Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  Hester Crowdie was just coming down the stairs, and greeted Katharine before reaching her. She seemed annoyed about something, Katharine thought. There was a little bright colour in her pale cheeks, and her dark eyes gleamed angrily.

  “I’m so glad you’ve come!” she exclaimed, helping her friend to take off her heavy coat. “Come in with me for a minute, won’t you?”

  “What’s the matter?” asked Katharine, going with her into the little front room. “You look angry.”

  “Oh — it’s nothing! I’m so foolish, you know. It’s silly of me. Sit down.”

  “What is it, dear?” asked Katharine, affectionately, as she sat down beside Hester upon a little sofa. “Have you and he been quarrelling?”

  “Quarrelling!” Hester laughed gaily. “No, indeed. That’s impossible! No — we were all by ourselves — Walter was singing over his work, and I was just lying amongst the cushions and listening and thinking how heavenly it was — and that stupid Mr. Griggs came in and spoiled it all. So I came away in disgust. I was so angry, just for a minute — I could have killed him!”

  “Poor dear!” Katharine could not help smiling at the story.

  “Oh, of course, you laugh at me. Everybody does. But what do I care? I love him — and I love his voice, and I love to be all alone with him up there under the sky — and at night, too, when there’s a full moon — you have no idea how beautiful it is. And then I always think that the snowy days, when I can’t go out on foot, belong especially to me. You’re different — I knew you were coming at eleven — but that horrid Mr. Griggs!”

  “Poor Mr. Griggs! If he could only hear you!”

  “Walter pretends to like him. That’s one of the few points on which we shall never agree. There’s nothing against him, I know, and he’s rather modest, considering how he has been talked about — and all that. But one doesn’t like one’s husband’s old friends to come — bothering — you know, and getting in the way when one wants to be alone with him. Oh, no! I’ve nothing against the poor man — only that I hate him! How are you, dearest, after the ball, last night? You seemed awfully tired when I brought you home. As for me, I’m worn out. I never closed my eyes till Walter came home — he danced the cotillion with your mother. Didn’t you think he was looking ill? I did. There was one moment when I was just a little afraid that — you know — that something might happen to him — as it did the other day — did you notice anything?”

  “No,” answered Katharine, thoughtfully. “He’s naturally pale. Don’t you think that just happened once, and isn’t likely to occur again? He’s been perfectly well ever since Monday, hasn’t he?”

  “Oh, yes — perfectly. But you know it’s always on my mind, now. I want to be with him more than ever. I suppose that accounts for my being so angry with poor Mr. Griggs. I think I’d ask him to stay to luncheon if I were sure he’d go away the minute it’s over. Shouldn’t you like to stay, dear? Shall I ask him? That will just make four. Do! I shall feel that I’ve atoned for being so horrid about him. I wish you would!”

  Katharine did not answer at once. The vision of her luncheon at home rose disagreeably before her — there would be her mother and her grandfather, and probably Charlotte. The latter was quite sure to have heard something about John, and would, of course, seize the occasion to make unpleasant remarks. This consideration was a decisive argument.

  “Dear,” she said at last, “if you really want me, I think I will stay. Only — I don’t want to be in the way, like Mr. Griggs. You must send me away when you’ve had enough of me.”

  “Katharine! What an idea! I only wish you would stay forever.”

  “Oh, no, you don’t!” answered Katharine, with a smile.

  Hester rang the bell, and the immaculate and magnificent Fletcher appeared to receive her orders about the luncheon. Katharine meanwhile began to wonder at herself. She was so unlike what she had been a few hours earlier, in the early morning, alone in her room. She wondered whether, after all, she were not heartless, or whether the memory of all that had lately happened to her might not be softened, like that of a bad dream, which is horrible while it lasts, and at which one laughs at breakfast, knowing that it has had no reality. Had her marriage any reality? Last night, before the ball, the question would have seemed blasphemous. It presented itself quite naturally just now. What value had that contract? What power had the words of any man, priest or layman, to tie her forever to one who had not the common decency to behave like a gentleman, and to keep his appointment with her on the same evening — on the evening of their wedding day? Was there a mysterious magic in the mere words, which made them like a witch’s spell in a fairy story? She had not seen him since. What was he doing? Had he not even enough respect for her to send her a line of apology? Merely what any man would have sent who had missed an appointment? Had she sold her soul into bondage for the term of her natural life by uttering two words— ‘I will’? It was only her soul, after all. She had not seen his face save for a moment at her own door in the afternoon. Did he think that since they had been married he need not have even the most common consideration for her? It seemed so. What had she dreamed, what had she imagined during all those weeks and months before last Monday, while she had been making up her mind that she would sacrifice anything and everything for the sake of making him happy? She could not be mistaken, now, for she was thinking it all over quite coldly during these two minutes, while Hester was speaking to the butler. She was more than cold. She was indifferent. She could have gone back to her room and put on her grey frock, and the little silver pin again, and could have looked at herself in the mirror for an hour without any sensation but that of wonder — amazement at her own folly.

  Talk of love! There was love between Walter Crowdie and his wife. Hester could not be with any one for five minutes without speaking of him, and as for Crowdie himself, he was infatuated. Everybody said so. Katharine pardoned him his pale face, his red lips, and the incomprehensible repulsion she felt for him, because he loved his wife.

  CHAPTER XXIV.

  KATHARINE AND HESTER went up to the studio together, and Hester opened the door.

  “I’ve brought your sitter, Walter,” she said, announcing Katharine. “I’ve come back with a reinforcement.”

  “Oh, Miss Lauderdale, how do you do?” Crowdie came forward. “Do you know Mr. Griggs?” he asked in a low voice.

  “Yes, he was introduced to me last night,” explained Katharine in an undertone, and bending her head graciously as the elderly man bowed from a distance.

  “Oh! that’s very nice,” observed Crowdie. “I didn’t know whether you had met. I hate introducing people. They’re apt to remember it against one. Griggs is an old friend, Miss Lauderdale.”

  Katharine looked at the painter and thought he was less repulsive than usual.

  “I know,” she answered. “Do you really want me to sit this morning, Mr. Crowdie? You know, we said Friday—”

  “Of course I do! There’s your chair, all ready for you — just where it was last time. And the thing — it isn’t a picture yet — is in the corner here. Hester, dear, just help Miss Lauderdale to take off her hat, won’t you?”

  He crossed the room as he spoke, and began to wheel up the easel on which Katharine’s portrait stood. Griggs said nothing, but watched the two women as they stood together, trying to understand the very opposite impressions they made upon him, and wondering with an excess of cynicism which Crowdie thought the more beautiful. For his own part, he fancied that he should prefer Hester’s face and Katharine’s character, as he judged it from her appearance.

  Presently Katharine seated herself, trying to assume the pose she had taken at the first sitting. Crowdie disappeared behind the curtain in search of paint and brushes, and Hester sat down on the edge of a huge divan. As there was no chair except Katharine’s, Griggs seated himself on the divan beside Mrs. Crowdie.

  “There’s never more than one chair here,” she explained. “It’s for the sitter, or th
e buyer, or the lion-hunter, according to the time of day. Other people must sit on the divan or on the floor.”

  “Yes,” answered Griggs. “I see.”

  Katharine did not think the answer a very brilliant one for a man of such reputation. Hitherto she had not had much experience of lions. Crowdie came back with his palette and paints.

  “That’s almost it,” he said, looking at Katharine. “A little more to the left, I think — just the shade of a shadow!”

  “So?” asked Katharine, turning her head a very little.

  “Yes — only for a moment — while I look at you. Afterwards you needn’t keep so very still.”

  “Yes — I know. The same as last time.”

  Meanwhile, Hester remembered that she had not yet asked Griggs to stay to luncheon, though she had taken it for granted that he would.

  “Won’t you stay and lunch with us?” she asked. “Miss Lauderdale says she will, and I’ve told them to set a place for you. We shall be four. Do, if you can!”

  “You’re awfully kind, Mrs. Crowdie,” answered Griggs. “I wish I could. I believe I have an engagement.”

  “Oh, of course you have. But that’s no reason.” Hester spoke with great conviction. “I daresay you made that particular engagement very much against your will. At all events, you mean to stay, because you only say you ‘believe’ you’re engaged. If you didn’t mean to stay, you would say at once that you ‘had’ an engagement which you couldn’t break. Wouldn’t you? Therefore you will.”

  “That’s a remarkable piece of logic,” observed Griggs, smiling.

  “Besides, you’re a lion just now, because you’ve been away so long. So you can break as many engagements as you please — it won’t make any difference.”

  “There’s a plain and unadorned contempt for social rules in that, which appeals to me. Thanks; if you’ll let me, I’ll stay.”

  “Of course!” Hester laughed. “You see I’m married to a lion, so I know just what lions do. Walter, Katharine and Mr. Griggs are going to stay to luncheon.”

  “I’m delighted,” answered Crowdie, from behind his easel. He was putting in background with an enormous brush. “I say, Griggs—” he began again.

  “Well?”

  “Do you like Rockaways or Blue Points? I’m sure Hester has forgotten.”

  “ ‘When love was the pearl of’ my ‘oyster,’ I used to prefer Blue Points,” answered Griggs, meditatively.

  “So does Walter,” said Mrs. Crowdie.

  “Was that a quotation — or what?” asked Katharine, speaking to Crowdie in an undertone.

  “Swinburne,” answered the painter, indistinctly, for he had one of his brushes between his teeth.

  “Not that it makes any difference what a man eats,” observed Griggs in the same thoughtful tone. “I once lived for five weeks on ship biscuit and raw apples.”

  “Good heavens!” laughed Hester. “Where was that? In a shipwreck?”

  “No; in New York. It wasn’t bad. I used to eat a pound a day — there were twelve to a pound of the white pilot-bread, and four apples.”

  “Do you mean to say that you were deliberately starving yourself? What for?”

  “Oh, no! I had no money, and I wanted to write a book, so that I couldn’t get anything for my work till it was done. It wasn’t like little jobs that one’s paid for at once.”

  “How funny!” exclaimed Hester. “Did you hear that, Walter?” she asked.

  “Yes; but he’s done all sorts of things.”

  “Were you ever as hard up as that, Walter?”

  “Not for so long; but I’ve had my days. Haven’t I, Griggs? Do you remember — in Paris — when we tried to make an omelet without eggs, by the recipe out of the ‘Noble Booke of Cookerie,’ and I wanted to colour it with yellow ochre, and you said it was poisonous? I’ve often thought that if we’d had some saffron, it would have turned out better.”

  “You cooked it too much,” answered Griggs, gravely. “It tasted like an old binding of a book — all parchment and leathery. There’s nothing in that recipe anyhow. You can’t make an omelet without eggs. I got hold of the book again, and copied it out and persuaded the great man at Voisin’s to try it. But he couldn’t do anything with it. It wasn’t much better than ours.”

  “I’m glad to know that,” said Crowdie. “I’ve often thought of it and wondered whether we hadn’t made some mistake.”

  Katharine was amused by what the two men said. She had supposed that a famous painter and a well-known writer, who probably did not spend a morning together more than two or three times a year, would talk profoundly of literature and art. But it was interesting, nevertheless, to hear them speak of little incidents which threw a side-light on their former lives.

  “Do people who succeed always have such a dreadfully hard time of it?” she asked, addressing the question to both men.

  “Oh, I suppose most of them do,” answered Crowdie, indifferently.

  “ ‘Jordan’s a hard road to travel,’ “ observed Griggs, mechanically.

  “Sing it, Walter — it is so funny!” suggested Hester.

  “What?” asked the painter.

  “ ‘Jordan’s a hard road’—”

  “Oh, I can’t sing and paint. Besides, we’re driving Miss Lauderdale distracted. Aren’t we, Miss Lauderdale?”

  “Not at all. I like to hear you two talk — as you wouldn’t to a reporter, for instance. Tell me something more about what you did in Paris. Did you live together?”

  “Oh, dear, no! Griggs was a sort of little great man already in those days, and he used to stay at Meurice’s — except when he had no money, and then he used to sleep in the Calais train — he got nearly ten hours in that way — and he had a free pass — coming back to Paris in time for breakfast. He got smashed once, and then he gave it up.”

  “That’s pure invention, Crowdie,” said Griggs.

  “Oh, I know it is. But it sounds well, and we always used to say it was true because you were perpetually rushing backwards and forwards. Oh, no, Miss Lauderdale — Griggs had begun to ‘arrive’ then, but I was only a student. You don’t suppose we’re the same age, do you?”

  “Oh, Walter!” exclaimed Hester, as though the suggestion were an insult.

  “Yes, Griggs is — how old are you, Griggs? I’ve forgotten. About fifty, aren’t you?”

  “About fifty thousand, or thereabouts,” answered the literary man, with a good-humoured smile.

  Katharine looked at him, turning completely round, for he and Mrs. Crowdie were sitting on the divan behind her. She thought his face was old, especially the eyes and the upper part, but his figure had the sinewy elasticity of youth even as he sat there, bending forward, with his hands folded on his knees. She wished she might be with him alone for a while, for she longed to make him talk about himself.

  “You always seemed the same age, to me, even then,” said Crowdie.

  “Does Mr. Crowdie mean that you were never young, Mr. Griggs?” asked Katharine, who had resumed her pose and was facing the artist.

  “We neither of us mean anything,” said Crowdie, with a soft laugh.

  “That’s reassuring!” exclaimed Katharine, a little annoyed, for Crowdie laughed as though he knew more about Griggs than he could or would tell.

  “I believe it’s the truth,” said Griggs himself. “We don’t mean anything especial, except a little chaff. It’s so nice to be idiotic and not to have to make speeches.”

  “I hate speeches,” said Katharine. “But what I began by asking was this. Must people necessarily have a very hard time in order to succeed at anything? You’re both successful men — you ought to know.”

  “They say that the wives of great men have the hardest time,” said Griggs. “What do you think, Mrs. Crowdie?”

  “Be reasonable!” exclaimed Hester. “Answer Miss Lauderdale’s question — if any one can, you can.”

  “It depends—” answered Griggs, thoughtfully. “Christopher Columbus—”
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br />   “Oh, I don’t mean Christopher Columbus, nor any one like him!” Katharine laughed, but a little impatiently. “I mean modern people, like you two.”

  “Oh — modern people. I see.” Mr. Griggs spoke in a very absent tone.

  “Don’t be so hopelessly dull, Griggs!” protested Crowdie. “You’re here to amuse Miss Lauderdale.”

  “Yes — I know I am. I was thinking just then. Please don’t think me rude, Miss Lauderdale. You asked rather a big question.”

  “Oh — I didn’t mean to put you to the trouble of thinking—”

  “By the bye, Miss Lauderdale,” interrupted Crowdie, “you’re all in black to-day, and on Wednesday you were in grey. It makes a good deal of difference, you know, if we are to go on. Which is to be in the picture? We must decide now, if you don’t mind.”

  “What a fellow you are, Crowdie!” exclaimed Griggs.

  “I’ll have it black, if it’s the same to you,” said Katharine, answering the painter’s question.

  “What are you abusing me for, Griggs?” asked Crowdie, looking round his easel.

  “For interrupting. You always do. Miss Lauderdale asked me a question, and you sprang at me like a fiery and untamed wild-cat because I didn’t answer it — and then you interrupt and begin to talk about dress.”

  “I didn’t suppose you had finished thinking already,” answered Crowdie, calmly. “It generally takes you longer. All right. Go ahead. The curtain’s up! The anchor’s weighed — all sorts of things! I’m listening. Miss Lauderdale, if you could look at me for one moment—”