It was a novelty in her small and serious experience to find herself in conjunction with such frivolity; she was almost inclined to be shocked. Nevertheless, in the ten years during which she had made her home in Parton Street, Mary Masters had surmounted her awe, if her astonishment still occasionally obtained. Neither her aunt nor Rainham had altered, nor had they grown perceptibly older.
Watching the latter to-day as he sat lolling back lazily, balancing his teacup, she was curiously reminded of her first impression of him; taking stock of her humorously, silently, in almost the same attitude, with the same sad eyes. And since Mary, too, had remained virtually unchanged, it is to the credit of the head of a particularly serious little daughter of the Puritans that she had ended by appreciating them both. In fact, she had discovered that neither of them was so frivolous as it appeared, or, at least, that there were visitors in Parton Street who seemed less frivolous, and whose frivolity shocked her more. Her shy brown eyes were penetrative, and often saw more than one would have imagined, and at last they believed that they had seen through the philosophic indifference of Lady Garnett's shrug, the gentle irony of Rainham's perpetual smile, the various masks of tragic comedians on a stage where there is no prompter, where the footlights are most pitiless, and where the gallery is only too lavish of its cat-calls at the smallest slip. Beneath it all she saw two people who understood each other as well as any two persons in the world. Did they understand each other so well that they could afford to trifle? She had an idea that their silences were eloquent, and that they might well be lavish of the crudity of speech. Oh, they pretended very well! The young girl found something admirable in the hard, polished surface which her aunt presented to the world: her rouge and her diamonds, her little bird-like air of living only in the present, of being intensely interested, of having no regrets—a manner to which Rainham responded so fluently with an assumption that she was right, that things were an excellent joke. After all, perhaps they pretended too much; at least, she found herself often, when they were present, falling away into reveries full of conjecture, from which, as happened now, she only awoke with a slight blush to find herself directly addressed.
"Wake up, Mary! we are talking of the Sylvesters. I was tellingPhilip that his little friend Eve has become entirely charming."
"Yes," said Mary slowly; "she is charming, certainly. Haven't you seen her, Philip? You used to be constantly there."
Rainham assumed the air of reflection.
"Really, I believe I used, when Eve was in short frocks, and Charles conspicuously absent. Like Lady Garnett, I find the barrister exhausting. He is very unlike his father."
"We are going to Switzerland with them this summer, you know,Philip? Will you join us?"
"Ah!" he put his cup down, not responding for a moment. "It would be delightful, but I am afraid impossible. You see, there's the dock; I have been away from it six months, and I shall have to repeat the process when the fogs begin. No, Lady Garnett, I won't be tempted."
She began to press him, and they fenced rapidly for some minutes, laughing. Rainham had just been induced to promise that he would at least consider the proposition, when the footman announced Mr. and Miss Sylvester. They came in a moment later; and while the barrister, a tall well-dressed man, with the shaven upper lip and neat whisker of his class, and a back which seemed to bend with difficulty, explained to Lady Garnett that his mother was suffering too much from neuralgia to come with them, Rainham resumed his acquaintance with the young girl. He had seen little of her during the past two years, and in the last of them, in which she had changed most, he had not seen her at all. It was with a slight shock, then, that he realized how completely she had grown up. He remembered her in so many phases of childhood and little girlhood, ranging up from a time when her speech was incoherent, and she had sat on his knee and played with his watch, to the more recent occasions when he had met her riding in the Park with her brother; and she had waved her little whip to him, looking particularly slim and pretty in the very trying costume which fashion prescribes for little girls who ride.
They had always been very good friends; she had been a most engaging little companion, and really, he reflected, he had been extremely fond of her. It gave him a distinct pain to reflect that their relation had, in the nature of things, come to an end. Gradually, as they talked, the young girl growing out of the first restraint of her shyness, and falling back into something of her old manner, the first painful impression of her entire strangeness left Rainham. In spite of her mature, little society air, her engaging attempts at worldliness, she was, after all, not so grown-up as she seemed. The child gleamed out here and there quite daintily, and as he indulged in reminiscence, and reminded her of some of their more remote adventures, her merriment found utterance very childishly.
"Our most tragical encounter, though, was with the monkey. Have you forgotten that? It was on one of your birthdays—you had a good many of them in Florence—I forget which it was. You must have been about ten. I had taken you to the Zoological Gardens, such as they were."
Her laughter rippled out softly again.
"I remember," she nodded, "it was dreadful."
"Yes," he said; "we were at the monkey-cage; you had grown tired of feeding the ostrich withcentesimi."
"Oh, Philip!" she interrupted him; "I never,neverwould have done such a thing. It was you who used to give the poor birdcentesimi. I only used to watch."
"Ah, you connived at it, anyhow," he went on. "Well, we were feeding the monkeys, this time with melon-seeds, when we somehow aroused the ire of a particularly ugly brute, who must have been distantly connected with a bull. Anyhow, he made a grab at the scarletberretyou were wearing, just missed your hair, and demolished the cap."
"I remember," she laughed. "You tied your handkerchief round my head, like an old peasant woman, and took me back in a carriage. And mamma was dreadfully angry about the cap, because she had bought it at Biarritz, and couldn't replace it in Italy. She thought you ought to have taken steps to get it back."
"Dear me!" said Rainham solemnly, "why didn't I think of it before?I wonder if it's too late to do anything now."
The girl's laughter broke out again, this time attracting the attention of her brother, who was discussing the projected travels, with the aid of Bradshaw, at Mary Masters' side. He glanced at them askance, pulling at his collar in his stiff, nervous fashion a little uneasily.
"What a long time ago all that seems, Philip!" she remarked after a while.
He was silent for a moment examining his finger-nails intently.
"Yes," he said rather sadly; "I suppose it does. I dare say you wouldn't care much for the Zoo now?"
"Oh, I shouldn't mind," she said gaily, "if you will take me."
But a move had been made opposite, and Charles Sylvester, coming up to them, overheard this last remark.
"I think we must be off," he said, consulting his watch. "Where isRainham going to take you?"
"To Florence," she said, smiling, "to the Zoo."
"Ah, a good idea," he murmured. "Well, good-bye, Lady Garnett; good-day, Rainham. I am sorry to see you don't seem to have benefited much by your winter abroad. I almost wonder you came back so soon. Was not it rather unwise? This treacherous climate, you know."
"Yes," said Rainham; "I, too, think you are right. I think I had much better have stayed—very much better."
"Ah, well," he said, "you must take care of yourself, and give us a look in if you have time."
Eve looked up at him, flushing a little, as though she found her brother's formal politeness lacking in hospitality. She was struck then, as she had not been yet during her visit, by a curious lassitude in her old friend's face. It affected her with an unconscious pity, causing her to second her brother's somewhat chilly invitation more cordially.
The humour which had shone in Rainham's eyes while they had been talking seemed to have gone out suddenly, like a lamp, leaving them blank and tired. It shocked her to realize how old and ill he had become.
Indolence and ill-health, in the opinion of many the salient points in Philip Rainham's character, had left him at forty with little of the social habit. The circle of his intimates had sensibly narrowed, and for the rest he was becoming more and more conscious that people whom one does not know exceedingly well are not worth knowing at all. The process of dining out two or three times a week in the company of two or three persons whose claims on his attention were of the slenderest he found a process attended with less and less pleasure the older he grew. There were few houses now which he frequented, and this year, when he had made an effort to devote a couple of evenings to the renewal of some acquaintance of the winter, and had discovered, as he had discovered anew each season, that the effort gave him no appreciable compensations for the disagreeables it involved, he made fresh resolutions of abstinence, and on the whole he kept them amazingly well.
For the most part, when he was not routed out by Lightmark (and since the young artist was in train to become a social acquisition this happened less frequently than of old), it was at Blackpool that he spent his evenings. He had, it is true, a standing invitation to dinner at Lady Garnett's when that old lady found herself at home; but Portman Square was remote, and evening dress, to a man with one lung in a climate which had so fickle a trick of registering itself either at the extreme top or bottom of the thermometer, presented various discomforts. His den behind the office—a little sitting-room with a bay-window facing Blackpool Reach, a room filled with books that had no relation to shipping, and hung round with etchings and pictures in those curiously-low tones for which he had so unreasonable an affection—was what he cherished most in London. He read little now, but the mere presence of the books he loved best in rough, uneven cases, painted black, lining the walls, caressed him. As with persons one has loved and grown used to loving, it was not always needful that they should speak to him; it was sufficient, simply, that they should be there. Neither did he write on these long, interminable evenings, which were prolonged sometimes far into the night. He had ended by being able to smile at his literary ambitions of twenty, cultivating his indolence as something choice and original, finding his destiny appropriate.
He spent the time in interminable reveries, sitting with a volume before him, as often as not unopened, smoking incessantly, and looking out of the window. The habit amused himself at times; it was so eminently symbolic of his destiny. Life, after all, had been to him nothing so much as that—a long looking out of window, the impartial spectatorship of a crowd of persons and passions from which he had come at last to seem strangely detached, almost as much as from this chameleon river, which he had observed with such satisfaction in all its manifold gradations of character and colour; its curious cold grayness in the beginning of an autumnal dawn; the illusion of warmth and depth which it sustained at noon, bringing up its burden of leviathans on the top of the flood; its sheen on moonless nights, when only little punctures, green and red and orange, and its audible stillness, reminded him that down in the obscurity the great polluted stream stole on wearily, monotonously, everlastingly to the sea. It was changeful and changeless. He thought he knew its effects by heart, but it had always new ones in reserve to surprise and delight him. He declared it at last to be inexhaustible. It was like a diamond on sunny days, flashing out light in every little ripple; in the late, sunless afternoon the light lay deeply within it, and it seemed jealous of giving back the least particle. He compared it then to an opal or a sapphire, which shine with the same parsimonious radiance.
One night, while he sat smoking in his wonted meditative fashion, he had a visitor—the painter Oswyn. He had almost forgotten his invitation, but he reminded himself of his first impression, and greeted him with a cordiality which the other seemed to find surprising. He took him into his sanctuary and found him whisky and a pipe; then he set himself to make the painter talk, a task which he found by no means arduous.
Oswyn was sober, and Rainham was surprised after a while at his sanity. He decided that, though one might differ from him, dissent from his premises or his conclusions, he was still a man to be taken seriously. His fluency was as remarkable as ever, and at first as spleenful; by-and-by his outrageous mood gave way, and, in response to some of Rainham's adroit thrusts, he condescended to stand on his defence. He could give a reasonable account of himself; was prepared clearly, and succinctly, and seriously with his justification. Rainham was impressed anew by his singleness, the purity of his artistic passion. His life might be disgraceful, indescribable: his art lay apart from it; and when he took up a brush an enthusiasm, a devotion to art, almost religious, steadied his hand.
"You may think me a charlatan," he said, with the same savage earnestness, "but I can tell you I am not. I may fail or I may succeed, as the world counts those things. It is all the same: I believe in myself. It is sufficient to me if I approve myself, and the world may go to damnation! What I care for is my idea!… yes, my idea, that's it! They can howl at me," he went on; "but they can never say of any stroke of my brush that I put it there for them. I could have painted pictures like Lightmark if I had cared, you know, but I did not care!"
"And yet he has great facility," said Rainham tentatively.
"He has more," said Oswyn bitterly, "or, at least, he had—genius. And he has deliberately chosen to go the wrong way, to be conventional. He can't plead 'invincible ignorance' like the others; he ought to know better. Well, he has his reward; but I can't forgive him."
Rainham shrugged his shoulders with something between a sigh and a laugh.
"Poor boy! he is young, you know. Perhaps he will live to see the errors of his ways."
"When he's an Academician, I suppose?" suggested the other ironically. "Do they ever see the errors of their ways? If they do they don't show it. No; he will marry a rich wife, and make speeches at banquets, and paint portraits of celebrities, for the rest of his days. And in fifty years' time people will say, 'Lightmark, R.A.? Who the devil was he?'"
By this time the young moon had risen, and its cold light shimmered on the misty river. Rainham refilled his pipe, and opened the window still more widely.
"By Jove, what a night!" he said. "What a night for a painter! I am sure you are longing to be out in it. I'm afraid there's nothing to show you in the dock at present; you must come down again when there's a ship coming in at night. I feel quite reconciled to the dock on those occasions. Shall we go for a stroll in the moonlight—and seek impressions?"
Oswyn's restless humour welcomed the suggestion, and he was already waiting, his soft felt hat in one ungloved hand, and a heavy, quaintly carved stick in the other.
They stood for some minutes on the little, square, pulpit-like landing, at the top of the creaking wooden staircase, which led down the side of the building from office to yard, listening to the faint drip of the water through the sluice-gates; the wail of a child outside the walls, and the pacing step of the woman who hushed it; the distant intermittent roar of the song which reached them through the often opened doors of a public-house. Presently the night-watchman lumbered out of his sentry-box by the gates, his dim lantern sounding pools of mysterious darkness, which were untouched by the solitary gas-lamp in the street outside, and which the faint moonlight only seemed to intensify.
Oswyn drew in a long breath of the cool, caressing air, momentarily straightening his bent figure. Then he gave a short laugh, which startled Rainham from the familiar state of half-smiling reverie to which he was always so ready to recur.
"The last time I saw the river like this," he said—"the last time I was down here at night, that is—was when I went with a Malay model of mine to his favourite opium den."
"You have not repeated the experiment?" asked Rainham absently.
"No; not yet, at any rate. It made my hand shake so damnably for a week afterwards that I couldn't paint. Besides, I doubt if I could find the place again. I couldn't get the Malay to come away at all; he is probably there still."
"Beg your pardon, sir," said the night-watchman hoarsely, when they reached the bottom of the difficult staircase, "there's been a young woman here asking for a gentleman of the name of Crichton. I told her there weren't no one of that name here, and Mr. Bullen, sir, he saw her, and sent her away. I thought I had better mention it to you, sir."
"Crichton? Crichton?" repeated Rainham indifferently. "I don't know anyone of that name. Some mistake, I suppose, or—— Well, sailors will be sailors! Thank you, Andrewes, that will do. Good-night—or, rather, we shall be back in half an hour or so." He turned to Oswyn, who had been hanging back to avoid any appearance of interest in the conversation, for corroboration. "You will come back, of course?"
"Rather late, isn't it? I think I had better catch some train before midnight, if there is one."
"Oh, there are plenty of trains," said Rainham vaguely. "We can settle that matter later. I can give you a bed here, you know, or a berth, at any rate."
As they stepped through the narrow opening in the gate, a dark form sprang forward out of the shadow, and then stopped timidly.
"Oh, Cyril!" cried a woman's plaintive voice. "Cyril! I knew you were here, and they wouldn't let me—— Ah, my God! it isn't Cyril after all…!"
The voice—and it struck Rainham that it was not the voice of a woman of the sort one would expect to encounter in the streets at that hour—died away in a broken sob, and the girl fell back a step, almost dropping the child she carried in her arms.
Her evident despair appealed to Rainham's somewhat inconveniently assertive sensibility.
He hesitated for a moment, glancing from the girl to Oswyn, and noting that the face, too, had a certain beauty which was not of the order affected by the women of Blackpool.
"Don't go," he said to Oswyn, who had withdrawn a few paces. "I won't keep you a moment!"
The baby in the woman's arms set up a feeble wail, and it was borne in upon Rainham's mind that the unhappy creature with the white face and pleading dark eyes had been waiting long.
"Didn't my foreman tell you that the—that the gentleman you asked for is not here?" he inquired gently. "No one here has ever heard of Mr. Crichton. I'm afraid you have made a mistake…. Hadn't you better go home? I'm sure it would be best for your child."
"Home?" echoed the girl bitterly. Then, changing her tone, "But I saw him here with my own eyes!" she pleaded. "I saw him at the window there not a week ago quite plain, and then they told me he wasn't here! I'm sure he would see me if he only knew—if he only knew!"
"He may have been here," suggested Rainham doubtfully. "There are a great many people here from day to day, and we don't always know their names. But I assure you he isn't here now."
The girl—for in spite of her pale misery she did not look more—drew her dark shawl more closely round herself and the child with a little, despairing shudder, glancing over her shoulder. Rainham let his eyes rest on the frail figure pityingly, and a thought of the river behind her struck him with a sudden chill.
He put his hand, almost surreptitiously, into his pocket.
"Where do you live?" he asked. "Near here?" The girl mentioned a street which he sometimes passed through when economy of time induced him to make an otherwise undesirable short-cut to the railway station. "Well," he said presently, "I can't keep my friend here waiting, you know. Come and see me to-morrow morning about midday, and I will see if I can help you. Only you must promise me to go straight home now! And"—here he dropped a coin quickly into her hand—"buy something for your child; you both look as if you wanted it."
The girl looked at him dumbly for a moment.
"I will come, sir, and—and thank you!" she said, with a quaver in her voice. And then, in obedience to Rainham's playfully threatening gesture, she turned away.
Rainham gazed after her until she had turned the corner.
"I'm sorry to have treated you to this—scene," he said apologetically, as he joined Oswyn, who was gazing over the narrow bridge. "I felt bound to do something for the girl, after she had been wasting all that time outside my gates. Did you notice what a pretty, refined face she had? I wonder who the man can be—Crichton, Cecil Crichton, wasn't it?… I never heard the name before. It doesn't sound like a sailor's name."
"Cecil Crichton?" echoed the other. "No … and yet it sounds familiar. Perhaps I am thinking of the Admirable, though he wasn't Cecil, as far as I remember. The old story, I suppose. Cecil Crichton—ah, Cyril Crichton?" he repeated. Then, dismissing the subject somewhat brutally, "Ah, well, it's no business of mine! Will you give me a light? Thanks!"
At three o'clock Lightmark dismissed his model—an Italian, with a wonderfully fine torso and admirable capabilities for picturesque pose, whom he had easily persuaded to abandon his ice-cream barrow to sit for him two or three times a week, acting the part of studio servant in the intervals.
"That will do, Cesare," he said, "aspetto persone; besides, you're shivering: I shall have you catching cold next, and I can't paint while you're sneezing. Yes, you're quite right,è un freddo terribile, considering that it's July. Off with you now, and come again at the same time on Friday.Si conservi—that's to say, don't get drunk in the interval; it makes you look such a brute that I can't paint you."
While the model transformed himself from a scantily-attired Roman gladiator into an Italian of the ordinary Saffron Hill description, Lightmark hastily washed his brushes, turned down his shirt sleeves, and donned the becoming velvet painting-jacket, which Mrs. Dollond had so much admired.
"I hope they won't notice Cesare's pipe," he said anxiously. "Even though he doesn't smoke here, it always seems to hang about. Perhaps I had better open the window and burn a pastille. And now, are we prepared to receive Philistia? Yes, I don't think the place looks bad, and—but perhaps Mrs. Sylvester mightn't like the gladiator. He certainly is deucedly anatomical at present. I'll go and leave him in Copal's studio, and then I can borrow his tea-things at the same time."
The studio was a lofty room on the ground-floor with an elaborately-devised skylight, and a large window facing north, through which a distant glimpse of Holland Park could be obtained. Lightmark had covered the floor with pale Indian matting, with a bit of strong colour, here and there, in the shape of a modern Turkish rug. For furniture, he had picked up some old chairs and a large straight-backed settee with grotesquely-carved legs, which, with the aid of a judicious arrangement of drapery, looked eminently attractive, and conveyed an impression of comfort which closer acquaintance did not altogether belie. Then there was the platform, covered with dark cloth, on which his models posed; the rickety table with many drawers, in which he kept brushes and colours; a lay figure, disguised as a Venetian flower-girl, which had collapsed tipsily into a corner; two or three easels; and a tall, stamped leather screen, which was useful for backgrounds. A few sketches, mostly unframed, stood in a row on the narrow shelf which ran along the pale-green distempered walls; and more were stacked in the corners—some in portfolios, and some with their dusty backs exposed to view. The palette which he had been using lay, like a great fantastic leaf, upon the table, amid a chaos of broken crayons, dingy stumps, photographs of sitters, pellets of bread, disreputable colour-tubes, and small bottles of linseed-oil, varnish, and turpentine. A sketch for Mrs. Sylvester's portrait, in crayons, was propped against the foot of an easel (Lightmark hoped that her son might buy it for his chambers); the canvas which he had prepared against the much-delayed sitting due from Miss Sylvester exposed its blank surface on another. A tall Japanese jar full of purple and yellow irises, a tribute to his expected guests, stood on the dusty black stove.
He had barely had time to arrange the borrowed tea-things, and to set a kettle on a little spirit-lamp behind the screen, when Mrs. Dollond and her husband were announced. He threw his black sombrero somewhat theatrically into a corner, and advanced with effusion to meet them. Mrs. Dollond had taken a decided interest in the young painter ever since the delightfully uncandid reflection of her by no means youthful beauty, which he had exhibited at the Grosvenor, had provoked so much comment among her friends.
She was a plump, little, fair-haired woman, with blue eyes, a very pink and white complexion, small hands, and a passion for dress with which people who had known her before her marriage, as a slim maiden devoted to sage-green draperies and square-toed shoes, declined to credit her, until they were told that she had, to put it plainly, grown fat—a development which compelled her to give up æstheticism and employ amodiste.
Her husband, who followed her into the room, carrying her impedimenta, wore the bored expression of the R.A. who is expected to admire the work of an outsider. He was the abject slave of his good-natured wife—shewasgood-natured, in spite of her love of scandal—and his only fault from her point of view, and his greatest one in the eyes of people in general, lay in an unfortunate habit of thinking aloud, a dangerous characteristic, which persons who are apt to find themselves in the position of critic should at any cost eradicate. Luckily, his benevolence was such that these outspoken comments were never really virulent, and not often offensive.
Mrs. Dollond seated herself smilingly on the least rickety chair, disposed of her veil with one neatly-gloved hand, and prepared a tortoiseshell eyeglass for action with the other.
"What a charming portrait!" she said, pointing with her plump index-finger to the sketch of Mrs. Sylvester. "Do I know the lady, I wonder? Oh! I do believe it's that Mrs. Sylvester."
"Yes," said Lightmark. "If you remember, you introduced me to her at the Academy soirée last year. I expect her here this afternoon, with her daughter. I am going to paint Miss Sylvester's portrait."
"Ah," said Mrs. Dollond mischievously, "and that accounts for the pastille. You never made such preparations whenIsat to you. I suppose you thought that a painter's wife could not possibly object to tobacco."
"And she certainly doesn't, judging by her consumption of cigarettes!" interposed her husband.
"Hugh, I'm ashamed of you. You know I'm a martyr to asthma—and cigarettes aren't tobacco. But how old is Miss Sylvester? Is she pretty?"
"Don't ask me to describe her, Mrs. Dollond. Wait till you see her—she's coming, you know. What do you think of that river-scape, most reverend signor? It's one of the little things I've been doing down at Rainham's Dock—down at Blackpool."
The Academician tried to appear interested as he assumed the conventional bird-like pose of the picture-gazer, and surveyed the sketch.
"Very pretty—very pretty! I should hardly have thought it was the Thames, though. It isn't muddy enough. In fact, the whole scheme of colour is much too clean for London. Quite absurd! Not a bit like it! Eh, my dear, what was I saying? Oh yes, I like the effect of the sunlight on that brown sail immensely. It's really very clever, very clever."
Mrs. Dollond, who never knew what her husband would say next, welcomed the influx of a small throng of visitors with a sigh of relief.
The Sylvesters and Philip Rainham, arriving at the same time, found the little studio almost crowded. Besides the Dollonds there were two or three of the Turk Street fraternity; a young sculptor, newly arrived from Rome, with his wife; Dionysus F. Quain, an American interested in petroleum, who had patronized Lightmark also at Rome; and Copal, whose studio was in the same building, and who was manifestly anxious about his Chelsea teacups.
Mrs. Sylvester greeted herprotégéwith a flattering degree of warmth which was entirely absent from the stare and conventional smile with which she honoured Mrs. Dollond, and the somewhat impertinent air of patronage which she wore when one or two of the young artists were introduced to her. If they did not mind, Mrs. Dollond was inclined to be resentful, for the moment, at least; and, as a preliminary attack, she maliciously encouraged Eve, who, ensconced in a corner, blissfully unconscious of the maternal anxiety which the other matron had detected, was eagerly turning over the contents of a portfolio which she had unearthed from its lurking-place behind her chair.
Rainham was looking over her shoulder, admiring the charming poise of the girl's head, and the contours of her wrists and hands, as she submitted the drawings to his inspection. Charles Sylvester stationed himself close by, and devoted himself to buttonholing the American senator, to the obvious discomfort of his victim, whose knowledge of Pennsylvanian oil-wells was infinitely greater than his acquaintance with the rudiments of summary jurisdiction, as practised in his native State, and who, after hazarding a remark to the effect that Judge Lynch had long since retired from the Bench, had, as he would have put it, "pretty considerably petered out."
"I hope my daughter isn't indiscreet?" Mrs. Sylvester had hazarded, after catching Lightmark's eye on its return journey from a glance in the direction of the little group in the corner; and the young man had reassured her hastily, before misgivings had time to assail him, and when they did, he hoped for the best. For a painter's portfolio is, after all, hardly less confidential than a diary, and may be on occasion almost as compromising, in spite of the fact that the records it contains are written in cipher.
The sunlight, mellowed to a dull straw colour by its passage through London air, slanted in at the window, falling first on Charles Sylvester's handsome face, with its eminently professional, severely cut features, and the careful limitation of whisker, which seemed so completely in harmony with his shaven upper lip and the unsympathetic scrutiny of his double eyeglass; then, losing some of its brightness among the little ripples of brown hair which a gracious Providence had forbidden her hat to conceal, fell like a halo upon the pale green wall behind Eve's head.
The young artists—the "boys," as they would have called themselves—were circulating busily with teacups andpetits fours, and the chatter of voices bore testimony to the preponderance of the Bohemian element. It is only the dwellers on the confines who lose their voices in the Temple of Art—a goddess who, to judge by her votaries, is not wont to take pleasure in silence.
"Oh," said Eve, in reply to one of Rainham's remarks, "is that Bordighera? What lovely blue water! and what perfectly delicious little fishing-boats! I should like to go there. Charles is going to take us to Lucerne in a week or two, you know, when the Long Vacation begins. But I suppose we shall hardly get to Italy."
"Yes, that's Bordighera"—with a sigh—"my happy hunting-ground. And the water is much bluer really—only don't tell Dick I said so. Yes, you ought to go there. If you stayed late enough you would have me dropping in on you one fine day, as soon as the fogs begin here. Happy thought! Why shouldn't we all winter out there?"
"That would be nice," said Eve, rather doubtfully; "but, you know, there's Charles—he would have to come back for the Law Courts in the autumn, and he would be so lonely all by himself. And—and there's my portrait. Mr. Lightmark wants to get that ready for next year's Academy; and I can't sit to him very often, as it is, because ofchaperons, you know."
Meanwhile Lightmark was telling Mrs. Dollond, in a confidential undertone, some story of a fair American sitter, who, on his expressing himself dissatisfied with his efforts worthily to transfer her complexion to canvas, had at once offered to send her maid round to his studio with an assortment of her favouritepoudre de rose. Dollond listened with an amused smile to a recital of the sculptor's impressions of the Salon, which he had taken on his way from Rome. Copal was making desperate efforts to count his precious teacups, a task which their scattered positions rendered distressingly difficult. Charles Sylvester was somewhat listlessly cross-examining a P.R.A. in embryo as to the exact meaning of "breadth" in a painting; and Mr. Quain had been making his way as unostentatiously as the creakiness of his boots would permit towards the door. Eve had despatched one of "the boys" in search of a portfolio to replace the one which she had exhausted, and another had been entrusted with the safe bestowal of her empty teacup. The new portfolio, when it arrived, proved to be filled, not as the others, with landscapes and waterscapes, but with studies from life—Capri fisher girls, groups of market people, Venetian boatmen, and hasty sketches for portraits.
Eve paused rather longer than usual over one of these, the picture of a pretty fair-haired girl, dressed as Pierrette, the general lack of detail and absence of background only making the vigorously outlined face more distinct.
"What a pretty girl, Philip!" said the young critic presently; "and how curiously she's dressed! What is she intended to represent? Is it a fancy dress?… Mr. Rainham, if you don't attend, I won't show you any more pictures."
"Tyrant," said Rainham absently, as he carried his eyes from the contemplative stare with which they had been regarding the vagaries of a butterfly on the skylight. "What have you found now?—Kitty, by Jove!"
He had no sooner uttered these last three words, in a very different tone to that of his previous idle remarks, than he cursed his indiscretion. It was a piece ofgaucheriewhich he would find it hard to forgive in himself, and Lightmark might well resent it.
"Kitty?" asked Eve, with some surprise, "who is Kitty? Mr.Lightmark, please tell us who this charming young lady, whom Mr.Rainham calls Kitty, is, since he won't."
"Kitty?" repeated Lightmark, with only a momentary hesitation, which the suddenness of the query might well account for; "I'm afraid I don't quite remember. There are so many Kitties, you know. All models are either Kitty or Polly. But if Rainham says it's Kitty, depend upon it he's right. He's got a wonderful memory for faces, especially pretty ones.—Yes," he added mischievously, "you ask Rainham."
Mrs. Sylvester looked uneasy, and, to her subsequent disgust, began to press "dear Mrs. Dollond" to come and see her.
Charles, who had looked up sharply at the first mention of the name, which had so disturbed the usually imperturbable Rainham, fixed his interrogative glasses first on the latter and then on Lightmark, and finally let them rest, with an expression of inquiring censure, on Rainham, whose confusion savoured to his mind so unmistakably of guilt that "Gentlemen of the jury" rose almost automatically to his lips. Nor did Rainham's attempt to smooth matters assist him.
"I must have seen the girl at the studio," he said, "when Lightmark was painting her. It's certainly a striking likeness, and that's what astonished me, you know. Almost like seeing a ghost. Ah, that little fellow used to sit for Lightmark in Rome—little sunburnt ruffian. We picked him up on the Ghetto, almost starving, and he got quite an artistic connection before we left. He was positively growing too fat; prosperity spoiled him as a model."
"Really?" said Eve listlessly. "I don't think I want to look at any more drawings; one can have too much of a good thing, and it must be time for us to go. We're dining out, and Charles doesn't like dressing in a hurry. Yes, mamma is buttoning her gloves. Good-bye, Mr. Rainham. Shall we see you again before we go to Switzerland? Ah, well, let's hope so. Au revoir, Mr. Lightmark. If you really think it's worth while for me to give you a solitary sitting next week——"
"If you would be so good. You see, I should have some ideas to go on with. Don't I deserve some reward, too, for allowing Rainham to monopolize you all the afternoon? And if you don't give me a sitting now, I'm afraid you will forget all about it when you come back to town; whereas, if we make a beginning, you will have to see it through—you will be compromised."
"What a stupid expression!" thought Mrs. Sylvester as the carriage rolled along the Kensington highroad.
Charles was unusually silent during the drive. The subject which occupied his thoughts was not one which he would have dreamed of ventilating even with his mother, and Eve's presence seemed to render the faintest allusion to it impracticable.
He had no great affection or even regard for Philip Rainham, whom he contemplated with that undefined disdain which a younger man so often feels for one who is too old to be on his own level, and too young to inspire reverence. The half-pitying regard which Mrs. Sylvester bestowed on the man who had been to her husband as a very dear younger brother had never furthered Rainham's advancement in her son's favour; and the manner in which Eve had centred her childish affections in Philip, who had made her his especial favourite, was even more prejudicial to his interests in that quarter. Hitherto, indeed, Sylvester's vague dislike had been so undemonstrative and immaterial that he would hardly have owned to it as such, and far less would he have acknowledged that he was, however unconsciously, feeling for a peg on which to hang it, for ground to support it; and yet from the first moment when the man's startled voice drew the questioning eyes upon his embarrassment, the judicial mind had been able to plume itself upon the penetration which had enabled it to detect something of doubtful odour about him from the first. "Kitty!" That word might explain so much—Rainham's long sojourns away from his business, for example.
Charles looked at Eve and frowned. Decidedly, thought the young moralist, the old intimacy must be discouraged. Nor did the fact that Rainham had been the source of his first brief, as well as of subsequent others, though it was not forgotten, suggest the advisability of a compromise; he even began to take a certain pride in the determination with which he was bringing himself to contemplate the sacrifice of so useful a friendship.
When they reached home there was barely time to dress for dinner, and Charles had no opportunity for atête-à-têtediscussion of the situation with his mother that evening. And as he breakfasted early next day and dined at the club, he had ample time in which to determine that, for the present, he would avoid anything in the shape of a family conference, and would content himself with keeping his eye on themauvais sujet.
As soon as Lightmark and Rainham were left alone in the twilight of the studio, the former flung himself into a chair with a sigh of relief, and devoted himself to rolling and lighting a cigarette. Rainham picked up his hat, consulted his watch, with a preoccupation of mind which prevented him from noticing what the time was, and, refusing the proffered tobacco-pouch and the suggested whisky-and-soda, seemed about to go. Then he stopped, with his back turned towards his host and a pretence of examining a sketch.
"I'm sorry I made such an ass of myself about that study—that girl, you know," he said presently. "The fact is, I saw her the other day, and the coincidence was rather startling."
Lightmark blew a light cloud of smoke from his lips before he spoke.
"Oh, it doesn't matter in the least, old man. You didn't implicate me, as it happened, though I'm afraid you got yourself into rather hot water. A poor devil of a painter must have models, and it's recognised, but men of business——! It's quite another thing. There's no possible connection between girls and dry docks." Then he added lightly, "Where are you going to dine to-night? Let's go to one of our Leicester Square haunts, or shall we get into a hansom and drive to Richmond? I've sold old Quain a picture, and I feel extravagantly inclined. What do you say? Under whichchef? Speak, or let's toss up."
Rainham appeared to consider for a moment; then he sat down again.
"About that girl," he said; "I suppose youdoremember something about her? She must have been very pretty when you painted her, though she's nothing wonderful now, poor thing! I don't want to pump you, Dick, but she seems to have been pretty badly treated, and I want to see if I can't help her."
"Help her!" with a shrug. "For goodness' sake tell me: is it DonQuixote or Don Lothario that you are playing?"
"I should have thought you need hardly have asked," answered the other a little sadly. "I found the wretched creature waiting, with an equally wretched baby, both apparently not far from starvation, outside the dock the other night; and—well, I thought she might be waiting for you."
Lightmark threw the stump of his cigarette into a corner viciously, with a dangerous glance at the other.
"Why the devil should she have been waiting for me? Did she say she was waiting for me? How should a model know that I had been painting there? But I don't want to quarrel with you, and, after all you've done for me, I suppose you've a certain right to put yourselfin loco parentis, and all that sort of thing. Tell me all you have found out about the girl—all she has told you, that is to say, and then I'll see what I can do."
This masterly suggestion seemed to Rainham both plausible and practical, and he proceeded to unfold the whole story of his first meeting with Kitty. When he reached the part of his narrative which brought out the girl's explanation that she was seeking to speak with a Mr. Crichton, Lightmark looked at him again covertly, with the same threatening light in his glance. Then, apparently reassured, he resigned himself again to listen, with a cigarette unlighted between his fingers.
"You say Oswyn heard the whole story?" he asked, when Rainham had finished. "Did the girl seem to know him? Or didheseem to have heard of this Crichton before?"
"No," said Rainham reflectively; "the girl didn't know Oswyn, though, on the other hand, he seemed certain that he had seen her face somewhere—probably in that study of yours, by the way; and he appeared to think that I ought to have heard of Crichton—Cyril Crichton. He told me that the man wrote clever, scurrilous articles on art and the drama for theOutcry. But I don't read English papers much. You see, our difficulty is that Cyril Crichton is obviously a nom de plume, and no one—not even the people at theOutcryoffice—know, or will say, who the man is; Kitty has tried. I suppose the editor knows all right, but he is discreet."
"Ah!" cried Lightmark. "Now I remember something about her. Have you got your hat? Let's get into a hansom and go and dine—I'm positively starving. I'll stand you a dinner at the Cavour—standing you a dinner will be such a new sensation; and new sensations are the only things worth living for. I will tell you about Kitty in the cab. What a beneficent old beggar you are!"
As they drove rapidly eastward along the High Street of Old Kensington, where the pale orange of the lamplight was just beginning to tell in the dusk, Lightmark explained how, some two years ago or more, he had been talking to a stranger in a railway carriage, and lamenting the difficulty of finding really pretty girls who would act as models; how the stranger had told him that he knew of such a one—a dressmaker's apprentice, or something of that sort, who found the work and hours too hard; and how, finally, Kitty had called at his studio—the old one in Bloomsbury—and had sat to him, perhaps half a dozen times, before vanishing from his knowledge. This account had been freely interspersed with exclamations on the beauty of the evening light in the Park, and the subtle charm of the hour after sunset, more exquisite in the clear atmosphere of Paris, but still sufficiently lovely even in London, and acknowledged by both of them to be one of the few compensations accorded to the dwellers in the much-abused Metropolis.
"I'm sorry," said Rainham penitently; "I had a stupid sort of idea that you were mixed up in the business somehow. I thought so even before I saw the sketch, because I couldn't understand whom else she could have been looking for at the dock. It's very mysterious."
"I shouldn't bother about the girl if I were you," replied the other light-heartedly. "Even if I had been mixed up with her, as you gracefully express it,youwouldn't have anything to do with it. I believe you think I've been playing the devil with her now, you old moralist! Hear me swear, by yon pale—— Dash it! there isn't a moon—well, by the cresset on the top of the Empire, that the young person in question has been my model for a brief space, and nothing more. Only my model in the strictest sense of the word. No, I'll pay the cab for once in a way."
When they had dined, sitting at their favourite table, which, from its position at the end, commanded a view of the bright exotic room, with its cosmopolitan contents, their wants cared for by the head-waiter, who adored Lightmark for his knowledge of his mother-tongue, recognising and being recognised by the forgotten of their acquaintance, who were also dining there, Lightmark proposed an adjournment to the little theatre in Dean Street hard by, where "Niniche" was being played for the last time by a clever company from across the Channel.
"We must go to the theatre," he said, "unless you prefer a hall; I confess I'm sick of them. I haven't satisfied my ideas of extravagance nearly yet. We will go and sit in the stalls at the Royalty and see Jane May and the others; it will remind us of old days."
"But, my dear fellow," expostulated the other, "it's so late, and we're in morning dress. Let's go to-morrow night instead."
"Ah no! to-morrow I sha'n't be in the right mood. Never put off till to-morrow, you know. Our not being in evening dress won't matter a bit, they'll only think we're critics; and 'Niniche' doesn't begin till nine."
On their speedy arrival at the modest portals of the little theatre, Lightmark instructed his companion, with an air of mystery, to wait, and presently emerged, smiling, from a triumphant encounter with the gentleman presiding at the box-office.
"They had no stalls left," he whispered; "but they're going to put us in two chairs at the side."
The house, with the exception of the more popular places, was crowded; and the boisterous absurdity of the farce was at its height. Rainham at first felt quite disconcerted by the proximity of the ludicrous figure in bathing dress who was leaning over the footlights, and declaiming his woes with a directness of appeal to the audience which alone would have marked the nationality of the robust actor, who was creating so much mirth out of the extremely hackneyed situation. He had got into the wrong bathing-machine (Lightmark seemed to find it intensely amusing) and the trousers of the rightful occupant only came down to his knees. Rainham at first was disconcerted, and then he began to feel bored. He fell into a semi-comatose state of contemplation, from which he was only aroused by the cadence on his ear of one of the most charming voices he had ever heard. So he characterized it, to Lightmark's amusement, when they were discussing their cigarettes and thejeune premièrein the interval between the acts.
"Oh for an epithet to describe her!" said Lightmark, catching his friend's enthusiasm. "She isn't exactly pretty—yes, sheispretty, but she isn't beautiful! She's got any amount of what dramatic critics callchic. Don't shudder—I hate the word quite as much as you do, but it was inevitable. The only thing I feel sure about is that she'sespiègle, and altogether delightful. And how funny that man is, or would be, if the authors had only given him a better chance! The fun of the piece is like those trousers—it only comes down to his knees."
"What I admire most is her voice," said the other inconsequently. "How is it that French actresses have such beautiful voices? Freedom from fogs can't be the only cause. And it's got all that delicious plaintiveness——"
"Yes," interposed Lightmark, "it's the voice of a true Parisianfemme de siècle, fin de siècle. There's the bell, let's go and hear some more of it."
After the second act Lightmark, in whom the influence of the evening was beginning to manifest itself in the shape of a geniality which was absent in a great degree from his more serious hours, and which had undoubtedly won him more friends than the other slightly pugnacious phase of his temperament, decided that Niniche was really very like Miss Sylvester, only less beautiful, and asserted that he was confident that she was younger than the newspapers made out.
Later, before the two friends parted on the steps of the modest club, which included both in its list of town members, Lightmark assumed an air of mystery, sighed once or twice, and looked at his friend with an expression in which forgiveness, reproach, and the lateness of the hour were strangely commingled.
"Old boy," he said, bending his eyebrows with an effort towards gravity, "I'm really rather cut up about that business—you thinking I was playing the gay deceiver, and all that sort of thing, you know. It was unworthy of you, Philip—it was, really. Dash it! I've been in love for ever so long. All the summer, seriously; I'm going to get married—settle down, range myself. Cut all you rips of bachelors…. But perhaps she won't see it. Oh, Lord!… Damn it all. Why don't you congratulate me, eh?"
Rainham was growing more and more serious, and it was with a real heartache and a curious apprehension of a moral blow that he answered, as gaily as he could:
"You're going a little too fast, Dick. If you haven't asked the girl, it's rather too early for congratulations, however irresistible your attractions may be. Who—who is it, Dick?"
"Oh, come, you know well enough. Eve—I wonder if she'll let me call her Eve? Eve! Isn't it a pretty name?"
"I wish you hadn't told me this, Dick," said the other, with more of the familiar weariness in his voice. "Are you sure you mean it? I don't believe you've thought it out. Why, what do you suppose Mrs. Sylvester will say, and Charles Sylvester?"
"You think they won't have anything to do with a poor devil of an artist, I suppose? Right you are, sir; but when the poor devil has a rich and gouty uncle, who is disposed to be friendly…. See? I think that alters the complexion of the case. You know, the Sylvesters are awfully well connected, and so on, but they haven't got much money. Mrs. Sylvester has a life annuity, and Charles—whom I always want to call 'Chawles,' because he's so pompous—has got his professional income. And Eve has got a little, enough to dress her, I should think. 'Payable quarterly on her attaining the age of twenty-one years, or marrying under that age, whichever shall first happen.' I've looked it all up at Somerset House. Last will and testament of Sylvester Charles Sylvester, Esq. I know they're rather ambitious, and wouldn't look at me if it wasn't for the Colonel. But the Colonel is a solid fact, and I've no doubt they think he's richer than he is. And I am making money, though you mightn't think it."
"I don't believe Mrs. Sylvester has thought about it at all," said Rainham doubtfully. "Eve is so young, and young artists are never looked on as marrying men. Take my advice and think about it."
"Youcall her Eve, do you? Ah, well, I won't be jealous of you, old boy. You shall come to the wedding and be best man; or no, the Colonel will be best man, I suppose? I can imagine him returning thanks for the bridesmaids in the most dazzling white waistcoat that was ever starched. Good-night; see you again soon."
"I don't know how it is," thought Rainham, as he walked up Old Compton Street, on his way to the attic near the British Museum which he rented when he was in England, for use on occasions of this kind. "It's very stupid of me, but I can't bear the idea of Eve marrying. A species of jealousy, I suppose; not ordinary jealousy, of course. And yet why not? I have never thought of her as anything but a child … why shouldn't Lightmark marry her? Eve's young, and good-looking, and sure to get on; and I'm a selfish old wreck. Yes, he shall marry her, and I will buy his pictures." Still, he shook his head even as he formulated this generous solution of the question, and could not induce himself to regard the position with equanimity, though he sat up till broad daylight wrestling with it. "I wonder if I am in love," he said, with a bitter laugh, as he shook the ashes out of his last pipe.
The upper end of the Park is never so fashionably frequented as its southern regions, and Rainham, whose want of purpose had led him past gay carpet-beds and under branching trees nearly to the Marble Arch, was hardly surprised to recognise among the heterogeneous array of promenaders, tramps, and nursemaids, whom the heat of the slanting sun had prompted to occupy the benches dotted at intervals along the Row, a face whose weary pallor caused him a pang of self-reproach—Kitty!
For the last few days, since his encounter with her portrait at Lightmark's studio, he had scarcely given her troubles a thought. When the girl saw him, after a startled look and movement, she seemed to shrink still further into the folds of her rusty black cloak, and, to avoid meeting Rainham's eyes, bent her head over the child who was seated at her side. He found something irresistibly charming and pathetically generous in the girl's spontaneous denial of any claim to his notice, although, except that he had promised to let her know anything he might learn of the whereabouts of the father of her child, he would have found it hard to establish in the mind of an outside critic that any such claim in fact existed.
"Well, my poor child," he said softly, as he dropped into one of the vacant seats on the same bench, "how goes it with you and the little one?"
"Oh, sir, you shouldn't speak to me—not here. Anyone might see you.Pray go. I know I shall get you into trouble, and you so kind!"
These words were spoken in a rapid, frightened whisper, and with an apprehensive glance at the intermittent stream of carriages passing within a few yards of them. Rainham shrugged his shoulders pitifully, but found it rather difficult to say anything. Certainly, his reputation was running a risk, and he felt that his indifference was somewhat exceptional.
"I'm sorry to say I've got no news for you," he said presently, after a silent pause, during which he had observed that the wide-eyed child was really far prettier than many who (as he had been assured by the complacent matrons who exhibited them) were "little cherubs," and that it was as scrupulously cared for as the little cherubs, even in their exhibition array. "I haven't been able to discover anything; but you mustn't despair, we shall find him sooner or later."
The girl glanced at him irresolutely, and then dropped her eyes again, leaning over the child.
"It's no good, sir," she said. "I'm only sorry to have given you so much trouble already. He won't come back—he's tired of me. He could find me if he wanted to, and watching and hunting for him like this would only set him more and more against me."
Rainham, as he listened to her, rather puzzled by her sudden change of attitude since their last interview, was forced to admit mentally that her reasoning, if it lacked spontaneity, was, at all events, indisputably sound; and while he found himself doubting whether the victim was not better versed in worldliness than he had at first suspected, he still felt a curious reluctance which, though he was half ashamed of his delicacy, prevented him from suggesting that, sentimental reasons apart, the betrayer still ought to be discovered, if only in order to force him to provide for the maintenance of his child. It hardly, perhaps, occurred to him that he, after all, would be the person who would suffer most, and he certainly did not for an instant credit the girl with any ulterior designs upon his purse.
"Oh, I don't know," he said feebly. "Perhaps he does not know where you are. And I dare say, if he saw the child——"
"The child?" echoed the woman bitterly. "That's just the worst of it!"
Rainham sighed, forced again to acknowledge his lower standing in the wisdom of the world. He would have given a great deal to be able to get up and go.
"Then you don't want me to employ a detective, or to advertise, or—or to make an appeal to the editor of theOutcry?"
Mrs. Crichton seemed to welcome the opportunity afforded by this direct questioning.
"No," she said, "I think it would be better not. I don't want to seem ungrateful, sir—and I'm sure I thank you very, very much for all you have done for me—but I think you had better take no more trouble about it. If I can get work I shall do all right."
In spite of the girl's evident attempt to pull herself together, her voice was less brave than her words, and they conveyed but little assurance to the listener. He shrugged his shoulders somewhat impatiently: the interview was beginning to tell upon his nerves.
"Of course, it's for you to decide, and I suppose you have thought it well out, and have good reason for this alteration of purpose. But when you talk about work——?"
He finished his sentence with a note of inquiry and a half apologetic glance at her slight form and frail, white fingers.
"I haven't always been a model," she explained with some dignity. "Would to God I never had! I can sew better than most, and I can work a type-machine. That's what I used to do before he came. But type-writing work isn't so easy to get as it was, and I am out of practice."
It occurred to him for a moment to ask the girl whether she could remember sitting for Mr. Lightmark, but he felt that Dick might resent the introduction of his name; and, remembering that she had told him that, for a time, before her health gave way, her artist patrons had been numerous, he dismissed the idea as not likely to be profitable.
As they spoke, she with her mournful eyes turned on Rainham's sympathetic face, he absently following the movements of the child as it laboriously raised a small edifice of gravel-stones on the seat between them, neither of them noticed the severely correct figure in the frock-coat and immaculate hat who passed close behind with observant eyeglass fixed upon the little group, and with an air which, after the first flush of open-mouthed surprise, was eloquently expressive of regretful indignation and the highest motives.
Charles Sylvester continued his walk for a distance of about fifty paces, and then seated himself in a position to command a view of the persons in whom he was interested.
"I don't like watching Rainham like this," he said to himself; "but it's a duty which I owe to society."
That the man was Rainham was as obvious as that the woman he was talking to was of a far lower rank in life than his own. And then there was the child!
"By Jove!" said Sylvester sententiously, "it's worse than I thought. People really ought to be warned. I suppose it's that girl he was talking about at the studio the other day; and he tried to shift her on to Lightmark. What a hypocrite the man must be!"
He was not, however, for long called upon to maintain, in the interests of society, his position of espionage; for Rainham, warned of the lapse of time by the clock which adorns the Park lodge, presently became aware that, if he was to fulfil his intention of calling on Mrs. Sylvester, he had no time to spare; and when he rose from his seat Charles Sylvester thought it advisable to resume the walk which his zeal had induced him to interrupt.
After all, he need not have hurried. Mrs. Sylvester was out, he was told by the butler, who proceeded to suggest, with the freedom of an old friend, that he should make his way upstairs and find Miss Eve.
"Yes, I think I will, Phelps," he said, after a moment's hesitation, "if she is disengaged."
"Miss Eve is in the music-room playing, I think, sir. Will you go up?"
They found the room empty, however, though an open violin-case on the table and a music-stand, on which leaflets of Schubert fluttered fitfully in the light breeze that entered through the open window, testified to its recent occupation.
While the butler left Rainham, with apologies, to make further search, the latter stood, hat in hand, making a survey of the little wainscoted room, which he remembered as the schoolroom. Indeed, though the name, in deference doubtless to Eve's mature age, had been altered, it still retained much of its former aspect. From the little feminine trifles lying about, scraps of unfinished crewel-work and embroidery, and the fresh flowers in the vases, he gathered that it was still an apartment which Eve frequented. He recognised her cage of love-birds hanging in the window; the cottage piano with its frontal of faded silk, on which he could remember her first painful struggles with Czerny and scales; the pictures on the walls, many of them coloured reproductions from the Christmas numbers of the illustrated papers; the ink-stained tablecloth on the round table in the centre. He examined the photographs on the mantelpiece with a smile—Charles in his wig and gown, and Mrs. Sylvester with her pretty, faded face, gazed at each other, with a curious likeness in their disparity, from a double frame in the centre; the spectacled profile of the eminently respectable woman who had superintended Miss Eve's studies held another place of honour; and, opposite, Rainham recognised a faded photograph of himself, taken six years before in Rome. He turned from these to the bookshelves, which seemed to be filled with relegations from the rest of the house—children's story-books in tarnished bright covers and dilapidated school-books. He took down one of these latter and examined it absently, with a half-sigh. He had it still in his hand when the young girl fluttered in, looking very cool and fresh in her plain, white dress with a broad sash of apple-green ribbon.
"I thought you were never coming to see us again, Philip," she said reproachfully, as she held out her little hand to him. "What possessed them to bring you here? It's awfully untidy."
"Phelps had an idea you were making music," he explained; "and, for the untidiness, I suppose he remembered that I was used to it of old."
"Yes, it's just the same. It is an untidiness of years, and it is hopeless to cope with it. Whathaveyou got there?"
He turned the book round to acquaint himself.
"Ollendorf's 'Elementary German Grammar,'" he said with a smile; "it's an interesting work."
She made a littlemoueexpressive of disapproval.
"Ah, how nice it is to have done with all that, Philip! You can't believe how glad I am to be 'finished'; yes, I am finished now. I don't even have masters, and Miss Murison has gone away to Brighton and opened a school for young gentlemen. Poor little wretches! how sorry I am for them! Do you remember Miss Murison, Philip?"
She had sunk down into an arm-chair, and Rainham stood, his stooping shoulders propped against the mantelpiece, smiling down at her.
"Yes, I remember Miss Murison; and so you are glad her reign has come to an end, Eve? Well, I suppose it is natural."
She nodded her pretty head.
"Just a little, Philip. But how tired you look! Will you have some tea? I suppose you have just come from Blackpool?"
His face darkened suddenly, and the smile for a moment died away.
"No," he said shortly, "I have been in the Park."
"Well," she remarked after a moment, "you must have some tea, anyhow. Of course you will wait and see mamma; she has gone to the Dollonds' 'at home,' you know. I an all alone. If you like, we will have it in here, as we did in the old days—a regular schoolroom tea."
"It will be charming," said Rainham, seating himself; "it will only want the Murison to complete the illusion."
"Oh, it will do just as well without her," said Eve, laughing; "ring the bell, please."
Rainham sat back watching her with far-away eyes, as she moved lightly about, giving her orders with a childish imperiousness, and setting out the little tea-table between them.
"It is delightful," he said again, when they were once more alone and he had accepted a well-creamed cup and a waferliketartine; "and I feel as if I had turned back several years. But how is it, by-the-bye, that you have not gone to the Dollonds'?"
She laughed up at him merrily.
"Because I have had much more important things to do. I have been with my dressmaker. I am going to a dance to-night, and I have had a great deal of bother over my new frock. But it is all right now, and I shall wear it to-night; and it is perfectly sweet. Oh, you have never seen me at a party yet, Philip."
"Never? My dear child, I have danced with you at scores."
"Oh yes, at children's parties; but never since I have grown up—'come out,' I mean. Oh, Philip, is there anything in life so delightful as one's first ball? I wish you would come out with us sometimes. I should like to dance with you again now."
"Ah," he said, "my dancing days are over. I am a wallflower, Eve, now; and my only use at balls is to fetch and carry for the chaperons."
"Philip!" she cried reproachfully, "what a dreadful thing to say!Besides, you used to dance so splendidly."
"Did I?" he asked; "I expect you would be less lenient now. Yes, I will have another cup, please."
She filled it, and he took it from her in silence, wondering how he could least obtrusively gain the knowledge of her mind he sought. He had said to himself that if he could find her alone, it would be so easy; just a word, an accent, would tell him how far she really cared. But now that she was actually with him, it had become strangely difficult. Very sadly he reflected that she had grown out of his knowledge; away from her, she rested in his memory as a child whom he could help. The actual presence of this young girl with the deep eyes, in the first flush of her womanhood, corrected him; an intolerable weight sealed his tongue, forbidding him to utter Lightmark's name, greatly as he desired. He racked himself for delicate circumlocutions, and it was only at last, by a gigantic effort, when he realized that the afternoon waned, while he wasted an unique occasion in humorous commonplace, that he broke almost brutally into Eve's disquisitions on her various festivities to ask, blushing like a girl, if Lightmark's picture progressed.
"I have had only a few sittings," she admitted, "and I expect they will be the last here. Perhaps they will be continued abroad. You know Mr. Lightmark is going to meet us in Switzerland, perhaps."
"You will like that?" suggested Rainham gravely.
She looked into her cup, beating a tattoo on the carpet with her little foot nervously.
"Yes," she said, after a minute, "I think so."
There was nothing in her words, her tone, to colour this bare statement of a simple fact. Only a second later, as if in a sudden need of confidence, a resumption of her old childish habit towards him, she raised her eyes to his, and in their clear, gray depths, before they drooped again beneath the long lashes, he read her secret. No words could have told him more plainly that she loved Lightmark—that Dick had merely to speak. Their silence only lasted a moment; but it seemed to Rainham, who had not shifted his position or moved a muscle, that it stretched over an interminable space of time. It was curiously intangible, and yet even then he realized that it would remain with its least accessories in his mind one of those trivial, indelible photographs which last a lifetime. The smell of mignonette that spread in from the window-box through the turquoise-blue Venetian blinds; the chattering of the love-birds; the strains of a waltz of Waldteufel's floating up from a German band in the street below—they ran into a single sensation that was like the stab of cold steel. He sat staring blankly at the tattered bookshelves, playing mechanically with his teaspoon; and presently he became aware that the young girl was talking, was telling him the route they should take next week, and the name of the hotel they were going to at Basel.