"Oh Aphrodite, queen of dread desire!By all the dreams that throng Love's golden ways,By all the honied vows thy votary pays,By sacrificial wine, and holy fire!Thou who hast made my heart thy living lyre,Hast thou no gift for me, nor any grace?Why hast thou turned the light of Love's sweet faceFrom me, the sweetest singer of Love's choir?""For songs that charm the long ambrosial yearsThe gods bring many gifts, and mine shall be—Immortal life in mortal agony—Vain longing, fanned by wingèd hopes and fearsTo inextinguishable flame—and tearsBitter as death, salt as the Lesbian Sea."
"Oh Aphrodite, queen of dread desire!By all the dreams that throng Love's golden ways,By all the honied vows thy votary pays,By sacrificial wine, and holy fire!Thou who hast made my heart thy living lyre,Hast thou no gift for me, nor any grace?Why hast thou turned the light of Love's sweet faceFrom me, the sweetest singer of Love's choir?"
"For songs that charm the long ambrosial yearsThe gods bring many gifts, and mine shall be—Immortal life in mortal agony—Vain longing, fanned by wingèd hopes and fearsTo inextinguishable flame—and tearsBitter as death, salt as the Lesbian Sea."
Her breast rose and fell with the lines; by this time she was educated up to their feeling.
"Who was Sappho, and what did she do?—I know, but I've forgotten," asked a voice in the crowd.
"Oh, the woman who threw herself at the other fellow's head, you know, who naturally didn't appreciate the compliment."
Audrey was not intelligent enough to refrain from the inward comment, "How singularly inappropriate! I should have said Katherine was about the last person in the world to——" She turned round and found herself face to face with the poet. Knowles had been wandering through the crowd with evasive eyes, successfully dodging the ladies of his acquaintance, while his air of abstraction took all quality of offence from the unerring precision of his movements. But when he saw Miss Craven he stopped. He had an inkling of the truth, and respected her feelings too much to slight her while Wyndham's marriage was still a topic of the hour.
"Not bad for the boy, that!" said he, smiling gently at Sappho. "He's coming out, isn't he?"
"So are you, I think—in a new line too!"
"Ah—er—not quite a new one. I've been taken that way before."
She was about to make some pretty speech when they were joined by Ted, who had not noticed Audrey. His forehead puckered slightly when he saw her, but that was no doubt from sympathy with her probable embarrassment. For the first time in their acquaintance he was indifferent to the touch of the small hand that had tried to mould his destiny. If the truth must be told, in the flush of his success Ted had found out that his passion for Audrey was only the flickering of the flame on the altar dedicated to eternal Art. He listened to her compliments without that sense of apotheosis which (however low he rated it) her criticism had been wont to produce.
"Don't let's be seen looking at it any longer," he said at last; "let's go and pretend to get excited about some other fellow's work."
So they left Audrey to herself. She turned back and went down the room to see "The Witch of Atlas," the lady robed in her "subtle veil" of starbeams and mist. Her view of this picture was somewhat obstructed by a stout gentleman who, together witha thin lady, was taking up the whole of the available space before it. His companion, a badly-dressed young woman with a double eye-glass, was trying to decipher the lines quoted in her catalogue. As Audrey paused she looked up and stared, as only a woman with a double eye-glass can stare, at the same time attracting the stout gentleman's attention by a movement of her elbow.
"Look, uncle, quick! That's her! That's the person!"
"What's that, Nettie?" (The stout gentleman swung round as if on a pivot, as Audrey moved gracefully by.) "You don't mean to say so? Where's Ted?"
She walked on through the rooms, depressed by the meeting with Knowles—it suggested Wyndham. She would be meetinghimnext. And indeed she met him in the first gallery, where her aimless wanderings had brought her again.
His wife was with him. Audrey knew that she must meet her some time, and she had expected to see in Alison Fraser an enlarged edition of herself; she had even feared anédition de luxe, which would have been intolerable. She was prepared for distinction; but she saw with a finer agony the slight figure, the sweet proud face with its setting of pale gold hair, and worse than all, the indefinable air of remoteness and reserve which made Mrs. Langley Wyndham more than a "distinguished" woman. Wyndham lifted his hat and would have passed on;but Audrey, to show her perfect self-possession, stopped and held out her hand. He felt it trembling as he took it in a preoccupied manner; and Mrs. Langley Wyndham became instantly absorbed in picture No. 1.
"Have you seen young Haviland's performance?" asked Wyndham. (He had to say something.)
"Yes; it's a very fine study."
"So Knowles tells me. But everything's a fine study in this collection. There ought to be 'a fine' for the abuse of that expression."
"But it really is; go and see for yourself."
"It's his sister, isn't it?"
"Yes."
"Ah, that accounts for it. He could give his mind to it in that case." Wyndham was surprised at his own fatuity; his remarks sounded like the weird inanities that pass for witticisms in dreams.
"Perhaps. But never mind Mr. Haviland; I want you to introduce me to your wife."
Wyndham looked round; his wife had turned an unconscious back.
"Oh—er—thank you, you're very kind, but—er—we're just going."
He had not meant them so, but his words were like a whip laid across Audrey's shoulders. He moved on, and his wife joined him.
Audrey came across them half an hour later, stooping over some designs in black and white. She saw Mrs. Langley Wyndham look up in herhusband's face with a smile, raising her golden eyebrows. The look was one of those intimate trifles that have no meaning beyond the two persons concerned in it. For Audrey, smarting from Wyndham's insult, it was the flick of the lash in her face.
In the autumn of that year Audrey woke and found herself the classic of the hour, a literary queen without a rival. Wyndham's great work was finished, and it stood alone. Not another heroine of fiction could lift her head beside Laura, the leading character of "An Idyll of Piccadilly." He himself owned, almost with emotion, that it was the best thing he had ever done. He had not touched the surface this time; he had gone deep down to the springs of human nature. He had not merely analysed the woman till her character lay in ruins around him, but he had built her up again out of the psychic atoms, and Laura was alive. She showed the hand of the master by her own nullity. In her splendid vanity she was like some piece of elaborate golden fretwork, from which the substance had been refined by excess of workmanship.
The voice of criticism was one voice; there arose a unanimous hymn of praise from every literary "organ" in the country. It was Mr. Langley Wyndham's masterpiece, a work that left the excellence of "London Legends" far behind it on a lower plane. Though there was no falling off in point of style, the author had found something better to do this time than to cultivate the flowers of perfect speech. "Laura" was a triumph of intimate characterisation. And the brutal touches that disfigured his former work were absent from this; he had shown us that the boldest, most inflexible realism is compatible with a delicacy worthy of the daintiest of esoteric ideals.
The book, dedicated "To my Wife," appeared early in October. By November the question of the sources was opened out, and it began to be whispered (a whisper that could be traced to the private utterances of Miss Gladys Armstrong) that the prototype of Laura was a Miss Audrey Craven. In the person of her ubiquitous double, Miss Audrey Craven became a leading figure in London society. Then bit by bit the news got into the papers, and Wyndham'ssuccès d'estimewas followed bysuccès de scandalewhich promised to treble his editions.
Thus Audrey, unable to achieve greatness, had greatness thrust upon her; and the weight of it bowed her to the earth. The earth? As she read on, the earth seemed to crumble away from under her feet, leaving her baseless and alone before that terrifying apocalypse. Wyndham had trained her intelligence till it could appreciate the force of every chapter in his book of revelations. At last she saw herself as she was. And yet—could that be she? That mixture of vanity, stupidity, and passion? To be sure, he had been careful to give her brown hair instead of tell-tale red, and skillfully to alter the plotof her life with all details of time and place; but—what had he said? "Light as air, fluent as water, a being mingled of fire and a little earth; fickle as the wind that blew her in a wavering line across the surface of things." "Modern, and of stuff so fine that it chafed under the very breath of disapproval; and yet with a little malleable heart in it compounded of the most primeval of affections." She turned over the pages; everywhere she came upon the same thing. Now the phrases were spun out fine, they were subtle, they seemed to cling round her and stifle her; now they were short and keen, and they cut like knives. "Women may be divided into three classes—the virtuous, the flirtuous, and the non-virtuous. The middle class is by far the largest. It shades off finely into the two extremes. Laura belonged to it." "The moon was up, and Diana, divine sportswoman, was abroad, hunting big game." "Laura had made a virtue of necessity. She said that proved the necessity of virtue."
Oh, the cruelty of it! Would Ted, would Vincent, have done this if they had had it in their power? True, they had reproached her; but it was to her face, alone in her own drawing-room, where she had a chance of defending herself.Theywould not have held her up to public scorn. And they had some right to blame her,—she saw that now. But what had she done to deserve this from Langley? How had he found it in his heart to speak against her? She had loved him. Yes, she hadknown many a passing pain, but she had never really suffered until now. That was a part of her education that had been neglected hitherto. Only an accomplished student of human nature could have coached her through the highest branches of it.
Having set the scandal successfully afloat, the society papers began to utter a feeble protest against it—thus increasing their own reputation for a refined morality. But they had no power to turn the tide, and the scandal floated on. In society itself judgment was divided. Whether "Laura" was or was not a work of the highest art, was a question you might have heard discussed at every other dinner-table. Perhaps the criticism that was most to the point was that of Miss Gladys Armstrong, who proclaimed publicly that Langley Wyndham laboured under the disadvantage of not being a woman, and having no imagination to make up for it. Meanwhile the tone of the larger reviews remained unchanged. The reviewers, to a man, had committed themselves to the position that the book was Wyndham's masterpiece; and nobody could be found to go back on that opinion.
But in all that concert of adulation one voice was silent—the only voice that Wyndham cared to hear, that of Percival Knowles. The others might howl in chorus, and it would not be worth his while even to listen; he was looking forward to Knowles's long impressive solo. But that solo never came, neither could the note of Knowles be detected in the intricate chorus. It was strange. Knowles had been the high priest of the new Wyndham worship, and to him the eminent novelist had looked for sympathy and appreciation. But Knowles had made no sign. They had avoided the subject whenever they met; Wyndham was not so hardened by authorship as to have lost the instinctive delicacy felt by the creator at the birth of his book. Knowles seemed only too much inclined to respect that delicacy. Finally, Wyndham resolved to go and see his friend alone, and tentatively sound him on the subject of "Laura." He proposed to himself a pleasant evening's chat, in which that lady would be discussed in all her bearings, and he would enjoy a foretaste of the praise ere long to be dealt out to him before an admiring public. On his way to Knowles's rooms he heard in fancy the congratulation, the temperate flattery, the fine discriminating phrase.
He found Knowles amusing himself with a blue pencil and Miss Armstrong's last novel. "Laura: An Idyll of Piccadilly" lay on the table beside him, its pages cut, but with none of those slips of paper between them which marked the other books put aside for review. Knowles greeted his friend with an embarrassed laugh, and they fell to discussing every question of the hour except the burning one for Wyndham. By the rapidity of his conversational manœuvres, it was evident that the critic wanted to steer clear of that topic. Wyndham, however, after ambling round and round it for sometime with no effect, suddenly brought up straight in front of it with—
"By-the-bye, have you condescended to read my last fairy-tale?"
"What, the Mayfairy tale?" said Knowles, with deft pleasantry. "Yes, of course I've read it."
"What do you think of it?"
Knowles suddenly looked grave. "Well, at the moment, I had much rather not tell you."
"Really? Well, I suppose I shall know some day."
Knowles looked as if he were struggling with an unpleasant duty, and it were getting the better of him.
"Not from me, I'm afraid. It will be the first work of yours I have left unnoticed. As I can't review it favourably, I prefer not to notice it at all."
"You surely don't suppose that I came here to fish for a review?"
"I do not."
"Thanks. I don't deny that I should have appreciated the public expression of your opinion, favourable or unfavourable. But I respect your scruples as far as I understand them. The only thing is——"
He paused; it was his turn to feel uncomfortable.
"Is what?"
"Well, after the way you've delivered yourself on my other books, which are feebleness itself compared with this one, I must say your present attitude astonishes me."
"I've given you my reasons for it."
"No; that's what you've not done. Surely we've known each other too long for this foolishness. Of course, it's considerate of you not to damn me for the entertainment of the British public; but you know you're the only man in England whose judgment I care about, and I confess I'd like to have your private opinion—the usual honest and candid thing, you know. I'm not talking of gods, men, and columns."
Knowles sat silent, frowning.
"Oh, well, of course, if you'd rather not, there's nothing more to be said."
"Not much."
But Wyndham's palpitating egoism was martyred by this silence beyond endurance, and he burst out in spite of himself—
"But it's inconceivable to me, after the way you've treated my first crude work. You must have set up some new canons of art since then. Otherwise I should say you were inconsistent."
But Knowles was not to be drawn out, if he could possibly help it.
"Do you mind telling me one thing—have you anything to say against its form?"
"Not a word. I admit that in form it's about as perfect as it well could be. I—er—" (he was beginning to feel that he could not help it) "object to your use of your matter."
"What on earth do you mean?"
"I mean what I say."
"Please explain."
"Very well. Since you so earnestly desire my honest and candid opinion, you shall have it. You remind me that I praised your earlier work, and suggest my inconsistency in not approving of your latest. My praise was sincere. I thought, and I have never changed my opinion, that the originality of your first books amounted to genius. Your last, however great its other qualities, has not that merit. It is,Ithink, conspicuously destitute of imagination."
"Do you deny its vitality—its faithfulness to nature?"
"Certainly not. I object to it as a barefaced plagiarism from nature."
"Then at least you'll admit that my heroine lives?"
"She does, unfortunately. Wouldn't it have been better taste to wait till she was decently dead?"
"Oh—I see. You meanthat."
"Yes; I mean that. If you had no respect for your own reputation, you might have thought of Miss Craven's."
"Excuse me, this is simply irrelevant nonsense, and most unworthy of you. Miss Craven, as you perfectly well know, is one manifestation of the eternal flirt. I seized on the type she belongs to, and individualised it."
"You did nothing of the sort. You seized on the individual and put her into type—a very different thing. Do you imagine that life will ever be the same to that poor woman again? I never liked Miss Craven, but she was harmless, even nice, before you got hold of her and spoilt her, by making her think herself clever. Isn't that what happens to Laura?"
"That—among other things."
"Other things, also slavishly copied from Miss Craven. I recognise the faithfulness of your portraiture in all its details; so does she and everybody else."
"Knowles, you talk like the lay fool. Surely you know how all fiction, worthy of the name, is made? I took what lay nearest at hand, as hundreds of novelists have done before me; though as for that, there's not an incident in the book that is not the purest fiction. You don't give me credit—I won't say for originality, but—for ordinary reconstructive ability."
"I give you credit for having made the most of quite exceptional advantages. You best know how you obtained them."
Wyndham reflected a moment, then looked Knowles in the face.
"I assure you solemnly there was never any question of Miss Craven's honour."
Knowles raised his eyebrows. "I didn't suppose for a moment there was. How about your own,though? Your notions of honour strike me as being quaintly original—rather more original than your Piccadyllic heroine."
Knowles was not bad-tempered, but he was a frequent cause of bad temper in other people. It was with the utmost difficulty that Wyndham controlled himself for a final effort to evade the personal, and set the question at large on general grounds.
"Then I suppose you would deny the right of any artist to make use of living material?"
Knowles yawned. "I don't attempt to deny anything. I'm debating another question."
"What is that?" Wyndham smiled an uneasy muscular smile.
"Whether it isn't my duty to kick you, or rather totryto kick you, out of this room."
"Really; and what for? For the crime of writing a successful story?"
"For the perpetration of the most consummate piece of literary scoundrelism on record."
As that statement was accompanied by a nervous twitching of the lips which Wyndham was at liberty to take for a smile, he held out his hand to Knowles before saying good-night.
"My dear Knowles, ifyournotions of literary honour held good, there would be an end of realism."
"The end of realism, my dear Wyndham, is the thing of all others I most desire to see."
They had shaken hands; but Wyndham understood his friend, and he knew as certainly as if Knowles had told him so that Audrey Craven, the woman whom neither of them loved, had avenged herself. She had struck, through Laura, at the friendship of his life. He was also informed of one or two facts about himself which had not as yet come within the range of his observation. He consoled himself with the reflection that the temptations of genius are not those of other men. And perhaps he was right.
Knowles sat down to his review of Miss Armstrong's book with unruffled urbanity. He wrote: "This authoress belongs to a select but rapidly increasing band of thinkers. There may be schisms in the new school with regard to details, but on the whole it is a united one. The members are unanimous in their fearless optimism. One and all they preach the same hopeful doctrine, that the attainment of a high standard of immodesty by woman will in time make morality possible for man."
He went to bed vowing that of all professions that chosen by the man of letters is the most detestable.
That winter was a hard one for the Havilands; they were at the very lowest ebb of their resources, short of being actually in debt. The reclaiming of Hardy had been an expensive undertaking for Katherine in more ways than one. And naturally the more successful her efforts were the more time they consumed. She had been so busy all summer finishing off old work that she had not been able to take up anything fresh. She had even been obliged to send away sitters, and they had betaken themselves elsewhere. The "Witch" had not sold, though she had won a big paragraph all to herself in "Modern Art." In her first enthusiasm over Ted's success Katherine had encouraged him to give up his pot-boilers. She had taken over some of his black-and-white work herself. And in the midst of it all she was engaged on a portrait of Vincent. They were so dependent on what they earned that these serious interruptions to work threatened an inroad on their small capital. Now, they might any day have applied to Mr. Pigott for a loan, and rejoiced that worthy gentleman's heart; but such a step was the last indignity, not even to be contemplated by Ted and Katherine. And even if theirpride had not stood in their way, that source of revenue seemed closed to them now. Ted and his uncle had had an unfortunate encounter in the New Gallery. The fact that he was indebted to Katherine for an invitation to the private view had not prevented Mr. Pigott from speaking his mind freely to her brother on the subject of the Witch. He said he could have forgiven Ted for painting such a picture. He could have forgiven Katherine too, if it had not been for her ability—that made her doubly responsible. Ted tried to soothe him; he led him gently away from the spot; he promised to do all he could to induce Katherine to cultivate the grace of stupidity; but it was useless. The old gentleman stood to his ground, and Ted left him there. He received a letter from him the next morning:—
"Dear Edward,—I parted from you yesterday more in sorrow than in anger. I need not tell you how deeply shocked and grieved I was to learn from a literary young friend that the subject of your sister's picture is taken from the works of the atheist Shelley—a man whose unprincipled life, I am told, is an all-sufficient commentary on his opinions."Your cousin Nettie is earning a modest competence by poker-work, and the painting of flowers, birds, and other innocent and beautiful objects. Why cannot Katherine do the same?"When she is willing to give up her present pursuits for some becoming occupation, let her be assured of my ready encouragement and help. Till then, no more.—From your affectionate uncle,"James Pigott."
"Dear Edward,—I parted from you yesterday more in sorrow than in anger. I need not tell you how deeply shocked and grieved I was to learn from a literary young friend that the subject of your sister's picture is taken from the works of the atheist Shelley—a man whose unprincipled life, I am told, is an all-sufficient commentary on his opinions.
"Your cousin Nettie is earning a modest competence by poker-work, and the painting of flowers, birds, and other innocent and beautiful objects. Why cannot Katherine do the same?
"When she is willing to give up her present pursuits for some becoming occupation, let her be assured of my ready encouragement and help. Till then, no more.—From your affectionate uncle,
"James Pigott."
Mr. Pigott had written his last sentence advisedly. "Some day," he said to himself, "those young people will have to put their pride in their pocket." He might have known that the Haviland pride was not of the kind that goes conveniently into any pocket, even an empty one.
But Katherine worked her hardest, and gave little heed to these things. She saw her own chances of success dwindling farther into the distance, and was surprised to see how little she cared, for a curious callousness had come over her of late. Selfish ambition—selfish, because it often persists in living when all other things are dead—seemed to have died in her at last. Had she overcome it? Or was it that she had really ceased to care? She had too much to think of to be able to settle that question just now.
After all, she had another source of pride. Vincent had begun by looking to her as a protection against his worst self; and when his mother died suddenly that winter, his last link with home being broken, he became more and more dependent on Katherine. And now, though the tie of comradeship between them was closer than ever, he had no longer any need of her. He could go alone. His will was free, his intellect was awake. He readhard now. All his old ardours and enthusiasms returned to him; he worked on the Pioneer-book, recasting his favourite parts, beating the whole into shape, and hunting down the superfluous adjective with a manly delight in the new sport. Katherine had shown the revised manuscript to Knowles, and he had found her a publisher and worked him into the right frame of mind. Katherine had suppressed part of that publisher's verdict: it was to the effect that, though the text was up to the average merit of its kind, the illustrations would form the most valuable portion of the work.
Hardy had submitted the final revision of his proofs to Katherine. But on one point he was resolute: "I want the dedication to stand as it is, Sis." And Katherine nodded her head and was silent.
He often talked about Audrey now. He was no longer bitter and vindictive, as he had been in the days of his degradation. His old feeling for her had returned to him, unchanged, except for the refining process he himself had undergone. His love was ennobled now by an infinite pity. Not that he had lost sight of what she had done for him; but now that his eyes were clearer, he saw her as she was, and felt to the full the pathos of her vanity.
Wyndham's book was severely criticised in Devon Street. One day, about four months after its appearance, Hardy had returned to the subject nearest his heart, and was discussing it with Katherine ashe sat to her for his portrait, now nearly finished. He had just pleasantly told her that he wished he had managed to fall in love with her instead of with Audrey; she would have made something very different of him—a remark to which Katherine made no answer, treating it, as Hardy thought, with the contempt it deserved. Then he broke out, as he had done many a time before.
"I don't know how it is. When I was away from her, I used to think of her as a sort of amateur angel leading me on." (Katherine smiled; it was very evident that Audrey had "led him on.") "When I was with her she seemed to be a little devil, encouraging everything that was bad in me. I don't know how she did it; but she did. And yet, Kathy, whatever they may say, I don't believe she's bad. I don't swear, of course, that she's a paragon of goodness——"
"Isn't there a medium?"
"But she was a sweet little thing before she met that scoundrel Wyndham. Wasn't she?"
But Katherine was giving the whole of her attention to Vincent's nose.
"Putting Audrey out of the question, I don't think much of Mr. Langley Wyndham. I don't like his books; I can't breathe in his stuffy drawing-rooms. Why can't the fellow open his windows sometimes and let in a little of God's fresh air? As you know, I believe he's even a shadier character than I am."
"He hasn't got a character; it's all run to literature."
"H'm—I'm not so sure about that."
Katherine had laid down her brushes, and was examining her work with her head on one side. "Well, he can't draw a character, anyhow; Laura's simply impossible."
"I don't know. Laura is Audrey, and Audrey's a funny person."
"I used to think that Audrey wasn't a person—that she was made up of little bits of people stuck together."
"That's not bad, Sis. Sheismade up of bits of people stuck together."
"Yes; but the thing is, what makes them stick? Mr. Wyndham doesn't go into that, andthat'sAudrey. His work is clever—too clever by half—but it's terribly superficial."
Hardy meditated on that saying; then he began again.
"You've done a great deal for me, Kathy. I sometimes think that if you'd given your mind to it, you could have made something of Audrey. You know, poor little thing, she used to think she was very strong-minded; but she was more easily twisted about than any woman I know. That's what made her so fickle. If there's any truth in that stupid story of Wyndham's, she must have been like a piece of putty in her hands. I believe, if you could have got hold of her, you could have done her some good."
"I don't believe in doing people good."
"I do. I'm a case in point."
"No, you're not."
"I am. You didmegood."
"I'm very glad to hear it. If I did, it's because I never thought about it. Now, if I tried my hand on Audrey, I should set to work with the fixed intention of doing her good; therefore I should fail miserably. It's a different thing altogether."
"I see no difference myself."
Katherine was silent. Her charity had covered the multitude of Vincent's sins. Why had she not been able to spare a corner of it for Audrey's?
"Come," said Hardy, "it's not as if she was really very bad."
"No, it's not; there'd be some chance then. There is a medium, and the medium is hopeless. The wonder is you never found that out."
"I did. I knew it all the time; yet I loved her. It made no difference—nothing ever will. I've tried to kill my feeling for her, but it's no use—I can't. I should have to kill myself first; and even then I believe I should find it waiting for me in Hades when I got there."
"After all, why should you try to kill it, Vincent?"
"It's the shame of it, Sis."
Katherine might have thought that on the contrary he seemed rather proud of the permanence of his affections, but she was too much preoccupied to be aware of his moral absurdity.
"Well, I don't know much about these things; but it seems to me that even if she doesn't love you, even if she isn't everything you thought she was, there's no reason to be ashamed of loving her."
"Ah, Kathy, you never loved any one like that."
Her colour changed. "No. It isn't every one who can love like that."
"What would you do if you were in my case—if you'd given yourself away like me? Supposing you went and lost your little heart to some man-fiend who was, we'll say, about as bad a lot as I am, and who had the execrable taste not to care a rap for you,—wouldn't you feel ashamed of him and yourself too?"
Katherine's white face flushed; she looked away from him, and answered steadily—
"No, I wouldn't."
He thought he had hurt her feelings, and was about to change the subject when she turned a beaming face to him.
"But then, you see, I don't love anything much."
"Good as you are, you'd be a better woman if you did."
"Of course there are exceptions. I've some sort of affection for the Witch and Ted."
"Ted is a very fine boy, and the Witch is a very fine picture, but—well, some day you'll have an affection for something else; it won't be a boy, and it won't be a picture. Then, Sis, you'll know what it is to feel, and your art will go pop."
"Oh, I hope not. But it's not true; look at Ted."
"Ted's a man, and you are a woman. Ten to one, a really great passion improves a man's art: it plays the deuce with a woman's."
"I don't believe it!" said Katherine, with rather more warmth than the occasion demanded.
"Shall I tell you what you've been doing, Sis? First of all, you've tried to live two lives and get the best out of each. That was tempting Providence, as Mrs. Rogers would say. You found that wouldn't work, so you said to yourself, 'I give it up. Here goes; I'll be a woman at all costs. I'll know what it is to love.'"
Katherine took up her brushes again, and in spite of herself moved one foot impatiently. Hardy went on, well pleased with his own lucidity.
"And you gave up the only thing you really cared about, and played at being the slave of duty, the devoted sister."
She sighed (was it a sigh of relief?).
"You're wrong. I'm anything but a devoted sister."
"Yes, you're anything but a devoted sister. I'm going to claim one of the privileges of friendship—that of speaking unpleasant truths in the unpleasantest way possible."
"Go on. This is getting interesting."
"I repeat, then, you're not a truly devoted sister. A truly devoted sister would give her brother a chance of developing some moral fibre on his ownaccount. Ever since you two lived together you've been making noble sacrifices. Now two can't play at that game, and the boy hasn't had a chance. The consequence is, he won't work; he prefers taking it easy."
"That was Audrey's fault, not mine."
"Yes, but you encouraged him; and now he does what he likes, young monkey, and you do all the pot-boilers. And you're making yourself ill over them. So much for Ted. I've given him a hint, and he took it very well. Now for the Witch. I believe in your heart of hearts you love her better than everybody else put together. And now you're off on the other tack; you're trying to sit on the artist in you that you may develop the woman. I mean the other way about; you're sitting on the woman that you may develop the artist."
"Aren't you getting a little mixed?"
"That plan works worse than all. Let me implore you not to go on with it. If you only knew it, there's nothing that you will ever do that's lovelier than your own womanhood. Whatever you do, don't kill that. Don't go on hardening your heart to everything human till there's no sweetness left in your nature, Kathy. I want my little sister to make the best of her life. Some day some good man will ask you to be his wife. If, when that day comes, you don't know how to love, little woman, all the success in the world won't make up to you for the happiness you have missed."
"Oh, Vincent, if you only knew how funny you are!" She laughed the laugh that Vincent loved to hear, and when she looked at him her eyelashes were all wet with it.
"All right, Sis. Some day you'll own that your elder brother wasn't such a fool as you think him."
"I—I don't think you a fool. I only wish you knew how frightfully funny you are! No, I don't, though," she added below her breath.
But Vincent was quite unable to see wherein lay the humour of his excellent remarks. He considered that his experience gave him a right to speak with authority on questions of feeling. But it had not made him understand everything.
The next morning Katherine was sitting before her easel, waiting for Vincent to come up for the last sitting. It was a raw, cold day, and her fingers felt numbed as they took up the brushes. Ted had made a promise to Hardy to do his fair share of the more remunerative work. Before keeping it, he was giving a few final touches to one of the figures in his Dante study of Paolo and Francesca, swept like leaves on the wind of hell. He was in high good humour, and as he worked he talked incessantly, quoting from an imaginary review. "In the genius of Mr. Edward Haviland we have a new Avatar of the spirit of Art. Mr. Haviland is the disciple of no school. He owes no debt either to the past or to the present. He works in a noble freedom fromprejudice and preconception, uncorrupted by custom as he is untrammelled by tradition. If we may classify what is above and beyond classification, we should say that in matter Mr. Haviland is an idealist, while in form he is an ultra-realist. We dare to prophesy that he will become the founder of a new romantico-classical school in the near future——"
"Oh, Ted, do be quiet, and let me think for a minute."
"What's the matter, Kathy?"
"I don't know. I think I'm tired, or else it's the cold."
Ted looked at her earnestly (for him) and then came over to her and stroked her hair. "There's something wrong. Won't you confide in your brother?"
"I'm all right—only lazy."
"Can't—can't I do anything?"
"Well, perhaps. I don't want you to give up much of your time to it; but if you'd finish some of those black-and-white things—I don't feel equal to tackling them all single-handed."
"Oh," said the boy, turning very red, "why didn't you say so before?" He sat down and began at once on the pile of manuscripts waiting to be illustrated. But he continued to talk. "I saw Vincent the other day, and he told me his opinion of you pretty plainly."
"What did he say?"
"Why, that you've sacrificed your poor brother toyour desire to cut a moral figure; that you've been cultivating all sorts of extravagant virtues at my expense. I might have been playing the most heroic parts, and getting any amount of applause, if you hadn't selfishly bagged all the best ones for yourself. You've taken up the whole of the stage, so that I haven't had room even to exercise the minor virtues. Just reach me that sheaf of crayons, there's a good girl. Thanks." Ted put on a judical air, and chose a crayon. "Look there! you've taken the most uncomfortable chair and the worst light in the studio, when I might have been posing in them all the time. I haven't had half a chance. Vincent said so. No wonder he's disgusted with you. Ah! that's not so bad for a mere tyro. No, Kathy, he's quite right. You're an angel, and I've been a lazy scoundrel. But you'll admit that during my painful mental affliction I wasn't quite responsible. And afterwards—well, how was I to know? I thought we were getting on very nicely."
"So we were, Ted—up till now."
Her last words were so charged with feeling that Ted looked up surprised. But he said nothing, being a person of tact.
The sitting that morning was not a long one. Hardy seemed tired and depressed. After posing patiently for half an hour, he gave it up.
"It's no good this morning. I must go out and get a little warmth into me. You people had better come too."
"It's such a horrid day," pleaded Katherine. "You'll get exceedingly wet, and come back no warmer. It's going to rain or snow, or something." As she spoke, the first drops of a cold sleet rattled on the skylight.
But Vincent was obstinate and restless.
"I must go, if it's only for a turn on the Embankment. What with my book and your picture, I haven't stretched my legs all week. Come along, Ted. You'll die, Kathy, if you persist in wallowing in oil-paint like that, and taking no exercise."
They set out before a cutting north-easter and a sharp shower of rain that froze as it fell. Katherine watched them as they crossed the street and turned on to the Embankment. The wind came round the corner, as a north-easter will, and through the window-sash, chilling her as she stood. "There's nobody more surprised than myself," she said. "And yet I might have known that if I went in for this sort of thing, I should make a mess of it." She went back to the fire, and settled herself in the attitude of thought. There was no end to her thinking now. Perhaps that was the reason why she was always tired. Hitherto she had triumphed over fatigue and privation by a power which seemed inexhaustible, and was certainly mysterious. Much of it was due to sheer youth and health, and to the exercise which gave her a steady hand and a cool head—much, doubtless, to her unflinching will; but Katherine was hardly aware how far her strengthhad lain in the absence of temptation to any feminine weakness. Hitherto she had seen her object always in a clear untroubled air, and her work had gained something of her life's austere and passionless serenity. Now it was all different, and she was thinking of what had made that difference.
Ted came back glowing from his walk; but Vincent was colder than ever. He sat shivering over the Havilands' fire all afternoon, and went to bed early.
"We'll finish that sitting to-morrow, Sis," he said, wearily. Ted went out again to dine with Knowles, and Katherine was left alone.
It might have been her own mood, or the shadow of Vincent's, but she was depressed with vague presentiments of trouble. They gathered like the formless winter clouds, without falling in any rain. Then she realised that she was very tired. She wrapped herself in a rug and lay down on the couch to rest. And rest came as it comes after a sleepless night, not in sleep deep and restorative, but in a gentle numbing of the brain. She woke out of her stupor refreshed. The cloud had rolled away, and she could work again. She sat down to the last pile of Vincent's proofs.
When she had finished them, she turned over the pages again. The reading had brought back to her the last eighteen months, with all the meaning that they had for her now. She looked back and thought of the years when she had first worked for Ted, ofthe precious time that Audrey had wasted. The fatalism that was her mood so often now told her that these thingshad to be. And it was better, infinitely better, for Ted to have had that experience. She looked back on the year that Vincent had wasted out of his own life, and saw that that too had to be. There had been vicarious salvation even there. Ted had once told her that there was a time when, as he expressed it, he would have walked calmly to perdition, if Vincent had not gone before him and shown him what was there. She looked back on that year of her own life, "wasted," as she had once thought—the year she had given up so grudgingly at the beginning, so freely at the end—and she was content.
And now she was giving up, not time alone, and thought, and labour, but love—love that could have no certain reward but pain. And she was still content. At first she had been astonished and indignant at her own capacity for emotion; it was as if her nature had suddenly revealed itself in a new and unpleasant light. Then she had grown accustomed to it. Yesterday she was even amused at the strangeness and the fatuity of it all. She described herself as a bungling amateur wandering out of her own line and attempting the impossible. Clearly she should have left this sort of thing to people like Audrey, to whose genius it was suited, and who might hope to attain some success in it; but for her the love of art was quite incompatible with the art of love. She could have imagined herself entertaining these feelings for some one like Percival Knowles, for instance, who was clever and had an educated sense of humour, who wrote verses for her and flattered her artistic vanity; but to have fixed upon Vincent of all people in the world! She must have done it because it was impossible. That was what she had said yesterday; but to-day she understood. Had she not helped to make Vincent a man that she could love without shame? He was the work of her hands, that which her own fingers had made. It was natural that she should love her own work. Was she not an artist before everything, as he had said? Her tears came, and after her tears a calm, in which she heard the beating of a heart that was not her own, and felt the pulse of the divine Fate that moves through human things.
Then she asked herself—Was Vincent right? What effect had this curious experience really had on her painting? She felt no personal interest in the answer, but she got up and went to the easel. Her portrait of Vincent was finished—all but the right hand, that was still in outline. It was strange. Ted's best work had begun with his head of Audrey. What about her own? She saw through her tears that in all her long and hateful apprenticeship to portrait-painting, nothing that she had ever done could compare with this last. There was a new quality in it, something that she had once despaired of attaining. And that was character. She had painted the man himself, as she saw him. Not theVincent of any particular hour, but Vincent with the memory of the past, and the hope of the future in his face. All the infinite suggestion and pathos, the complex expression that life had left on it, was there. If she had not loved Vincent—loved him not only as he was, but as he might have been—would she have known how to paint like that? Although her womanhood would never receive the full reward of its devotion, that debt had been paid back to her art with interest. The artistic voice told her that Vincent was wrong; that for her what women call love had meant knowledge; that her strength would henceforth lie in the visible rendering of character; and that work of such a high order would command immediate success.
And the voice of her womanhood cried out in anguish—"All the success in the world won't make up to you for the happiness you have missed."
There was no sitting the next day; for Vincent was in bed, ill, with congestion of the lungs.
There is a little village in North Devon, sheltered from the sea by a low range of sand-hills that stretches for miles on each side of it. The coast turns westward here, and no cliff breaks that line of billowy sand; northward and southward it goes, with the rhythmic monotony of the sea. The sand-hills are dotted with tufts of the long star-grass, where the rabbits sit; inland they are covered with fine blades bitten short by the sheep. Seaward lies the hard ribbed sand, glistening with salt, and fringed with the white surf of the Atlantic.
On the coast, about a mile from the village, there is a long one-storyed bungalow, built on the sand-hills. The sand is in the garden, where no flowers grow but sea-pinks and the wild horn-poppy; it lies in drifts about the verandah, and is whirled by the Atlantic storms on to the low thatched roof. The house stands alone but for a few fishermen's huts beside it, huddled close together for neighbourhood.
Here, because it was the most man-forsaken spot she knew, Audrey had come, exchanging the roar of London for the roar of the Atlantic. She thought she would find consolation in the presence of Nature. London had become intolerable to her. Everywhere she turned she was reminded of the hateful Laura. Laura stood open in the window of every book-shop; Laura lay on every drawing-room table; there was no getting away from her. And yet Audrey's notoriety had won her more friends than she had ever had before. Everywhere people were kind to her; they made much of her; they said it was "hard lines," it was "a shame," "execrable," "unpardonable," and they assured her that nobody thought a bit the worse of her for all that. Some even went so far as to declare that they saw not the remotest resemblance between her and the popular heroine. But it was no use. Nothing could raise her in her own esteem. She fled. She longed to be alone with Nature. She took the bungalow for the winter; and once there, she wished she had never come.
She arrived in a storm that lasted some days. She thought she would have gone mad simply with hearing the mad wind and sea. It was the same whether she sat indoors listening to them, or she walked out, battling with the wreaths of whirling sand. After the storm came the dull, grey, heaving calm,—always the rolling clouds, the rolling sand-hills, and the rolling sea. That was infinitely worse. And to add to her depression, Audrey had never been so rigidly confined to the society of her chaperon; there was nobody else to see or hear, and the boundaries of the poor lady's intellect were conspicuous in the melancholy waste. There was no escape from her except into the cold monotony without.
Then February set in warm though grey. One morning Audrey was able to sit out in a sunny hollow of the sand-hills, where the rabbits had flattened a nest for her. Then she could think.
She was in the presence of Nature. Art was nothing to this. Art, in the time of her brief acquaintance with it, had baffled her, and given her a hint of her own feebleness; but Nature was the great Incomprehensible—and she was alone with it. Alone, in a lonely land, peopled mostly by the wild creatures of sea and shore, by peasants and fishermen, men and women who looked at her with strange eyes and spoke a strange language; whose ways were dark to her, and their thoughts unfathomable. She was face to face not only with primitive human beings, but with the primeval forces of the world—the stern, implacable will of the wind and sea. Not that she could feel these things thus, for they lay beyond the range of her emotions; but at the same time they tortured her. At first it was only by a dull sense of their presence, annihilating her own. Then, because they were things too great for her to grasp, they cruelly flung her back upon herself. They had no revelation for her. But left to herself, bit by bit her own character was revealed to her,—not as it had appeared to her before—not even as Wyndham had revealed it to her—but in the nothingness that was its being. It was stripped bare of all that had clothed it, and ruled it, and made it seem beautiful in her eyes. Left to herself, all theinfluences that had lent colour and consistency to this blank, unstable nature, had passed out of her life. The men whose destiny she had tried to mould, who had ended by moulding hers, twisting it now into one shape, now into another, had done with it at last; they had flung it from them unshapen as before. There was no permanence even in destiny. Vincent, whose will had dominated her own; Ted, whose boyish passion had touched her heart and made her feel; Langley, whose intellect had kindled hers, and made her able to think,—they were all gone, and she was alone. That was Langley's doing—Langley, whom alone of the three she had really loved—ah, she hated him for it now. And hating him, she remembered the many virtues of the two whom she had not loved well. Vincent—that was a revelation of love—why had she shut her eyes to it? Ted too, poor boy, he might have been hers still if she had chosen. She might have been moulding his destiny at this moment—instead of which, his destiny was doubtless moulding itself admirably without her.
Then her mood changed. She revolted against the cruelty of her lot. Her sex was the original, the unpardonable injustice. If she had only been a man, she could have taken her life into her own hands, and shaped it according to her will. But woman, even modern woman, is the slave of circumstances and the fool of fate.
"Audrey, Audrey, my dear!" called a wind-blownvoice across the sand-hills. Solitude had frightened Miss Craven out of the bungalow, and she was picking her way in and out among the rabbit holes.
North Devon was hateful to cousin Bella. She hated the wastes of sand and sea, the discomforts of the bungalow, the slow hours uncertainly measured by meal-times that seemed as if they would never come. Her brain was wild with unsatisfied curiosity. Yet she had tact in the presence of real suffering. She had forborne to question Audrey about the past, and their present life was not fruitful in topics. She did nothing but wonder. "I wonder when it will be tea-time? I wonder if there was anything between Audrey and her cousin? I wonder which of those three gentlemen it was? I wonder when it will be tea-time?" That was the monotonous rondo of her thoughts to which the sea kept time.
"Audrey, my dear, come in! I think it must be lunch-time," she wailed. But no answer came from the hollow. She meekly turned, and picked her way back again across the sand-hills.
Audrey lay hidden till the forlorn little figure was out of sight; then she got up and looked around her. She shuddered. Her life was as bleak as the bleak landscape smitten by the salt wind—cold and grey and formless as the winter sea.
What was that black silhouette on the sands? She strained her eyes to see. Another figure was making its way towards her from the bungalow.When it came near she recognised the unofficial rustic who brought telegrams from the nearest post-town. She waited. The man approached her with an inane smile on his face.
"Teleegram vur yü, Mizz," he drawled.
She tore open the cover, and read: "Come at once. Vincent dying. Wire what train you come by.—Katherine."
She crumpled the paper in her clenched hand. The landscape was blotted out; she saw nothing but the envelope lying at her feet, a dull orange patch against the greyish sand.
"Any awnzur, Mizz?"
"No." She shut her eyes and tried to realise it. "Yes—yes, there is! Wait—I must look out my trains first."
She made out that by driving to Barnstaple, and catching the two-o'clock train, she would reach Waterloo about eight. She sent the man back with a telegram saying that she would be in Devon Street by nine that evening at the latest.
It was past one then, and she had yet to pack. It was hopeless—she could never catch that train. It did not matter; there was another to Paddington an hour later: it was a slow train, but she would be with Vincent by eleven.
But she was faint, and had to have some luncheon before she could do anything; and there was so much to do. She flew hither and thither, trying to collect her clothes and her thoughts. Her greycloak and her bearskins—she would want them, it would be cold in the train. And her best hat—where was her best hat? Cousin Bella had hidden her best hat. Ah! shemustthink, or everything would go wrong. What was it all about? Vincent dying—dying? Audrey knew little about dying, except that it was a habit people had of plunging you suddenly into mourning when you had just ordered a new dress. Death was another of those things she could not understand.
By the time she had had luncheon, and decided what clothes she would take, and packed them; by the time the one old fly in the village had been ordered, and had made its way at a funereal pace to Barnstaple,—Audrey was just in time to see the three-o'clock train steaming out of the station. By taking the next train and travelling all night, she would only reach Paddington at four in the morning.
As she was at last borne on towards London, lying back on the cushions and trying to sleep, the facts became more clear to her. Vincent was dying; and he had sent for her. She was exalted once more in her own eyes.
It seemed to her then that her love for Vincent had been the one stable and enduring thing in her nature, the link that bound her to a transfigured past, that gave coherence to a life of episodes.
Vincent had been ill for six weeks before Katherine sent off her telegram. For a month of that time he had been struggling with death. Then, when the mild weather set in, he had taken a sudden turn for the better, and it seemed to himself and the Havilands that he had won the victory. Only the doctor and Mrs. Rogers looked grave,—the doctor because of his science, which taught him to be cautious in raising people's hopes; Mrs. Rogers, because of a deep theological pessimism. She unburdened herself to Katherine.
"I knew 'ow it 'ud be when 'e gave up them 'abits of 'is, miss. 'E's been as good as gold for the last year. 'E 'yn't given me no trouble nor anybody; a goin' about so soft, and bilin' of 'is corffee in 'is little Hetna. I said tomyselfthen, 'e's going to be took. It was the same with my pore 'usban', miss."
"Don't talk nonsense, Mrs. Rogers. Mr. Hardy hasn't the least intention of dying; he's getting better as fast as ever he can."
"Oh, miss! don't you sy so! It gives me a turn to 'ear anybody talk so presumptuous. Don't you do it, m'm. If 'e is a little better, it's enuff to make the Almighty tyke 'im, jest to 'ear you, miss."
Katherine forgave Mrs. Rogers, for the affectionate woman had helped to nurse Vincent with a zeal out of all proportion to her knowledge. Katherine had engaged a night-nurse during the crisis of his illness; after that, she and Ted nursed him themselves by turns—one sitting up all night, while the other slept on a bed made up in the sitting-room, to be within call. Katherine learned to know Ted better in those six weeks than in all his life before. The boy seemed to be possessed by a passion of remorse. He was as quiet as Katherine in Vincent's room, and could do anything that had to be done there with the gentleness and devotion of a woman. She would willingly have kept on the trained nurse, in order to give Vincent every advantage in the fight for recovery; but it was impossible.
For all three of them had come to the end of their resources at the same time. The Havilands were in debt at last. Vincent had sunk nearly all his capital in his British Columbian farm, where the agent, in whose integrity he had guilelessly trusted, worked the land for his own benefit, and cheated him out of the returns. His mother had left everything to her second husband. Worse than all was the reprehensible conduct of Sir Theophilus Parker. The old gentleman had died well within the term his nephew had given him, but had made no mention of him in his will, and "Lavernac and three thousand a-year" went to a kinsman of irreproachablemorals, but a Radical, and many degrees more distant than Vincent from the blood of a Tory squire.
So, after the struggle with death, came the struggle with poverty. Work was impossible for hands busy with service in the sick-room, and young brains worn out with watching and anxiety. The most expensive luxuries were poor Vincent's necessities; for everything depended now on keeping up his strength.
One morning, after a long night's watching, instead of turning into the next room to sleep, Katherine put on her hat and cloak and went up to the deserted studio. She left the house with the "Witch of Atlas" under her cloak, and carried her to every picture-dealer in Piccadilly and New Bond Street. It was all in vain. Everywhere the Witch was pronounced to be beautiful, but unsalable. She was bowed out of every shop-door with polite regret, expressed in one formula: "The demand for this kind of work is really so small that we could only offer you a nominal sum, madam." Finally, Katherine turned into a small shop in Westminster, only to receive the same answer. But this time she was desperate. "What do you call a nominal sum?" The dealer looked the picture up and down; he noted, too, the shabby cloak and worn face of the artist.
"Frame included, five guineas. Not a shilling more, miss."
"I'll take that," she said, almost greedily. Andthe Witch was handed over the counter in exchange for the tenth part of her value.
But five guineas were a mere drop in the ocean of their necessities.
Two days later Katherine set out again, no longer alert and eager, but with a white face, a firm mouth, and a bearing so emphatically resolute that it suggested a previous agony of indecision. She took a 'bus from Lupus Street to the City. Getting out at Leadenhall Street, she walked on till she came to a building where an arrow painted on the doorway guided her to the offices of Messrs. Pigott & Co., on the third floor. On and on she went, up the broad stone stairs, with a sick heart and trembling knees, the steepest, weariest climb she had ever made in a life of climbing. When she reached the third floor she almost turned back at the sight of the closed door marked "Private." Then the thought of Vincent lying in his wretched room, a sudden blinding vision of his white face laid back on the pillows, overcame the last rebellion of her pride. She knocked; a well-regulated voice answered, "Who is there?" She brushed her eyelashes with her hand and walked in.
"It's me, uncle."
Mr. Pigott almost started from his seat. "You, Katherine? Bless me! Dear me, dear me!" He put on his spectacles, and examined her as if she had been some curious animal. And he, too, noticed not only her frayed skirt and the worn edgesof the fur about her cloak, but the sharp lines of her face and the black shadows under her eyes.
"Sit down, my dear."
She obeyed, putting her elbow on the office table and resting her head in her hand. She looked defiantly, almost fiercely, before her, and spoke in a cold, hard voice—
"I've come to ask you if you'll lend us some money. We're in debt——"
"In debt? Tt-t-t-tt—that's bad."
"I know it is. But we've had illness in the house, and expenses that we had to meet."
"Bless me! Is the boy ill?"
"No; it's not Ted——" But as she tried to explain who it was she broke down utterly, and burst into tears. Then uncle James took off his spectacles and wiped them. He waited till she could speak coherently; and when he had heard, he took his cheque-book out of his drawer, asking no questions and making no comments—for which Katherine respected him.
"How much will clear you, Katherine, and see you to the end of this business?"
"Twenty pounds would clear us; but——"
Uncle James looked very grave, and he wrote with a slow and terrible deliberation. But he smiled lavishly as he handed her a cheque for a hundred guineas. He had made it guineas.
"Remember, there's plenty more where that came from."
"I—I don't know how to thank you, uncle; we'll repay it gradually, with the interest."
"Interest, indeed; you'll do nothing of the kind. And we won't say anything about repayment either, this time. Only keep out of debt—keep out of debt, and don't make a fool of yourself, Katherine."
Katherine hesitated, and her voice trembled. "I—I'm not——"
"No, I don't say you are. I ask no questions; and, Katherine!" he looked up, but she was still standing beside him.
"Yes."
"Always come to me at once when you want money; and go to your aunt Kate when you want advice. She'll help you better than I can, my dear."
"Thank you—thank you very much indeed. You are too good to me." She stooped down and kissed him on the forehead, pressing his hand in hers, and was gone before he could see her tears. Perhaps they would have gratified him. But he was amply rewarded by her kiss and the compliment paid him by his own conscience, which told him that he had not forced his niece's confidence, as he might have done, nor yet chuckled, as he might have done, over her fallen pride. It was a remarkable fulfilment of prophecy, too.
When she got back to Devon Street, Vincent was asleep, with Mrs. Rogers watching over him, and Ted was waiting for her to come to lunch. He looked terribly depressed.
She showed him her cheque in silence.
"You never askedhim, that stern old Puritan father?"
"Don't, Ted. Yes, I did. I thought it would kill me; but it didn't. Oh, Ted, wehavedone him an injustice. He was kindness itself. I had to tell him about Vincent, too, and he never said a word—only gave me the cheque, and said we weren't to pay it back."
"H'm, that wasn't half bad of him, poor old thing." That admission meant a great deal from Ted.
"There's a letter there for you,—from Knowles, I think."
"What's he writing about?" She tore open the envelope. To her intense surprise she found a cheque for fifty guineas in it, and this note:—
"Dear Miss Haviland,—Forgive my saying so, but when you want to sell your pictures, why don't you consult your friends instead of going to a thieving dealer? I found the Witch in the hands of such an one, and rescued her, for I won't say how little. As I could not possibly keep my ill-gotten gains on any other terms, please accept the enclosed, which with what you probably received will make up something like her real value. I need not tell you how delighted I am to possess so exquisite a specimen of your best work."
"Dear Miss Haviland,—Forgive my saying so, but when you want to sell your pictures, why don't you consult your friends instead of going to a thieving dealer? I found the Witch in the hands of such an one, and rescued her, for I won't say how little. As I could not possibly keep my ill-gotten gains on any other terms, please accept the enclosed, which with what you probably received will make up something like her real value. I need not tell you how delighted I am to possess so exquisite a specimen of your best work."
"Ted, what am I to do? Send it back again?"
"No, you little fool! Keep it, and never dothatagain—for any one."
For any one? What was there that she would not do for Vincent? But Ted, having said that, looked more depressed than ever. He went to the fireplace, and leaned against the chimneypiece, shading his face with his hand.
"What is it, Ted?"
He made no answer. A terrible fear clutched at her heart, and he saw it in her eyes.
"He's all right now; he's sleeping. But——"
"Butwhat? Tell me, Ted."
"Well, Crashawe was here this morning, and he says he isn't really better."
"But heisbetter. He said so himself when he examined him yesterday."
"Yes, so he is, in a way. That is, you see, his lungs are all right. It's his heart that's bad now. Crashawe says it must always have been more or less weak. And now——" He stopped short.
"Ted——" she implored.
"It may stop beating any minute."
She said nothing; she only took off her hat and cloak and put on her artist's overall,—it was her nurse's apron now. She must go to Vincent. But a thought struck her before she reached the door.
"Does he know?"
"No; but I think he has some idea. He told Crashawe this morning not to interfere with thecourse of nature." Ted smiled a dreary smile at the recollection.