Clytie's last words rang in Kent's ears all night. She loved him. She had surrendered herself to his kiss, she had told him her heart in plain, unequivocal language. In the first blaze of this happiness he did not perceive the gloomy background of their love. All that he could feel was that Clytie had left the life to which he had been a stranger, that she had come back to live in his daily company in the old helpful way, that, furthermore, her simple friendship had changed into something unutterably sweeter. He looked into the future and found it glowing with many rose tints of beauty. He saw Clytie and himself carrying out to its fullest his brave gospel of work—to its fullest because of their belief and trust in one another. He saw Clytie painting noble pictures, drawing strength and confidence from his sympathy—himself stimulated to great achievement, the prose of life transmuted into sonorous epic, lyrical gladness, elegiac grace. The fever in his blood kept him awake as image after image passed before his fancy. But whether the vision was of Clytie walking by his side through the gaslit streets, or of Clytie's glorious head strained back to view the effect of brush strokes he had suggested, or of Clytie sitting by the table as he worked, the lamp between them, it ended always with the warm touch of Clytie's lips beneath his, and the low, clear voice, “I love you.”
This exaltation is common to most men when a strong love comes to them. But to Kent it was all the intenser through the peculiarities of his nature. He had lived without the sphere of women. The passionateness of his temperament had thrown itself utterly into another channel. His work had been his love, his wife, the centre of all his energies, all his hopes. The craving for the unknown complement of existence had found satisfaction in the added line upon line, the growing bulk of manuscript, the builder's thrill when the creation of his own brain is materialising itself course by course into a majestic edifice. Besides, action, whether it was spending hours in a musty library in the exciting search after a reference, or tramping for miles in the keen mountain air of Norway, always fascinated him and compelled the entire energy of his being. He beheld the earth after his wholesome fashion and saw that it was good. To him life was complete. Things, therefore, not contained within his sphere he looked upon as superfluities. Woman was a superfluity; the impulses of sex repugnant. The very intensity of his nature made him shrink all the more strenuously from the sexual principle upon which love is built. When, however, love came to him, in spite of himself, he was dazed with it, terrified. On that January morning when he buried his face in the faint perfume of Clytie's handkerchief he felt himself overcome with a kind of horror. The fierce consciousness that he would give his soul to hold her in his arms and kiss her hair and eyes and lips was to him a torture of debasement. This morbidness was due only to the violence of the reaction. It lasted but a short while, and toned down into a feeling of disloyalty to Clytie's friendship in daring to love her. But time at last adjusted his moral balance, when it was too late, and Clytie was lost to him. And then his love was purified into a deep, passionate devotion that was its own joy and recompense. If circumstances had remained unchanged, Kent would have carried this deeper than romantic love with him to the grave. It had grown into his inmost heart, informing that subconsciousness that makes a man's individual life. Even during the last few months, when they were meeting in frank, friendly fashion, his love had altered very little in kind. He believed her to be a happy wife, loving her husband, with whom in a moment of bitterness he had once silently measured himself. The precious boon of her friendship was regained, nothing more, and it was given to him, under no false pretences on his part, but all the more tenderly because she knew of his devotion. Secure in the impression of her happiness, he would never have wavered in word or thought from his straightforward, simple loyalty, and his days would have passed in quiet contentment, saddened a little, perhaps, by regrets for what might have been, but never tormented by longings for the impossible.
But conditions were no longer the same. Clytie had renounced her married life. Except as a memory of bitterness it had no place in her thoughts. Except by a legal fiction she was her own mistress once more, free to go and come, think and act. Even in name she would be Clytie Davenant again, and she had spoken to him in that strange tone he had never heard before, and had come nearer to him as her touch lay upon his arm. The whole pent up passion of Kent's life had gone forth into that kiss. For Kent the world was changed, and the night a dream of unutterable things. But by the morning it had brought counsel. This love, acknowledged on both sides—whither would it tend? A great problem. So great a one, indeed, that Kent was tempted to shirk grappling with it. Courage and a stout heart, he said to himself, and all would be well. But one cannot rid one's self in this easy way of responsibilities. If you shake them from your shoulders, they shackle themselves about your feet. Kent felt thus fettered as he lay awake. Moreover, his early misgivings concerning Hammerdyke came, like the curses in the proverb, home to roost. If he had spoken to Clytie then, before her marriage, possibly she might have been spared all this suffering. He wished that he had obtained from Wither all the particulars of the ugly rumours that had been afloat, investigated them, confronted Clytie bravely with the truth, and so saved her from wrecking her life. And yet he felt that he could not have done so. Well, what was past was past. The present and the future contained enough matter to engage his attention. He lay for some time in bed trying to solve these perplexities. At last, at half-past nine, he rose, dressed, and went into his sitting-room to prepare his breakfast. This was a simple process. On a couple of gas-stoves, connected by india-rubber piping with the two gas-jets in his room, he placed a kettle and a saucepan, the latter containing eggs. Then he spread a little cloth on a clear space of his dresser-table, and brought out his crockery and other breakfast requisites from one of the under-cupboards. A ham somewhat cut into, butter, and marmalade he procured from a safe in a third little room on the landing which he used as a combined larder and lumber-room. For years Kent had enjoyed the simple Bohemianism of this Sunday morning meal. He could linger over it easefully without the weekday glance at his watch, when time was short. There was the Sunday paper, a weekly review or two, the long, undisturbed after-breakfast pipe. It was a time when he could release himself with free conscience from his busy life and enjoy his leisure. But this morning the eggs seemed stale, the ham tasteless, the journals dull, and he found himself looking at his watch. He would go down and see Clytie at eleven, an hour which he had himself arbitrarily fixed upon, and he was counting the minutes. It is surprising how long minutes are when you count sixty of them.
At last eleven o'clock came and Kent descended the stairs. But Clytie was out. Mrs. Gurkins, who answered his ring on Clytie's bell, informed him that Miss Davenant would not be in for lunch. Perhaps she would be back during the afternoon. So Kent went upstairs again, disappointed, and, after vainly trying to occupy himself, seized his hat and went out for a long tramp through Putney and Wimbledon. His heart was full of strange emotions that beset him for many hours, making them seem hopelessly long. Of the two Clytie passed by far the happier day.
In the afternoon, on his return, he heard voices in the studio. He knocked and entered. Clytie was there with Winifred.
“Can I come in?”
“Of course,” said Clytie. “Why do you ask? We have been expecting you ever so long. In fact we have kept tea waiting for you.”
He put down his hat and stick, nodded as usual to Winifred, and advanced, through force of later habit, with outstretched hand, to Clytie. She laid her fingers in his slowly, looked up at him from her chair by the stove, and laughed.
“You forget I am no longer a visitor, Kent,” she said rebukingly.
“Only this once, then,” he answered, “to welcome you back among us.”
“Where have you learned to make pretty speeches?” asked Clytie.
She was pleased with the words and gave his hand a sudden pressure.
Kent brought a chair up to where Clytie and Winifred were sitting, tried to talk lightly, and failed. A silence came over the little party. Tea caused a distraction, and they fell to discussing indifferent subjects, odds and ends of gossip, but in a desultory fashion that each found strange. At last Clytie rose, cut the Gordian knot in her impulsive way.
“I am going to do one or two things in the sitting-room,” she said. “You two have a talk until I come back.”
Kent opened the door for her. On the threshold she turned and whispered to him: “Talk to Winifred a little. You will do each other good.”
He closed the door after her and went back to Winifred.
“So we have her with us again.”
“Yes,” she replied gently, “and I don't know whether to feel sorry or glad.”
“Did you know—had you any idea that she was unhappy? I never knew till yesterday—or the day before.”
“I think I knew—before—perhaps because I am a woman. It made my heart ache.”
“But she is not unhappy now,” said Kent. “Therefore you ought to be glad.”
Winifred glanced at him swiftly. In spite of the brown softness of her eyes they were woman's eyes, capable of quick, subtle perceptions.
“But will she be happy, Kent?” she asked, bending down over her needlework. As she had not been able to paint, she had taken in hand, by way of feminine comfort, some sewing for Clytie.
“What do you mean?” he asked, with a man's preference to answer a concrete question rather than a delicately hinted suggestion.
“Will not this tie that cannot be loosed hamper her all through her life?”
“God knows!” he said gloomily. And then, brightening, he added: “But we have her with us for always, Winifred, and we who love her can try to make her forget it.”
“Ah, can we, my dear Kent?” she said, putting her work and both hands in her lap and looking at him. “You love her, but you can't love her as I do. Oh, no, no,” she added as he smiled and shook his head. “You may think you do, but it is not possible. You have found faults in Clytie and scolded her—oh, very kindly and sympathetically, I know, but still in your eyes Clytie can do wrong. In mine she can't—and there is the difference. Clytie is not like other girls. She is like no one in the world. Everything must give way to her. If Clytie were to do something you would thinkdreadful—commit a murder—I feel that she would be justified in doing it, and I should love her all the more tenderly and dearly.”
“God bless your loving little heart!” cried Kent. “Love like yours could make the most miserable creature on earth happy.”
“Ah, no, Kent. What could I do for her? Listen: I was a poor, friendless, ignorant, uninteresting little girl when I first met Clytie. And she was kind to me. She seemed so brave and strong and clever and beautiful, I quite shrank from her. I felt so small and humble beside her. And she singled me out from among all the rest of the girls at the Slade School, and made me her friend. I never could tell what she found in me.”
“She can tell, and I can, too,” exclaimed Kent with abrupt enthusiasm—“the purest, tenderest flower of a soul that ever breathed!”
“Oh, Kent!” said Winifred as the colour rose to her dark cheeks. “You must not say things like that. Clytie has done everything for me, everything—and I——”
“You have helped Clytie as no one else could have done,” said Kent, “and you are doing it now.”
“Am I?”
“Yes; don't you see how bright and happy you have made her?”
“She is brighter than I should have thought,” said Winifred musingly. “But will it last?”
“We must try to make it lasting, you and I,” said Kent softly.
He pondered for a moment over the love in each of their hearts, the girl's and the man's. How exquisitely pure and selfless hers seemed to be! He could not realise it in all its beauty, but his perceptions had been refined enough for him to be profoundly touched.
“You have taught me something, Winifred,” he said after a pause, during which she had quietly resumed her sewing. “I am happier than I have been all day.”
Clytie returned soon afterwards. She looked curiously at the faces of her two friends, and then, divining, perhaps, something of what had passed between them, went up to Winifred and kissed her. After this they talked more freely—of old habits, plans for the future. The latter were vague, for Winifred's marriage with Treherne was fixed for the early part of the next year, and the studio without Winifred was unrealisable. Still the plans were food for much intimate gossip, which some may liken to the very salt of life.
When Winifred had gone, Kent went with Clytie into the sitting-room, where, furnished with hammer and nails, he hung the few pictures that Clytie had brought with her, together with some that had been lying about the studio. It was a delight to him to perform this little service for her, and she too felt the woman's happiness of being surrendered to a man's helpfulness. He fetched from his own rooms a bookstand, which he secured against the wall, a few curios, and an armful of the dainty cushions, chair backs, and curtain sashes with which his sister Agatha in misguided zeal had years ago supplied his drawers and cupboards.
“They are not as artistic as your odds and ends, you know,” he said by way of apology. “But until you can get some together they will be more cheerful to look at than Mrs. Gurkins's efforts.”
He had just completed his scheme of decoration when Mrs. Gurkins came up to lay the cloth for Clytie's dinner. Clytie detained him as he was about to go.
“Won't you stay and dine with me?” she said half timidly.
She felt that she could not dismiss him. To do so on conventional grounds would be the silliest prudery. Besides, a sense of helplessness had come over her, and she wanted him by her side, longed for him to think and act for her. The touch of any incident bordering ever so slightly on the dramatic would at that moment have sufficed to free the spring of feminine reserve and loosen passionate expression of her longing for his presence. But the simple commonplace of the situation saved her. Kent's eyes brightened at the invitation.
“And we can have a long evening afterwards?” he asked half pleadingly.
“Of course,” said Clytie, with an inward smile.
On Monday morning Kent, as he was starting for the Museum, put his head in at Clytie's sitting-room door. She was at breakfast, having risen rather later than usual. By her side was an open letter. As Kent entered she pushed back her chair and looked up at him, a gleam of gladness eclipsing in her eyes a late expression of pain. Kent noticed the sudden change.
“You have been sad, Clytie,” he said in his rough tenderness. “That is not right. Did you not promise me last evening that you would be happy, very happy?”
“So I shall be,” she answered, taking his hand in hers and turning away her head. “Only there are things that cut one to the heart. You are a man; you can't understand a woman—no man can, no matter how he loves her. Look, read that—the end of the sordid story of my latter life. Oh, Kent, I am not worth your love! This thing has degraded me enough, and this last insult——Oh, read it and see. It would be better that you should know of how little account I really am.”
Kent took the letter which she thrust into his hand, and, without having read it, tore it into tiny pieces which he scattered through the open window to the four winds. Then he came and put one arm around her.
“Because one man insults you, dear, it is all the more reason that I should love and shield you. That part of your life is dead now. You said yourself this letter was the end. Let it be so, Clytie.”
His delicacy and tenderness moved her very deeply. Womanlike, she had wanted him to read the paper, and yet loved him all the more for not having done so. The letter was her own note to Thornton, which he had returned with “You can go to the devil!” scrawled across it. The sheer brutality had made her lose, as it were, her self-respect, had presented her to her own eyes as a thing of naught, unworthy of the reverential love that Kent brought her. How could she honestly be to him the brightest and noblest of women with that scrawled thing dragging her down? Accordingly his actions and words gladdened her. She looked up at him, and he read as in some magical book the spell of tenderness that swam in her eyes. Then he threw himself on his knees before her and buried his face in her lap.
“Oh, my love, my love!”
And, stirred to her depths with a passionate thrill that was like a great pain, she threw her arms round his neck and kissed him.
Two years passed, outwardly uneventful, yet momentous in the development of inner life. Her marriage sometimes appeared to Clytie as a far-away episode, a kind of dream state in which she had been invested with a strange, unrealisable personality. Yet influences had remained, impulses had been awakened, that could not again lie dormant; knowledge had come to her that could not lapse into oblivion, leaving no trace behind. In her daily intercourse with Kent her nature expanded. It lost imperceptibly that vein of hardness which her struggle for self-development had fostered, and the disillusions and repugnances of her marriage had gradually been strengthening. Except in a brief interval of intoxication she had never known the woman's sweetness of surrender. The great triumph of surrender had never even then been hers. And this was gradually making itself felt in her heart during the two years that passed from the time of leaving her husband's roof.
They contained hours of sweet bitterness, it is true. Although Thornton had gone out of her life like an evil phantom, yet the legal tie between them remained unbroken. Mrs. Farquharson, who seldom did things by halves, after seeing her idol broken trampled it underfoot into a thousand pieces, and vehemently tried to persuade Clytie to seek after a divorce. She even insisted upon her taking counsel's opinion on the matter. But there was no definite evidence obtainable to support an action at law, and Clytie, sick at heart, was glad to dismiss the question from her mind forever. Yet in the eyes of the world she was Hammerdyke's wife, and so she would have to remain until death parted them. Perhaps when enlightenment sheds a fuller ray upon our civilisation we shall make radical changes in our marriage laws, for they are based upon the sad old fallacy that human conduct and human emotion are indifferently susceptible of regulation. As yet we can universalise only on material things: security of property, full stomachs, and warm backs for the poor. The facts of broken lives and torn hearts we can recognise only in particular instances, as they come within each man's individual sphere. The universality of spiritual, moral, and emotional suffering is as yet far from being a national conception. When this is attained we may hope for social conditions happier than those under which we struggle at present.
Thornton had taken the most effectual steps to become an undisturbing element in Clytie's life. The constituency for which he had intrigued and striven to be nominated did not return him at the bye-election, which took place soon after Clytie's departure, but chose instead a radical lawyer with an insignificant presence and a shakiness as to aspirates. Thornton was disgusted and humiliated at his defeat. Politics lost their charm. An offer from the Belgian government to reform the administration in a wide tract of country whose borders were infested with Arabs came to him at this juncture, and found him in a mood for acceptance. He bade Mrs. Clavering a sardonic farewell and replunged into the wilds out of English ken.
Winifred only remained in the King's Road for a few months. Early in the new year she married Treherne, and Clytie was left alone. The studio seemed very forlorn for some time afterwards, robbed, as it were, of an inherent tender grace, a softening, refining influence that had always been dear to Clytie, even in her days of greatest wilfulness. Yet it gladdened her to know that Winifred was happy—married to a man of fine fibre who could value the exquisite gift that the high gods had given him.
“You are a lucky girl, dear,” she said to the young bride one day when visiting her in her new home.
“Of course I am,” replied Winifred enthusiastically. “A man like Victor——”
“Oh, yes,” replied Clytie drily. “I know. He is all perfection. But the man doesn't live who is fit to black your boots, my child. I did not mean that; I meant that you were a lucky girl in having eluded your obvious destiny.”
Winifred looked at her open-eyed.
“I always used to think somewhat sadly about you,” Clytie went on. “I seemed to read in your face and eyes that you would marry a man quite unworthy of you, who would ill treat you, and that you would love him more as he became worse, that your life would be a dreadful, purposeless sacrifice. And now you see how you have escaped. Victor is just the husband I could have picked out for you. So you are a lucky girl.”
“I wish you were as happy as I am, darling,” said Winifred, looking at her somewhat wistfully through her own gladness.
“Perhaps I am,” replied Clytie, with a flush. “Who knows? Utter completion of existence is not possible in this imperfect world of ours; and if my life has its gaps that ache a little, yet it has its fulness, believe me, dear. I am happier now than I have ever been. After all, the gaps matter very little.”
“Now you are getting somewhat beyond me,” said Winifred. “I can't quite follow you.”
“Ah, you needn't, Winnie dear,” replied Clytie. “Only go on loving and trusting me. Don't you see that I am happy because I too have a good man's love?”
“But if—if you had been—if things were different—you might have married,” said Winifred hesitatingly.
“That does not make the love less beautiful and life-giving,” replied Clytie.
This and other conversations of a like tenor succeeded finally in allaying Winifred's doubts as to Clytie's happiness. An uneasy burden was lifted off her mind, glad as her heart was in the new joy of her marriage. Henceforth she was content to take Clytie's assurances, and to trust in her own rooted idea that Clytie's deep, complex nature was beyond the reach of her simple comprehension, and ungovernable by the canons that regulated commoner clay. Strong in this faith, she triumphed in the first little conflict of opinion that arose between herself and her husband. Fine and generous as his views were, he had, nevertheless, a strict churchman's regard for the proprieties of life. The recognised intimacy between Clytie and Kent, harmless as it appeared before Clytie's marriage, had begun to cause him certain uneasiness. He was fond of them both, partly for their own sakes, partly on account of his wife. An unkind thought concerning them hurt his sensitive nature, and yet, as time went on, such thoughts began painfully to formulate themselves in his mind. At last his conscience forced him to broach the subject to Winifred. She listened with a little flush of spirit in her cheek, and then broke into such a warm torrent of words that Treherne was fairly amazed. He had never dreamed that his gentle, brown-eyed wife could be capable of such passionateness. Her logic of devotion overmastered his scruples, and he was almost converted to Winifred's unswerving faith. At any rate, from that time forth he was Clytie's firm friend and ally.
During these two years Clytie was in some need of friends. The society in which she had moved during her married life was a world unknown to her now. Only the circle of her girlhood's acquaintances remained, and of these some manifested disapprobation at the mode of life she had adopted. Every staunch adherent was therefore of inestimable value, and half unconsciously she clung to every hand held out in friendship.
The resumption of her life with Kent had produced also great tension in her relations with Durdleham. Finally it snapped them entirely.
“I don't for a moment suppose,” wrote Mrs. Blather in the last letter that passed between them, “that everything is not most innocent and honourable on both sides. But your conduct is grossly imprudent and must inevitably give rise to most painful scandal. It is your duty both to the name you bear (painful though the associations connected with it may be) and to that which you had from papa to put yourself beyond the reach of calumny by living no longer beneath the same roof as Mr. Kent. Until you do so papa and Janet and myself will consider that any regard you may have had either for ourselves personally or for our honour as a family has entirely gone, and, I grieve to say it, our doors, though not our hearts, will have to be closed against you.”
Clytie read her condemnation very sadly. She could not blame her sister. Mrs. Blather was acting conscientiously, according to the faith and tradition she had inherited from her Godfearing ancestors. Petty and futile as many of the formulas were by which she had been trained to regulate human conduct, yet there were great ones which could not do otherwise than command respect. “Thou shalt not sin,” is a formula the obeying or renouncing of which is often a secret for one or two human hearts alone. Its corollary, “Thou shalt not appear to be sinning,” is one which must be dealt with openly, under the world's eye. Mrs. Blather's judgment was based on this latter formula, her position unassailable. She had no Winifred to shake with the eloquence of love her faith in the formula's eternal verity. She was supported by the firm convictions of a lifetime, and by the unhesitating assent of her father and sister. The letter cut off all Clytie's hopes of ever being understood by her family. She herself knew their inmost hearts, was conversant with every principle by which they were guided, and she could bear them no ill will. But to them she knew she would be forever inscrutable, and she accepted their judgments with sad resignation.
In point of common fact, she was called upon to make the old, old choice that has been offered to woman in all ages, between her family and the man she loved. Without a moment's hesitation she chose the man, and severed herself finally from her kin. Kent had become the object of her life. She had loved him—she knew that now—before her marriage. She had wronged him, as it seemed to her, by not having realised it, had received notwithstanding a tender, absolute devotion whose brave selflessness had been a revelation to her. No sacrifice that she could make for his happiness was too great for her. She loved him with the whole strength of her full nature. If any sacrifices on her part were not made, it was Kent that forbade them. The less he would accept the more did she find in her heart to offer. That she should remain in what they had begun to look upon as their common home seemed to be a vital necessity to his happiness. The mild, affectionate approval of Grace and Janet could not compensate the great loss that each would sustain in a rupture of their intercourse. Any appeal to her sister she knew would be useless. She was firm in the path in which she had elected to walk, and Mrs. Blather's letter remained unanswered.
But Kent could not take this comprehensive view of humanity. That Clytie should be cast off by her family aroused his indignation.
“They never loved you,” he said one day. “You were always a thorn in their flesh, and now they have seized an opportunity of plucking you out.”
“You are wrong, dear,” replied Clytie. “They loved me in their unemotional fashion, and if I were to die they would shed many tears and wear mourning for a whole year. But don't you see that I am of Samaria? I cannot pray in the temple of Jerusalem, and the houses of Israel are closed against me. It is of their religion to do so. They believe that the 'bread of the Samaritan is as the flesh of swine.' We cannot change their faith. We can only seek in Samaria for freer conditions of life, and the love of those who are Samaritans at heart.”
“If I loved you less, I might take up as lofty a position as you,” said Kent. “But I cannot bear that even a Pharisee of the Pharisees should presume to judge you.”
“They have been judging me rightly or wrongly all my life,” said Clytie, with a smile. “It was my own challenge; I gave it vehemently and passionately as a girl when life lay before me like a closed book which they refused to open for me. Now that I have learned some of its secrets I give the challenge with a calm conviction that I am acting in accordance with laws higher than theirs. So do not fret about me, dear.” And then she added in a low voice:
“You know I would give up all I could have in the world for you, if you would accept it.”
Then Kent put his arms around her and kissed her.
“I accept far too much in my selfishness,” he said. “My old lonely life was happy, but it could not be so again. So in spite of all, Clytie, I say, Stay with me.”
“I should stay whatever you said,” returned Clytie. “Don't fancy that all the giving is on my side.”
One sad event marked the mid-time in these two years, robbing Clytie of an external interest that had grown to be very dear to her. The boy Jack died.
The first meeting with him after the terrible scene in her husband's house was in the studio, whither he had betaken himself on one of his frequent visits to Winifred. A sensation of pain caught at Clytie's heart as she marked the lines of Thornton's features wrought in miniature on the boy's face. It only lasted a few moments, and then it melted away into a great pity. Jack was Jack, were Thornton twenty times his father. That he was so parented should make her pity for him all the greater. She never felt more drawn towards the boy than in that first interview. She told no one but Kent of the secret of his parentage, not even Winifred, to whom Jack, in spite of full intentions, never had an opportunity of showing the photograph. For Mrs. Bur-mester having discovered that Jack had temporarily abstracted it, had cuffed him soundly and secreted the coveted treasure in a secure hiding-place.
Whatever hopes Clytie might have entertained as to Jack's future were cut short by the change in her circumstances. All she could do was to contribute towards his training in the sphere in which the high gods, assisted by Kent and Treherne had placed him. Besides, he had manifested no particular intellectual bent. His gifts were rather those of action; books wearied him, except such as dealt with wild exploit and adventure. And she shrank now from the idea of his entering the army—a feminine distaste, easily understandable. So she had perforce to concur in the scheme whereby he should remain another year at the school and then be apprenticed to a respectable trade. Kent comforted her with his assurances. If the boy had the fire of success in him, he would rise out of the common ranks. Life was all before him with its endless fortuities. With devoted friends watching and guiding him, it would be a poor world if he did not arrive at ultimate good. And Clytie in her turn comforted the boy, trying to soften and mould his nature with her womanly influence.
It was his last term at the school. He had won for himself the golden opinions of the authorities. The semi-animal little arab of four years ago had developed into a bright, self-reliant lad of generous impulses, subject, it is true, to fits of ungovernable passion, but quick to forgive, repent, and do penance. Suddenly Clytie received a telegram that Jack was very ill. She left her work and started immediately for the school. There she found that diphtheria had broken out among the boys, and Jack's was the most critical case. Day and night she nursed him. But it was of no avail. The boy died, and Clytie returned to London with a cheerless sense of loss. Mrs. Burmester, who came to see her after the funeral, whimpered a little, and hoped that Clytie would recommend her to any of her friends who happened to be in need of a charwoman. And then Clytie looked at the mother, thought of the father. After all, if the laws of heredity had anything to do with the controlling of human destinies, were it not better for Jack to be dead? When the woman had gone she went and stood before the replica of her famous picture which she had painted for Kent, and shook her head sadly.
“What I have painted there,” she said to Kent, “the cruelty and animalism that seemed to have gone out of his face latterly, would always have remained. Human nature is a palimpsest, dear. What is written is written forever, though it seem obliterated, and may be called up to the surface at any moment. I call Jack happy, being dead.”
With the exception of this episode the weeks and months passed in peaceful uneventfulness. Clytie worked assiduously at her art. At first the studio seemed lonely and dispiriting without Winifred. But other influences compensated her loss. As soon as it became known that she had resumed her profession, orders came in plentifully and kept her busy. And then perhaps Winifred's absence brought her nearer to Kent. If she worked hard all day and failed to reach her artistic ideal, it was deep comfort to know that Kent's whole-hearted encouragement would soon come and cheer her and save her from depression. They had learned to depend much upon each other in their work. In every mood they were constant companions, never weary of each other. Instead of walking home from the Museum, as he had done for years, Kent would hurry back by train from Charing Cross to Sloane Square, so as to shorten her loneliness by half an hour. A cup of tea, a talk over the day's work, perhaps a stroll along the Embankment, dinner, and then the long quiet evening as in the old days—such was the ordinary routine. Certain changes had naturally occurred in Kent's habits—changes for his distinct good, as Clytie used to declare laughingly. He rarely used the attic sitting-room. His scratch Bohemian meals were things of the past. What law of God or man forbade them to eat together? Clytie asked once in the early days when they were talking of household trifles. And then Kent bluntly insisted upon an arrangement whereby they divided equally the rent of the rooms they inhabited. It was not fair, he maintained, that he should give her sitting-room all that wear and tear without helping to pay for it. Clytie yielded, not unpleasurably, seeing that he was bent upon it, but she reserved the studio as her own especial sanctum.
The charm of the life grew daily upon Kent, with its infinite grace of little things. He told her this often, with awkward sincerity, as a man can only tell the woman he loves deeply. And Clytie would laugh contentedly and say:
“But you'll soon get tired of these organised meals and long for your freedom again. Don't you ever crave to be swallowing your coffee as you brush your hair in the mornings? And doesn't it chafe you all the afternoon at the Museum to think that there is a regular dinner awaiting you when you get back?”
“No; somehow I like it,” he would reply, laughing. “I believe I am developing into respectability.”
Combining their resources they were able to entertain in a modest way those of their friends who perfectly understood their relations—the Farquharsons, the Trehernes, Wither. On these occasions Mrs. Gurkins's husband, a lean, self-effacive man, would wait at table in the severest of black and lend immense dignity to the meal. Wither was a constant visitor. The “monastery” was broken up; Fairfax had taken a practice in a large country town, Green had taken a wife. Wither complained bitterly, railing at them both for their disgusting selfishness. Clytie learned to love the bright-eyed, gnomelike little being, his cynical, paradoxical talk, his large-heartedness which he was ever anxious to conceal from the world. Often when life seemed to weigh a little heavy, the future to loom somewhat sad, and Kent and Clytie had been sitting alone, a spell of wistful silence over them, Wither would come in unexpectedly, and, with his subtle feminine perception piercing to the heart of their mood, would exert himself to extra brilliancy and dissipate their cloud in laughter. A man by no means requires delicate tact to win a woman's love, but no man who displays it towards a woman can fail of winning a little of the overflow of her heart. Clytie was grateful to Wither. Once, when bidding him good-night,—Kent had gone into the passage,—she added impulsively, “and thank you.”
He looked at her in his odd way, with a smile playing around his lips.
“What for? For being miserable and lonely and making use of you to cure myself?”
But they understood one another, and he was touched by Clytie's little tribute. And Clytie had spoken out of her heart.
For, in spite of the helpfulness and comfort of their life together, there were gaps in its plenitude which, as she had said to Winifred, ached a little at times. Kent was tenderness, manly sympathy itself: he would have cut his tongue out rather than formulate a longing that could not be satisfied. But moments came when the irony of life seemed somewhat bitterly mocking, and caused a veil of sadness to be drawn between them. And like people who love deeply each was sensitive to the variations in the other's mood. Then Clytie would yearn for the impossible: to fix forever the light she loved to see in his eyes, to cling to his arm and be acknowledged his wife before all the world. Thus through the midst of their happy, earnest life ran a vein of sorrow.
But the years that had passed, with their manifold emotions, experiences, and disillusions, with their awakenings of passion, with their plentiful gift of tears, with their later gift of an almost holy communion of souls, had completed the woman and the artist. One hunger remained to her—one that had had no place in her girlish cravings—a woman's hunger that is as a thing sacred, and wondrously softens her nature. An infinite compassion took within her the place of scorn. Her eyes had learned the trick of tenderness which illuminated her bright, fearless face. Her judgments became less harsh, gained in breadth what they lost in brilliance. She “saw life steadily and saw it whole.” Many of its mysteries had been revealed to her, and she had learned the road to the heart of others. The great lesson that Kent in the years before had suggested to her she grasped in its entirety, and it revolutionised her artistic career. No longer was her art a stepping-stone, a magic-lantern sheet on which to project life in order to realise its meaning. It was no longer the objective form of a vague craving, but the idealised record of an experience. When she painted the wistful, old-world look in a waif's eyes it was no longer with the impatient, fretful hope that its significance would be taught her from her own canvas; her awakened sight gazed with the sorrow of knowledge into the young soul, and she used her art to bear witness to the world of what was there. In a dim way she was conscious of this change of attitude—seeking within herself for the reason of the deeper, intenser, calmer feeling with which she approached her work. There came, too, a sense of responsibility, the necessity of perfecting whatever she painted in its presentation of truth. As her genius expanded the inner interpretation of the formula, “Art for art's sake,” dawned upon her in the realisation of the “sorrowful great gift” whereby the artist has the privilege of piercing through the media of sense and intellect and touching the naked soul of man.
She went, as of old, into the streets for her models, choosing the side of life least understanded of Philistia, sublimating that which was spiritual, eternal in abject and outcast, beggar and courtesan. Strange were the walks of Kent and herself about the great city, by day and by night, and strange the spars and fragments of humanity they picked up in these rambles, who found their way afterwards to Clytie's studio. They went together to East End music halls, bank holiday gatherings, thieves' kitchens, night clubs in the West End, where ladies are admitted free on a member's introduction, Kent paying his subscription almost at the door. It was towards women that Clytie's sympathy flowed the strongest. Her first contact with one ofces autresin the hotel at Dinan had set a chord vibrating within her that now rang out full and true. She could paint these women, young, withered, children on the lurid threshold, old women with charred and blackened past. It is the moralist's part to condemn, evolve the moral; the artist on the higher plane disintegrates the spiritual from the animal and presents it in the form of Truth. From the comedy of misery, the tragedy of sex, the never ending drama of vice and crime, the one draws groans, the other tears. Each has his place in the cosmos. Thus Clytie, artist and woman, walked through the abomination of desolation and opened the eyes of the world to the glimmering spiritual rays that shot across it.
Once more she took out the studies she had made for the “Faustina” picture. This time she could look on them without a shudder, only sadly. The picture would never be painted. She was no longer in feverish, passionate search after mysteries that had baffled her. The picture now had no artistic reason for existence. It would be a cruel, despairing work, a tragedy of cynicism. Knowledge of the world had given her knowledge of self; she knew now how blent were the foreshadowings of passion in her own soul with those that she had hungered to express on the young face of Faustina. In those days she could have found a model in her own mirror, and then the personal note dominating the picture would have saved it from heartlessness. For the complete woman to paint it would be the presentation of the damnation of a young soul. But the contemplation of her earlier work suggested vividly the converse of the subject—a Faustina swept away by the whirl of passion with the after-light of innocence in her soul's depths. The conception grew within her, took form, awoke the full artist in the ripe woman. With a throbbing sense of mastery, a quivering thrill of inspiration, new to her as the first love kiss on a young girl's lips, she betook herself to her task.
It was the 5th of August, two years after Clytie had resumed her artistic life with Kent. The afternoon was hot and oppressive. Clytie was tired and lay back on the couch by the window, for she had worked unceasingly all through the summer and the strain was beginning to tell on her.
They had just returned from the West End Gallery, where Clytie's picture had been exhibited during the season. This was the closing day, and they had gone to see the picture for the last time. A wealthy American had purchased it for the art museum of his native city, and to-morrow it would be packed up and sent over seas.
“It's like parting forever from the child that is dearest to you,” she said with a little touch of melancholy. “That is the worst of painting. A poet or a musician—even an etcher can keep his work by him, but a painter loses all. Doesn't it seem hard?”
Kent acquiesced, comforted her, spoke with vague cheeriness of the law of sacrifice which we must all obey. On the other hand, she must think of all that the picture had brought her, the public fame, the homage of those whose opinion was dear to her.
“Yes; in all that I have succeeded beyond my wildest hopes,” said Clytie. “But what is it? At the Redgraves' the other afternoon crowds of people stared at me, whispered each other requests to be introduced to Clytie Davenant. The men praised all the wrong points in my picture, and the women tried to get at the way I did my hair. I know it's flattering to one's vanity, dear, and I like it. I honestly like it. But it is a superficial little gratification. Now it is all over I begin to think of what that picture has cost, what has gone to the making of it. Neither money nor fame can pay me back.”
“It has cost you hours of work in which you have found happiness,” said Kent. “You must not overlook that.”
“Oh, Kent!” cried Clytie, not seeing for the moment that he had deliberately avoided the deeper elements in her thought. “Don't you know what I mean? You who have been just now preaching to me the law of sacrifice! Don't you know that to be the woman to paint that picture there were sacrificed the traditions and formulas of my home—there were sacrificed the first pure flush of a girl's love, the illusions of a wife, the joy of motherhood, the dignity of a proud woman?”
She raised herself impulsively on her elbow and continued with flashing eyes:
“Don't you see that? And you of all men who have shared with such bitterness in the sacrifice! Yes, you, my dearest, my best, my love! Your life has been sacrificed, your love, your devotion, your nobleness. For once in the world the man has paid, and not the woman. For two long years we have lived together, eating at the same table, living a common life, which, had one great fact been non-existent would have crowned our days with happiness. I am of Samaria—I don't care. I have offered to you to defy the world, to live openly together, to bear your name. You have said 'No,' for my sake sacrificing yourself. Can this life last forever? Have not the past two years been filled with longings, restraints, bitternesses, regrets, all silently working—you too loyal to utter them, I dreading lest the utterance of them on my part should render you unhappier?”
“I have been happy,” said Kent. “A thousandth part of what you have given me would have made me more than happy.”
“But your due is a thousand times more!” cried Clytie. “I have given you little enough, but I have drawn from you the breath by which I live, the strength, the passion, the will by which I have reached my poor success. It can't be so any longer; it would be unjust, cruel!”
“Stop, my darling!” exclaimed Kent, greatly agitated. I am a man, and you are saying things a man cannot bear from the woman he loves. Let us finish this before it is too late, and I lose mastery over myself. I have thought over it all—with the fiercest hunger in my heart—even in moments of our love that have been worth a century of misery. I have thought over it all ways. What was impossible two years ago is impossible now. I will not wreck your life by condemning you to scorn and ostracism and the loss of all that the outside world can give you.”
Clytie did not reply, but turned her face towards the open window, looking with knitted brow into the patch of blue heaven that was just visible over the tops of the opposite houses. A great, great longing possessed her, an infinite tenderness towards the man who could speak and act so selflessly. She longed to be able to say three little words, summing up the yearning of her heart: “For my sake.” But they seemed unutterable at that hour. Perhaps at another time, in a moment of less vehement tone, when he was unawares, the words could be whispered in his ear. She sank deep into the thought—utter woman.
A long, long silence, which Kent, uncomprehensive, like a man, did not dare to break. A thought had seized him too, a troubling doubt. Would he always be as strong?
At last he drew mechanically out of his pocket an evening paper that he had bought on the way home, and as mechanically opened it and began to skim the contents.
Suddenly he leaped to his feet with a loud cry:
“Clytie!”
She sprang up, startled, and saw him standing with white cheeks and shaking hand, holding out the paper.
“Read—he—he—read!”
Clytie took the paper from him, and her eyes instinctively fell upon the paragraph:
A telegram from Loango announces the death of Mr. Thornton Hammerdyke, the well-known explorer, in a skirmish with some Arab slave-traders. Later particulars will be given in our next edition.
The newspaper fell from her hand, and they remained for some moments facing each other, trembling. Then she lowered her eyes and went to him humbly.