He strangled a wild desire to order a special train, but bought a great gray kangaroo cloak lined with glossy black marten, and then retired into himself to consider things.
‘I’m going out for the day to-morrow with Dick,’ said Maisie to the red-haired girl when the latter returned, tired, from marketing in the Edgware road.
‘He deserves it. I shall have the studio floor thoroughly scrubbed while you’re away. It’s very dirty.’
Maisie had enjoyed no sort of holiday for months and looked forward to the little excitement, but not without misgivings.
‘There’s nobody nicer than Dick when he talks sensibly, she though, but I’m sure he’ll be silly and worry me, and I’m sure I can’t tell him anything he’d like to hear. If he’d only be sensible, I should like him so much better.’
Dick’s eyes were full of joy when he made his appearance next morning and saw Maisie, gray-ulstered and black-velvet-hatted, standing in the hallway. Palaces of marble, and not sordid imitation of grained wood, were surely the fittest background for such a divinity. The red-haired girl drew her into the studio for a moment and kissed her hurriedly.
Maisie’s eyebrows climbed to the top of her forehead; she was altogether unused to these demonstrations. ‘Mind my hat,’ she said, hurrying away, and ran down the steps to Dick waiting by the hansom.
‘Are you quite warm enough! Are you sure you wouldn’t like some more breakfast? Put the cloak over you knees.’
‘I’m quite comf’y, thanks. Where are we going, Dick? Oh, do stop singing like that. People will think we’re mad.’
‘Let ‘em think, — if the exertion doesn’t kill them. They don’t know who we are, and I’m sure I don’t care who they are. My faith, Maisie, you’re looking lovely!’
Maisie stared directly in front of her and did not reply. The wind of a keen clear winter morning had put colour into her cheeks. Overhead, the creamy-yellow smoke-clouds were thinning away one by one against a pale-blue sky, and the improvident sparrows broke off from water-spout committees and cab-rank cabals to clamour of the coming of spring.
‘It will be lovely weather in the country,’ said Dick.
‘But where are we going?’
‘Wait and see.’
The stopped at Victoria, and Dick sought tickets. For less than half the fraction of an instant it occurred to Maisie, comfortably settled by the waiting-room fire, that it was much more pleasant to send a man to the booking-office than to elbow one’s own way through the crowd. Dick put her into a Pullman, — solely on account of the warmth there; and she regarded the extravagance with grave scandalised eyes as the train moved out into the country.
‘I wish I knew where we are going,’ she repeated for the twentieth time.
The name of a well-remembered station flashed by, towards the end of the run, and Maisie was delighted.
‘Oh, Dick, you villain!’
‘Well, I thought you might like to see the place again. You haven’t been here since the old times, have you?’
‘No. I never cared to see Mrs. Jennett again; and she was all that was ever there.’
‘Not quite. Look out a minute. There’s the windmill above the potato-fields; they haven’t built villas there yet; d’you remember when I shut you up in it?’
‘Yes. How she beat you for it! I never told it was you.’
‘She guessed. I jammed a stick under the door and told you that I was burying Amomma alive in the potatoes, and you believed me. You had a trusting nature in those days.’
They laughed and leaned to look out, identifying ancient landmarks with many reminiscences. Dick fixed his weather eye on the curve of Maisie’s cheek, very near his own, and watched the blood rise under the clear skin. He congratulated himself upon his cunning, and looked that the evening would bring him a great reward.
When the train stopped they went out to look at an old town with new eyes. First, but from a distance, they regarded the house of Mrs. Jennett.
‘Suppose she should come out now, what would you do?’ said Dick, with mock terror.
‘I should make a face.’
‘Show, then,’ said Dick, dropping into the speech of childhood.
Maisie made that face in the direction of the mean little villa, and Dick laughed.
‘“This is disgraceful,”‘ said Maisie, mimicking Mrs. Jennett’s tone.
‘“Maisie, you run in at once, and learn the collect, gospel, and epistle for the next three Sundays. After all I’ve taught you, too, and three helps every Sunday at dinner! Dick’s always leading you into mischief. If you aren’t a gentleman, Dick, you might at least — ”‘
The sentence ended abruptly. Maisie remembered when it had last been used.
‘“Try to behave like one,”‘ said Dick, promptly. ‘Quite right. Now we’ll get some lunch and go on to Fort Keeling, — unless you’d rather drive there?’
‘We must walk, out of respect to the place. How little changed it all is!’
They turned in the direction of the sea through unaltered streets, and the influence of old things lay upon them. Presently they passed a confectioner’s shop much considered in the days when their joint pocket-money amounted to a shilling a week.
‘Dick, have you any pennies?’ said Maisie, half to herself.
‘Only three; and if you think you’re going to have two of ‘em to buy peppermints with, you’re wrong. She says peppermints aren’t ladylike.’
Again they laughed, and again the colour came into Maisie’s cheeks as the blood boiled through Dick’s heart. After a large lunch they went down to the beach and to Fort Keeling across the waste, wind-bitten land that no builder had thought it worth his while to defile. The winter breeze came in from the sea and sang about their ears.
‘Maisie,’ said Dick, ‘your nose is getting a crude Prussian blue at the tip.
I’ll race you as far as you please for as much as you please.’
She looked round cautiously, and with a laugh set off, swiftly as the ulster allowed, till she was out of breath.
‘We used to run miles,’ she panted. ‘It’s absurd that we can’t run now.’
‘Old age, dear. This it is to get fat and sleek in town. When I wished to pull you hair you generally ran for three miles, shrieking at the top of your voice. I ought to know, because those shrieks of yours were meant to call up Mrs. Jennett with a cane and — — ’
‘Dick, I never got you a beating on purpose in my life.’
‘No, of course you never did. Good heavens! look at the sea.’
‘Why, it’s the same as ever!’ said Maisie.
Torpenhow had gathered from Mr. Beeton that Dick, properly dressed and shaved, had left the house at half-past eight in the morning with a travelling-rug over his arm. The Nilghai rolled in at mid-day for chess and polite conversation.
‘It’s worse than anything I imagined,’ said Torpenhow.
‘Oh, the everlasting Dick, I suppose! You fuss over him like a hen with one chick. Let him run riot if he thinks it’ll amuse him. You can whip a young pup off feather, but you can’t whip a young man.’
‘It isn’t a woman. It’s one woman; and it’s a girl.’
‘Where’s your proof?’
‘He got up and went out at eight this morning, — got up in the middle of the night, by Jove! a thing he never does except when he’s on service.
Even then, remember, we had to kick him out of his blankets before the fight began at El-Maghrib. It’s disgusting.’
‘It looks odd; but maybe he’s decided to buy a horse at last. He might get up for that, mightn’t he?’
‘Buy a blazing wheelbarrow! He’d have told us if there was a horse in the wind. It’s a girl.’
‘Don’t be certain. Perhaps it’s only a married woman.’
‘Dick has some sense of humour, if you haven’t. Who gets up in the gray dawn to call on another man’s wife? It’s a girl.’
‘Let it be a girl, then. She may teach him that there’s somebody else
in the world besides himself.’
‘She’ll spoil his hand. She’ll waste his time, and she’ll marry him, and ruin his work for ever. He’ll be a respectable married man before we can stop him, and — he’ll ever go on the long trail again.’
‘All quite possible, but the earth won’t spin the other way when that happens.... No! ho! I’d give something to see Dick “go wooing with the boys.” Don’t worry about it. These things be with Allah, and we can only look on. Get the chessmen.’
The red-haired girl was lying down in her own room, staring at the ceiling. The footsteps of people on the pavement sounded, as they grew indistinct in the distance, like a many-times-repeated kiss that was all one long kiss. Her hands were by her side, and they opened and shut savagely from time to time.
The charwoman in charge of the scrubbing of the studio knocked at her door: ‘Beg y’ pardon, miss, but in cleanin’ of a floor there’s two, not to say three, kind of soap, which is yaller, an’ mottled, an’ disinfectink.
Now, jist before I took my pail into the passage I though it would be pre’aps jest as well if I was to come up ‘ere an’ ask you what sort of soap you was wishful that I should use on them boards. The yaller soap, miss — — ’
There was nothing in the speech to have caused the paroxysm of fury that drove the red-haired girl into the middle of the room, almost shouting — ’Do you suppose I care what you use? Any kind will do! — any kind!’
The woman fled, and the red-haired girl looked at her own reflection in the glass for an instant and covered her face with her hands. It was as though she had shouted some shameless secret aloud.
CHAPTER VII
Roses red and roses white
Plucked I for my love’s delight.
She would none of all my posies, —
Bade me gather her blue roses.
Half the world I wandered through,
Seeking where such flowers grew;
Half the world unto my quest
Answered but with laugh and jest.
It may be beyond the grave
She shall find what she would have.
Mine was but an idle quest, —
Roses white and red are best! — Blue Roses
THE SEA had not changed. Its waters were low on the mud-banks, and the Marazion Bell-buoy clanked and swung in the tide-way. On the white beach-sand dried stumps of sea-poppy shivered and chattered.
‘I don’t see the old breakwater,’ said Maisie, under her breath.
‘Let’s be thankful that we have as much as we have. I don’t believe they’ve mounted a single new gun on the fort since we were here. Come and look.’
They came to the glacis of Fort Keeling, and sat down in a nook sheltered from the wind under the tarred throat of a forty-pounder cannon.
‘Now, if Ammoma were only here!’ said Maisie.
For a long time both were silent. Then Dick took Maisie’s hand and called her by her name.
She shook her head and looked out to sea.
‘Maisie, darling, doesn’t it make any difference?’
‘No!’ between clenched teeth. ‘I’d — I’d tell you if it did; but it doesn’t, Oh, Dick, please be sensible.’
‘Don’t you think that it ever will?’
‘No, I’m sure it won’t.’
‘Why?’
Maisie rested her chin on her hand, and, still regarding the sea, spoke hurriedly — ’I know what you want perfectly well, but I can’t give it to you, Dick. It isn’t my fault; indeed, it isn’t. If I felt that I could care for any one — — But I don’t feel that I care. I simply don’t understand what the feeling means.’
‘Is that true, dear?’
‘You’ve been very good to me, Dickie; and the only way I can pay you back is by speaking the truth. I daren’t tell a fib. I despise myself quit enough as it is.’
‘What in the world for?’
‘Because — because I take everything that you give me and I give you nothing in return. It’s mean and selfish of me, and whenever I think of it it worries me.’
‘Understand once for all, then, that I can manage my own affairs, and if I choose to do anything you aren’t to blame. You haven’t a single thing to reproach yourself with, darling.’
‘Yes, I have, and talking only makes it worse.’
‘Then don’t talk about it.’
‘How can I help myself? If you find me alone for a minute you are always talking about it; and when you aren’t you look it. You don’t know how I despise myself sometimes.’
‘Great goodness!’ said Dick, nearly jumping to his feet. ‘Speak the truth now, Maisie, if you never speak it again! Do I — does this worrying bore you?’
‘No. It does not.’
‘You’d tell me if it did?’
‘I should let you know, I think.’
‘Thank you. The other thing is fatal. But you must learn to forgive a man when he’s in love. He’s always a nuisance. You must have known that?’
Maisie did not consider the last question worth answering, and Dick was forced to repeat it.
‘There were other men, of course. They always worried just when I was in the middle of my work, and wanted me to listen to them.’
‘Did you listen?’
‘At first; and they couldn’t understand why I didn’t care. And they used to praise my pictures; and I thought they meant it. I used to be proud of the praise, and tell Kami, and — I shall never forget — once Kami laughed at me.’
‘You don’t like being laughed at, Maisie, do you?’
‘I hate it. I never laugh at other people unless — unless they do bad work.
Dick, tell me honestly what you think of my pictures generally, — of everything of mine that you’ve seen.’
‘“Honest, honest, and honest over!”‘ quoted Dick from a catchword of long ago. ‘Tell me what Kami always says.’
Maisie hesitated. ‘He — he says that there is feeling in them.’
‘How dare you tell me a fib like that? Remember, I was under Kami for two years. I know exactly what he says.’
‘It isn’t a fib.’
‘It’s worse; it’s a half-truth. Kami says, when he puts his head on one side, — so, — ”Il y a du sentiment, mais il n’y a pas de parti pris.”‘ He rolled the r threateningly, as Kami used to do.
‘Yes, that is what he says; and I’m beginning to think that he is right.’
‘Certainly he is.’ Dick admitted that two people in the world could do and say no wrong. Kami was the man.
‘And now you say the same thing. It’s so disheartening.’
‘I’m sorry, but you asked me to speak the truth. Besides, I love you too much to pretend about your work. It’s strong, it’s patient sometimes, — not always, — and sometimes there’s power in it, but there’s no special reason why it should be done at all. At least, that’s how it strikes me.’
‘There’s no special reason why anything in the world should ever be done. You know that as well as I do. I only want success.’
‘You’re going the wrong way to get it, then. Hasn’t Kami ever told you so?’
‘Don’t quote Kami to me. I want to know what you think. My work’s bad, to begin with.’
‘I didn’t say that, and I don’t think it.’
‘It’s amateurish, then.’
‘That it most certainly is not. You’re a work-woman, darling, to your boot-heels, and I respect you for that.’
‘You don’t laugh at me behind my back?’
‘No, dear. You see, you are more to me than any one else. Put this cloak thing round you, or you’ll get chilled.’
Maisie wrapped herself in the soft marten skins, turning the gray kangaroo fur to the outside.
‘This is delicious,’ she said, rubbing her chin thoughtfully along the fur.
‘Well? Why am I wrong in trying to get a little success?’
‘Just because you try. Don’t you understand, darling? Good work has nothing to do with — doesn’
t belong to — the person who does it. It’s put into him or her from outside.’
‘But how does that affect — — ’
‘Wait a minute. All we can do is to learn how to do our work, to be masters of our materials instead of servants, and never to be afraid of anything.’
‘I understand that.’
‘Everything else comes from outside ourselves. Very good. If we sit down quietly to work out notions that are sent to us, we may or we may not do something that isn’t bad. A great deal depends on being master of the bricks and mortar of the trade. But the instant we begin to think about success and the effect of our work — to play with one eye on the gallery — we lose power and touch and everything else. At least that’s how I have found it. Instead of being quiet and giving every power you possess to your work, you’re fretting over something which you can neither help no hinder by a minute. See?’
‘It’s so easy for you to talk in that way. People like what you do. Don’t you ever think about the gallery?’
‘Much too often; but I’m always punished for it by loss of power. It’s as simple as the Rule of Three. If we make light of our work by using it for our own ends, our work will make light of us, and, as we’re the weaker, we shall suffer.’
‘I don’t treat my work lightly. You know that it’s everything to me.’
‘Of course; but, whether you realise it or not, you give two strokes for yourself to one for your work. It isn’t your fault, darling. I do exactly the same thing, and know that I’m doing it. Most of the French schools, and all the schools here, drive the students to work for their own credit, and for the sake of their pride. I was told that all the world was interested in my work, and everybody at Kami’s talked turpentine, and I honestly believed that the world needed elevating and influencing, and all manner of impertinences, by my brushes. By Jove, I actually believed that! When my little head was bursting with a notion that I couldn’t handle because I hadn’t sufficient knowledge of my craft, I used to run about wondering at my own magnificence and getting ready to astonish the world.’
‘But surely one can do that sometimes?’
‘Very seldom with malice aforethought, darling. And when it’s done it’s such a tiny thing, and the world’s so big, and all but a millionth part of it doesn’t care. Maisie, come with me and I’ll show you something of the size of the world. One can no more avoid working than eating, — that goes on by itself, — but try to see what you are working for. I know such little heavens that I could take you to, — islands tucked away under the Line.
Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) Page 8