Chapter Four.“Cumly,June1,19—.“Dear Captain Blair,“As you say, I am bound in duty to thank you for the box.“Considered as a box, it is a treasure indeed. It is so ‘worthy’ of my collection, that every other specimen looks in comparison poor and tawdry. I have placed it on a little pinnacle of its own, where it shines afar, leaving the lesser lights undimmed.“Miss Beverley returns warm thanks to Captain Blair for his kindness in remembering her collection, and adding to it so valuable and antique a specimen.“But—there remains Katrine, and Katrine’s duty is so much more complicated! She has written, as you prophesied, four separate letters, all well spelt, and punctuated, and admirably composed, the sentences rounded to a marvel, but alas! each separate one said a different thing, and was afterwards torn up for a different reason.“Number one was haughty and firm: firm, without a quaver of doubt. ‘Miss Beverley was surprised that Captain Blair could suppose for a moment, that etc., etc.. Miss Beverley could certainly not consent to sacrifice the dignity and self-respect so dear to the heart of every true etc.’“So far, so good, but Katrine here came to the conclusion that Miss Beverley was a hopeless prig, and effort number one was destroyed forthwith. Number two was also firm, but more affable in tone.“Miss Beverley had been duly amused by the perusal of Captain Blair’s letter. She realised that it had been written on the spur of an impulse, and that he had not intended his suggestion to be taken seriously. She would proceed to banish it from her mind, as she felt sure he would now wish her to do.“Here again Katrine interfered, rated Miss Beverley as a hypocrite, declared that she believed nothing of the sort, and sent the second missive packing after the first.“The third and fourth attempts were destroyed for—er—otherreasons! One flies at times from one extreme to another. Here now beginning the fifth.“If you are sure; if you arequitesure that my letters would be a help, I should like to say yes, but conscience pricks.—the Cranford conscience which sees not only straight ahead, but round every conceivable niche and corner.“Take first your own point of view! Suppose a moment that Ididwrite, you might be horribly disappointed with my letters! You have enjoyed my weekly effusions to Dorothea, but you must remember that she and I are the friends of years, who have shared together all the big experiences of our lives, so that we have a thousand mutual links and interests. Also,—and the importance of this there is no denying—we are both women! When writing to Dorothea I can be just as frivolous, as morbid, as unreasonable as I please. She understands; she’s been there herself. But no mere man—“Suppose my letters were insufferably flat and tame, what a position for the Lonely Fellow to find himself bound to reply in kind! He ought seriously to consider this point.“Then there’s my own position, and with myself goes irrevocably Martin, my brother.“Am Iquitejustified in taking up any interest, which must more or less engross my thoughts, and distract them from what is my real life work?“I am all that he has left. He turned to me in his trouble, and I must always put him first. It’s not the easiest thing in the world to live with a literary man. The readers who praise his books and gush over his lofty sentiments, would be surprised if they could live in the house for a week, and listen to his flow of language over such a trifle, as, say, a banging door! For the last eight years all my time, and all my thought, have been devoted to the effort of pleasing Martin, and,—(one can acknowledge things on paper more easily than in words!)—it isn’t a brilliant success!“I thought that it was; no! I didn’t think at all, I just complacently took it for granted that he was very lucky to have me, and that I made him as happy and comfortable as he possibly could be under the circumstances, but just lately I’ve had an awakening.“Heisn’thappy; he isn’t even content. I’ve been quite an efficient Martha, but the Mary rôle seems to have been neglected, and we are growing apart, rather than together. That must be stopped! I must give more thought to him; not less.“I am all he has left. I should be false to my trust if I deliberately undertook anything which would separate me from Martin by so much as a thought.“Are you fine enough, honest enough,manenough, to acknowledge that I’m right, and to respect my decision?“Lonely Man! I ought not to begin a regular correspondence with you. Just occasionally, perhaps, I might write; for Christmas, or Easter, or your birthday, and to receive a letter in reply would make a break in my life, which as you so blightingly remark begins to show symptoms of ‘cramp.’ (How could my letters be ‘so delightful’ if they were ‘cramped’?) The very first thing you must do is to explain just how, and in what way, you discern in me the fatal growth! I’m so down upon it in other people; I imagined myself so immaculately free! The least you can do is to warn me of the danger point, before the infection has time to spread.“Also,—as the aim and object of the correspondence is that I should know your honourable self, let me in to some of the secrets which my photograph understands so well, and most of all, tell me what makes my eyes sorry? It seems a little hard to be shut out, when mere photographs see so much!“Miss Beverley presents her compliments to Captain Blair. She finds it a very difficult thing to wind up a letter to a man whom she has never seen. Miss Beverley will be obliged if Captain Blair will therefore kindly consider this letter concluded in the manner which seems to him the most graceful and appropriate.”Katrine carried the letter to the post in her own hands, the address carefully turned inwards so as to be screened from the scrutiny of peering eyes. Although the distance from the house to the post-office was about an eighth of a mile, it was seldom that she could traverse it without being accosted at least three or four times. This morning, however, the ordinary gossip jarred upon every nerve; she realised with a shiver of distaste that upon previous occasions she had enjoyed these encounters, had looked forward to them as to one of the prized episodes in the day; had been moved to excitement when she herself possessed a tiny item of news to add to the general store. As she crossed the road to the post-office, she debated with herself as to the cause of her change of mind, and found it in the envelope clasped in her hand.A real interest had come into her life, and in its presence she had no room for trivial make-believes. Until now, for eight long years, nothing had happened to reach the real heart of her, and make her feel. Never, never once, a thrill, a surprise, a feeling that the great procession of life had halted to give her place, until one short week ago, when out of the void a voice had spoken, and across the world had come a challenge, an appeal! She, who owned little, was asked for much; at the moment when her own heart was starved, she was asked to fill another. The voice had called; all that was vital within her sang a reply.The letter was held out in an extended hand, was pressed for one moment between tightening fingers, then dropped deep into the box. She stood motionless for a moment, overwhelmed by the irrevocability of the action, then turned aside with the feeling of one facing a new life.That evening Martin was conscious of a special attempt on Katrine’s part to be agreeable and sympathetic. The secret lying warm and fragrant at her own heart made her especially tender over his loneliness, added to which tenderness was a decided leaven of compunction. Theoretically, she was ready to sacrifice all for Martin’s sake; virtually, she had stubbornly set herself to reject the one suggestion he had made for months past. It had taken a whole week of valiant striving against self to bring her to the point of giving in with a good grace. The prospect of a visit from Grizel Dundas was distinctly unpleasant, despite the fact that Grizel was a well-loved friend. Katrine searched her conscience for a reason for this contradiction, at the same time shutting a tight bolt over the one suggestion which endeavoured to make itself heard. Jealous! Why should she be jealous? Even if Grizel were a thousand times more attractive than herself, they moved in different worlds, and owned entirely distinct circles of friends. Why, pray, need she be jealous? The inner voice was sternly forbidden to mention Martin’s name in such a connection. Jealousy was out of the question where Martin was concerned. His suggestion had been made out of consideration for her own enjoyment; it lay on her conscience that she had received the suggestion ungraciously. She swallowed the last doubt, and said gravely:“I’ve been thinking, Martin, that Iwillask Grizel for next month. There’s not much to do, but the garden is at its best, and she’ll enjoy that. I’ll write to-night.”Martin crumbled his bread.“Oh, well,” he said slowly, “I wrote to her myself last night. I meant to tell you. We have been growing rather dull, living so much alone. It will do us good to have some fresh life.”
“Cumly,June1,19—.
“Dear Captain Blair,
“As you say, I am bound in duty to thank you for the box.
“Considered as a box, it is a treasure indeed. It is so ‘worthy’ of my collection, that every other specimen looks in comparison poor and tawdry. I have placed it on a little pinnacle of its own, where it shines afar, leaving the lesser lights undimmed.
“Miss Beverley returns warm thanks to Captain Blair for his kindness in remembering her collection, and adding to it so valuable and antique a specimen.
“But—there remains Katrine, and Katrine’s duty is so much more complicated! She has written, as you prophesied, four separate letters, all well spelt, and punctuated, and admirably composed, the sentences rounded to a marvel, but alas! each separate one said a different thing, and was afterwards torn up for a different reason.
“Number one was haughty and firm: firm, without a quaver of doubt. ‘Miss Beverley was surprised that Captain Blair could suppose for a moment, that etc., etc.. Miss Beverley could certainly not consent to sacrifice the dignity and self-respect so dear to the heart of every true etc.’
“So far, so good, but Katrine here came to the conclusion that Miss Beverley was a hopeless prig, and effort number one was destroyed forthwith. Number two was also firm, but more affable in tone.
“Miss Beverley had been duly amused by the perusal of Captain Blair’s letter. She realised that it had been written on the spur of an impulse, and that he had not intended his suggestion to be taken seriously. She would proceed to banish it from her mind, as she felt sure he would now wish her to do.
“Here again Katrine interfered, rated Miss Beverley as a hypocrite, declared that she believed nothing of the sort, and sent the second missive packing after the first.
“The third and fourth attempts were destroyed for—er—otherreasons! One flies at times from one extreme to another. Here now beginning the fifth.
“If you are sure; if you arequitesure that my letters would be a help, I should like to say yes, but conscience pricks.—the Cranford conscience which sees not only straight ahead, but round every conceivable niche and corner.
“Take first your own point of view! Suppose a moment that Ididwrite, you might be horribly disappointed with my letters! You have enjoyed my weekly effusions to Dorothea, but you must remember that she and I are the friends of years, who have shared together all the big experiences of our lives, so that we have a thousand mutual links and interests. Also,—and the importance of this there is no denying—we are both women! When writing to Dorothea I can be just as frivolous, as morbid, as unreasonable as I please. She understands; she’s been there herself. But no mere man—
“Suppose my letters were insufferably flat and tame, what a position for the Lonely Fellow to find himself bound to reply in kind! He ought seriously to consider this point.
“Then there’s my own position, and with myself goes irrevocably Martin, my brother.
“Am Iquitejustified in taking up any interest, which must more or less engross my thoughts, and distract them from what is my real life work?
“I am all that he has left. He turned to me in his trouble, and I must always put him first. It’s not the easiest thing in the world to live with a literary man. The readers who praise his books and gush over his lofty sentiments, would be surprised if they could live in the house for a week, and listen to his flow of language over such a trifle, as, say, a banging door! For the last eight years all my time, and all my thought, have been devoted to the effort of pleasing Martin, and,—(one can acknowledge things on paper more easily than in words!)—it isn’t a brilliant success!
“I thought that it was; no! I didn’t think at all, I just complacently took it for granted that he was very lucky to have me, and that I made him as happy and comfortable as he possibly could be under the circumstances, but just lately I’ve had an awakening.
“Heisn’thappy; he isn’t even content. I’ve been quite an efficient Martha, but the Mary rôle seems to have been neglected, and we are growing apart, rather than together. That must be stopped! I must give more thought to him; not less.
“I am all he has left. I should be false to my trust if I deliberately undertook anything which would separate me from Martin by so much as a thought.
“Are you fine enough, honest enough,manenough, to acknowledge that I’m right, and to respect my decision?
“Lonely Man! I ought not to begin a regular correspondence with you. Just occasionally, perhaps, I might write; for Christmas, or Easter, or your birthday, and to receive a letter in reply would make a break in my life, which as you so blightingly remark begins to show symptoms of ‘cramp.’ (How could my letters be ‘so delightful’ if they were ‘cramped’?) The very first thing you must do is to explain just how, and in what way, you discern in me the fatal growth! I’m so down upon it in other people; I imagined myself so immaculately free! The least you can do is to warn me of the danger point, before the infection has time to spread.
“Also,—as the aim and object of the correspondence is that I should know your honourable self, let me in to some of the secrets which my photograph understands so well, and most of all, tell me what makes my eyes sorry? It seems a little hard to be shut out, when mere photographs see so much!
“Miss Beverley presents her compliments to Captain Blair. She finds it a very difficult thing to wind up a letter to a man whom she has never seen. Miss Beverley will be obliged if Captain Blair will therefore kindly consider this letter concluded in the manner which seems to him the most graceful and appropriate.”
Katrine carried the letter to the post in her own hands, the address carefully turned inwards so as to be screened from the scrutiny of peering eyes. Although the distance from the house to the post-office was about an eighth of a mile, it was seldom that she could traverse it without being accosted at least three or four times. This morning, however, the ordinary gossip jarred upon every nerve; she realised with a shiver of distaste that upon previous occasions she had enjoyed these encounters, had looked forward to them as to one of the prized episodes in the day; had been moved to excitement when she herself possessed a tiny item of news to add to the general store. As she crossed the road to the post-office, she debated with herself as to the cause of her change of mind, and found it in the envelope clasped in her hand.
A real interest had come into her life, and in its presence she had no room for trivial make-believes. Until now, for eight long years, nothing had happened to reach the real heart of her, and make her feel. Never, never once, a thrill, a surprise, a feeling that the great procession of life had halted to give her place, until one short week ago, when out of the void a voice had spoken, and across the world had come a challenge, an appeal! She, who owned little, was asked for much; at the moment when her own heart was starved, she was asked to fill another. The voice had called; all that was vital within her sang a reply.
The letter was held out in an extended hand, was pressed for one moment between tightening fingers, then dropped deep into the box. She stood motionless for a moment, overwhelmed by the irrevocability of the action, then turned aside with the feeling of one facing a new life.
That evening Martin was conscious of a special attempt on Katrine’s part to be agreeable and sympathetic. The secret lying warm and fragrant at her own heart made her especially tender over his loneliness, added to which tenderness was a decided leaven of compunction. Theoretically, she was ready to sacrifice all for Martin’s sake; virtually, she had stubbornly set herself to reject the one suggestion he had made for months past. It had taken a whole week of valiant striving against self to bring her to the point of giving in with a good grace. The prospect of a visit from Grizel Dundas was distinctly unpleasant, despite the fact that Grizel was a well-loved friend. Katrine searched her conscience for a reason for this contradiction, at the same time shutting a tight bolt over the one suggestion which endeavoured to make itself heard. Jealous! Why should she be jealous? Even if Grizel were a thousand times more attractive than herself, they moved in different worlds, and owned entirely distinct circles of friends. Why, pray, need she be jealous? The inner voice was sternly forbidden to mention Martin’s name in such a connection. Jealousy was out of the question where Martin was concerned. His suggestion had been made out of consideration for her own enjoyment; it lay on her conscience that she had received the suggestion ungraciously. She swallowed the last doubt, and said gravely:
“I’ve been thinking, Martin, that Iwillask Grizel for next month. There’s not much to do, but the garden is at its best, and she’ll enjoy that. I’ll write to-night.”
Martin crumbled his bread.
“Oh, well,” he said slowly, “I wrote to her myself last night. I meant to tell you. We have been growing rather dull, living so much alone. It will do us good to have some fresh life.”
Chapter Five.The fly stopped at the gate, the flyman alighted, and prompted by a sweet expectancy in Grizel’s eye, rose to a height of gallantry hitherto unknown, and offered his arm to assist her to alight. Grizel leaned heavily upon it, and having languidly descended to the level of the pavement, dropped her uplifted skirts and trailed slowly towards the house. In contradiction to the fashion of the day the skirts were trained both back and front, they floated round her in a soft billowy cloud, trailing in their wake a little shower of pebbly stones. They were most unfashionable skirts, for a railway journey they were ridiculously inappropriate; they were also undeniably unsanitary, but the most irate critic could not have denied that they were becoming. The skirts were of a soft, quaker grey, edged with a little foam of flounces. No one wore flounces in that summer of hobble skirts! A scarf of lavender chiffon was thrown round her neck, she wore a straw hat of no particular shape, draped in no particular fashion, with an old lace veil. Up the garden path she came between the two tall lines of hollyhocks, a slight nymph-like figure, enveloped in cloud-like draperies, with a glimpse of a small pale face between the dip of the veil and the float of the scarf.Martin and Katrine rushed together to the door, vociferous in greetings and explanations.“Grizel! We were going to meet you... Yousaidfour-thirty! What induced you to travel by the slow?”“Ilikethem slow,” drawled Grizel in her deep rich tones. She trailed into the drawing-room, subsided on to an oak settee, the nearest available seat, held up her face for Katrine’s caress, and extended a small hand to Martin with the air of an Empress bestowing an order. This done she yawned undisguisedly, rummaged in a bag—another floating accessory of violet satin—produced a minute purse, and asked with a frown:“What’s his fare? Please ask him, Somebody, and pay him double. I always pay double; then they don’t swear. I do loathe being sweared. With my money, please. No paupery!”The deep drawling tone was in the oddest contrast with the unconventional, not to say slangy mode of speech, but the listeners betrayed no surprise. They were accustomed to the discrepancy, and in common with the rest of the world enjoyed, the while they condemned. Grizel’s language grew ever more and more exaggerated and boy-like. She really ought to reform! but on the other hand how much less amusing it would be if she did!“The full fare is two shillings. Tip him sixpence if you like, but to give more is corruption. You shouldn’t be cowardly, Grizel. It makes things hard for other people.”Grizel blinked, and encouraged another yawn.“Is that Socialism?” she drawled vaguely. “Have you caught it down here? I’ll join tomorrow, but don’t expect a fellow to have principles at the end of a journey. Give me crumpets!”Lifting her arms she tugged at the two long, dagger-like pins with amethyst heads, which held her hat in place, flipped it to the ground, and blinked vaguely in Martin’s face.“Don’t I lookplainwith my hair squashed?”In truth at the moment Grizel was not beauteous. Her little face was without a trace of colour, marks of fatigue ringed the grey eyes, the mass of soft brown hair was flattened by the pressure of the hat. Just a little, tired, colourless face, not even in the first flush of youth, for the fine lines which are the surest tell-tale of advancing years were already beginning to show at the corners of her eyes. Katrine was sympathetically agreed that Grizelwasplain this afternoon, but Martin felt a sudden flushing of the cheeks as he met the glance of the long eyes; a sudden swelling of the throat.He did not know if Grizel were plain or not; what was more to the purpose, he didn’t care. An ordinary, commonplace woman might be appraised for her looks, but this woman’s lure lay in something infinitely more subtle. Ill or well, tired or alert, sorry or glad, she remained a very type of womanhood, from whose eyes looked out the eternal challenge, the eternal question. No man in Grizel’s presence could forget that she was a woman, and that some time, somewhere, some fortunate man might be her mate.As he turned back to the tea-table Martin asked himself for the hundredth time if Grizel were conscious of her power. There was nothing consciously provocative in her glance; her manner with men was indifferent to the point of boredom, yet there it was, a turn of the head, a droop of the lid, a tone in the low rich voice proclaimed the man’s woman, the woman who from childhood to age is served and worshipped, who on a desert island would find a Prince Charming behind the first palm.The serving of Grizel’s tea engrossed for some minutes the entire attention of her two hosts. She was supplied with a table, a footstool, a cushion for her back; her tea was first watered, secondly milked, and thirdly strengthened to its original state; her toast was cut into tiny strips. She yawned at intervals with infantile abandon; it is to be feared she scattered many crumbs upon the grey pile carpet, but unlike ninety-nine women out of a hundred, she made no effort to fluff her flattened hair, or to arrange the delicate disorder of her attire. There was something primitive, almost savage, in her childlike naturalness of mien.In excuse for such lapses from conventional manners, Katrine was wont to remind herself that Grizel lived so much alone: no one in the grim town house but the old great-aunt, and the retinue of family servants who had grown old in her service. It was a ghastly life for a young woman still several years under thirty, it would have been considered so at least by most young women, but Grizel stoutly refused to be pitied. The old “Buddy” was alone. The old Buddy needed her; the old Buddy found pleasure and refreshment in her society,—why then should she not have what she wanted?“S’poseyouwere an old Buddy of eighty-nine, and nobody wouldn’t come, how wouldyoulike it, d’you suppose?” she would enquire with her usual disregard of grammar, circumlocution, and other conventions practised by the polite, and her hearers mentally substituting “Grizel” for “nobody,” invariably decided that they wouldn’t like it at all.“How’s the old Buddy?” enquired Katrine, when, the preliminary preparations over, she found a chance to begin tea on her own account. She took not the faintest interest in the venerable dame, who for the last ten years had refused to see any one beyond the members of her own family, but it seemed the proper thing to make the enquiry and get it over before proceeding to more interesting subjects. “The same as usual, I suppose!”Grizel held a morsel of cake extended in her hand; frowned at it sternly, and shook her head.“Failing!” she said solemnly. “Failing rapidly; sometimes quite lucid, but, generally speaking, dotty! Dotty, my dear, as the veriest March hare. Hallucinations. Delusions. Went in to see her last night in a new rig, and she took me for the Queen of Sheba. Chatted quite calmly for a moment, then blushed and started wriggling, trying to do obeisance from her wheeled chair. Said she hadn’t caught the name, and hoped I would forgive!”“Poor old Buddy! Awkward for you both. And what did you do next?”“Oh, I Shebaed, of course,” laughed Grizel lightly. “Bit embarrassing, y’know, because James was Solomon, and she made compromising remarks. Humorous! if you think of it—Solomon in whiskers and greasy black! I could have wished it had been John. John is a shapely young thing, and devoted to me. We had quite a rollicky evening. I made offerings of tea caddies and chimney-piece ornaments, and she kissed my hand. Poor old Buddy! She had quite a bean feast.”Grizel’s deep voice could take on occasion a note of beautiful tenderness; it sounded now at the mention of the old mad aunt, and her listeners noting it, marvelled afresh. Lady Griselda Dundas might now be irresponsible for her eccentricities, but no one could deny that at a time when she was in full possession of her faculties she had complacently plumed herself upon the popular vote which placed her at the head of the cantankerous, ill-mannered women in Society. With all sincerity she had endeavoured to live up to her reputation, and though her grand-niece was possibly the only person on earth for whom she had any affection, she was also at the same time the most convenient butt. Grizel was ordered about, hectored, reproved, dragged here and there without the slightest reference to her own wishes. That the girl bore it cheerfully, uncomplainingly, even with an appearance of zest, was attributed to mercenary motives by society at large. Grizel was—presumably—heiress to Lady Griselda’s fortune, and it was felt that an even harder apprenticeship would be a cheap price to pay for so big a prize. Surmises in plenty were made as to the amount in question; Grizel went about labelled as one of the greatest heiresses in society, but not even her most intimate friends had the temerity to question Lady Griselda as to the reality of these expectations. No one but her “man of business” knew the secret of the will locked within his safe.“What happens about your own bean feasts, Grizel?” Martin enquired from the corner seat, to which he had carried his tea. The position afforded a full-length view of the visitor as she lolled on the couch; it was also slightly behind Katrine at the tea-table. There were occasions when it was distinctly an asset to be out of the range of Katrine’s eyes. “Do you go out as much as you used? I suppose there is a capable maid whom you can leave in charge. You can’t possibly be bound—”“I’m not bound, but she’s a beautiful excuse. I go out when she’s better, which means an invitation which tempts, and if it doesn’t she’s worse! In the daytime I’m on duty. Parsons is a brick, but she’s a serious brick, and it’s hard lines on the old Buddy to be taken seriously night and day. It needs a vast intellect to be vivacious with the insane, but it’s drefful interesting when you’ve learned the knack. I’m thinking of taking it up as a Pro. Doctor White has sworn to recommend me. He says he fears for his own brain, but just for the moment he ordered a change... I’m not used to taxing my intellect, and it’s a bit of a strain, so I took a mean advantage of the old dear’s infirmity, and told her certain sure I’d be back at four o’clock, and when I arrive at the week’s end, she’ll groan because I’m ten minutes late!”“A week! Now that we’ve got you, we won’t let you go in a week. You must take a good rest while you’re about it. We have no excitements on hand except the Barfield Garden Party, but you shall be out in the fresh air, and feed on strawberries and cream, and sleep half the day. We must send her back with a little more colour in her cheeks, mustn’t we, Katrine?”Katrine looked at her visitor, and smiled. She had not wanted to invite Grizel; the proposition had found her in an antagonistic mood, she had resented the fact that it had come from Martin rather than herself, but now Grizel had arrived, and with the personal presence, antagonism had vanished into space. Her thoughts turned back to yesterday, when at the same hour in the same room she and Martin had partaken of tea together. Certainly no one could have called it a lively meal. There were occasions when the coming of a third person infused a wonderful refreshment into the daily routine, but Katrine knew her guest’s nature better than did her brother. Martin desired that they should take care of Grizel; in reality it was Grizel who would take care of them. Martin had declared that Grizel must rest; Grizel was incapable of rest, and rest would weary her more than action. Where Grizel was, things happened. Even as she sat pale and weary upon the sofa, vitality flowed out of her; the atmosphere was instinct with electric force.“Grizel,” said Katrine smiling, “will do as she pleases. She always did, and she always will, and she will please to gad! She will gad from morning till night, and drag me about to gad with her. It’s very easy for you, Martin; you issue instructions, shut yourself up in your study all day, and expect them to be carried out, but I tell you at the beginning,—I wash my hands of responsibility! I’ll go where I’m—dragged, and do as I—must! She’ll be tired out, of course, but it won’t be my fault.”“But I haven’t the least intention of letting him shut himself up. ’Course I’ll gad! What else is there to do, but don’t you worry, my lamb, Martin shall gad with me!” announced Grizel calmly. She flashed her honey-coloured eyes across the room to where Martin sat among the shadows of the dark old room. His back was towards the light, she could see the outline of his long lean face, the fine modelling of the jaw, but the expression in the dark eyes she could not see. “We’ll have such—sport!” She laughed, a deep, soft-throated laugh.“I’m working,” said Martin in a hesitating voice, a voice which seemed forced out of him against his will. “I’m afraid, Grizel, that I can’t—”“And I’m afraid, Martin, that youmust! What work are you trying to do?”“I’ve started a fresh book. It’s just beginning to go. The first chapters are always a pull, but I hope at last that I’m well afloat.”“I’ll help you!” announced Grizel calmly. “You play with me, and I’ll work with you. I’ve always felt it in me to write a corking novel. We’ll collaborate, and make ’em sit up! Present day, of course. I can’t contend with any century but my own.Verymodern, and up to date, and the heroine lives in Kensington. She must be a duck, Martin!Isshe a duck? What colour are her eyes?”“Er—Her eyes are grey—”“Grey as a mountain tarn—” Grizel rolled her own eyes to the ceiling. “Well! It’s a useful shade, and affords scope for variety. They can grow black under stress of emotion, and in evening dress when she wants to look her best. And the hero! he’ll be my affair, of course. I’ll write the man-ey bits, and you’ll do the girl—”“You mean—”Grizel waved an imperious hand.“I donot! I mean what I say.” She screwed up her little face in an expressivemoue. “Poof! Who knows more about a man in love—you or I? Who’d be fairer to another girl?—If more books were written in that way, they’d be a vast deal truer to life. We’ll show ’em! Katrine, congratulate us; our fortune is made.”Katrine’s smile was a trifle forced. Of course it was nonsense to suppose that Grizel would be allowed to invade the sanctuary of Martin’s room; nevertheless, knowing as she did the heights of her visitor’s audacity, she felt it her duty to adopt an air of dignified reproof.Martin’s work was not a subject for jest, it was a serious affair, with the stages of which his sister was well acquainted. First the stage of restless absent-mindedness, during which it was useless to expect punctuality, or even an appropriately sensible answer to a question; next, a brief period of intoxication when the long-delayed inspiration dawned with a brilliance which promised a glory never before attained; thirdly, the long months of labour and anxiety, in which the early triumph faded to at best a temperate content.Katrine was never admitted into her brother’s confidence about his work. He had allowed it to be known that he could not suffer questions or remarks; never once in those eight years had she dared to question concerning a heroine’s eyes. Through mental storms and sunshine, she had “sat tight,” observant but silent, expressing her sympathy, Martha-like, in soups and sauces. It was not for Grizel to obtrude where she, a sister, might not go.Katrine pushed back her chair, and rose to her feet.“You are talking nonsense, my dear. Come upstairs! You look tired to death, and your hair is coming down. I’ll give you a book, and you can sleep or read until it’s time to dress. I’ll carry your things.” She gathered together the scattered hat, gloves, and bag, and led the way upstairs, Grizel trailing slowly in her wake.The bedroom was sweet and fresh; after the manner of such rooms in country houses, a bowl of roses stood on a table; through the open window the air blew soft and clean. Grizel looked around with smiling satisfaction; then dropping her impedimenta on the bed, and wheeling round with a swift, unexpected movement, she faced her hostess, and nipped her chin between a thumb and forefinger.The two faces were close together: for a moment Katrine smiled, unconcerned and amused, but the honey-coloured eyes stared on, stared deep, stared with a long, unblinking intentness which brought the colour rushing to her cheeks. She twitched her head, the small fingers gripped with unexpected tenacity; she frowned and fumed, but the eyes stared relentlessly on. Finally she raised both hands and forced herself free.“Grizel, whatisit? Why are you staring? What in the world has happened?”“And that, my lamb,” returned Grizel calmly, “is just precisely what I am axing myself!”She turned her back, and strolled nonchalantly across the rooms.
The fly stopped at the gate, the flyman alighted, and prompted by a sweet expectancy in Grizel’s eye, rose to a height of gallantry hitherto unknown, and offered his arm to assist her to alight. Grizel leaned heavily upon it, and having languidly descended to the level of the pavement, dropped her uplifted skirts and trailed slowly towards the house. In contradiction to the fashion of the day the skirts were trained both back and front, they floated round her in a soft billowy cloud, trailing in their wake a little shower of pebbly stones. They were most unfashionable skirts, for a railway journey they were ridiculously inappropriate; they were also undeniably unsanitary, but the most irate critic could not have denied that they were becoming. The skirts were of a soft, quaker grey, edged with a little foam of flounces. No one wore flounces in that summer of hobble skirts! A scarf of lavender chiffon was thrown round her neck, she wore a straw hat of no particular shape, draped in no particular fashion, with an old lace veil. Up the garden path she came between the two tall lines of hollyhocks, a slight nymph-like figure, enveloped in cloud-like draperies, with a glimpse of a small pale face between the dip of the veil and the float of the scarf.
Martin and Katrine rushed together to the door, vociferous in greetings and explanations.
“Grizel! We were going to meet you... Yousaidfour-thirty! What induced you to travel by the slow?”
“Ilikethem slow,” drawled Grizel in her deep rich tones. She trailed into the drawing-room, subsided on to an oak settee, the nearest available seat, held up her face for Katrine’s caress, and extended a small hand to Martin with the air of an Empress bestowing an order. This done she yawned undisguisedly, rummaged in a bag—another floating accessory of violet satin—produced a minute purse, and asked with a frown:
“What’s his fare? Please ask him, Somebody, and pay him double. I always pay double; then they don’t swear. I do loathe being sweared. With my money, please. No paupery!”
The deep drawling tone was in the oddest contrast with the unconventional, not to say slangy mode of speech, but the listeners betrayed no surprise. They were accustomed to the discrepancy, and in common with the rest of the world enjoyed, the while they condemned. Grizel’s language grew ever more and more exaggerated and boy-like. She really ought to reform! but on the other hand how much less amusing it would be if she did!
“The full fare is two shillings. Tip him sixpence if you like, but to give more is corruption. You shouldn’t be cowardly, Grizel. It makes things hard for other people.”
Grizel blinked, and encouraged another yawn.
“Is that Socialism?” she drawled vaguely. “Have you caught it down here? I’ll join tomorrow, but don’t expect a fellow to have principles at the end of a journey. Give me crumpets!”
Lifting her arms she tugged at the two long, dagger-like pins with amethyst heads, which held her hat in place, flipped it to the ground, and blinked vaguely in Martin’s face.
“Don’t I lookplainwith my hair squashed?”
In truth at the moment Grizel was not beauteous. Her little face was without a trace of colour, marks of fatigue ringed the grey eyes, the mass of soft brown hair was flattened by the pressure of the hat. Just a little, tired, colourless face, not even in the first flush of youth, for the fine lines which are the surest tell-tale of advancing years were already beginning to show at the corners of her eyes. Katrine was sympathetically agreed that Grizelwasplain this afternoon, but Martin felt a sudden flushing of the cheeks as he met the glance of the long eyes; a sudden swelling of the throat.
He did not know if Grizel were plain or not; what was more to the purpose, he didn’t care. An ordinary, commonplace woman might be appraised for her looks, but this woman’s lure lay in something infinitely more subtle. Ill or well, tired or alert, sorry or glad, she remained a very type of womanhood, from whose eyes looked out the eternal challenge, the eternal question. No man in Grizel’s presence could forget that she was a woman, and that some time, somewhere, some fortunate man might be her mate.
As he turned back to the tea-table Martin asked himself for the hundredth time if Grizel were conscious of her power. There was nothing consciously provocative in her glance; her manner with men was indifferent to the point of boredom, yet there it was, a turn of the head, a droop of the lid, a tone in the low rich voice proclaimed the man’s woman, the woman who from childhood to age is served and worshipped, who on a desert island would find a Prince Charming behind the first palm.
The serving of Grizel’s tea engrossed for some minutes the entire attention of her two hosts. She was supplied with a table, a footstool, a cushion for her back; her tea was first watered, secondly milked, and thirdly strengthened to its original state; her toast was cut into tiny strips. She yawned at intervals with infantile abandon; it is to be feared she scattered many crumbs upon the grey pile carpet, but unlike ninety-nine women out of a hundred, she made no effort to fluff her flattened hair, or to arrange the delicate disorder of her attire. There was something primitive, almost savage, in her childlike naturalness of mien.
In excuse for such lapses from conventional manners, Katrine was wont to remind herself that Grizel lived so much alone: no one in the grim town house but the old great-aunt, and the retinue of family servants who had grown old in her service. It was a ghastly life for a young woman still several years under thirty, it would have been considered so at least by most young women, but Grizel stoutly refused to be pitied. The old “Buddy” was alone. The old Buddy needed her; the old Buddy found pleasure and refreshment in her society,—why then should she not have what she wanted?
“S’poseyouwere an old Buddy of eighty-nine, and nobody wouldn’t come, how wouldyoulike it, d’you suppose?” she would enquire with her usual disregard of grammar, circumlocution, and other conventions practised by the polite, and her hearers mentally substituting “Grizel” for “nobody,” invariably decided that they wouldn’t like it at all.
“How’s the old Buddy?” enquired Katrine, when, the preliminary preparations over, she found a chance to begin tea on her own account. She took not the faintest interest in the venerable dame, who for the last ten years had refused to see any one beyond the members of her own family, but it seemed the proper thing to make the enquiry and get it over before proceeding to more interesting subjects. “The same as usual, I suppose!”
Grizel held a morsel of cake extended in her hand; frowned at it sternly, and shook her head.
“Failing!” she said solemnly. “Failing rapidly; sometimes quite lucid, but, generally speaking, dotty! Dotty, my dear, as the veriest March hare. Hallucinations. Delusions. Went in to see her last night in a new rig, and she took me for the Queen of Sheba. Chatted quite calmly for a moment, then blushed and started wriggling, trying to do obeisance from her wheeled chair. Said she hadn’t caught the name, and hoped I would forgive!”
“Poor old Buddy! Awkward for you both. And what did you do next?”
“Oh, I Shebaed, of course,” laughed Grizel lightly. “Bit embarrassing, y’know, because James was Solomon, and she made compromising remarks. Humorous! if you think of it—Solomon in whiskers and greasy black! I could have wished it had been John. John is a shapely young thing, and devoted to me. We had quite a rollicky evening. I made offerings of tea caddies and chimney-piece ornaments, and she kissed my hand. Poor old Buddy! She had quite a bean feast.”
Grizel’s deep voice could take on occasion a note of beautiful tenderness; it sounded now at the mention of the old mad aunt, and her listeners noting it, marvelled afresh. Lady Griselda Dundas might now be irresponsible for her eccentricities, but no one could deny that at a time when she was in full possession of her faculties she had complacently plumed herself upon the popular vote which placed her at the head of the cantankerous, ill-mannered women in Society. With all sincerity she had endeavoured to live up to her reputation, and though her grand-niece was possibly the only person on earth for whom she had any affection, she was also at the same time the most convenient butt. Grizel was ordered about, hectored, reproved, dragged here and there without the slightest reference to her own wishes. That the girl bore it cheerfully, uncomplainingly, even with an appearance of zest, was attributed to mercenary motives by society at large. Grizel was—presumably—heiress to Lady Griselda’s fortune, and it was felt that an even harder apprenticeship would be a cheap price to pay for so big a prize. Surmises in plenty were made as to the amount in question; Grizel went about labelled as one of the greatest heiresses in society, but not even her most intimate friends had the temerity to question Lady Griselda as to the reality of these expectations. No one but her “man of business” knew the secret of the will locked within his safe.
“What happens about your own bean feasts, Grizel?” Martin enquired from the corner seat, to which he had carried his tea. The position afforded a full-length view of the visitor as she lolled on the couch; it was also slightly behind Katrine at the tea-table. There were occasions when it was distinctly an asset to be out of the range of Katrine’s eyes. “Do you go out as much as you used? I suppose there is a capable maid whom you can leave in charge. You can’t possibly be bound—”
“I’m not bound, but she’s a beautiful excuse. I go out when she’s better, which means an invitation which tempts, and if it doesn’t she’s worse! In the daytime I’m on duty. Parsons is a brick, but she’s a serious brick, and it’s hard lines on the old Buddy to be taken seriously night and day. It needs a vast intellect to be vivacious with the insane, but it’s drefful interesting when you’ve learned the knack. I’m thinking of taking it up as a Pro. Doctor White has sworn to recommend me. He says he fears for his own brain, but just for the moment he ordered a change... I’m not used to taxing my intellect, and it’s a bit of a strain, so I took a mean advantage of the old dear’s infirmity, and told her certain sure I’d be back at four o’clock, and when I arrive at the week’s end, she’ll groan because I’m ten minutes late!”
“A week! Now that we’ve got you, we won’t let you go in a week. You must take a good rest while you’re about it. We have no excitements on hand except the Barfield Garden Party, but you shall be out in the fresh air, and feed on strawberries and cream, and sleep half the day. We must send her back with a little more colour in her cheeks, mustn’t we, Katrine?”
Katrine looked at her visitor, and smiled. She had not wanted to invite Grizel; the proposition had found her in an antagonistic mood, she had resented the fact that it had come from Martin rather than herself, but now Grizel had arrived, and with the personal presence, antagonism had vanished into space. Her thoughts turned back to yesterday, when at the same hour in the same room she and Martin had partaken of tea together. Certainly no one could have called it a lively meal. There were occasions when the coming of a third person infused a wonderful refreshment into the daily routine, but Katrine knew her guest’s nature better than did her brother. Martin desired that they should take care of Grizel; in reality it was Grizel who would take care of them. Martin had declared that Grizel must rest; Grizel was incapable of rest, and rest would weary her more than action. Where Grizel was, things happened. Even as she sat pale and weary upon the sofa, vitality flowed out of her; the atmosphere was instinct with electric force.
“Grizel,” said Katrine smiling, “will do as she pleases. She always did, and she always will, and she will please to gad! She will gad from morning till night, and drag me about to gad with her. It’s very easy for you, Martin; you issue instructions, shut yourself up in your study all day, and expect them to be carried out, but I tell you at the beginning,—I wash my hands of responsibility! I’ll go where I’m—dragged, and do as I—must! She’ll be tired out, of course, but it won’t be my fault.”
“But I haven’t the least intention of letting him shut himself up. ’Course I’ll gad! What else is there to do, but don’t you worry, my lamb, Martin shall gad with me!” announced Grizel calmly. She flashed her honey-coloured eyes across the room to where Martin sat among the shadows of the dark old room. His back was towards the light, she could see the outline of his long lean face, the fine modelling of the jaw, but the expression in the dark eyes she could not see. “We’ll have such—sport!” She laughed, a deep, soft-throated laugh.
“I’m working,” said Martin in a hesitating voice, a voice which seemed forced out of him against his will. “I’m afraid, Grizel, that I can’t—”
“And I’m afraid, Martin, that youmust! What work are you trying to do?”
“I’ve started a fresh book. It’s just beginning to go. The first chapters are always a pull, but I hope at last that I’m well afloat.”
“I’ll help you!” announced Grizel calmly. “You play with me, and I’ll work with you. I’ve always felt it in me to write a corking novel. We’ll collaborate, and make ’em sit up! Present day, of course. I can’t contend with any century but my own.Verymodern, and up to date, and the heroine lives in Kensington. She must be a duck, Martin!Isshe a duck? What colour are her eyes?”
“Er—Her eyes are grey—”
“Grey as a mountain tarn—” Grizel rolled her own eyes to the ceiling. “Well! It’s a useful shade, and affords scope for variety. They can grow black under stress of emotion, and in evening dress when she wants to look her best. And the hero! he’ll be my affair, of course. I’ll write the man-ey bits, and you’ll do the girl—”
“You mean—”
Grizel waved an imperious hand.
“I donot! I mean what I say.” She screwed up her little face in an expressivemoue. “Poof! Who knows more about a man in love—you or I? Who’d be fairer to another girl?—If more books were written in that way, they’d be a vast deal truer to life. We’ll show ’em! Katrine, congratulate us; our fortune is made.”
Katrine’s smile was a trifle forced. Of course it was nonsense to suppose that Grizel would be allowed to invade the sanctuary of Martin’s room; nevertheless, knowing as she did the heights of her visitor’s audacity, she felt it her duty to adopt an air of dignified reproof.
Martin’s work was not a subject for jest, it was a serious affair, with the stages of which his sister was well acquainted. First the stage of restless absent-mindedness, during which it was useless to expect punctuality, or even an appropriately sensible answer to a question; next, a brief period of intoxication when the long-delayed inspiration dawned with a brilliance which promised a glory never before attained; thirdly, the long months of labour and anxiety, in which the early triumph faded to at best a temperate content.
Katrine was never admitted into her brother’s confidence about his work. He had allowed it to be known that he could not suffer questions or remarks; never once in those eight years had she dared to question concerning a heroine’s eyes. Through mental storms and sunshine, she had “sat tight,” observant but silent, expressing her sympathy, Martha-like, in soups and sauces. It was not for Grizel to obtrude where she, a sister, might not go.
Katrine pushed back her chair, and rose to her feet.
“You are talking nonsense, my dear. Come upstairs! You look tired to death, and your hair is coming down. I’ll give you a book, and you can sleep or read until it’s time to dress. I’ll carry your things.” She gathered together the scattered hat, gloves, and bag, and led the way upstairs, Grizel trailing slowly in her wake.
The bedroom was sweet and fresh; after the manner of such rooms in country houses, a bowl of roses stood on a table; through the open window the air blew soft and clean. Grizel looked around with smiling satisfaction; then dropping her impedimenta on the bed, and wheeling round with a swift, unexpected movement, she faced her hostess, and nipped her chin between a thumb and forefinger.
The two faces were close together: for a moment Katrine smiled, unconcerned and amused, but the honey-coloured eyes stared on, stared deep, stared with a long, unblinking intentness which brought the colour rushing to her cheeks. She twitched her head, the small fingers gripped with unexpected tenacity; she frowned and fumed, but the eyes stared relentlessly on. Finally she raised both hands and forced herself free.
“Grizel, whatisit? Why are you staring? What in the world has happened?”
“And that, my lamb,” returned Grizel calmly, “is just precisely what I am axing myself!”
She turned her back, and strolled nonchalantly across the rooms.
Chapter Six.When Grizel sailed down to dinner two hours later, it would have been difficult to recognise in her the pallid traveller of the afternoon. She was gorgeously attired in a robe of golden net covered with an embroidery of the same hue. The golden sheaf clung round her, and trailed heavily on the ground; encased in it her body appeared of an incredible slimness, yet from head to foot there was not one angle, not one harsh, unlovely line. Nymph, elf, fay, she was all rounded curve and dimple, from satin shoulder to arched and tiny feet. Though one might marvel that a human being could live in such wand-like form,thinwas a word which could never occur. Grizel was no more thin than Katrine herself. Her soft, mouse-brown hair was waved loosely back, and twisted in a fashion which preserved the shape of the head,—a rare and wonderful sight at a time when nine women out of ten carried a cushion-like appendage standing out many inches behind the ear. Grizel was too wise to disguise herself by any such freak of fashion; an artist would have noted with delight that she invariably respected the natural “line” of the body. Neck and arms were bare of ornament, her cheeks were still pale, but with a warm, cream-like tint which had no trace of ill-health, her honey-coloured eyes reflected the golden lights of her dress. The scarlet lips made the one contrasting note of colour.Katrine stared blankly at the entrance of the apparition, the inevitable admiration largely tinged with reproach. How ridiculous, and unsuitable, and altogether Grizelish to choose such a dress for a quiet home evening! It was probably the first that had come to her hand, and she had put it on without a thought. When there was a dinner party, and the most important people in the neighbourhood were assembled to meet her, she would just as likely as not appear in a simple muslin. Katrine had lived through such experiences before, and had suffered much aggravation thereby. She stared with exaggerated surprise, whereupon Grizel gurgled, quick to appreciate the criticism.“Yes, ma’am. Myverybest! Ain’t I a pr-etty ittle did?”“It would be very suitable for a Court ball. What possessed you to put it on to-night?”“I felt like it,—in a golden mood! I always dress to suit my moods. Besides it’s quite new, and the dear thing wanted its turn. It is my Sheba dress, but you aren’t nearly so appreciative as Aunt Griselda.Shebowed down before me.”“I’m not going to bow down, but it’s a marvellous frock!” Katrine felt a depressing consciousness of the shabby black net which had done duty for home wear for several winters in succession, and woman-like reflected with a pang that the price of that golden sheaf would probably equal that of her entire summer outfit. How would it feel to own a fairy purse, and bid Paquin do his best?For a moment she was rent with envy, then curiosity claimed its day. She crossed the room, and peered with awe and admiration at the elaborateness of the dress, the chiffon skirts poised one upon another, which softened the glare of the satin slip, the exquisite design of the embroidery, the rare and varied beads with which it was intermingled.“Grizel—what gorgeousness! Every bead is a treasure. It must have taken months to work. And on a piece of perishable net. I havereadabout such things, but I’ve never seen them... Mrs Brewston would read you a lesson on wanton extravagance—”“Decadence,” interrupted Grizel firmly. “You mustalwayscall it decadence. And I should perfectly agree. But the poor lambs had embroidered it, so some onehadto pay, and Aunt Griselda might as well do it as any one else. I wouldn’t have dreamed ofgivingthe order!”“Humbug! Quibbler!—Is there any possible way of getting into it, or do you wriggle in at the neck? There’s nothing of you, my dear, but you are modelled so considerately—plump in the right places! ... The sleeves are a trifle attenuated, don’t you think?”“Perhaps they are, but it’s the fault of my arms. Theyareso pretty! Look at that ikkle, ikkle dimple... You wouldn’t have the heart to hide it!” returned Grizel, shutting one eye so as to peer with the other at the soft, infantile dents above the elbow. In praise or blame she was always markedly honest as regarded her own appearance. Even when Martin made his appearance at the door, and came to the sudden stand as if dazzled by the glittering apparition in the middle of the dark room, Grizel seemed to see no reason for changing her pose, but continued to peer and to crane with undiminished interest.“I’m showing Katrine a bonnie wee dimple... This side, to the west! I can just peer at it like this, but it’s beautiful viewed from the side, I wear my sleeve cut short ‘a pupos.’ ... This is the dress that the Duck wears, Martin, the night she’s engaged. He hadn’t intended to speak so soon, but when he saw her in it he couldn’t resist—”“I’m sure he couldn’t—!”Martin’s echo came back with what his sister considered a painful banality. She flinched before it, as at a desecration. When one is accustomed to regard a man as seated on a permanent pinnacle of grief, it is a shock to find him condescending to the ordinary barter of compliment, but Martin was oblivious of her frown, for Grizel had opened her closed eye, and peered upward into his face with her sweet, lazy smile.He gave her his arm, led her in to dinner, arranged her chair, and groped under the table for a footstool, leaving Katrine to follow, alone and unnoticed. Never in all the years they had lived together had he thought of a footstool for his sister’s feet! As there was only one of these articles in common use, she was obliged to do without the ordinary support, and the feeling of discomfort lasted throughout the meal.The curtains were undrawn, leaving a vista of garden sloping upward to the knoll, the low panelled room was already dim, and the table was lighted by candles in tall silver stands. A bowl of beautifully cut old glass was piled high with roses, and the meal was dainty and well chosen, for Katrine was on her mettle before Grizel’s quizzical eyes. Martin sat at the head of the table; he had the long thin face, the deep-set eyes, the sensitive lips, which carry the mind instinctively to the days of old. For him a stock and a fob would have seemed more appropriate than twentieth-century attire. His eyes looked particularly dark to-night; he held himself buoyantly erect.Grizel rested both elbows on the table, and began feeding herself with fragments of bread, before the soup was served.“Excuse my bad manners. They’resofashionable!” she mumbled in explanation. She attacked her soup with a zest which one would hardly have expected from so fragile a creature, and took little part in the conversation until it was finished. Then once more she rested her elbows on the table, and smiled across at her host.“And so,” she said lazily, “to-morrow is the Duke’s bean-feast. It’s no end of a way, isn’t it? How do we go?”“Martin has engaged a car. Several neighbours wanted us to share, and it was really quite a blessing to be able to refuse. Last year we went with the Morlands, and they stuck to us like glue to the bitter end. This time we shall be free.”“We three, and a second man. Who is the second man?”“We three, andnoother man!”Grizel dropped her hands on to the table, and stared with distended eyes.“But, my child, how absurd. I’m the most unexacting of critters but I make it a principle, never to share a man! Theremustbe an odd bachelor in the neighbourhood who’d be glad of a lift! A presentable, flirtable creature to make up the four!”The youthful parlour-maid jerked at the sound of that second adjective, and scurried from the room, soup plates in hand, leaving Katrine to whisper hasty reprisals.“Grizel, please! Wait until afterwards. It’s a young girl I am training. She belongs to the Y.W.C.A.”Grizel’s stare changed to a smile.“I don’t object, dear. I really don’t. So long as she’s pleased, I assure you I won’t let it makeanydifference!”“But that’s just what I want it to do! Do please be sensible until dinner is over, and for mercy’s sake don’t talk about flirts. She’ll be so shocked.”“Then she’ll be the first Y.W. I’ve ever met whowas. And I don’t believe she will, neither. There’s a tilt to her cap—”The door opened to admit the Y.W., bearing in her hands the fish, and on her face that expression of concentrated vacuity which denotes acute curiosity. Every householder has suffered such moments, and knows by experience the painful pause which ensues before one of the diners bursts vivaciously into impersonalities, but to-day there was no pause. Grizel was too nimble-witted to permit such discomfiture. There was not the slightest break in the continuity of her speech, her words flowed on in a smooth unbroken stream.”—The which I take to typify a certain temperamental tendency towards the ornate, coupled with a desire to please, and be appreciated by those whom Providence has appointed lords among us, against which tendency all the restrictions of that admirable society—”“Grizel! Idiot! Eat your fish. You talk too much!”Martin had burst into a roar of laughter, in which Katrine perforce was obliged to join. The Y.W. marched stolidly round the table. She was by no means so dense as she appeared, was perfectly aware that the visitor had been reproved in her absence, and suspected a personal application in the long-winded speech. She disappeared in search of sauce, and to report the progress of events to the eager cook.“I’ll make a compact with you,” whispered Grizel eagerly. “I’ll talk like a tract to the end of my stay, if you can induce hernotto puff down my back! Principles I respect, but draughts I abhor. Just make it perfectly clear!” ...The Y.W. returned, and puffed vigorously the while she handed the sauce, whereat Katrine suffered a moment of acute suspense, but Grizel only wriggled her white shoulders, and remarked sweetly:“Chill, isn’t it, for the time of year!”Katrine hastily turned the conversation.“Grizel, did you know that Martin’s last book is already in its third edition?”“No. Is it? How very good.”The words were irreproachable but there was something lacking in the tone. Katrine frowned, Martin looked across the table at the sparkling golden figure, who sat with head on one side, and brows arched, like a penitent child asking for forgiveness. Their eyes met, and he smiled in reassuring sweetness.“Martin’s books are a forbidden topic at Martin’s table. After dinner, Grizel, I’ll take you to see my roses. They are much more interesting.”“In that dress! In those slippers!” gasped Katrine outraged. As neither of her hearers volunteered a reply she considered the proposition ruled out of court, but after coffee had been served it was necessary to retire to her room to write an order to the stores, and upon her return, lo! the room was empty, the French windows stood apart, and in and out between the bushes of the knoll passed a shimmer of golden light.Katrine’s first sensation was one of shocked surprise at the recklessness of garden promenades in a costly new gown, her second an impulse to go out in her turn, and make one of a party to enjoy the fragrant dusk. She had gathered up her skirts, was on the point of stepping through the window, when like a dart came the remembrance of Grizel’s words, her avowed dislike to “sharing a man”; of Martin’s evident agreement. She drew back, seated herself on the nearest chair, and digested the unwelcome thought.They would not want her! They had probably chosen the moment when she was out of the room to start on their ramble alone. If she were to join them now, her presence would form the proverbial “trumpery.”Katrine could have understood it, could have sympathised frankly if it had been a case of love; lovers naturally wished to be alone, but Martin and Grizel were merely friends, not even intimate friends, since Grizel’s visits had come at long intervals during the past years. They could have no sweet secrets to discuss.Sitting alone in the room looking out into the dusk, a memory darted back out of the years. Just so had she sat during her first visit to the house, in that brief summer of Martin’s wedlock. She had been a young girl then, lately released from school. She recalled anew the loneliness which had fallen upon her, while Martin and Juliet roamed the garden paths, and she sat alone, listening to the soft burst of laughter, watching the flit of the white dress.A white dress, ghost-like, transparent; a light, slight thing, as befitted the youthful wearer. Grizel’s dress was gold; it flashed an opulent orange and red. There was nothing ghostly about it; it was warm, and human, and alive. It drew the eye with an irresistible allure.How could he! How could he! Along the very paths which he had paced with Juliet. Beside the flowers which her hands had planted! Once again Katrine suffered the pang, the repulsion. All these years she had suffered at the sight of Martin sorrowful and lonely, now—mysterious, but incontrovertible fact!—she suffered afresh at the sight of him consoled.Without, in the garden, Grizel was flitting from tree to tree like a big gold moth, bending her head to drink in the heavy perfume. The curve of the neck, the curve of the cheek half hidden against the leaves, the reed-like figure bent low from the waist, they were the very epitome of grace.“Martin! Martin! I must have some of these to take up to my room. There’s magic in the scent of red roses... real country roses, living on their own stems. It has something different from all other scents. These are the trees which little Juliet planted? How sweet she was that day, when they were planted, and she was so happy, so dirty, like a pretty child in her big pinafore! Theyoughtto be sweet!”Martin winced. He did not reply, but taking a knife from his pocket cut off one or two of the best blooms, carefully pruning the thronged stems. For the first months after Juliet’s death her name had been continually on his lips, he had loved to talk about her, to hear her discussed; later on the reference had become rarer, more strained; now for years it had been avoided as elaborately as though it had belonged to a criminal, a prodigal. The young fair face still hung on the walls, but in the house where she had lived no one mentioned Juliet’s name. Only Grizel, an outsider, talked of her still, naturally, simply, with a transparent pleasure in the remembrance.Martin was not sure whether the reference more pleased or jarred. Yes! he remembered! He should never forget that bright autumn day, the laughing crowd of spectators, the picture of his girl wife in her short garden skirt, waving her spade in triumph. He could never forget, but the personal significance had faded. There seemed little connection between himself and that boyish bridegroom; it was an effort to realise that that sweet child had truly been his wife.The present moment seemed far more real, more vital. Himself, the man, occupied with the matured work of life; Grizel, the woman, instinct with the lure of her sex. He held the roses towards her that she might enjoy their fragrance, and for a minute they stood in silence, side by side. Then Grizel raised her head, and looked into his face with a long, penetrating glance. This was the real moment of their meeting, and both silently recognised it as such.“How goes it, Martin?” she asked in her soft rich voice. “How goes it?”“Haltingly, Grizel, haltingly!” his smile flickered, and died out. “We’ll talk of that presently; you are the one person to whom Icantalk on that subject, but first of all there is something else. Prisoner at the Bar.—Why don’t you like my book?”His voice was gentle, bantering, almost tender in tone. There was not the faintest touch of offence, but Grizel’s discomfiture was as naïve and undisguised as that of a child.“Martin! you said that we were not to discuss—”“Not in public; not at meals, not even before Katrine, but certainly when we are alone. There’s no getting out of it, Grizel. You said nothing, it was only a tone, but as it happens I understand your tones. The book may run through a dozen editions, but for you it has failed. Why?”She stood before him, slim and straight, her face puckered in thought.“I—don’t—know! Everything,—or was it nothing, Martin?”“Can I help you to find out? A few leading questions perhaps... Is it clever?”“Very clever.”“Original?”“Original!”“Interesting?”“Quite interesting.”“Clever, original, and interesting, and already in its third edition! What would you have more, Mistress Critic?”Grizel lifted her right hand, and lightly tapped her heart.“Clever, interesting, original, but it didn’ttouch! The craft is good, Martin; you are a skilful workman—I think you grow more and more skilful, but—”“Go on, Grizel; don’t be afraid. Tell me the whole truth.”Grizel faced him in silence. It was not often that so grave and thoughtful an air was seen upon her sparkling face. Her eyes gazed past his, far away into the night.“Once,” she said dreamily, “there was a painter. He painted marvellous pictures, but it was the depth and tone of his colouring which made him celebrated over all the world. And of all his colours there was one in particular which appeared in all his pictures, and the secret of which his fellow-artists tried in vain to discover. It was a red, Martin, a red so rich, so warm, sokindled, that all who beheld it felt warmed in their souls, and his fellow-artists questioned and pondered, and tried in vain to produce the same glow upon their own canvases—and the years passed, and they grew old and weary, and still they failed. At last one day the great man died, and those who tended him for his burial were amazed to find a wound, anopenwound, above his heart. And then at last they understood. The red of his pictures, the glow which had warmed the world, had been painted with his own blood!”There was silence in the garden. The scent of roses hung heavy upon the air.“And I,” said Martin slowly. “I write inink.”Grizel made no reply. She turned from the rose-bed, and passed along a winding path which led round the herbaceous border to the slope of the orchard beyond. It was a narrow path, too narrow for two to walk in line, so that Martin, following, could not see her face. It was like Grizel, he reflected, to have chosen that path at this moment. She divined that he could speak more openly unseen.“And even, Grizel, if I wrote in your painter’s medium, my reds would have no glow! One cannot give out what one does not possess. While I am cold myself, how can I give out warmth? It is so long, Grizel, since my heart was warm!”A sigh floated back to his ears.“Pauvre!” breathed the deep voice, but she did not turn her head; the gleaming figure flitted before him down the darkening path.“I flattered myself that I had made a brave pretence. It was a good enough sham to delude the world, but You have found me out. Don’t think that I regret it—I am thankful to Heaven thatsome oneunderstands. To be praised for what one knows to be false is a bitter pill. Sometimes I wonder, shall I throw it all up? Settle down comfortably into the rut, and—grow roses! I could grow good roses, Grizel; the best of their kind. There would be no need to be ashamed.”In the twilight he saw her shake her head. A fold of the golden robe escaped her hands, and trailed on the ground. They stooped together to lift it up, and she smiled up at him with her sweet gay smile.“But you couldn’t, Martin; you couldn’t do it! You might make a hundred resolutions, but you’d begin again. There’s no escape that way, dear man. You must write, as you must breathe, therefore it follows that you must get warm. Chills are depressing things, but they are dangerous only when they are allowed to settle. This old house of yours has its back to the sun.”“I can read your parable, Grizel, but circumstances—like houses—are not easily turned round. Life has made chains for me from which I cannot escape. Katrine—”“I rather—suspect,” interrupted Grizel drawling, “that Katrine’s chains are slackening! Some one, or something, has been supplying the oil. Another creak or two and she will be breaking loose, and going off at a tangent which will surprise your innocent mind!”“Symbols again! I don’t follow so easily this time, but if the signs are good, I am uncommonly thankful. I can talk openly to you, Grizel, for you won’t misunderstand. Katrine is—on my mind! Perhaps it would be more honest if I said on mynerves! I’ve a suspicion that I’m on her nerves also, and the mischief of it is, that things are growing worse. There’s nothing definitely wrong, and yet there’s—everything! I feel an utter brute.”To his astonishment, to his relief, Grizel laughed; a blithe and comfortable laugh. They had reached the summit of the orchard by this time, and had paused to look down at the twinkling lights of the village before turning back to the house.“Poor, dear, conventional brute! Am I expected to be shocked? I’m not one bit, and I can’t pretend to be. It’s not your fault, and it’s not Katrine’s. You have both done your laborious bests to accomplish something that has never been accomplished by effort since the world began, and you are both overcome with Remorse because it has failed. I’d like to present you with a putty medal apiece to the memory of a successful failure. You have lived together, two utter strangers, who happen to have been born brother and sister, for eight long years without once descending to violence. It’s magnificent, it’s incredible! You ought to be intoxicated with pride! It’s the most unique quality on earth which enables two people to live in happiness and understanding, and what constitutes it, the dickens only knows. We’ve got it,—my old Buddy and I. We are at opposite ends of the poles, we can on occasions quarrel like cats, but in the main we understand; wefit! You and Katrine don’t touch within miles. There’s no credit, there’s no blame. Fate placed us together, not choice. I have succeeded because—please realise this!—I didn’t needto try. You, poor lambs, have tried away what little chance you had. It is affectation to pretend that it is your fault. The only blame would be to go on living in a false condition.”“I know it, I know it! I’ve been feeling it more and more strongly. It’s not fair to Katrine; it’s not fair to me or to my work. But what can I do? I brought her here, she has given up her youth to looking after me, there’s no other home open, to her—I don’t pretend that her happiness is bound up in mine, but shethinksthat it is, and that’s virtually the same thing. She would feel desperately aggrieved—”“Oh, you unselfish people, there’s no dealing with you!” Grizel shrugged impatiently. “Lether feel aggrieved! If it’s a case of smarting for a week, or freezing for life, then let hersmart! Can’t you make up your mind just for once in your life to speak the bold, blatant truth? ‘Katrine, my dear, we are getting sick of each other—let’s cut it, and part! I’ll give you an allowance—go off and pay visits, or set up a crib of your own, enjoy yourself in your own way, but for Heaven’s sake let me be happy too!’”Martin shook his head.“I couldn’t, Grizel; I couldn’t! It may be the right thing to do, but I’m a coward. I can’t face it. Not that way!”Grizel looked at him whimsically. Men—the best of men, were so apt to believe that so long as the words were not actually spoken, their feelings remained concealed. And woman,—the pity of it!—could read the meaning of a sign. This woman already had read the signs. Undoubtedly, inevitably, a change was at hand!
When Grizel sailed down to dinner two hours later, it would have been difficult to recognise in her the pallid traveller of the afternoon. She was gorgeously attired in a robe of golden net covered with an embroidery of the same hue. The golden sheaf clung round her, and trailed heavily on the ground; encased in it her body appeared of an incredible slimness, yet from head to foot there was not one angle, not one harsh, unlovely line. Nymph, elf, fay, she was all rounded curve and dimple, from satin shoulder to arched and tiny feet. Though one might marvel that a human being could live in such wand-like form,thinwas a word which could never occur. Grizel was no more thin than Katrine herself. Her soft, mouse-brown hair was waved loosely back, and twisted in a fashion which preserved the shape of the head,—a rare and wonderful sight at a time when nine women out of ten carried a cushion-like appendage standing out many inches behind the ear. Grizel was too wise to disguise herself by any such freak of fashion; an artist would have noted with delight that she invariably respected the natural “line” of the body. Neck and arms were bare of ornament, her cheeks were still pale, but with a warm, cream-like tint which had no trace of ill-health, her honey-coloured eyes reflected the golden lights of her dress. The scarlet lips made the one contrasting note of colour.
Katrine stared blankly at the entrance of the apparition, the inevitable admiration largely tinged with reproach. How ridiculous, and unsuitable, and altogether Grizelish to choose such a dress for a quiet home evening! It was probably the first that had come to her hand, and she had put it on without a thought. When there was a dinner party, and the most important people in the neighbourhood were assembled to meet her, she would just as likely as not appear in a simple muslin. Katrine had lived through such experiences before, and had suffered much aggravation thereby. She stared with exaggerated surprise, whereupon Grizel gurgled, quick to appreciate the criticism.
“Yes, ma’am. Myverybest! Ain’t I a pr-etty ittle did?”
“It would be very suitable for a Court ball. What possessed you to put it on to-night?”
“I felt like it,—in a golden mood! I always dress to suit my moods. Besides it’s quite new, and the dear thing wanted its turn. It is my Sheba dress, but you aren’t nearly so appreciative as Aunt Griselda.Shebowed down before me.”
“I’m not going to bow down, but it’s a marvellous frock!” Katrine felt a depressing consciousness of the shabby black net which had done duty for home wear for several winters in succession, and woman-like reflected with a pang that the price of that golden sheaf would probably equal that of her entire summer outfit. How would it feel to own a fairy purse, and bid Paquin do his best?
For a moment she was rent with envy, then curiosity claimed its day. She crossed the room, and peered with awe and admiration at the elaborateness of the dress, the chiffon skirts poised one upon another, which softened the glare of the satin slip, the exquisite design of the embroidery, the rare and varied beads with which it was intermingled.
“Grizel—what gorgeousness! Every bead is a treasure. It must have taken months to work. And on a piece of perishable net. I havereadabout such things, but I’ve never seen them... Mrs Brewston would read you a lesson on wanton extravagance—”
“Decadence,” interrupted Grizel firmly. “You mustalwayscall it decadence. And I should perfectly agree. But the poor lambs had embroidered it, so some onehadto pay, and Aunt Griselda might as well do it as any one else. I wouldn’t have dreamed ofgivingthe order!”
“Humbug! Quibbler!—Is there any possible way of getting into it, or do you wriggle in at the neck? There’s nothing of you, my dear, but you are modelled so considerately—plump in the right places! ... The sleeves are a trifle attenuated, don’t you think?”
“Perhaps they are, but it’s the fault of my arms. Theyareso pretty! Look at that ikkle, ikkle dimple... You wouldn’t have the heart to hide it!” returned Grizel, shutting one eye so as to peer with the other at the soft, infantile dents above the elbow. In praise or blame she was always markedly honest as regarded her own appearance. Even when Martin made his appearance at the door, and came to the sudden stand as if dazzled by the glittering apparition in the middle of the dark room, Grizel seemed to see no reason for changing her pose, but continued to peer and to crane with undiminished interest.
“I’m showing Katrine a bonnie wee dimple... This side, to the west! I can just peer at it like this, but it’s beautiful viewed from the side, I wear my sleeve cut short ‘a pupos.’ ... This is the dress that the Duck wears, Martin, the night she’s engaged. He hadn’t intended to speak so soon, but when he saw her in it he couldn’t resist—”
“I’m sure he couldn’t—!”
Martin’s echo came back with what his sister considered a painful banality. She flinched before it, as at a desecration. When one is accustomed to regard a man as seated on a permanent pinnacle of grief, it is a shock to find him condescending to the ordinary barter of compliment, but Martin was oblivious of her frown, for Grizel had opened her closed eye, and peered upward into his face with her sweet, lazy smile.
He gave her his arm, led her in to dinner, arranged her chair, and groped under the table for a footstool, leaving Katrine to follow, alone and unnoticed. Never in all the years they had lived together had he thought of a footstool for his sister’s feet! As there was only one of these articles in common use, she was obliged to do without the ordinary support, and the feeling of discomfort lasted throughout the meal.
The curtains were undrawn, leaving a vista of garden sloping upward to the knoll, the low panelled room was already dim, and the table was lighted by candles in tall silver stands. A bowl of beautifully cut old glass was piled high with roses, and the meal was dainty and well chosen, for Katrine was on her mettle before Grizel’s quizzical eyes. Martin sat at the head of the table; he had the long thin face, the deep-set eyes, the sensitive lips, which carry the mind instinctively to the days of old. For him a stock and a fob would have seemed more appropriate than twentieth-century attire. His eyes looked particularly dark to-night; he held himself buoyantly erect.
Grizel rested both elbows on the table, and began feeding herself with fragments of bread, before the soup was served.
“Excuse my bad manners. They’resofashionable!” she mumbled in explanation. She attacked her soup with a zest which one would hardly have expected from so fragile a creature, and took little part in the conversation until it was finished. Then once more she rested her elbows on the table, and smiled across at her host.
“And so,” she said lazily, “to-morrow is the Duke’s bean-feast. It’s no end of a way, isn’t it? How do we go?”
“Martin has engaged a car. Several neighbours wanted us to share, and it was really quite a blessing to be able to refuse. Last year we went with the Morlands, and they stuck to us like glue to the bitter end. This time we shall be free.”
“We three, and a second man. Who is the second man?”
“We three, andnoother man!”
Grizel dropped her hands on to the table, and stared with distended eyes.
“But, my child, how absurd. I’m the most unexacting of critters but I make it a principle, never to share a man! Theremustbe an odd bachelor in the neighbourhood who’d be glad of a lift! A presentable, flirtable creature to make up the four!”
The youthful parlour-maid jerked at the sound of that second adjective, and scurried from the room, soup plates in hand, leaving Katrine to whisper hasty reprisals.
“Grizel, please! Wait until afterwards. It’s a young girl I am training. She belongs to the Y.W.C.A.”
Grizel’s stare changed to a smile.
“I don’t object, dear. I really don’t. So long as she’s pleased, I assure you I won’t let it makeanydifference!”
“But that’s just what I want it to do! Do please be sensible until dinner is over, and for mercy’s sake don’t talk about flirts. She’ll be so shocked.”
“Then she’ll be the first Y.W. I’ve ever met whowas. And I don’t believe she will, neither. There’s a tilt to her cap—”
The door opened to admit the Y.W., bearing in her hands the fish, and on her face that expression of concentrated vacuity which denotes acute curiosity. Every householder has suffered such moments, and knows by experience the painful pause which ensues before one of the diners bursts vivaciously into impersonalities, but to-day there was no pause. Grizel was too nimble-witted to permit such discomfiture. There was not the slightest break in the continuity of her speech, her words flowed on in a smooth unbroken stream.
”—The which I take to typify a certain temperamental tendency towards the ornate, coupled with a desire to please, and be appreciated by those whom Providence has appointed lords among us, against which tendency all the restrictions of that admirable society—”
“Grizel! Idiot! Eat your fish. You talk too much!”
Martin had burst into a roar of laughter, in which Katrine perforce was obliged to join. The Y.W. marched stolidly round the table. She was by no means so dense as she appeared, was perfectly aware that the visitor had been reproved in her absence, and suspected a personal application in the long-winded speech. She disappeared in search of sauce, and to report the progress of events to the eager cook.
“I’ll make a compact with you,” whispered Grizel eagerly. “I’ll talk like a tract to the end of my stay, if you can induce hernotto puff down my back! Principles I respect, but draughts I abhor. Just make it perfectly clear!” ...
The Y.W. returned, and puffed vigorously the while she handed the sauce, whereat Katrine suffered a moment of acute suspense, but Grizel only wriggled her white shoulders, and remarked sweetly:
“Chill, isn’t it, for the time of year!”
Katrine hastily turned the conversation.
“Grizel, did you know that Martin’s last book is already in its third edition?”
“No. Is it? How very good.”
The words were irreproachable but there was something lacking in the tone. Katrine frowned, Martin looked across the table at the sparkling golden figure, who sat with head on one side, and brows arched, like a penitent child asking for forgiveness. Their eyes met, and he smiled in reassuring sweetness.
“Martin’s books are a forbidden topic at Martin’s table. After dinner, Grizel, I’ll take you to see my roses. They are much more interesting.”
“In that dress! In those slippers!” gasped Katrine outraged. As neither of her hearers volunteered a reply she considered the proposition ruled out of court, but after coffee had been served it was necessary to retire to her room to write an order to the stores, and upon her return, lo! the room was empty, the French windows stood apart, and in and out between the bushes of the knoll passed a shimmer of golden light.
Katrine’s first sensation was one of shocked surprise at the recklessness of garden promenades in a costly new gown, her second an impulse to go out in her turn, and make one of a party to enjoy the fragrant dusk. She had gathered up her skirts, was on the point of stepping through the window, when like a dart came the remembrance of Grizel’s words, her avowed dislike to “sharing a man”; of Martin’s evident agreement. She drew back, seated herself on the nearest chair, and digested the unwelcome thought.
They would not want her! They had probably chosen the moment when she was out of the room to start on their ramble alone. If she were to join them now, her presence would form the proverbial “trumpery.”
Katrine could have understood it, could have sympathised frankly if it had been a case of love; lovers naturally wished to be alone, but Martin and Grizel were merely friends, not even intimate friends, since Grizel’s visits had come at long intervals during the past years. They could have no sweet secrets to discuss.
Sitting alone in the room looking out into the dusk, a memory darted back out of the years. Just so had she sat during her first visit to the house, in that brief summer of Martin’s wedlock. She had been a young girl then, lately released from school. She recalled anew the loneliness which had fallen upon her, while Martin and Juliet roamed the garden paths, and she sat alone, listening to the soft burst of laughter, watching the flit of the white dress.
A white dress, ghost-like, transparent; a light, slight thing, as befitted the youthful wearer. Grizel’s dress was gold; it flashed an opulent orange and red. There was nothing ghostly about it; it was warm, and human, and alive. It drew the eye with an irresistible allure.
How could he! How could he! Along the very paths which he had paced with Juliet. Beside the flowers which her hands had planted! Once again Katrine suffered the pang, the repulsion. All these years she had suffered at the sight of Martin sorrowful and lonely, now—mysterious, but incontrovertible fact!—she suffered afresh at the sight of him consoled.
Without, in the garden, Grizel was flitting from tree to tree like a big gold moth, bending her head to drink in the heavy perfume. The curve of the neck, the curve of the cheek half hidden against the leaves, the reed-like figure bent low from the waist, they were the very epitome of grace.
“Martin! Martin! I must have some of these to take up to my room. There’s magic in the scent of red roses... real country roses, living on their own stems. It has something different from all other scents. These are the trees which little Juliet planted? How sweet she was that day, when they were planted, and she was so happy, so dirty, like a pretty child in her big pinafore! Theyoughtto be sweet!”
Martin winced. He did not reply, but taking a knife from his pocket cut off one or two of the best blooms, carefully pruning the thronged stems. For the first months after Juliet’s death her name had been continually on his lips, he had loved to talk about her, to hear her discussed; later on the reference had become rarer, more strained; now for years it had been avoided as elaborately as though it had belonged to a criminal, a prodigal. The young fair face still hung on the walls, but in the house where she had lived no one mentioned Juliet’s name. Only Grizel, an outsider, talked of her still, naturally, simply, with a transparent pleasure in the remembrance.
Martin was not sure whether the reference more pleased or jarred. Yes! he remembered! He should never forget that bright autumn day, the laughing crowd of spectators, the picture of his girl wife in her short garden skirt, waving her spade in triumph. He could never forget, but the personal significance had faded. There seemed little connection between himself and that boyish bridegroom; it was an effort to realise that that sweet child had truly been his wife.
The present moment seemed far more real, more vital. Himself, the man, occupied with the matured work of life; Grizel, the woman, instinct with the lure of her sex. He held the roses towards her that she might enjoy their fragrance, and for a minute they stood in silence, side by side. Then Grizel raised her head, and looked into his face with a long, penetrating glance. This was the real moment of their meeting, and both silently recognised it as such.
“How goes it, Martin?” she asked in her soft rich voice. “How goes it?”
“Haltingly, Grizel, haltingly!” his smile flickered, and died out. “We’ll talk of that presently; you are the one person to whom Icantalk on that subject, but first of all there is something else. Prisoner at the Bar.—Why don’t you like my book?”
His voice was gentle, bantering, almost tender in tone. There was not the faintest touch of offence, but Grizel’s discomfiture was as naïve and undisguised as that of a child.
“Martin! you said that we were not to discuss—”
“Not in public; not at meals, not even before Katrine, but certainly when we are alone. There’s no getting out of it, Grizel. You said nothing, it was only a tone, but as it happens I understand your tones. The book may run through a dozen editions, but for you it has failed. Why?”
She stood before him, slim and straight, her face puckered in thought.
“I—don’t—know! Everything,—or was it nothing, Martin?”
“Can I help you to find out? A few leading questions perhaps... Is it clever?”
“Very clever.”
“Original?”
“Original!”
“Interesting?”
“Quite interesting.”
“Clever, original, and interesting, and already in its third edition! What would you have more, Mistress Critic?”
Grizel lifted her right hand, and lightly tapped her heart.
“Clever, interesting, original, but it didn’ttouch! The craft is good, Martin; you are a skilful workman—I think you grow more and more skilful, but—”
“Go on, Grizel; don’t be afraid. Tell me the whole truth.”
Grizel faced him in silence. It was not often that so grave and thoughtful an air was seen upon her sparkling face. Her eyes gazed past his, far away into the night.
“Once,” she said dreamily, “there was a painter. He painted marvellous pictures, but it was the depth and tone of his colouring which made him celebrated over all the world. And of all his colours there was one in particular which appeared in all his pictures, and the secret of which his fellow-artists tried in vain to discover. It was a red, Martin, a red so rich, so warm, sokindled, that all who beheld it felt warmed in their souls, and his fellow-artists questioned and pondered, and tried in vain to produce the same glow upon their own canvases—and the years passed, and they grew old and weary, and still they failed. At last one day the great man died, and those who tended him for his burial were amazed to find a wound, anopenwound, above his heart. And then at last they understood. The red of his pictures, the glow which had warmed the world, had been painted with his own blood!”
There was silence in the garden. The scent of roses hung heavy upon the air.
“And I,” said Martin slowly. “I write inink.”
Grizel made no reply. She turned from the rose-bed, and passed along a winding path which led round the herbaceous border to the slope of the orchard beyond. It was a narrow path, too narrow for two to walk in line, so that Martin, following, could not see her face. It was like Grizel, he reflected, to have chosen that path at this moment. She divined that he could speak more openly unseen.
“And even, Grizel, if I wrote in your painter’s medium, my reds would have no glow! One cannot give out what one does not possess. While I am cold myself, how can I give out warmth? It is so long, Grizel, since my heart was warm!”
A sigh floated back to his ears.
“Pauvre!” breathed the deep voice, but she did not turn her head; the gleaming figure flitted before him down the darkening path.
“I flattered myself that I had made a brave pretence. It was a good enough sham to delude the world, but You have found me out. Don’t think that I regret it—I am thankful to Heaven thatsome oneunderstands. To be praised for what one knows to be false is a bitter pill. Sometimes I wonder, shall I throw it all up? Settle down comfortably into the rut, and—grow roses! I could grow good roses, Grizel; the best of their kind. There would be no need to be ashamed.”
In the twilight he saw her shake her head. A fold of the golden robe escaped her hands, and trailed on the ground. They stooped together to lift it up, and she smiled up at him with her sweet gay smile.
“But you couldn’t, Martin; you couldn’t do it! You might make a hundred resolutions, but you’d begin again. There’s no escape that way, dear man. You must write, as you must breathe, therefore it follows that you must get warm. Chills are depressing things, but they are dangerous only when they are allowed to settle. This old house of yours has its back to the sun.”
“I can read your parable, Grizel, but circumstances—like houses—are not easily turned round. Life has made chains for me from which I cannot escape. Katrine—”
“I rather—suspect,” interrupted Grizel drawling, “that Katrine’s chains are slackening! Some one, or something, has been supplying the oil. Another creak or two and she will be breaking loose, and going off at a tangent which will surprise your innocent mind!”
“Symbols again! I don’t follow so easily this time, but if the signs are good, I am uncommonly thankful. I can talk openly to you, Grizel, for you won’t misunderstand. Katrine is—on my mind! Perhaps it would be more honest if I said on mynerves! I’ve a suspicion that I’m on her nerves also, and the mischief of it is, that things are growing worse. There’s nothing definitely wrong, and yet there’s—everything! I feel an utter brute.”
To his astonishment, to his relief, Grizel laughed; a blithe and comfortable laugh. They had reached the summit of the orchard by this time, and had paused to look down at the twinkling lights of the village before turning back to the house.
“Poor, dear, conventional brute! Am I expected to be shocked? I’m not one bit, and I can’t pretend to be. It’s not your fault, and it’s not Katrine’s. You have both done your laborious bests to accomplish something that has never been accomplished by effort since the world began, and you are both overcome with Remorse because it has failed. I’d like to present you with a putty medal apiece to the memory of a successful failure. You have lived together, two utter strangers, who happen to have been born brother and sister, for eight long years without once descending to violence. It’s magnificent, it’s incredible! You ought to be intoxicated with pride! It’s the most unique quality on earth which enables two people to live in happiness and understanding, and what constitutes it, the dickens only knows. We’ve got it,—my old Buddy and I. We are at opposite ends of the poles, we can on occasions quarrel like cats, but in the main we understand; wefit! You and Katrine don’t touch within miles. There’s no credit, there’s no blame. Fate placed us together, not choice. I have succeeded because—please realise this!—I didn’t needto try. You, poor lambs, have tried away what little chance you had. It is affectation to pretend that it is your fault. The only blame would be to go on living in a false condition.”
“I know it, I know it! I’ve been feeling it more and more strongly. It’s not fair to Katrine; it’s not fair to me or to my work. But what can I do? I brought her here, she has given up her youth to looking after me, there’s no other home open, to her—I don’t pretend that her happiness is bound up in mine, but shethinksthat it is, and that’s virtually the same thing. She would feel desperately aggrieved—”
“Oh, you unselfish people, there’s no dealing with you!” Grizel shrugged impatiently. “Lether feel aggrieved! If it’s a case of smarting for a week, or freezing for life, then let hersmart! Can’t you make up your mind just for once in your life to speak the bold, blatant truth? ‘Katrine, my dear, we are getting sick of each other—let’s cut it, and part! I’ll give you an allowance—go off and pay visits, or set up a crib of your own, enjoy yourself in your own way, but for Heaven’s sake let me be happy too!’”
Martin shook his head.
“I couldn’t, Grizel; I couldn’t! It may be the right thing to do, but I’m a coward. I can’t face it. Not that way!”
Grizel looked at him whimsically. Men—the best of men, were so apt to believe that so long as the words were not actually spoken, their feelings remained concealed. And woman,—the pity of it!—could read the meaning of a sign. This woman already had read the signs. Undoubtedly, inevitably, a change was at hand!