Owing to some refusals, the dinner-party gradually shrank in size and importance, and it was not until within four days of its date that Audrey discovered to her dismay that she was "a man short." As good luck would have it, she met Knowles that afternoon in Regent Street, and confided to him her difficulty and her firm determination not to fill the gap with any "nonentity" whatever. Audrey was a little bit afraid of Mr. Percival Knowles, and nothing but real extremity would have driven her to thisdesperate course. "If you could suggest any one I know, who isn't a nonentity, and who wouldn't mind such ridiculously short notice: it's really quite an informal little dinner, got up in a hurry, you know, for Mr. Haviland, a very clever young artist, and his sister."
Knowles smiled faintly: he had heard before of the very clever young artist (though not of his sister). He was all sympathy.
"Sorry. I can't think of any one you know—nota nonentity—but I should like to bring a friend, if I may. You don't know him, I think, but I believe he very much wants to know you."
"Bring him by all means, if he won't mind such a casual invitation."
"I'll make that all right."
Knowles lifted his hat, and was about to hurry away.
"By-the-bye, you haven't told me your friend's name."
He stopped, and answered with a sibilant incoherence, struggling as he was with his amusement. But at that moment Audrey's attention was diverted by the sight of Ted coming out of the New Gallery, and she hardly heard what was being said to her.
"I shall be delighted to see Mr. St. John," she called back, making a random shot at the name, and went on her way with leisurely haste towards the New Gallery.
On the evening of her dinner Audrey had some difficulty in distributing her guests. After all, eight had accepted. Besides the Havilands, with Mr. Knowles and his friend Mr. St. John, there was Mr. Flaxman Reed, who, as Audrey now discovered, greatly to her satisfaction, was causing some excitement in the religious world by his interesting attitude mid-way between High Anglicanism and Rome. There were Mr. Dixon Barnett, the great Asiatic explorer, and his wife; and Miss Gladys Armstrong, the daring authoress of "Sour Grapes" and "Through Fire to Moloch," two novels dealing with the problem of heredity. Audrey had to contrive as best she might to make herself the centre of attraction throughout the evening, and at the same time do justice to each of her distinguished guests. The question was, Who was to take her in to dinner? After weighing impartially the claims of her three more or less intimate acquaintances, Audrey decided in favour of the unknown. She felt unusual complacence with this arrangement. Her fancies were beginning to cluster round the idea of Mr. St. John with curiosity. It was to be herself and Mr. St. John, then. Mr. Knowles andMiss Armstrong, of course: the critic was so cynical and hard to please that she felt a little triumphant in having secured some one whom he would surely be delighted to meet. Mr. Flaxman Reed and Katherine—n-no, Mrs. Dixon Barnett, Mr. Dixon Barnett falling to Katherine's share. For Ted, quite naturally, there remained nobody but Cousin Bella. "Poor boy, he'll be terribly bored, I'm afraid, but it can't be helped."
The Havilands were the first to arrive.
"How superb you look!" was Audrey's exclamation, as she kissed her friend on both cheeks and stepped back to take a good look at her. Katherine's appearance justified the epithet. Her gown, the work of her own hands, was of some transparent black stuff, swathed about her breasts, setting off the honey-like pallor of her skin; her slight figure supplied any grace that was wanting in the draperies. That black and white was a splendid foil for Audrey's burnished hair and her dress, an ingenious medley of flesh-pink, apple-green, and ivory silk.
"One moment, dear; just let me pin that chiffon up on your shoulder, to make your sleeves look wider—there!" She hovered round Katherine, spying out the weak points in her dress, and disguising them with quick, skillful fingers. A woman never looks more charming than when doing these little services for another. So Ted thought, as he watched Audrey laying her white arms about hissister, and putting her head on one side to survey the effect critically. To the boy, with his senses sharpened to an almost feverish subtilty by the incessant stimulus of his imagination, Audrey was the epitome of everything most completely and joyously alive. Roses, sunlight, flame, with the shifting, waving lines of all things most fluent and elusive, were in her face, her hair, the movements of her limbs. Her body was like a soul to its clothes; it animated, inspired the mass of silk and lace. He could not think of her as she was—the creature of the day and the hour, modern from the surface to the core. Yet never had she looked more modern than at this moment; never had that vivid quality, that touch of artificial distinction, appeared more stereotyped in its very perfection and finish. But Ted, in the first religious fervour of his passion, had painted her as the Saint of the Beatific Vision; and in the same way, to Ted, ever since that evening on the river, she recalled none but open-air images. She was linked by flowery chains of association to an idyllic past—a past of four days ago. Her very caprices suggested the shy approaches and withdrawals of some divinity of nature. It was by these harmless fictions, each new one rising on the ruins of the old, that Ted managed to keep his ideal of Audrey intact.
There was a slight stir in the passage outside the half-open door. Audrey, still busy about Katherine's dress, seemed not to hear it.
"My dear Audrey!" protested Miss Craven from her corner.
"There, that'll do!" said Katherine, laughing; "you've stuck quite enough pins into me for one night."
"Stand still, and don't wiggle!" cried Audrey, as the door opened wide. For a second she was conscious of being watched by eyes that were not Ted's or anything like them. At the same time the footman announced in a firm, clear voice, "Mr. Knowles and Mr. Langley Wyndham!"
She had heard this time. The look she had seen from the doorway was the same look that had followed her in the Dean's drawing-room at Oxford. All the emotions of that evening thronged back into her mind—the vague fascination, the tense excitement, the mortification that resulted from the wound to her self-love and pride.
So this was Mr. St. John!
A year ago he had refused an introduction to her, and now he wanted to know her; his friend had said so. He was seeking the acquaintance of his own accord, without encouragement. How odd it all was! Well, whether his former discourtesy had been intentional or not, he knew how to apologise for it gracefully.
She had no time to think more about the matter, for her remaining guests came in all together; and in another five minutes Audrey was suffering from that kind of nightmare in which some grave issue—you don't know precisely what—hangs on the adjustment of trifles, absurdly disproportionate to the event, and which disarrange themselves perversely at the dramatic moment. Everything seemed to go wrong. She had relied on Knowles and Miss Gladys Armstrong for a brilliant display of intellectual fireworks; but beyond the first casual remarks absolutely required of them, they had not a word to say to each other. Miss Armstrong managed cleverly enough to strike a little spark of epigram from the flinty dialogue. It flickered and went out. Knowles smiled politely at the abortive attempt; but at her first serious remark he shook his head, as much as to say, "My dear lady, this is a conundrum; I give it up," and finally turned to Katherine on his left. In fact, he monopolised her during the rest of dinner, much to the annoyance of Mr. Dixon Barnett, who spent himself in futile efforts to win back her interest,—his behaviour in its turn rousing the uneasy attention of Mrs. Dixon Barnett. She, again, was so preoccupied in watching the movements of her lord, that she almost forgot the existence of Mr. Flaxman Reed, who sat silent and depressed under her shadow.
Wyndham gave Audrey credit for great perspicacity in pairing these two off together. "Poor fellow," he said to himself; "to preserve him from the temptations of the world and the flesh, she's considerately sent him in with the devil." For his own part, he devoted himself to Audrey and his dinner.From time to time he glanced across the table, and whenever he did so the corners of Knowles's mouth twitched nervously and he began to stroke his upper lip—a provoking habit of his, seeing that he had no moustache to account for it. Evidently there was some secret understanding between the two, and Wyndham was gravely and maliciously amused.
Katherine was enjoying herself too, but without malice. She had so few acquaintances and lived so much in the studio, that it was all fresh life to her. She was pleased with that unconscious irony of Audrey's which had thrown Knowles and Miss Armstrong together; pleased with the by-play between Knowles and Wyndham, and with the behaviour of the married couple. It was always a delight to her to watch strange faces. Mrs. Dixon Barnett was a big woman, with a long head, and she looked something like a horse with its ears laid back, her hair being arranged to carry out that idea. The great Asiatic explorer, whose round face wore an expression of permanent surprise, suggested a man who has met with some sudden shock from which he has never recovered. Katherine felt sorry for the Asiatic explorer. She felt sorry for Miss Gladys Armstrong too, a little pale woman with a large gaze that seemed to take you in without looking at you. Her face, still young and childlike, was scored with the marks of hard work and eager ambition, and there was bitterness in the downward droop of her delicate mouth. Yet the authoress of"Sour Grapes" was undeniably a successful woman. And Wyndham too, the successful man—Wyndham's face attracted Katherine in spite of herself, it was full of such curious inconsistencies. Altogether it was refined, impressive, almost noble; yet each of the features contradicted itself, the others, and the whole. The general outline was finely cut, but it looked a little worn at the edges. The shaven lips were sensitive, but they had hard curves at the corners; they were firm, without expressing self-restraint. In the same way the nose was fine at the bridge, and coarse towards the nostrils. The iris of the eyes was beautiful, with its clear brown streaks on an orb of greenish grey; yet his eyes were the most disagreeable feature in Wyndham's face. As for Knowles, he interested her with his genial cynicism; but it was a relief to turn from these restless types to Mr. Flaxman Reed. He had the face of the ideal ascetic—sweet in its austerity, militant in its renunciation. What in heaven's name was he doing at Audrey Craven's dinner-table?
Katherine was not too much absorbed in these speculations to see that Ted was behaving very prettily to old Miss Craven, and making himself useful by filling up awkward pauses with irrelevant remarks. The boy looked perfectly happy. Audrey's mere presence seemed to satisfy him, though she had not spoken a dozen words to him that evening, and was separated from him by the length of the table. At last she rose, and as he held the dooropen for her to go out, she turned to him with arched eyebrows and a smile that was meant to say, "You've been shamefully neglected, I know, but I had to attend to these tiresome people." Katherine saw Mr. Wyndham making a mental note of the look and the smile. She had taken an instinctive dislike to that man.
Upstairs in the drawing-room the five women settled down in a confidential group, and with one accord fell to discussing Mr. Wyndham. Miss Craven began it by mildly wondering whether he "looked so disagreeable on purpose, or because he couldn't help it." On the whole, she inclined to the more charitable view.
"What do you say, Kathy?" asked Audrey, without looking up.
"I agree with Miss Craven in thinking nature responsible for Mr. Wyndham's manners."
Mrs. Dixon Barnett disapproved of Katherine, but she joined in here with a guttural assent.
"Poor man," said Miss Gladys Armstrong, "he certainly hasn't improved since that affair with Miss Fraser."
Audrey looked up suddenly,—"What affair?"
"Don't you know? They were engaged a long time, wedding-day fixed and everything, when she broke it off suddenly, without a word of warning."
"Why?"
"Why indeed! She left her reasons to the imagination."
"When did it happen?"
"Just about this time last year. I can't think what made her do it, unless she had a turn for psychical research—raking in the ashes of his past, and that sort of thing."
"Was he very much cut up about it?"
"He didn't whine. But he's got an ugly wound somewhere about him. Curious man, Langley Wyndham. I haven't got to the bottom of him yet; and I flatter myself I know most men. My diagnosis is generally pretty correct. He's a very interesting type."
"Very," said Audrey below her breath. The novelist knitted her brows and fell into a reverie. Her interest in Langley Wyndham was not a purely professional one. Audrey reflected too. "Just about this time last year. That might account for things." She would have liked to ask more; but further discussion of his history was cut short by the entrance of Wyndham himself, followed by the rest.
Mr. Flaxman Reed was the first to take the empty seat by Audrey's side. He remembered the talk he had with her at Oxford—that talk which had provoked Wyndham's sarcastic comments. Himself a strange compound of intellectual subtilty and broad simplicity of character, he had taken Audrey's utterances in good faith. She had spoken to him of spiritual things, in one of those moments of self-revelation which, he knew well, come suddenly tothose—especially to women—whose inner life is troubled. But this was not the atmosphere to revive such themes in. He had no part in Audrey's and in Wyndham's world,—the world which cared nothing for the principles he represented, those two great ideals which he served in his spirit and his body—the unity of the Church and the celibacy of the priesthood. But Audrey interested him. He had first met, last seen her, during a spiritual and intellectual crisis. He had stood alone then, severed from those dearest to him by troubled seas of controversy; and a word, a look, had passed which showed that she, this woman, sympathised with him. It was enough; there still clung to her the grave and tender associations of that time.
To-night the woman was unable to give him her whole-hearted attention. Audrey was disturbed and preoccupied. Ted was lounging at the back of her chair, hanging on her words; Wyndham and Miss Armstrong were sitting on the other side of her, and she felt herself straining every nerve to catch what they were saying.
"Yes," said Miss Armstrong in the tone of a proud parent, "'Through Fire to Moloch' was my first. In that book I threw down the gauntlet to Society. It shrugged its shoulders and took no notice. My second, 'Sour Grapes,' was a back-hander in its face. It shrieked that time, but it read 'Sour Grapes.'"
"Which at once increased the demand for 'Through Fire to Moloch.' I congratulate you."
Miss Armstrong ignored the impertinent parenthesis. "The critics abused me, but I expected that. They are men, and it was the men I exposed——"
Knowles, who was standing near, smiled, and blushed when he caught himself smiling. Wyndham laughed frankly at his confusion, and Audrey grew hot and cold by turns. What was the dreadful joke those two had about Miss Armstrong? She leaned back and looked up at Ted sweetly.
"Ted, I should like to introduce you to Mr. Knowles. He'll tell you all about that illustrated thing you wanted to get on to."
"I'm afraid," said Knowles, "that's not in my line: I don't know anything about any illustrated things."
"Well, never mind; I want you to know something about Mr. Haviland, anyhow."
This was just what Knowles wanted himself. He was deeply interested in the situation as far as he understood it, and he looked forward to its development. This little diversion created, Miss Armstrong continued with imperturbable calm. But Audrey, listening with one ear to Mr. Flaxman Reed, only heard the livelier parts of the dialogue.
"Life isn't all starched linen and eau-de-Cologne," said Miss Armstrong, sententiously.
"Did I ever say it was?" returned Wyndham.
"Virtually you do. You turn your back on average humanity."
"Pardon me, I do nothing of the kind. I use discrimination."
"Nature has no discrimination."
"Exactly. And Nature has no consideration for our feelings, and very little maidenly reserve. Therefore we've invented Art."
Audrey leaned forward eagerly. She felt an unusual exaltation. At last she was in the centre of intellectual life, carried on by the whirl of ideas. She answered her companion at random.
"Yes," Mr. Flaxman Reed was saying, "my workisdisheartening. Half my parish are animals, brutalised by starvation, degraded out of all likeness to men and women."
"How dreadful! What hard work it must be!"
"Hard enough to find decent food and clothing for their bodies. But to have to 'create a soul under those ribs of death'——" he paused. His voice seemed suddenly to run dry.
"Yes," said Audrey in her buoyant staccato, "I can't think how you manage it."
There was a moment of silence. Wyndham had turned from Miss Armstrong; Knowles and Ted had long ago joined Miss Haviland at the other end of the room, where Mr. Dixon Barnett, still irresistibly attracted by Katherine, hovered round and round the little group, with the fatal "desire of the moth for the star." Audrey stood up; MissArmstrong was holding out her hand and pleading a further engagement. The little woman looked sour and ruffled: Wyndham's manner had acted on her like vinegar on milk. She was followed by Mr. Flaxman Reed. Wyndham dropped into the seat he left.
"Dixon," said Mrs. Barnett in a low voice which the explorer knew and obeyed. They were going on to a large "At Home."
Audrey turned to Wyndham with a smile, "I hope you are not going to follow them, Mr. Wyndham?"
"No; I'm not a person of many engagements, I'm thankful to say. Barnett hasn't much the cut of a great explorer, has he?"
"No; but those wiry little men can go through a great deal."
"A very great deal. Is Mrs. Barnett a friend of yours?"
"No, not especially. Why?"
"Mere curiosity. That mouth of hers ought to have a bit in it. It's enough to send any man exploring in Central Asia. I can understand Barnett's mania for regions untrodden by the foot of man—or woman."
Audrey laughed a little nervously. "I made a mistake in introducing him to Miss Haviland."
"It was a little cruel of you. But not half so unkind as asking Miss Armstrong to meet Knowles. That was a refinement of cruelty."
"Why? What have I done? Tell me."
"Didn't you know that Knowles went for Miss Armstrong in last week's 'Piccadilly'? Criticised, witticised, slaughtered, and utterly made game of her?"
"No? I'd no idea! I thought they'd be delighted to meet each other; and I know so few really clever people, you know" (this rather plaintively). "He does cut up people so dreadfully, too."
"He cut her up into very small pieces. Knowles does these things artistically. He's so urbane in his brutality; that's what makes it so crushing. Are you an admirer of Miss Armstrong?"
He looked her full in the face, and Audrey blushed. She had read Miss Armstrong's works, and liked them, because it was the fashion; but not for worlds would she have admitted the fact now.
"I don't think I am. I've not readallher books."
"Didyou like them?"
"I—I hardly know. She's written so many, and I can't understand them—at least not all of them."
Wyndham smiled. She had read all of them, then.
"I'm glad to hear it. I can't understand them myself; but I detest them, all the same."
"I thought so. I saw you were having an argument with her."
"Oh, as for that, I agreed with her—with her theory, that is, not with her practice; that's execrable. But whatever she says I always want to support the other side."
He changed the subject, much to Audrey's relief.
"I think you knew Mr. Flaxman Reed at Oxford?"
"Yes, slightly. He's an old friend of my uncle's."
"There's something infinitely pathetic about him. I've an immense respect for him—probably because I don't understand him. I was surprised to meet him here."
"Really, you are very uncomplimentary to me."
"Am I? Mr. Reed has renounced all the pleasant things of life—hence my astonishment at seeing him here. Do you find him easy to get on with?"
"Perfectly." She became absorbed in picking the broken feathers out of her fan. She took no interest in Mr. Flaxman Reed. What she wanted was to be roused, stimulated by contact with a great intellect; and the precious opportunity was slipping minute by minute from her grasp. Wyndham was wasting it in deliberate trivialities. She longed to draw him into some subject, large and deep, where their sympathies could touch, their thoughts expand and intermingle. She continued tentatively, with a suggestion of self-restrained suffering in her voice, "I don't think I have any right to discuss Mr. Reed. You know—I have no firm faith, no settled opinions."
It was an opening into the larger air, a very little one; she had no knowledge or skill to make it bigger, but she was determined to show herself a woman abreast of her time. Wyndham leaned back and looked at her through half-opened eyelids.
"You are no longer convinced of the splendid logic of the Roman faith?"
She started. His words recalled vividly that evening at Oxford, though she would not have recognised them as hers but for the quotation marks indicated by Wyndham's tone.
"No—that was a year ago. What did you know about me then?"
"Nothing. I divined much."
"You are right. How well you remember!" She leaned forward. Her face was animated, eager, in its greed of sympathy, understanding, acknowledgment. Clear and insistent, with a note as of delicate irony, the little porcelain clock in the corner sounded eleven. Knowles and others were making a move. Wyndham rose.
"I remember most things worth remembering."
Five minutes afterwards Audrey, wrapt in thought, was still standing where Wyndham had left her. Miss Craven and Katherine had gone upstairs, and she was alone with Ted. Suddenly she clenched her hands together, at the full length of her white arms, and turned to him in an agony of tenderness, clinging to him like an overwrought child, and lavishing more sweetness on him than she had done since the day of their engagement. Ted was touched with the unusual pathos of her manner. He put it down to sorrow at their separation during the whole of a long evening.
It was the third week in August; summer was dying, as a London summer dies, in days of feverish sunlight and breathless languor. Everywhere there was the same torpor, the same wornout, desiccated life in death. It was in the streets with their sultry pallor, in the parks and squares where the dust lay like a grey blight on every green thing. Everywhere the glare accentuated this toneless melancholy. It was the symbol of the decadence following the brilliant efflorescence of the season, the exhaustion after that supreme effort of Society to amuse itself. This lassitude is felt most by those who have shared least in the amusement, the workers who must stay behind in the great workshop because they are too busy or too poor to leave it.
There was one worker, however, who felt nothing of this depression. Langley Wyndham had reasons for congratulating himself that everybody was out of town, and that he was left to himself in his rooms in Dover Street. For one thing, it gave him opportunity for cultivating Miss Craven's acquaintance. For another, he had now a luxurious leisure in which to polish up the proofs of his last novel, and to arrange his ideas for its successor. Compared withthis great work, all former efforts would seem to the taste they had created as so much literary trifling. Hitherto he had been merely trying his instrument, running his fingers over the keys in his easy professional way; but these preliminary flourishes gave no idea of the constructive harmonies to follow. And now, on a dull evening, some three weeks after Audrey's dinner-party, he was alone in his study, smoking, as he leaned back in his easy-chair, in one of those dreamy moods which with him meant fiction in the making, the tobacco-smoke curling round his head the Pythian fumes of his inspiration. The study was curiously suggestive of its owner's inconsistencies. With its silk cushions, Oriental rugs, and velvet draperies, its lining of books, and writing-table heaped with manuscripts and proofs, it witnessed to his impartial love of luxury and hard work. It told other secrets too. The cigar-case on the table beside him was embroidered by a woman's hand, the initials L. W. worked with gold thread in a raised monogram. Two or three photographs of pretty women were stuck by their corners behind the big looking-glass over the fireplace, together with invitation cards, frivolous little notes, and ball programmes. On one end of the mantel-board there was a photograph of Knowles; on the other, the one nearest Wyndham's chair, an empty frame of solid silver. The photograph and the frame represented the friendship and the love of his life.
To-night he had left his proofs untouched on thewriting-table, and had settled himself comfortably to his pipe, with the voluptuous satisfaction of a man who has put off a disagreeable duty. He felt that delicious turmoil of ideas which with him accompanied the building up of a story round its central character. Not that he yet understood that character. Wyndham had his intuitions, but he was not the man to trust them as such; it was his habit to verify them by a subsequent logic. His literary conscience allowed nothing to take the place of the experimental method, the careful observation, and arranging of minute facts, intimate analytical study from the life. No action was too small, no emotion too insignificant, for his uncompromising realism. He had applied the same method to his own experience. Whatever came in his way, the tragedy or comedy of his daily life, his moods of passion and apathy, the aspirations of his better moments, all underwent the same disintegrating process. He had the power of standing aloof from himself, of arresting the flight of his own sensations, and criticising his own actions as a disinterested spectator. Thus he made no experiment on others that he had not first tried on his own person. If any man ever understood himself, that man was Langley Wyndham. He was by no means vain of this distinction; on the contrary, he would have said that as a man's inner consciousness is the only thing he has any direct knowledge of, he must be a fool if he can live with himself—the closest of all human relations—for thirty-five years without understanding his own character.
What he really prided himself on was his knowledge of other people, especially of women. Unfortunately, for the first few years of his literary life he knew no women intimately: he had many acquaintances among them, a few enemies, but no friends; and the little he knew of individuals had not tended to raise his opinion of women in general. Consequently he drew them all, as he saw them, from the outside; the best sort with a certain delicacy and clearness of outline, the result of unerring eyesight and the gift of style; the worst sort with an incisive, almost brutal touch that suggested the black lines bitten out by some powerful acid. His work "took" because of its coarser qualities, the accentuated bitterness, the startling irony, the vigorous, characteristic phrase. Those black strokes were not introduced to throw up the grey wash or pencilled shading; Wyndham's cynicism was no mere literary affectation, it was engrained in his very nature. He had gone through many phases of disillusionment (including disgust at his own success) before that brief crisis of feeling which ended in his engagement to Miss Fraser. Then, for the first time in his life, a woman's nature had been given to him to know. It was a glorious opportunity for the born analyst; and for the first time in his life he let an opportunity go. He loved Alison Fraser, and he found that love made understanding impossible. He neverwanted to understand her; the relentless passion for analysis was absorbed in a comprehensive enthusiasm which embraced the whole of Alison and took no count of the parts. To have pulled her to pieces, even with a view to reconstruction, would have been a profanation of her and of his love. For a whole year the student of the earthly and the visible lived on the substance of things unseen—on faith in the goodness of Alison Fraser. By a peculiar irony it was her very goodness—for she was a good woman—which made her give up Wyndham. As Miss Gladys Armstrong had guessed (or as she would have put it, diagnosed), a detail of Wyndham's past life had come to Miss Fraser's knowledge, as these details always come, through a well-meaning friend. It was one which made it difficult for her to reconcile her marriage with Wyndham to her conscience. And because she loved him, because the thought of him, so hard to other women, so tender to herself, fascinated her reason and paralysed her will—flattering the egoism inherent even in the very good—because she was weak and he was irresistibly strong, she cut herself from him deliberately, open-eyed, and with one stroke. She had just sufficient strength for the sudden breaking off of their engagement, none for explanation, and none, alas! to save her from regretting her act of supererogatory virtue.
Wyndham gave no sign of suffering. He simply sank back into himself, and became the man he had been before, plus his experience of feeling, and minusthe ingenuousness of his self-knowledge. He took instead to self-mystification, trying to persuade himself that because he could not have Alison, Alison was not worth having. After that, it was but a step to palming off on his reason the monstrous syllogism that because Alison was unworthy, and Alison was a woman, therefore all women were unworthy. Except for purely literary purposes, he had done with the sex. He became if anything more intently, more remorselessly analytical, more absolutely the student of human nature. He lived now in and for his work.
He struck out into new paths; he was tired of his neutral washes, and striking effects in black and white. He had begun to dream of glorious subtilties of design and colour. Novels were lying in his head ten deep. He had whole note-books full of germs and embryos, all neatly arranged in their separate pigeon-holes. In some he had jotted down a name and a date, or a word which stood for a whole train of ideas. In others he had recorded some illustration as it occurred to him; or a single sentence stood flanked by a dozen variants—Wyndham being a careful worker and sensitive to niceties of language. To-night he was supremely happy. He saw his way to a lovely little bit of psychological realism. All that had been hitherto wanting to this particular development of his art had been the woman. In Audrey Craven he had found the indispensable thing—intimacy without love, or even, as he understoodthe word, friendship. She was the type he had long desired, the feminine creature artless in perpetual artifice, for ever revealing herself in a succession of disguises.
He was beginning to adjust his latest impressions to his earlier idea of her. He recalled the evening when he had first seen her—the hot, crowded drawing-room, the heavy atmosphere, the dull faces coming and going, and the figure of Audrey flashing through it all. She had irritated him then, for he had not yet classified her. He had tried not to think of her. She dogged his thoughts with most unmaidenly insistence; her image lay in wait for him at every cross-road of association; it was something vivid yet elusive, protean yet persistent. He recalled that other evening of her dinner-party—their first recognised meeting. Her whole person, which at first sight had impressed him with its emphatic individuality, now struck him as characterless and conventional. And yet—what was she like? She was like a chameleon. No, she wasn't; he recollected that the change of colour was a vital process in that animal. She was like an opal—all sparkle when you move it, and at rest dull, most undeniably dull. No,thatwasn't it exactly. She was a looking-glass for other people's personalities (he hated the horrid word, and apologised to himself for using it), formless and colourless, reflecting form and colour. After a moment's satisfaction with this last fancy, he became aware that he was being made the fool of metaphor. That was not his way. To find out what lay at the bottom of this shifting personality, what elemental thoughts and feelings, if any, the real Audrey was composed of; to see for himself the play of circumstances on her plastic nature, and know what reaction it was capable of—in a word, to experimentalise in cold blood on the living nerve and brain tissue, was his plan of work for the year 1896.
Making a mental note of several of the above phrases for future use, Wyndham knocked the ashes out of his pipe and went to bed, where he dreamed that the Devil, in evening dress, was presenting him with Audrey's soul—done up in a brown wrapper marked "MS. only"—for dissection.
It was in no direct accordance with his literary plans, though it may have been preordained in some divine scheme of chances, that Wyndham found himself next Sunday attending evensong at St. Teresa's, Lambeth. It so happened that Audrey and the Havilands had chosen that very evening to go and hear, or, as Ted expressed it, see Flaxman Reed. He wanted Flaxman Reed's head for a study. Ted seldom condescended to enter any church of later date than the fifteenth century, and, architecturally speaking, he feared the worst from St. Teresa's. Indeed, smoke, fog, and modern Gothic genius have made the outside of that building one with the grimy street it stands in, and Ted was not prepared for the golden beauty of the interior. His judgment halted as if some magic effect of colour had blinded it to stunted form and pitiful perspective. But the glory of St. Teresa's is its music. The three late-comers were shown into seats in the chancel as the choir were singing theMagnificat. Music was the one art to which Audrey's nature responded spontaneously after its kind. She knelt down and covered her face with her hands for a prayer's space, while the voices ofthe choir and organ shook her on every side with a palpable vibration. She was conscious then of a deep sense of religion merging in a faint expectancy, a premonition of things to follow. She rose from her knees and found an explanation of this in the fact that Langley Wyndham was standing in the opposite seat below the choir. She was not surprised; for her the unexpected was always about to happen. It had happened now.
She tried not to see or think of him; but she felt him as something illuminating and intensifying her consciousness. She heard the vicar's voice like a fine music playing in the background. Then organ and choir burst into the anthem. It was a fugue; the voices seemed to have gathered together from the ends of the world, flying, pursuing and flying, doubled, trebled, quadrupled in their flight, they met and parted, they overtook and were overtaken. And now it was no longer a fugue of sounds—it was a fugue of all sensations. The incense rose and mingled with the music; the music fled and rose, up among the clustering gas-jets, up to the chancel roof where it lost itself in a shimmering labyrinth of gold and sapphire, and died in a diminuendo of light and sound. Audrey looked up, and as her eyes met Wyndham's, it seemed as if a new and passionate theme had crashed into her fugue, dominating its harmonies, while the whole rushed on, more intricate, more tumultuous than before. Her individuality that had swum with thestream became fluent and coalesced with it now, soul flooded with sense, and sense with soul. She came to herself exhausted and shivering with cold. Flaxman Reed was in the pulpit. He stood motionless, with compressed lips and flashing eyes, as he watched the last deserters softly filing out through the side-aisles. The lights were turned low in nave and chancel; Ted wriggled in his seat until he commanded a good view of the fine head, in faint relief against a grey-white pillar, stone on stone; and Flaxman Reed flung out his text like a challenge to the world: "The things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal." The words suggested something piquantly metaphysical, magnificently vague, and Audrey followed the sermon a little way. But Flaxman Reed was in his austerest, most militant mood. He was a master of antithesis, and to Audrey there was something repellent in his steel-clad thoughts, his clear diamond-pointed sentences. No eloquence had any charm for her that was not as water to reflect her image, or as wind to lift and carry her along. Her fancy soon fluttered gently down to earth, and she caught herself wondering whether Wyndham would walk back to Piccadilly or go in a hansom.
She was still pursuing this train of thought as they left the church, when she proposed that they should go back to Chelsea by Westminster instead of Lambeth Bridge. Wyndham overtook them asthey turned down to the river by St. Thomas's Hospital. He stopped while Audrey pointed out the beauty of the scene with her little air of unique appreciation. "Isn't it too lovely for words? The suggestion—the mystery of it!" Her voice had a passionate impatience, as if she chafed at the limitations of the language. "Who says London's cold and grey? It's blue. And yet what would it be without the haze?" Wyndham smiled inscrutably: perhaps he wondered what Miss Audrey Craven would be without the haze?
"What did you think of the service?" she asked presently. By this time she and Wyndham were walking together a little in advance of the others.
"I didn't hear it. I was watching Flaxman Reed all the time." This statement, as Audrey well knew, was not strictly correct.
"So was I. My uncle says if he stays in the church he'll be the coming man."
"The coming man? H'm. He's been going back ever since I knew him. At present he's got to the thirteenth century; he may arrive at the Nicene age, but he'll never have a hold on his own. He's nothing but a holy anachronism."
"Oh? I thought you didn't understand him?"
"In one way I do, in another I don't. You see I knew him at Oxford when I was a happy undergraduate." (Audrey could not imagine Langley Wyndham ever being an undergraduate; it seemed to her that he must always havebeen a Master of Arts.) "I knew the real Flaxman Reed, and he was as logical a sceptic as you or I. There was an epidemic of ideas in our time, and the poor fellow was frightened, so he took it—badly. Of course he made up his mind that he was going to die, and he was horribly afraid of dying. So instead of talking about his interesting symptoms, as you or I might do" ("You or I"—again that flattering association!), "he quietly got rid of the disease by attacking its source."
"How?"
"Well, I forget the precise treatment, but I think he took equal parts of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, diluted withaqua sacra. He gave me the prescription, but I preferred the disease."
"At any rate he was in earnest."
"Deadly earnest. That's the piety of the fraud."
"You surely don't call him a fraud?"
"Well—a self-deceiver. Isn't that the completest and most fatal form of fraud? He fights and struggles to be what he isn't and calls it renouncing self."
"He renounces the world too—and everything that's pleasant."
"I'm afraid that doesn't impress me. I can't forget that he renounced reason because it was unpleasant. Rather than bear a little spiritual neuralgia, he killed the nerve of thought."
"How terrible!" said Audrey, though she had novery precise notion of what was involved in that operation.
"To us—not to him. Yet he talks about doing good work for his generation."
"Why shouldn't he? He works hard enough."
"Unfortunately his generation doesn't want his work or him either. It's too irrevocably pledged to reality. There's one thing about him though—his magnificent personality. I believe he has unlimited influence over some men and most women."
Audrey ignored the last suggestion. "You seem to find him very interesting."
"He is profoundly interesting. Not in himself so much, but in his associations. Do you know, when I saw you in church to-night it struck me that he might possibly influenceyou."
"Never! I should have to give up my intellect first, I suppose. I'm not prepared to dothat." Wyndham smiled again. "Why, what made you think he would influence me?"
"I'd no right to think anything at all about it, but I know some women take him for a hierophant."
"Some women? Do you think I'm like them?"
"You are like nothing but yourself. I was only afraid that he might persuade you to renounce yourself and become somebody else, which would be a pity."
"Don't be alarmed. I'm not so impressionable as you think."
"Aren't you? Be frank. Didn't you feel to-night that he might have a revelation for you?"
"No. And yet it's odd you should say so. I have felt that, but—not with him. I shall never come under that influence."
"I hope not." (It was delightful to have Langley Wyndham "hoping" and being "afraid" for her.) "He belongs to the dead—you to the living."
What a thing it is to have a sense of style, to know the words that consecrate a moment! They were crossing Westminster Bridge now, and Audrey looked back. On the Lambeth end of the bridge Ted and Katherine were leaning over the parapet; she looked at them as she might have looked at two figures in a crowd. Lambeth and St. Teresa's seemed very far away. She said so, and her tone implied that she had left illusion behind her on the Surrey side.
Wyndham said good-bye at Westminster. Audrey was not quite pleased with his manner of hailing a hansom; it implied a conscious loss of valuable time.
"What fools we were to let him catch us up," said Ted as they walked towards Pimlico. Audrey made no answer. She was saying to herself that Langley Wyndham had read her, and—well, she hardly thought he would take the trouble to read anything that was not interesting.
Audrey had made a faint protest against Wyndham's realistic presentation of Flaxman Reed. In doing so she was not guided by any insight into the character of that divine, or by any sympathy with his aims. Indeed she could not have understood him if she had tried. Her thoughts had never travelled along that avenue of time down which Wyndham had tracked his pathetic figure to the thirteenth century. She merely wanted to avoid a slavish acquiescence in Wyndham's view, to guard a characteristic intellectual attitude. Intellect has its responsibilities, and she was anxious to show herself impartial. In all this Flaxman Reed counted for nothing. It was intolerable to her that Wyndham should have classed her even for a moment with those weak emotional creatures who submitted to his influence. Why, he might just as well have said that she was influenced by Ted Haviland; the fact being that no engaged woman ever preserved her independence more completely than she had done. Had devotion to Ted interfered with her appreciation of Wyndham? Then she reflected that Wyndham did not know about her engagement any more than other people.
So when Mr. Flaxman Reed called, as he did on Monday afternoon, Audrey met him with a mind secure against any malignant charm. His most innocent remarks excited her suspicion.
"I'm glad you've found your way to St. Teresa's. We don't often get such a strong contingent from the other side." By "the other side" Mr. Reed meant Middlesex, but to Audrey the phrase was insidiously controversial. She determined to take her stand once and for all.
"I'm afraid my heterodoxy is incorrigible. So I should say is Mr. Langley Wyndham's."
The vicar raised his eyebrows in mild surprise. "I don't know whyhecame—unless it was for old acquaintance' sake."
"Ah! you knew him, didn't you? Do tell me about him. He's public property, you know."
"I daresay, but I have no right to discuss him. We hardly ever meet now; if we did we shouldn't agree. We are enigmas to each other."
"Yes," she said meditatively, and with a faint reproduction of Wyndham's manner, "I should say you would be. He belongs so essentially to the present, don't you think?"
Flaxman Reed flushed painfully. "And I to the past—is that what you mean?"
"Yes, I think I do."
"You may be right. I suppose he is very modern—a decadent who would rather die with his day than live an hour behind it—who can't see that thefuture may have more kindred with the past than with the present. Mind you, I'm not talking of him, but of his school."
"Then you read him? Of course—everybody reads him."
"I've not much time for any reading that lies outside my work. But I read his first book when it came out. Is it from him you get what you call your heterodoxy?"
"No. You have to think these things out for yourself."
Audrey was led into making this statement simply by the desire to please. That eternally feminine instinct told her that at the moment she would be most interesting to Flaxman Reed in the character of a forlorn sceptic. His face sharpened with a sudden distrust.
"What, haveyougot the malady of the century—the disease of thought? Surely this is something new?"
"It is. One can't go on for ever in the old grooves. One must think."
"Yes; that curse is laid upon us for our sins."
Audrey smiled a bitter smile, as much as to say that she must have committed some awful crime to be so tormented with intellect as she was.
"I suppose," he continued guilelessly, "every earnest mind must go through this sooner or later."
"Yes, but I've come out on what you call the other side. I can't go back, can I?"
"No; but you can go round."
Audrey shook her head sadly, feeling all the time how nice it was to be taken seriously.
"Why not? Why not compromise? What is life but compromise? What else is my own position as an Anglican priest? I daresay you know that my heart is not altogether with the Church I serve?" He checked himself; he had not meant to strike this personal note. And how could he explain the yearning of his heart for the great heart of the Mother-church? This would have been possible last year at Oxford, but not now. "I tell you this because I feel that it might perhaps help you."
"No; I know what you will say next. You will tell me to stop thinking because it hurts me."
"I won't. You will go on thinking in spite of me. But your intellect will be feeding on itself. You will get no farther. Thought can never be satisfied with thought."
Flaxman Reed was only a simple pure-minded priest, but Wyndham himself could not have chosen words more subtly calculated to establish the "influence." To have two such champions battling for possession of her soul was exciting enough in all conscience, but she was inexpressibly flattered by that dramatic conception of herself as a restless intellect struggling with the storms of doubt. It would be hard to say how Flaxman Reed came to believe in any real passion of thought behind Audrey's spiritual coquetry. His ministration to a living illusion was almost as touching as his devotion to a dead ideal. But Audrey herself was too completely the thrall of the illusion to feel compunction.
There was no voice to warn him that his enthusiasm was the prey of the eternal vanity. He leaned back in his meditative hieratic attitude, his elbows resting on the arm of his chair, his thin hands joined at the finger-tips, wondering what he should say to help her. After all, Audrey had stated her case a little vaguely—there was a reticence as to details. These, however, he easily supplied from his own experience, supposing hers to have been more or less like it. He said he wished he had known of this before, that he had spoken sooner, wincing perceptibly as Audrey pointed out the inexpediency of discussing eternal things on so temporal an occasion as her dinner-party. He did not mean that. His time now was short; he had a stupid parish meeting at five o'clock. He went rapidly over the ground, past immemorial stumbling-stones of thought, refuting current theories, suggesting lines of reading; in his excitement he even recommended some slight study of Patristics. There was nothing like getting to the sources—Polycarp and Irenæus were important; or he could lend her Lightfoot. But he did not want to overwhelm her with dogmas—mere matter for the intellect—he would prefer her to accept some truths provisionally and see how they worked out. After all, the working out was everything. He wanted her to see that it was a question of will. Inthe crisis of his own life he had helped himself most by helping others—practically, he meant—seeing after his poor people, and so on. Didn't she think it might be the same with her?
Audrey looked grave. It was good to be taken seriously, but this was going a little too far.
Didn't she think she could "do something? Other ladies——"
Flaxman Reed was doing well, very well indeed, but he had spoiled it all by that hopelessly inartistic touch. Any man of the world could have told him that to mention "other ladies" to Audrey—to take her out of the circle of supreme intelligences in which he had placed her ten minutes ago, and to confuse her with the rank and file of parochial underlings and hangers-on—was death to the "influence." It was an insult to her glorious womanhood. Some people might even have objected that such crass ignorance of the world he renounced detracted from the merit of the renunciation. Her voice was very cold and distant as she answered him. "What do you suppose I could do? If you mean slumming, I've never been down a slum in my life." No, he didn't mean slumming exactly. To tell the truth, he could not fancy Audrey mingling with the brutal side of life. He would have shrunk from giving her work that he committed without a pang to his deaconesses and sisters.
"Do you mean mothers' meetings then, and that sort of thing? Icouldn't."
No, he didn't mean mothers' meetings either. But he thought she might like to come sometimes to their social evenings.
"Social evenings"—that was worse than all. He had plunged in his nervousness to the lowermost bathos. Audrey saw that he looked puzzled and disheartened. She crossed over to her writing-desk, wrote out a cheque for five pounds, and gave it to him with the prettiest action in the world. "I want you to take that for your poor people. I wish I could help in some other way, but I can't. I am so sorry." The apology was sweetness itself, but she had the air of having settled her account with humanity—and him. He thanked her gravely and took his leave, reminding her that whenever she needed his help, it would still be there. She remained musing some time after he had gone.
He little guessed how nearly he had won the victory. Perhaps he would have scorned any advantage gained by an appeal to her sex, though he had conceded much to it—more than he well knew.
August was a miserable month for Katherine in the hot attic, hard at work on her own pictures, and too often finishing the various orders for black and white which Knowles had after all managed to put in Ted's way. She could have stood the hard work if she had not been more than ever worried on Ted's account. With her feminine instinct sharpened by affection, she foresaw trouble at hand—complications which it would never have entered into the boy's head to consider. For reasons of her own Audrey was still keeping her engagement a secret. She was less regular, too, in making appointments, fixing days for Ted to go over and see her; and more often than not he missed her if he happened to call at Chelsea Gardens of his own accord. At the same time she came to Devon Street as often as, or oftener than, ever, and there her manner to Ted had all its old charm, with something added; it was more deeply, more seriously affectionate than before. And yet it was just in these tender passages that Katherine detected the change of key. That tenderness was not remorse, as she might have supposed. It had nothing to do with the past, being purely an emotion of the passing moment. Audrey was playing a new part. Her mind was swayed by a fresh current of ideas; it had suffered the invasion of a foreign personality. The evidence for this was purely psychological, but it all pointed one way. A sudden display of new interests, a startling phrase, a word hitherto unknown in Audrey's vocabulary, her way of handling a book, the alternate excitement and preoccupation of her manner, they were all unmistakable. Katherine had noticed the same signs in the days of Audrey's first absorption in Ted. She had caught his tricks, his idioms, his way of thinking. She had even begun to see, like Ted, the humour of things, and to make reckless speeches, not quite like Ted, that shocked cousin Bella's sense of propriety. Katherine had smiled at her innocent plagiarism, and wondered at the transforming power of love. And now—Audrey was actually undergoing another metempsychosis. Under whose influence? Here again Katherine's instinct was correct. It was Wyndham's presence that in three weeks had brought about the change. Yes; in that impressive affection, in the pleading tremor of her voice, in her smiles and caresses, Audrey was acting a part before one invisible spectator. She played as if Wyndham were standing by and looking on. Her love for Ted had been a reality; therefore it served as a standard to measure all emotions by—it made this new passion of the imagination a thing of flesh and blood. No wonder that she would not announce her engagement. Atthe best of times her fluent nature shrank from everything that was fixed and irrevocable—above all from the act of will that trammelled her wandering fancy, the finality that limited her outlook upon life. And now it was impossible. The three weeks in which she had known Wyndham had shown her that, compared with that complex character, that finished intellect, Ted was indeed little better than a baby. Not that she could have done without Ted—far from it. As yet Wyndham was still the unknown, shadowy, far-off, and unapproachable. The touch of Ted's hand seemed to make him living, to bring him nearer to her. Ted still stood between her and the void where there is no more revelation, no hope, no love—and Hardy would be in London in another week.
Katherine had not guessed all the truth, any more than Audrey had herself; but she had guessed enough to make her extremely anxious. Audrey was not the wife she could have wished for Ted: she disapproved of his marriage with her as a certain hindrance to his career; but, above all, she dreaded for him the agony of disappointment which must follow if Audrey gave him up. She had no very clear idea of what it would mean to him; but judging his nature by what she had seen of it, she feared some shock either to his moral system or to his artistic powers. She longed to speak to him about it; but Ted and she were not accustomed to handling their emotions, and of late they had avoided allpersonal questions not susceptible of humorous treatment. After this persistent choosing of the shallows, she shrank from a sudden plunge into the depths. She felt strongly, and with her strong feeling was a bar to utterance.
At last an incident occurred which laid the subject open to frivolous discussion.
Katherine was painting one afternoon, and Ted was leaning out of the window, which looked south-west to Chelsea, his thoughts travelling in a bee-line towards the little brown house. Suddenly he drew his head in with an exclamation.
"Uncle James, by Jove! He'll be upon us in another minute. I'm off!" And he made a rush for his bedroom.
Katherine had only time to wipe the paint from her brush, to throw a tablecloth over the Apollo and a mackintosh over the divine shoulders of the Venus—Mr. Pigott was a purist in art, and Katherine respected his prejudices—when her uncle arrived, panting and inarticulate.
"Well, uncle, this is a surprise! How are you?"
"No better for climbing up that precipice of yours. What on earth possessed you to come to this out-of-the-way hole?"
"It's a good room for painting, you see——"
"What'sthat? Couldn't you find a good room in West Kensington, instead of planting yourself up here away from us all?"
This was a standing grievance, as Katherine knew.
"Well, you see, it's nicer here by the river, and it's cheaper too; and—how's aunt Kate?"
"Your aunt Kate has got a stye in her eye."
"Dear me, I'm very sorry to hear it. And you, uncle?"
"Poorly, very poorly. I ought not to have got out of my bed to-day. One of my old attacks. My liver's never been the same since I caught that bad chill at your father's funeral."
Uncle James looked at Katherine severely, as if she had been to blame for the calamity. His feeling was natural. One way or another, the Havilands had been the cause of calamity in the family ever since they came into it. Family worship and the worship of the Family were different but equally indispensable forms of the one true religion. The stigma of schism, if not of atheism, attached to the Havilands in departing from the old traditions and forming a little sect by themselves. Mr. Pigott meant well by them; at any time he would have helped them substantially, in such a manner as he thought fit. But, one and all, the Havilands had refused to be benefited in any way but their own; their own way, in the Pigotts' opinion, being invariably a foolish one—"between you and me, sir, they hadn't a sound business head among them." As for Ted and Katherine, before the day when he had washed his hands of Ted in the office lavatory, uncle James had tried to play the part of an overruling Providence in their affairs, and the young infidelshad signified their utter disbelief in him. Since then he had ceased to interfere with his creatures; and latterly his finger was only to be seen at times of marked crisis or disturbance, as in the arrangements for a marriage or a funeral.
An astounding piece of news had come to his ears, which was the reason of his present visitation. He hastened to the business in hand.
"What's this that I hear about Ted, eh?"
"I don't know," said Katherine, blushing violently.
"I'm told that he's taken up with some woman, nobody knows who, and that they're seen everywhere together——"
"'Who told you this?"
"Your cousin Nettie. She's seen them—constantly—in the National Gallery and the British Museum, carrying on all the time they're pretending to look at those heathen gods and goddesses"—Katherine glanced nervously round the studio. "They actually make assignations—they meet on the steps of public places. Nettie has noticed her hanging about waiting for him, and some young friends of hers saw them dining together alone at the Star and Garter. Now what's the meaning of all this?"
Katherine was too much amused to answer yet; she wanted to see what her uncle would say next. He shook his head solemnly.
"I knew what it would be when you two had it all your own way. As for you, Katherine, you took a very grave responsibility on your shoulders whenyou persuaded your young brother to live with you here, in this neighbourhood, away from all your relations. Your influence has been for anything but good."
"My dear uncle, you are so funny; but you're mistaken. I know Miss Craven, the lady you mean, perfectly well; she and Ted are great friends, and it's all right, I assure you."
"Do you mean to tell me he is engaged to this young lady he goes about with?"
Katherine hesitated: if she had felt inclined to gratify a curiosity which she considered impertinent, she was not at liberty to betray their secret.
"I can't tell you that, for I'm not supposed to know."
"Let me tell you, then, that it looks bad—very bad. To begin with, your cousin Nettie strongly disapproves of the young woman's appearance, so loud and over-dressed, evidently got up to attract. But it lies in a nutshell. If he's not engaged to her, why is he seen everywhere with her? If he is engaged to her, and she's a respectable woman—I sayifshe's respectable, why doesn't he introduce her to his family? Why doesn't he ask your aunt Kate to call on her?"
"Well, you see, supposing they are engaged, they wouldn't go and proclaim it all at once; and in any case, that would depend more on Miss Craven than Ted. I can't tell you any more than I have done; and I'd be greatly obliged if you wouldn't allowTed's affairs to be gossiped about by cousin Nettie or anybody else."
She was relieved for the moment by the entrance of Mrs. Rogers with the tea-tray.
"Tea, uncle?"
"No, thank you, none of your cat-lap. I must see Ted himself. Where is he?"
"I'm not sure, but Ithinkhe's gone out."
Mrs. Rogers looked up from her tray, pleased to give valuable information.
"Mr. 'Aviland is in 'is bedroom, m'm; I 'eard 'im as I come up."
"Oh, I'll go and tell him then."
She found Ted dressing himself carefully before calling on Audrey. She wasted five minutes in trying to persuade him to see his uncle. Ted was firm.
"Give him my very kindest regards, and tell him a pressing engagement alone prevents my waiting on him."
With that he ran merrily downstairs. His feet carried him very swiftly towards Audrey.
Katherine gave the message, with some modifications; and Mr. Pigott, seeing that no good was to be gained by staying, took his leave.
Ted came back sooner than his sister had expected. He smiled faintly at the absurd appearance of the Venus in her mackintosh, but he was evidently depressed. He looked mournfully at the tea-table.
"I'm afraid the tea's poison, Ted, and it's cold."
"It doesn't matter, I don't want any."
"Had tea at Audrey's?"
"No."
He strode impatiently to the table and took up one of the illustrations Katherine had been working at.
"What's up?" said she.
"Oh—er—for one thing, I've heard from the editor of the 'Sunday Illustrated.' He's in a beastly bad temper, and says my last batch of illustrations isn't funny enough. The old duffer's bringing out a religious serial, and he must have humour to make it go down."
Katherine was relieved. To divert him, she told him the family's opinion as to his relations with Audrey. That raised his spirits so far that he called his uncle a "fantastic old gander," and his cousin Nettie an "evil-minded little beast."
"After all, Ted," said Katherine, judicially, "why does Audrey go on making a mystery of your engagement?"
"I don't know and I don't care," said Ted, savagely.
Surely it was not in the power of that harmless person, the editor of the "Sunday Illustrated," to move him so? Something must have happened.
What had happened was this. As Ted was going into the little brown house at Chelsea he had met Mr. Langley Wyndham coming out of it; and for the first time in his life he had found Audrey in a bad temper. She was annoyed, in the first place,because the novelist had been unable to stay to tea. She had provided a chocolate cake on purpose, the eminent man having once approved of that delicacy. (It was a pretty way Audrey had, this remembering the likings of her friends.) She was also annoyed because Ted's coming had followed so immediately on Wyndham's going. It was her habit now, whenever she had seen Wyndham, to pass from the reality of his presence into a reverie which revived the sense of it, and Ted's arrival had interfered with this pastime. The first thing the boy did, too, was to wound her tenderest susceptibilities. He began playing with the books that lay beside her.
"What a literary cat it is!"
She frowned and drew in her breath quickly, as if in pain. He went on turning over the pages—it was Wyndham's "London Legends"—with irreverent fingers.
"I should very much like to know——" said Audrey to Ted, and stopped short.
"What would you very much like to know, Puss?"
"What you saw in me, to begin with."
"I haven't the remotest idea—unless it was your intellect."
"I should also like to know," said Audrey to the teapot, "why people fall in love?"
"The taste is either natural or acquired. Some take to it because they like it; some are driven toit by a hereditary tendency or an unhappy home. I do it myself to drown care."