless, “do you want me to let her go away? To London?”
Visions of Lizzie, in unseemly low-necked dresses surrounded by crowds of young men — all possible Vernons — lent a sudden firmness to his voice, a sudden alertness to his manner.
“No, certainly not,” she answered the voice and the manner as much as the words. “I shouldn’t dream of such a thing. Then it hadn’t occurred to you?”
“It certainly had not.”
“You see,” she said earnestly, “it’s like this — at least this is how I see it: She’s all shaken and upset, and so are you, and when I’ve gone — and I must go in a very little time — you’ll both of you simply settle down to thinking over it all, and you’ll grow farther and farther apart!”
“I don’t think so,” said he; “things like this always right themselves if one leaves them alone. Lizzie and I have always got on very well together, in a quiet way. We are neither of us demonstrative.”
“Now Heaven help the man!” was the woman’s thought. She remembered Betty’s clinging arms, her heartfelt kisses, the fervency of the voice that said, “Dear darling, pretty, kind, clever Aunt! I’d give my ears to go.” Betty not demonstrative! Heaven help the man!
“No,” she said, “I know. But when people are young these thinks rankle.”
“They won’t with her,” he said. “She has a singularly noble nature, under that quiet exterior.”
Miss Desmond drew a long breath and began afresh.
“Then there’s another thing. She’s fretting over this — thinks now that it was something to be ashamed of; she didn’t think so at the time, of course.”
“You mean that it was I who—”
This was thin ice again. Miss Desmond skated quickly away from it with, “Well, you see, I’ve been talking to her. She really is fretting. Why she’s got ever so much thinner in the last week.”
“I could get a locum,” he said slowly, “and take her to a Hydropathic Establishment for a fortnight.”
“Oh dear, oh dear!” said Miss Desmond to herself. Aloud she said: “That would be delightful, later. But just now — well, of course it’s for you to decide, — but it seems to me that it would be better for you two to be apart for a while. If you’re here alone together — well, the very sight of you will remind each other — That’s not grammar, as you say, but—”
He had not said anything. He was thinking, fingering the brass bosses on the corners of the divine Augustine, and tracing the pattern on the stamped pigskin.
“Of course if you care to risk it,” she went on still with that fine air of detachment,—”but I have seen breaches that nothing could heal arise in just that way.”
Two people sitting down together and thinking over everything they had against each other.
“But I’ve nothing against Lizzie.”
“I daresay not,” Miss Desmond lost patience at last, “but she has against you, or will have if you let her stay here brooding over it. However if you like to risk it — I’m sorry I spoke.” She got up and moved to the door.
“No, no,” he said hastily, “do not be sorry you spoke. You have given me food for reflection. I will think it all over quietly and — and—” he did not like to talk about prayers to Miss Desmond somehow, “and — calmly and if I see that you are right — I am sure you mean most kindly by me.”
“Indeed I do,” she said heartily, and gave him her hand in the manly way he hated. He took it, held it limply an instant, and repeated:
“Most kindly.”
He thought it over for so long that the aunt almost lost hope.
“I have to hold my tongue with both hands to keep it quiet. And if I say another word I shall spoil the song,” she told Betty. “I’ve done my absolute best. If that doesn’t fetch him, nothing will!”
It had “fetched him.” At the end of two interminable days he sent to ask Miss Desmond to speak to him in the study. She went.
“I have been thinking carefully,” he said, “most carefully. And I feel that you are right. Perhaps I owe her some amends. Do you know of any quiet country place?”
Miss Desmond thought Betty had perhaps for the moment had almost enough of quiet country places.
“She is very anxious to learn drawing,” he said, “and perhaps if I permitted her to do so she might understand it as a sign that I cherish no resentment on account of what has passed. But—”
“I know the very thing,” said the Aunt, and went on to tell of Madame Gautier, of her cloistral home in Paris where she received a few favoured young girls, of the vigilant maid who conducted them to and from their studies, of the quiet villa on the Marne where in the summer an able master — at least 60 or 65 years of age — conducted sketching parties, to which the students were accompanied either by Madame herself, or by the dragon-maid.
“I’ll stand the child six months with her,” she said, “or a year even. So it won’t cost you anything. And Madame Gautier is in London now. You could run up and talk to her yourself.”
“Does she speak English?” he asked, anxiously, and being reassured questioned further.
“And you?” he asked. And when he heard that Norway for a month and then America en route for Japan formed Miss Desmond’s programme for the next year he was only just able to mask, with a cough, his deep sigh of relief. For, however much he might respect her judgment, he was always easier when Lizzie and her Aunt Julia were not together.
He went up to town, and found Madame Gautier, the widow of a French pastor, established in a Bloomsbury boarding-house. She was a woman after his own heart — severe, simple, earnest. If he had to part with his Lizzie, he told himself in the returning train, it could be to no better keeper than this.
He himself announced his decision to Betty.
“I have decided,” he said, and he spoke very coldly because it was so very difficult to speak at all, “to grant you the wish you expressed some time ago. You shall go to Paris and learn drawing.”
“Do you really mean it?” said Betty, as coldly as he.
“I am not in the habit of saying things which I do not mean.”
“Thank you very much,” said Betty. “I will work hard, and try that the money shan’t be wasted.”
“Your aunt has kindly offered to pay your expenses.”
“When do I go?” asked Betty.
&nbs
p; “As soon as your garments can be prepared. I trust that I shall not have cause to regret the confidence I have decided to place in you.”
His phrasing was seldom well-inspired. Had he said, “I trust you, my child, and I know I shan’t regret it,” which was what he meant, she would have come to meet him more than half-way. As it was she said, “Thank you!” again, and left him without more words. He sighed.
“I don’t believe she is pleased after all; but she sees I am doing it for her good. Now it comes to the point her heart sinks at the idea of leaving home. But she will understand my motives.”
The one thought Betty gave him was:
“He can’t bear the sight of me at all now! He’s longing to be rid of me! Well, thank Heaven I’m going to Paris! I will have a grass-lawn dress over green, with three rows of narrow lace insertion, and a hat with yellow roses and — oh, it can’t be true. It’s too good to be true. Well, it’s a good thing to be hated sometimes, by some people, if they only hate you enough!”
“‘So you’re going to foreign parts, Miss,’ says I.”
Mrs. Symes had flung back her bonnet strings and was holding a saucerful of boiling tea skilfully poised on the fingers of one hand. “‘Yes, Mrs. Symes,’ says she, ‘don’t you wish you was going too?’ she says. And she laughed, but I’m not easy blinded, and well I see as she only laughed to ‘ide a bleedin’ ‘art. ‘Not me, Miss,’ says I; ‘nice figure I should look a-goin’ to a furrin’ boardin’ school at my time of life.’
“‘It ain’t boardin’ school,’ says she. ‘I’m a-going to learn to paint pictures. I’ll paint your portrait when I come home,’ says she, and laughs again — I could see she done it to keep the tears back.
“‘I’m sorry for you, Miss, I’m sure,’ I says, not to lose the chance of a word in season, ‘but I hope it’ll prove a blessing to you — I do that.’”
“‘Oh, it’ll be a blessing right enough,’ says she, and keeps on laughing a bit wild like. When the art’s full you can’t always stop yourself. She’d a done better to ‘ave a good cry and tell me ‘er troubles. I could a cheered her up a bit p’raps. You know whether I’m considered a comfort at funerals and christenings, Mrs. James.”
“I do,” said Mrs. James sadly; “none don’t know it better.”
“You’d a thought she’d a bin glad of a friend in need. But no. She just goes on a-laughing fit to bring tears to your eyes to hear her, and says she, ‘I hope you’ll all get on all right without me.’”
“I hope you said as how we should miss her something dreadful,” said Mrs. James anxiously, “Have another cup.”
“Thank you, my dear. Do you take me for a born loony? Course I did. Said the parish wouldn’t be the same without her, and about her pretty reading and all. See here what she give me.”
Mrs. James unrolled a violet petticoat.
“Good as new, almost,” she said, looking critically at the hem. “Specially her being taller’n me. So what’s not can be cut away, and no loss. She kep’ on a-laughing an’ a-smiling till the old man he come in and he says in his mimicking way, ‘Lizzie,’ says ‘e, ‘they’re a-waitin’ to fit on your new walkin’ costoom,’ he says. So I come away, she a-smiling to the last something awful to see.”
“Dear, dear,” said Mrs. James.
“But you mark my words — she don’t deceive me. If ever I see a bruised reed and a broken ‘art on a young gell’s face I see it on hers this day. She may laugh herself black in the face, but she won’t laugh me into thinking what I knows to be far otherwise.”
“Ah,” said Mrs. James resignedly, “we all ‘as it to bear one time or another. Young gells is very deceitful though, in their ways, ain’t they?”
Book 2. — The Man
CHAPTER VIII. THE ONE AND THE OTHER.
“Some idiot,” remarked Eustace Vernon, sipping Vermouth at a little table, “insists that, if you sit long enough outside the Café de la Paix, you will see everyone you have ever known or ever wanted to know pass by. I have sat here for half-an-hour — and — voila.”
“You met me, half an hour ago,” said the other man.
“Oh, you!” said Vernon affectionately.
“And your hat has gone off every half minute ever since,” said the other man.
“Ah, that’s to the people I’ve known. It’s the people I’ve wanted to know that are the rarity.”
“Do you mean people you have wanted to know and not known?”
“There aren’t many of those,” said Vernon; “no it’s — Jove, that’s a sweet woman!”
“I hate the type,” said the other man briefly: “all clothes — no real human being.”
The woman was beautifully dressed, in the key whose harmonies are only mastered by Frenchwomen and Americans. She turned her head as her carriage passed, and Vernon’s hat went off once more.
“I’d forgotten her profile,” said Vernon, “and she’s learned how to dress since I saw her last. She’s quite human, really, and as charming as anyone ought to be.”
“So I should think,” said the other man. “I’m sorry I said that, but I didn’t know you knew her. How’s trade?”
“Oh, I did a picture — well, but a picture! I did it in England in the Spring. Best thing I’ve done yet. Come and see it.”
“I should like to look you up. Where do you hang out?”
“Eighty-six bis Rue Notre Dame des Champs,” said Vernon. “Everyone in fiction lives there. It’s the only street on the other side that authors seem ever to have dreamed of. Still, it’s convenient, so I herd there with all sorts of blackguards, heroes and villains and what not. Eighty-six bis.”
“I’ll come,” said the other man, slowly. “Do you know, Vernon, I’d like awfully to get at your point of view — your philosophy of life?”
“Haven’t you got one, my dear chap!—’sufficient unto’ is my motto.”
“You paint pictures,”, the other went on, “so very much too good for the sort of life you lead.”
Vernon laughed.
“My dear Temple,” he said, “I live, mostly, the life of a vestal virgin.”
“You know well enough I’m not quarrelling with the way you spend your evenings,” said his dear Temple; “it’s your whole outlook that doesn’t match your work. Yet there must be some relation between the two, that’s what I’d like to get at.”
There is a bond stronger than friendship, stronger than love — a bond that cannot be forged in any other shop than the one — the bond between old schoolfellows. Vernon had sometimes wondered why he “stood so much” from Temple. It is a wonder that old schoolfellows often feel, mutually.
“The subject you’ve started,” said he, “is of course, to me, the most interesting. Please develop your thesis.”
“Well then, your pictures are good, strong, thorough stuff, with sentiment — yes, just enough sentiment to keep them from the brutality of Degas or the sensualism of Latouche. Whereas you, yourself, seem to have no sentiment.”
“I? No sentiment! Oh, Bobby, this is too much! Why, I’m a mass of it! Ask—”
“Yes, ask any woman of your acquaintance. That’s just it — or just part of it. You fool them into thinking — oh, I don’t know what; but you don’t fool me.”
“I haven’t tried.”
“Then you’re not brutal, except half a dozen times in the year when you — And I’ve noticed that when your temper goes smash your morals go at the same time. Is that cause or effect? What’s the real you like, and where do you keep it?”
“The real me,” said Vernon, “is seen in my pictures, and — and appreciated by my friends; you for instance, are, I believe, genuinely attached to me.”
“Oh, rot!” said Bobby.
“I don’t see,” said Vernon, moving his iron chair to make room for two people at the next table, “why you should expect my pictures to rhyme with my life. A man’s art doesn’t rhyme with his personality. Most often it contradicts flatly. Look at musicians — what a divine art, and
what pigs of high priests! And look at actors — but no, one can’t; the spectacle is too sickening.”
“I sometimes think,” said Temple, emptying his glass, “that the real you isn’t made yet. It’s waiting for—”
“For the refining touch of a woman’s hand, eh? You think the real me is — Oh, Temple, Temple, I’ve no heart for these childish imaginings! The real me is the man that paints pictures, damn good pictures, too, though I say it.”
“And is that what all the women think?
“Ask them, my dear chap; ask them. They won’t tell you the truth.”
“They’re not the only ones who won’t. I should like to know what you really think of women, Vernon.”
“I don’t think about them at all,” lied Vernon equably. “They aren’t subjects for thought but for emotion — and even of that as little as may be. It’s impossible seriously to regard a woman as a human being; she’s merely a dear, delightful, dainty—”
“Plaything?”
“Well, yes — or rather a very delicately tuned musical instrument. If you know the scales and the common chords, you can improvise nice little airs and charming variations. She’s a sort of — well, a penny whistle, and the music you get depends not on her at all, but on your own technique.”
“I’ve never been in love,” said Temple; “not seriously, I mean,” he hastened to add, for Vernon was smiling, “not a life or death matter, don’t you know; but I do hate the way you talk, and one of these days you’ll hate it too.”
Miss Desmond’s warning floated up through the dim waters of half a year.
“So a lady told me, only last Spring,” he said. “Well, I’ll take my chance. Going? Well, I’m glad we ran across each other. Don’t forget to look me up.”
Temple moved off, and Vernon was left alone. He sat idly smoking cigarette after cigarette, and watched the shifting crowd. It was a bright October day, and the crowd was a gay one.
Suddenly his fingers tightened on his cigarette, — but he kept the hand that held it before his face, and he bent his head forward.