The last three days of their stay in Paris were marked by a return on the part of Thornton to his old devotion. He declined invitations ruthlessly, spent almost the whole of his time with his wife. In all outward and visible signs they were lovers again, but the inward and spiritual grace was a bit vapoury. They went on excursions together, to Fontainebleau, Melun, Passy. One day they wandered about the forest of Vincennes and he kissed her beneath the trees as he used to do at Bordighera. They had gay, laughing meals together at little riverside restaurants. He was passionate in his expressions of endearment and in his delight at her beauty. With the negative tact of passion, he avoided all subjects that could jar upon her. For three days he was the Thornton of their honeymoon.
Clytie at first could not understand this sudden change. She asked him the reason tremulously.
“Can't you see, you silly girl,” he replied with masterful frankness, “that I love you and we have only three more days' idleness?”
And then she let the spell come over her again and surrendered herself to his mood. But now, instead of entering with spontaneous joy a world of laughter whose magic gates lay open before her, she crossed the threshold with deliberate step. She had to choose whether to laugh or cry. She was young, she wanted to love her husband; so she chose to laugh. It was an act of reason. But woe to love when reason has to find its argument!
By Whitsuntide they were in London, installed in their house in the Cromwell Road. The three days' passion had cooled down, and the atmosphere was colder than before. But Clytie for several weeks was so busy that she had not time for much consideration of troubling questions. First, the house required her attention. There was much supplementary furniture to be chosen, many minor schemes of decoration to be carried out in accordance with her own artistic tastes.
Thornton gave her a free hand in these matters, and, beyond taking it for granted that the house should be fitly arranged, never troubled himself about details. He attended two or three picture sales with Clytie, where he bought a few pictures on her recommendation, ordered some great leather armchairs for his smoking-room, and then transferred his attention to concerns of more serious interest. So Clytie, left unhampered, succeeded in arranging the house to her own satisfaction. This occupied a great portion of her time; the rest was almost entirely devoted to her social duties.
She found herself in some small position in society, as the artistic wife of a distinguished soldier of fortune with a considerable income, and it was Thornton's special ambition for the time being that this position should be maintained and secured, in furtherance of his own personal projects. Whilst contemplating marriage, or rather after he had, in his fierce impetuous way, decided upon it, he had sought around after some practical interest in his new life. He had forsworn Africa, with a virtuous sense of self-sacrifice. What remained worthy of a man's serious attention? He did not consult Clytie. It scarcely occurred to him that the subject concerned her. Of the few careers that presented themselves he selected two, the turf and politics, and wavered for some time in his choice. At last he tossed up for it, as he had often done at the fork of two paths in the forest. The coin came down with the Queen's head uppermost—and that meant politics. He was a Tory of the fiercer school. Even if family and professional tradition had not influenced him, a lengthy course of despotic authority enforced by the halter and the butt end of a musket is not favourable to the cultivation of Liberal suavities and amenities. And again, the “type” is almost always Tory. He was even out of touch with the broader Conservativism of our day, between which and modern Liberalism he failed to appreciate the distinction. In fact his political ideals, such as they were, belonged to the beginning instead of the end of the century, but he expressed them with a fervour that left no doubt as to their genuineness.
He had no difficulty in setting at work the machinery of social influence, and the result was the offer of a private-secretaryship on the part of an under-secretary of state. He accepted it. It would not only afford him an insight into the practical working of politics, but would give him an opportunity of making himself known to the chiefs of the Conservative party and securing their influence when he should seek to enter Parliament. When everything was settled he informed Clytie casually in Paris of his new ambitions. She, too, had wondered what outlet this man of restless action would find for his energies, and, shrinking from inquiry, had been filled with vague uneasiness. Now she felt that he had made a worthy choice and in spite of dubious encouragement strove to identify herself with his interests. True, she contemplated with a little dismay the abandonment of her own pet social theories, which tended towards an advanced and somewhat inchoate Radicalism, and the espousal of a cause forming part of a scheme of life against which she had so passionately rebelled. But she wilfully, almost desperately, shut her eyes against all this. She would give her heart and soul to Thornton's glory, and the sacrifice of principle on her part would only accentuate the triumph. But this sacrifice Thornton did not concern himself to realise. Very few men ever do. As we have seen, he laughed at it.
He entered upon his political duties as soon as they returned to London, led a busy life of work and pleasure, throwing into both the energy of his strong vitality. He was not a man to wait. Social position, power, must be wrested from the world by force of arms. The sooner the struggle began and the fiercer it was fought the sooner would come success. It behoved Clytie, therefore, to enter upon it with him at once. Before she could realise herself as mistress of a large house, as cut off from the old habits that had invested London with earnest charm, as sundered from Kent and Winifred, as deprived of her art and her dreams and ambition, she found herself caught up in the whirl of London society, bidden to cultivate its conventions, flatter its weaknesses, intrigue, gossip, dance, drive, rush, without a moment's pause to think.
And thus began her new life. It was not the one she had dreamed of. In fact she hardly recognised herself in her deliberate subordination to a nature dominating hers. She let herself drift, abandoning herself to the current, clutching hold of her love towards her husband as the only plank saving her from destruction.
Winifred she saw occasionally. She had no time for anything beyond a half hour's gossip, and then she forgot her own hopes and fears in the happiness of her friend, who had just become engaged to Treherne. She saw nothing of Kent. A feeling she could not analyse restrained her from writing to him, ever so formally. It was analogous to the whimsical shrinking from sketching his portrait when she had first met him. She heard of him, however, through Winifred. He came down to the studio still occasionally, and chatted over the teacups—“chiefly about you, dear,” said Winifred, “and the old days and your present life.”
“And is he changed at all?” asked Clytie. “It seems centuries since those same old days. I feel almost like asking whether he has a gray head and carries his years well!”
“It does seem a long time,” said Winifred reflectively. “But it really isn't, you know, and Kent is just the same as ever. His trip abroad has done him so much good. Do you know, dear, except Victor—and Mr. Hammerdyke, of course—I think he is the best man in all the world.”
Her brown cheeks flushed as she spoke, and Clytie bent down and kissed them.
“Oh, Winnie darling, I wish everybody were as true and loyal as you,” she said.
A great sob was in her heart, and she would have given much to have buried her face in Winnie's lap and let the tears come how they would. But she mastered herself, and before the other had time to hear the echo of the chord that was struck she went on:
“Tell me, Winnie, how is his great work getting on?”
“Rapidly, I believe,” answered Winifred. “He seems to have nothing else to live for now. I think he misses you, dear, and plunges into it as a kind of consolation. He has had a great compliment paid him—have you heard? He met a great Austrian scientist, Herr ————, I can't remember his name—it doesn't matter. Anyhow, he showed this professor his work, and talked to him about the difficulties of publishing, expense, and all that, and a few days ago he received an offer from the University of Vienna to translate what was already done into German and publish it there. He says it is a most distinguished honour.”
“I am so glad, dear,” said Clytie. “I feel proud of him, and I wish I could see him—to give him my congratulations. You will tell him that I asked after him, won't you, Winnie?”
“Why, of course!” said Winifred. “Don't we always talk of you?”
Mrs. Blather was anxious that Clytie and her husband should come to Durdleham to stay there after the season in town was over. But Clytie replied evasively to the affectionate invitation. She shrank from Durdleham even more than from herself. Mrs. Blather, now that the soreness as regards the wedding had worn off, was delighted at the brilliant match—just the very marriage one could have wished for Clytie, as she remarked over the Durdleham tea tables. Besides, it was definite settling down for Clytie, saving them from that shadow of scandal that had always seemed liable to be cast over them through her unprincipled behaviour. There were no longer any fears. And Mrs. Blather had her own little triumph in another way. She remembered now she had prophesied years ago that Clytie's desire to live her art life in London was a craze that would not last long—like Janet's transient enthusiasm for cookery classes. Both Janet and herself took it for granted that Clytie viewed her past errors with the same indulgent retrospective smile, and wrote her complacent letters based on this assumption. And Clytie found it harder than ever to write to them naturally, to answer these letters in the same tone. If her sisters had failed to understand her when to her her young, earnest self was brightly intelligible, how could they do it now when she saw herself vaguely, dimly, wrapped in impenetrable vapours? A visit to Durdleham, under the circumstances, seemed almost an ordeal. Yet Thornton's presence there might make some difference.
She spoke to him very little on the subject. He broached it himself one day at breakfast, almost the only time now, except late at night, that she saw him alone. It was nearing the end of July and the session of Parliament was on the eve of closing.
“When are you going to see your people, Clytie?” he asked, looking over his paper.
“I thought I had told you. They want us to come for a week as soon as we can leave town.”
“Us?”
“Yes; won't you come?”
“Oh, no, thanks. It would not suit me at all. You go and make an excuse for me.”
“Things are not gay there, I know,” said Clytie, “but I should like you to come with me.”
“It can't be done, my dear,” replied Thornton. “You had better have a quiet time there by yourself, while I go up to Scotland——”
“I thought you would have liked me to go to Scotland with you—we have seen so little of each other lately. You don't want to stay up there all the autumn without me?” she added half pathetically.
“Why, my dear Clytie, you can come if you like,” said her husband, drawing back his chair from the table. “Only you won't find much fun in a little shooting-box in the middle of a glen in the Highlands. Look: you go and see your people for a month, and then, if you like, you can come and join me there—that is to say, if Carteret has any of his women folks staying in the house, which does not seem to be quite settled yet. If he hasn't, naturally you can't come.”
“In that case I shall not go to Durdleham—I couldn't. You would not understand why. I shall stay in London, and mind the house.”
“I should not like you to do that,” said Thornton.
“Why not?”
“Because I had rather you did not,” he repeated, with a gathering frown.
“How long do you contemplate being away?” asked Clytie quietly.
“August and September, perhaps—I can't quite tell yet.”
“Do you propose, then, that I should go and stay in Durdleham for two months with my people?”
He had not contemplated it, but he was irritated at her show of opposition. He lost his temper and said sharply:
“Yes. Or with any other friends you like. I am not going to have you remain here all by yourself.”
“Will you tell me your reasons, Thornton?” asked Clytie.
He crumpled up his paper angrily and thumped it on the table. The veins in his forehead stood out. His face grew ugly.
“When I say a thing is to be done I mean it,” he cried, “and I am not accustomed to be asked for my reasons!”
“I shall leave you until you have recovered yourself,” said Clytie with dignity, and she left the room.
This was the first real quarrel between them. The blood had often rushed hot through Clytie's veins and set her pulses tingling, but hitherto she had restrained herself, feeling that the first revolt would mark the beginning of the end.
She passed a miserable day. When Thornton came home in the afternoon to dress for dinner he was in one of his light-hearted moods. He had backed an outsider some weeks back at very long odds. The race had been run that day and the outsider had won, bringing him a couple of thousand pounds—a windfall that relieved him of certain temporary embarrassments. Hence his buoyancy that afternoon. He had apparently forgotten the morning's difference, and called Clytie “little wife” again, and promised her a victoria to supplement the modest brougham with which they had begun. He put his arm round her and kissed her, praised her beautiful hair, the roundness of her arms, her dress. He told her the gossip of the day in his bright off-hand manner, made her laugh in spite of her weariness. But when he kissed her she shrank a little. In the elation of his victory he did not notice her lack of responsiveness; besides, he was not over-sensitive at any time. When they returned home at night from the dinner-party to which they had gone together, Thornton was still in pleasant mood. Nothing more was said respecting the plans for August and September.
The reconciliation did not last long. Clytie strove with an earnestness that was torture to keep the peace between them, but sometimes her nature clamoured within her and broke out in self-assertion. Only four months married, and already the breach between them was perceptible, slowly widening. And it was Clytie that drifted away from her husband. If she had been a lesser nature, she might have retained the love on both sides. A woman of a lower type would have been able to flatter, soothe, cajole, yield, and thus have kept Thornton at her feet. The patronising contempt for her own needs, which lashed Clytie to the soul, she would have treated lightly, as the natural and foolish vanity of the superior being; and she would have found in a sudden demonstration of passion full compensation for previous indifference. But Clytie was not only unversed herself in the arts of seduction, but despised them fiercely in other women. And she began also to dread Thornton's fits of affection as much as his fits of anger.
He left her one morning quivering with mortification and suppressed bitterness. He himself was not conscious of the slight he had inflicted, and he went away in gay spirits. Their talk had turned upon a Cabinet Minister named Godderich, whose influence Thornton was anxious to acquire. Now it had so happened that this same Godderich had succeeded in making himself vastly obnoxious to Clytie. She told her husband this, giving him the reasons.
“I have not been accustomed to that kind of admiration,” she said, “and I don't like it.”
But Thornton laughed his great laugh, called her “his unconventional prude,” and went on to show her what an invaluable ally Godderich was.
“You must swallow your dislike, Clytie,” he said. “Why, God bless my soul, if ninety-nine women out of a hundred had that chance, they would get the eyes out of his head.”
“Would you so much desire me to be like ninety-nine women out of a hundred, then, Thornton?”
“Oh, nonsense, Clytie; you know what I mean. Come! Don't you see that here's a way of pushing things on a bit? What does it matter if the ass is attentive? You can laugh at him. But keep him in hand a bit until we want to let him loose. Do you see? Of course I trust you, and all that sort of thing.”
“I thank you for your confidence,” she replied. “But I don't think you will need to exercise it much.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, never mind. Do you really want me, Thornton, to encourage this man to make love to me, so as to get a hold on him for other purposes?”
“I never saw anyone like you for the dotting of i's,” said Thornton, amused. “But that's about the size of it. Don't you see what an infernal ass we can make of him? Well, think it over, little wife. Good-bye.”
He opened the front door,—this little conversation had taken place in the hall,—and ran down the steps very well pleased with himself.
But Clytie's heart turned from him and she passed a wretched day—all the more trying as she felt in honour bound to sing antistrophe of praise of Thornton to the strophe of Mrs. Farquharson, with whom she was lunching.
In the evening they were going out together. He came home late from Westminster, dressed hurriedly, and went down to the drawing-room, where Clytie was waiting. She was wearing a low-cut dress. Her arms were bare. A tiny diamond clasp to a thin gold chain flashed on her bosom.
“By Jove! You're looking lovelier than ever!” he cried. “Come, let me kiss you.”
He drew her to him, kissed the upper part of her arm, and then her lips. But she made no response. She shrank, and this time he noted it. His arm still round her waist, he held back his head and looked at her.
“Clytie!”
He spoke with loverlike reproach, and kissed her again, and again she shrank. And then he cast her aside roughly, and stamped his foot.
“Damn it! Clytie,” he exclaimed, showing his teeth, “you are a perfect icicle!”
Clytie made no reply, but turned to the window and buttoned her glove. Thornton rang the bell violently, and when the footman appeared asked him why the devil the carriage had not come round. Then he flung himself into a chair and turned over a book. And thus they remained without speaking until the brougham was announced. On their way to their dinner-party they did not speak. He was in a fit of furious sulks, and Clytie's heart was too heavy. Afterwards he went off to his club and she drove home by herself.
And this at the end of only four months' wedded life. What would it be at the end of four years, fourteen? Clytie strove for a little to blame herself for supersensitiveness, egotism, coldness. But her self rose in arms against this charge. For, like the unfolding of a horrible story, the nature of Thornton's love for her, the nature of the place she really occupied in his estimation, gradually broke upon her. The meaning of light remarks, trivial jests, careless actions; the meaning of caresses now half contemptuous, now passionate—all came to her in full light, in all their crudity, out of the gray darkness in which she had instinctively kept it hidden from herself. She stared at it—not in ignorant surmise as she had done in Paris, but with a ghastly sickening of soul.
Oh, the degradation of it! What was she to her husband but a possession, a toy, a woman, to suffer his caresses when it so pleased him to bestow them, a mistress whom he had taken it into his head to bind legally to himself, so that she might serve certain purposes of his in society? What little better was she to him than the women whom men buy,—Loulou Mendès, for instance,—save that he reckoned,—he had told her so,—on her fidelity to him? Things she had tried to ascribe to the careless familiarity of love blazed insultingly before her, scorching her, making her writhe in her abasement.
Naturally satiety had come to him. He was indifferent whether he saw her or not for a season. Only in his absence she was to obey blindly his caprices. If only she was his wife, she thought bitterly, in the humdrum Durdleham way, where at least she would have had the conventional position in their conjugal relations! Either that or the wild independence of a Loulou Mendès, carrying her will in her hand, free to choose her own way among the groves of the satyrs. For even there the free path smells sweeter than the one of servitude.
Just before the session ended Clytie came to a definite understanding with her husband. It is surprising what pain can underlie this mutual adjustment of two intelligences.
The scene was again the breakfast-room. Each was reading the morning's correspondence. Thornton tossed a letter across the table.
“Carteret's women folk can't come,” he said. “Devilish sensible women—they don't see the fun of it. So it's settled. I go up as soon as this wretched grind is over.”
“Very well,” said Clytie calmly. “I hope you will have a good time.”
“Thanks,” he replied in his careless way. “It will be like old times again. And you will put in a good, quiet couple of months with your people.”
Clytie bit her lip. Her heart beat a little faster. She was going to set herself in opposition to him. She glanced at him before she spoke; he hardly seemed to expect an answer, but continued reading another letter. He looked kind and frank, she thought, a husband for any woman to be proud of. In his morning freshness, clean-shaven, groomed, trimmed, he seemed handsomer than ever. His close brown hair had not a touch of gray; scarcely a line showed on his forehead or beneath his eyes; and the dark rich colour was visible beneath the bronze on his cheek. He broke into a laugh, buoyant and careless, over his letter, and looked up at Clytie. Then, his glance meeting hers, his face grew more serious.
“What are you gazing at me for with those great blue eyes of yours, Clytie?”
She bent forward, rested her cheek on her hand.
“In regard to what you have just said—my going to Durdleham—I am not going for many reasons. I told you so, Thornton, the other day.”
“I am quite aware of it,” said Thornton. “But you are going.”
He looked her full in the face, and she returned his gaze calmly and unflinchingly.
“Don't let us quarrel, Thornton,” she said. “It is so sordid and petty. Let us try quietly to understand one another.”
His glance fell first, and he threw himself back in his chair with a laugh and unfolded his paper.
“All right—we'll bar scenes. Only don't say anything too severe or you'll spoil my breakfast.”
“Thornton,” she said, not changing her attitude, “I think I know what my duty is towards you, and I try to perform it. Has it ever struck you that you may have some duties towards me?”
“I can't say it has,” he replied.
“I don't think you understand me, Thornton. I will try to make it clearer to you. As far as you will let me take an interest in your life, I do so. I am more than willing to make any sacrifices—to give up everything for you. But when you do not want me, as this autumn, I surely may remember that I have a life of my own to lead.”
“And suppose that life does not suit me?”
“That is the point, Thornton. If you wished me, out of love for you, to do anything, I would do it. But this is a matter in which love has no place. Provided I am scrupulous in all my duties towards you, I have a right to my own life, to my own antipathies, to my own favourite pursuits—in fact to myself as an individual, and it is your duty towards me to recognise it.”
“I don't quite see what you are driving at,” said Thornton. “You can dislike sweet champagne and paint pictures and read Schopenhauer if you like. Who is preventing you? But in certain matters, as you are my wife, you have got to do what I tell you.”
“To take an extreme case, by way of argument: Suppose the fancy seized you to order me to remain in my bedroom all day—you would expect me to obey you?”
“By God! I should think I would!” cried Thornton, starting to his feet, with blazing eyes and the veins standing out on his forehead.
“It seems, Thornton,” she said very quietly, “you have married the wrong woman.”
Then she rose, too, from the table, moved towards him, and laid her hand on his arm. He shook it off with an impatient oath, and turned away, fuming, to stare out of the window. She was too well accustomed to his fits of passion to resent the indignity. She mechanically picked off some withering leaves from some flowers on the mantelpiece, and waited for him to speak. At last he turned round again, and asked her sullenly:
“Have you any other pretty remarks to make?”
“If you will listen to them quietly.”
“Well, what do you want? I grant I was a fool to marry you. Let me hear the consequences of my folly.”
His face was set in a sneer, an ugly expression. She had seen it several times since that evening at the opera in Paris. The tears sprang into her eyes as she glanced at him.
“Oh, don't speak and look like that!” she cried. “I cannot bear it. I did not intend to say anything hard just now. I only meant that you had mistaken me, and my needs, and my nature. I have tried to look upon marriage from your point of view for four months, and I can't do it any longer. You say I must obey you blindly in everything, even your arbitrary fancies, subordinate myself absolutely to you. Thornton, believe me, where your interests or love are concerned I will do it; but where they are not I can't, and it will be happier for both of us that I should tell you so frankly. If you go your way alone, I must go mine.”
“That means you set yourself in defiance to my wishes?”
Clytie checked an impulse of impatience.
“If you won't understand me, and insist on putting it that way—yes.”
They looked at each other for some time. And then Thornton ground his teeth and glared at her.
“You can go your own way if you like, but I warn you one of these days there will be the devil to pay!”
And he strode out of the room, cursing, and slammed the door behind him.
Clytie sat down by the window. The tears would come in spite of her pride. She had gained the victory. But there are some victories that have all the aching sense of defeat.
On the day after this conversation Clytie was surprised by an announcement from Durdleham that Mrs. Blather and Janet were suddenly coming to town and would avail themselves of her often repeated invitation to pay her a visit in her new home. Janet had been ailing for some time past. The over-refined Davenant blood had never been vivifying at any time, and now, as there were sudden dangers of a grave kind, their Durdleham doctor had advised her consulting a London specialist. They hurried to catch the great man before he left for his summer holidays. That was their apology to Clytie for the shortness of their notice. Ordinarily on their rare visits to town they put up at Durfey's Hotel in Albany Street. Their father and grandfather had put up there from time immemorial, and they spoke of Durfey's with solemn familiarity, as if it were the one hotel of London. On this occasion, however, they came and stayed with Clytie.
Their presence in the house was a relief to her, even though it was by way of counter-irritation. Thornton showed himself in the light of a charming host and delighted his sisters-in-law. They could not find enough felicitations to bestow upon Clytie. They forgot the old misunderstandings, took it for granted that Clytie had finally settled, was happy, without any ulterior desires. They went round the house, Mrs. Blather manifesting mild enthusiasm over the more solid arrangements in the way of furniture and domestic appurtenances, Janet going into little ecstasies over the decorations.
“I never thought you had such a talent for house management,” said Mrs. Blather after an inspection of the linen-cupboards and china-closets.
“I hardly think it requires absolute genius,” replied Clytie, “to see that sheets are folded up properly and that plates are not put away dirty.”
“Ah!” said her sister, with a philosophic sigh. “So many young wives are so inexperienced.”
It was a delight to Mrs. Blather to see Clytie in this aspect. She could talk to her now on common ground; Clytie had become an ordinary sensible woman, who could discuss the things that fill the ordinary sensible woman's life: housemaids, fancywork, and the price of fish. Mrs. Blather knew that Hammerdyke was fairly well off, but she thought it her duty to give Clytie many valuable hints as to household expenditure, to which Clytie listened with suave distraction. She also gave her recipes for cooking, and the washing of lace, and infallible methods for removing wine stains from tablecloths; also neat little formulas for the management of a husband.
“But yours is simply perfect,” she added, with reference to this last. “Oh, Clytie, you are a lucky girl!”
To Clytie there was something pathetically humorous in the aspect she presented to her sisters; in finding herself, for the first time in her life, perfect in their eyes; in their changed relations. It was amusing to be the lady of the house, and to make plans for Gracie and Janet's entertainment. She brightened under the sense of it, and though many a misconception on their part caused her a sharp twinge of pain, she allowed them to purr on contentedly, taking a small measure of enjoyment from the comfort thereof. Besides, she felt that it would not last long. Their stay was limited to three days. A week of it would have been intolerable. For this reason she declined to accompany them back to Durdleham. At first Mrs. Blather was rather hurt at her refusal; but Clytie gently smoothed over the matter, tactfully avoiding to give specific reasons.
Although Thornton was amenity itself in his intercourse with Clytie when they met in her sisters' presence, in their private relations he showed a certain soreness—the result of the process of understanding. She tried to heal this, to win back from him, if not love, at least gentleness and courtesy.
“I must thank you, Thornton, for being so nice to my sisters,” she said once.
“I suppose I know how to behave myself in my own house,” he replied coldly, and Clytie retired, and listened, with an ache in her heart, to Mrs. Blather's epithalamion.
Still it comforted her to see Thornton his old bright self again, as she had known him before her marriage, even though she knew his brow would darken on the departure of her guests. It gladdened her to hear him talk animatedly to Janet of the wonders of the forest and the romance of war. The hall, the staircase, and the walls of his smoking room were lined with curiosities of travel: spears and skin-covered shields, swords, wooden maces—a whole armoury of savage weapons. There were feathered headdresses, great rings roughly wrought of virgin gold, strange garments, some stained with blood. On the landing above the hall stairs hung an evil wooden yoke with pendent chains which he had lifted from the necks of two dead slaves, left by the caravan to die and rot by the way; and, flanking it, two great lions' heads glared defiantly. To each relic a history was attached, now commonplace, now ghastly. Clytie knew them all, but she accompanied her sisters as Thornton took them round, a perfect cicerone, and she was pleased to see his face light up and his eyes glow with the reminiscence of dangers and brave deeds. It brought her a glad memory of the past and a little hope for the future. She was grateful, too, to Thornton for thus effectually hiding from her sisters any signs of their recent differences and divergencies. She could receive their congratulations with a sense of grim humour. Anything approaching pity, with whatever delicate sympathy it might be conveyed, would have made her wince with pain. Even Mrs. Farquharson, who had sharp eyes and many kindly affinities with her, shared Mrs. Blather's unquestioning belief in the happiness of her lot. Before others Thornton was still the gallant lover and courteous husband, and Clytie was not unthankful. When questioned as to Thornton's plans for the autumn she answered vaguely. The session had worn him out. He was going up to Scotland for the grouse shooting. She herself was going to take care of the house until his return. She preferred staying in London in August to going anywhere without him. And Mrs. Blather, quite satisfied, paid her a little compliment on her wifeliness, and suggested various household improvements to occupy her time during her grass-widowhood.
So Mrs. Blather and Janet went back to Durdleham, to raise a flutter of excitement at the Durdleham tea tables over their accounts of Clytie's moral and material prosperity and her husband's manifold perfections. But the old man, Mr. Davenant, shook his head and sighed. Slow to receive fresh impressions, he could not conceive Clytie other than wilful and paradoxical. And he was suspicious of the brilliant soldier of fortune. He would much have preferred his daughter to have married a steady-going country gentleman or professional man. Still no fault could be found with Hammerdyke, who had treated him with every courtesy.
Before Thornton's departure for Scotland a kind of reconciliation was patched up between them. The first overtures had come from Clytie. After all, he was her husband. They were bound together, for better or worse, till death parted them. It was only common sense to struggle that it should be for better. She humbled herself, then, a little, confessed that she had been unreasonable in some things. He happened to be in a softer mood, and encouraged her to tell him she was sorry if she had been cold and selfish. Unconsciously she made him feel quite magnanimous. He kissed her gaily, bade her think no more about it, and even condescended to say with regard to the main point at issue:
“Well, perhaps you are about right in not caring to go to Durdleham. Your sisters are not rapid.”
A remark which, although it jarred somewhat on Clytie's strung nerves, she nevertheless accepted as a token of peace.
This was the second time in her life that she had deliberately humbled herself before a man. She thought of it with a queer little pang. When she had put down her young pride so as to retain Kent's friendship and esteem, on the day that Jack had destroyed Winifred's picture, it had been all gladness and triumph. She remembered how happily she had gone to sleep that night, in pleasant subconsciousness of certain feminine workings. It had been a joy to surrender then. But now? She shrugged her shoulders, tried to dismiss it from her mind.
In the middle of August she found herself alone in the great house, enjoying the leisure and solitude, the independence, the freedom from friction. She devoted most of her time to her painting, which had been sadly neglected since her marriage. Her studio was a pleasant room, with a good light. It had not the severe, businesslike air of the one in the King's Road; it was warmer, heavier with velvet hangings, richer in quaint furniture. Instead of the whitewashed walls scrawled over with grotesque caricatures, it had a delicately toned Morris paper. The floor was polished, strewn with thick rugs; a great white bearskin lay before the hearth. The piles of canvases stretched upon rough wooden backs that used to lie stacked up in odd corners Thornton had had framed for her, as a surprise to greet her on her home-coming, and now the best of them were hung round the room. Some of her cherished possessions found a place—the etching by Rupert Kent, two or three of Winifred's delicate studies, and an exquisite Jacquemart that Kent had given her long ago. But otherwise all was new, luxurious, separating her from the old associations of her art life.
Whilst searching for a subject she took out her studies for the Faustina picture. But she put them aside with a shudder. She was painting merely for amusement, to gratify the artistic impulse that urged her to create. But the hope, by which she had been gradually rising towards the goal of her ambition, the hope of fame and full accomplishment, was gone, apparently beyond recall; and she mused upon it sadly. This sense of finality is characteristic of youth—its one governing pessimism. Yet she was cheerful enough, glad to feel the brush between her fingers again, and to smell the familiar odour of turpentine, and to see her fancies take visible form under her touch. The artist within her asserted itself, though vaguely, as from some depth where it lay buried. It was undergoing a subtle change, and its weak, inchoate manifestations were those of a period of transition. But Clytie knew it not.
The Farquharsons returned to town towards the end of the month, and Winifred also, after her annual seaside holiday with the children. And many of Clytie's other friends remained in London, and welcomed her back among them. It was like a return to her old life. Only Kent was absent from her circle. She missed him, sighing a little for the impossible.
Thornton wrote from Scotland with affectionate brevity. He did not know that he could have missed her so much. He had bagged so many brace that morning. He longed to see her. He thought he might as well stay on with Carteret so long as there was any sport forward. His letters, dashed off with a broad quill pen in a great, bold hand, covered four sides of notepaper, and came once a week. Clytie had no reason to complain of lack of attention on the part of her husband. Consequently she looked forward to less troubled days when they should lead their common life together again.
An occasional visitor that she had during these weeks was the boy Jack. He had been for a term at the industrial school to which Treherne and Kent had procured him admittance, and now passed as a reformed character amongst his enthusiasts. The teachers at the school, with vivid memories of stormy scenes, might have demurred at this opinion; but they were miles away holiday-making, and for the time blissfully oblivious of Jack. Four months over a spelling-book and a carpenter's bench, even though the latter may be situated amid pleasant fields, are not long enough to purify the blood from the wildness of London streets; and a lifetime so spent cannot wash out hereditary taint; but they can teach the use of soap and water and a suitable adjustment of garments. And Jack was clean, and his wild elf locks were cropped into compulsory smugness, and his clothes conformed to a strictly conventional order. This external revolution was so startling that an accompanying moral reform seemed unquestionable. Even his mother's dull pessimism was affected by it. When she returned from her work she bribed him with bread and treacle to sit in a chair where she could admire him, instead of sending him out of her way into the streets as she had been wont to do. But Jack ate the bread and treacle and then sauntered into the street of his own accord. He did not admire his mother, and only heeded her blandishments when they assumed an objective form. He admired one person, and that was Winifred. With her the young animal was tame, almost docile. It was merely owing to lack of special instinct that he did not lick her hand. He was often in the studio, where he had been constituted general factotum during his holidays. He swept the floor, cleaned the windows, set the brushes and paints in order before Winifred arrived, ran messages for her, and whenever she permitted would sprawl on the ground by her side, following her movements with his great brown eyes. To prevent him from wasting his time and energies in this passive adoration, Winifred often invented commissions for him which he executed with proud despatch, disregarding all allurements to eat the lotus of the gutter and holding his person sacred as Winifred's messenger. It was in consequence of this that he found his way to Clytie's house, acting as postman for his patroness. At first he was shy. He had not lost the feeling of awe with which Clytie inspired him, nor had he forgotten the dread picture of her anger on that day when she had summarily dismissed him from her service. It was only his devotion to Winifred that had induced him to put, as it seemed to him, his head in the lion's mouth. But when he found that the lion was kind and roared as gently as his own dove, and further, gave him various unimaginable dainties to eat and odd shillings to spend in surreptitious tobacco, the house in the Cromwell Road became invested with pleasant associations.
It was after Clytie had had two or three visits from him that the idea occurred to her to paint the portrait of the reformed Jack. The sittings continued long after the necessity for them had ceased. Jack came of his own accord. At last one day he astonished her by refusing the shilling that she held out to him.
“I didn't come for that,” he said bluntly. “I come to see you.”
Clytie and the urchin in industrial school corduroys looked steadily for some seconds at one another, and both in their respective ways were conscious of having added to their sum of knowledge. Then they became real friends. Clytie looked upon him with a new interest, taking herself severely to task for having summed him up in the past with such scornful superficiality. She atoned for it now by seeking to interest herself in his life, to give herself a little place in it, whereby it should receive some individual colour. This was all the easier now, as Winifred had smoothed down many of Jack's social asperities. Albeit not refined of speech, he no longer used profane language in the studio, nor did he entertain her with sanguinary details of cat murder. When the time came for him to return to school Clytie felt quite sorry.