The next evening, after dinner, I left the ship and made my way toSuzee's place to take her for the promised walk.
It was just seven when I stepped ashore, and light of the purest, most exquisite gold lay over everything. The air had that special quality of Alaska which I have never met anywhere else, an extreme humidity; it hung upon the cheek as a mist hangs, only it was clear as crystal, brilliant as a yellow diamond.
There was no wind, not a breath ruffled the stillness nor stirred the motionless blue water.
The exquisite chain of islands off the mainland was mirrored in the still, shining depths, and lifted their delicate outlines clothed with fir and larch, soft as half-forgotten dreams, against the transparent blue of the sky. Sitka was placid and restful, the streets quiet and empty as I walked along in the sunny silence.
Suzee was at the door waiting for me. She had dressed herself differently, entirely in yellow. The yellow silk of the little square jacket contrasted well with her midnight hair, and the only dash of other colour in the picture she presented was the blue stone in her earrings.
"Good evening, Treevor," she said, smiling up at me. And I bent down and pressed my lips to those little, soft, curved ones she put up for me.
We started out at once. Suzee told me we were going for a long way to see the wood, and had the important air of a person going on a lengthy expedition. She had brought a Japanese sunshade with her which she put up, and certainly the hot light falling through the rice-paper had a wonderfully beautiful effect on her creamy skin and soft yellow silk clothing. She walked easily, only with rather short steps. As she was of the lower class, there had been no question of the "golden lilies" or distortion of the feet for her, and they were small and prettily shaped, bare, save for a sort of sandal, or as the Indians call them, "guaraches," bound under the sole.
We passed up the main street and soon after turned into a narrow winding road that leads along the coast, Sitka being on a promontory, with a beautiful azure bay running inland behind it.
Our path ran sometimes inland, through portions of wood, part of that great impenetrable primeval forest that at one time completely covered the whole of Sitka, sometimes quite on the edge of the water. Here there were rocks and boulders, and little coves of white sand and stretches of miniature beaches, with the lip of the bay resting on them.
Infinitesimal waves broke on the sunny white sand with a low musical tinkle, across the bay one could see the delicate chain of islands rising with their feathery trees into the blue, warding off the breakers and the storms of the open sea beyond. In here, the peaceful water murmured to itself and repeated tales of the beginning of the world, of the first gold dawn that broke upon the earth, and of later days, when the sombre black forests came to the water's edge and none knew them but the great black bear, and when the seals played joyously, undisturbed, in the fog-banks off the islands. I was in the mood to appreciate deeply the beauty of the scene, and all the objects round seemed to speak to me of their inner meaning, but my companion was not at all moved by, nor interested in her surroundings. She helped to make the picture more strange and lovely as she sat by me on a rock, with her shining clothes and brilliant face under the gay sunshade, but mentally she jarred on me by her complete indifference to any influence of the scene. I almost wished I were alone here, to sit upon this tremendous shore and dream.
"You are dull, Treevor," she exclaimed pettishly. "You really are."
I had kissed her twice in the last ten minutes, but she hated my eyes to wander for a moment from her face to the sea. She hated the least reference apparently to the landscape. As long as I was talking to her and about her, admiring her dress or her hair, she was satisfied.
"Come along," she said impatiently; "let us go on to the wood, leave off looking at that stupid sea."
I rose reluctantly and we followed the road which turned inland again. The wood was a world of grey shadows. As we entered by a narrow trail leading from the road, the golden day outside was soon closed from us by the thick veils of hanging creeper and parasitical plants of all sorts that entwined round the gnarled and aged trees, and crossing and re-crossing from one to the other, netted them together.
Over the creepers again had grown grey-green lichens and long, shaggy moss, so that strands and fringes of it fell on every side, filling the interstices of the gigantic web that stretched from tree to tree, excluding the light of the sunlit sky.
Beneath, the lower branches of the trees were sad and sodden, overgrown with lichen, clogged with hanging wreaths of moss. A river ran through the wood and at times, swelled by the melting snows, burst, evidently, in roaring flood over its banks.
Everywhere there were traces of recent floods, roots washed bare and places where the swirling waters had heaped up their débris of sticks and mud-stained leaves. All along the damp ground the lowest branches of the trees, weighted with tangled moss, trailed, broken and bruised by the fierce rush of the current. The trees themselves seemed centuries old, bent and gnarled and twisted into grotesque and ghostly forms. In the dim twilight reigning here one could fancy one stood in some hideous torture-chamber, surrounded by writhing and distorted figures. There an elbow, there a withered arm, a fist clenched in agony, seemed protruding from the sombre, sad-clothed trees, so weirdly knotted and twisted were the old cinder-hued boughs.
As we neared the river we could hear it rushing by long before we could see it, so thick was the undergrowth that hung low over it.
It seemed as if we might be approaching the black Styx through this melancholy wood where all seemed weeping in torn veils and ash-coloured garments.
No touch of depression affected my companion; she seemed as insensible to the grey solemnity, the dim mystery of the wood, as she had been to the vivid glory of the sea. She slipped a little velvet hand into mine, and when we drew near to the hidden Styx, murmured softly:
"We will find a dry place, Treevor, on the other side, and sit down among the trees. Then you must take me in your arms and I will be your own Suzee. I do not want my old husband any more."
I stopped and looked down upon her. Not even the sad light could dim the soft brilliance of her face. It seemed to bloom out of the ashy shadows like an exquisite flower. Her eyes were wells of fire beneath their velvet blackness.
"Do you love me very much?" I asked.
"Oh, yes, so much," she answered with passionate emphasis. "You are so beautiful. Never have I seen any one so beautiful, and so tall and so strong. Oh, it ispainto me to love you so much."
And indeed she became quite white, as she drew her hand from mine and clasped both of hers upon her breast as if to still some agony there.
My own heart beat hard. The grey wood seemed to lose its ashy tone and become warm and rosy round us. I bent over her and took her up wholly in my arms, and she laughed and threw hers around me in wild delight.
"Carry me, Treevor, over the bridge and up the slope at the side. It is so nice to feel you carrying me."
It was no difficulty to carry her, and the waves of electricity from her joyous little soul rushed through me till my arms and all the veins of my body seemed alight and burning.
I ran with her, over the narrow bridge and up the slope, where, as she said, there was drier ground. And there, on a bed of leaves under some tangled branches, I fell on my knees with her still clasped to my breast, and covered her small satin-skinned face with kisses.
"I am yours now. You must not let me go. I only want to look and look at your face. I wish I could tell you how I love you. Oh, Treevor, I can't tell you…."
As I looked down, breathless with running and kisses and the fires she had kindled within me, I saw how her bosom heaved beneath the yellow jacket, how all the delicate curves of her breast seemed broken up with panting sighs and longing to express in words all that her body expressed so much better.
"Darling, there is no need to tell me. I know." And I put my hand round her soft column of throat, feeling all its quick pulses throbbing hard into the palm of my hand.
"Put your head down on my heart, Treevor. Lie down beside me; now let us think we have drunk a little opium, just a little, and we are going to sleep through a long night together. Hush! What is that? Did you hear anything?"
She lifted my hand from her throat and sat up, listening.
I had not heard anything. I had been too absorbed. All had vanished now from me, except the fervent beauty of the girl before me.
The sea of desire had closed over my head, sealing the senses to outside things; I drew her towards me impatiently.
"It is nothing," I murmured. "I heard nothing." But she sat up, gazing straight across a small cleared space in front of us to where the impenetrable thicket of undergrowth again stood forward like grey screens between the twisted tree trunks.
"Yes, there was something; there, opposite! Look, something is moving!" I followed her eyes and saw a strand of loose moss quiver and heard a twig break in the quiet round us. We both watched the undergrowth across the open space intently. For a second nothing moved, then the boughs parted in front of us, and through the great lichen streamers and rugged bands of grey-green moss depending from them, peered an old, drawn-looking face.
Suzee gave a piercing shriek of dismay, and started to her feet.
"My husband!" she gasped.
I sprang to my feet, and my right hand went to my hip pocket. The head pushed through the thicket, and a bent and aged form followed slowly. I drew out my revolver, but the figure of the old man straightened itself up and he waved his hand impatiently, as if deprecating violence.
"Sir, I have come after my wife," he said, in a low, broken tone.
I slipped the weapon back in my pocket. I had had an idea that he might attack Suzee, but voice and face showed he was in a different mood.
Suzee clung to my hand on her knees, crying and trembling.
"Go and sit over there," he said peremptorily to her, pointing to the other side of the glade, far enough from us to be out of hearing.
She did not move, only clung and shivered and wept as before.
I bent over her, loosening my hand.
"Do as he says," I whispered; "no harm can come to you while I am here."
Suzee let go my fingers reluctantly and crept away, sobbing, to the opposite edge of the thicket. The old Chinaman motioned me to sit down. I did so, mechanically wondering whether his calmness was a ruse under cover of which he would suddenly stab me. He sat down, too, stiffly, beside me, resting on his heels, and his hard, wrinkled hands supporting his withered face.
"Now," he said, in a thin old voice; "look at me! I am an old man, you are a young one. You are strong, you are well; you are rich too, I think." He looked critically over me. "You have everything that I have not, already. Why do you come here to rob an old man of all he has in this world?"
I felt myself colour with anger. All the blood in my body seemed to rush to my head and stand singing in my ears.
I felt a furious impulse to knock him aside out of my way; but his age and weakness held me motionless.
"All my youth, when I was strong and good-looking as you are now, and women loved me, I worked hard like a slave, and starved and saved. When others played I toiled, when they spent I hoarded up. What was I saving for? That I might buy myselfthat." He waved his hand in the direction of Suzee, sitting in a little crumpled heap against a gnarled tree opposite us.
"I bought her," he went on with increasing excitement. "I bought her from a woman who would have let her out, night by night, to foreigners. I have given her a good home, she does no hard work. She has a child, she has fine clothes. I work still all day and every day that I may give money to her. She is my one joy, my treasure; don't take her away from me, don't do it. You have all the world before you, and all the women in it that are without husbands. Go to them, leave me my wife in peace."
Tears were rolling fast down his face now, his clasped hands quivered with emotion.
"When I was a young man I would not take any pleasure. No, pleasure means money, and I was saving. When I am old I will buy, I said. It needs money, when I am old I shall have it. I can buy then. But, ah! when one is old it is all dust and ashes."
I looked at his thin shrunken form, poorly clad, at his face, deeply lined with great furrows, made there by incessant toil and constant pain. I felt my joy in Suzee to wither in the grey shadow of his grief. Some people would have thought him doubtless an immoral old scoundrel, and that he had no business in his old age to try to be happy as younger men are, to wish, to expect it. But I cannot see that joy is the exclusive right of any particular age. A young man or young woman has no more right or title to enjoy than an old man or woman; they have simply the right of might, which is norightat all.
"Well, what do you want me to say or do?" I exclaimed impatiently. "Take your wife back with you now, no harm has happened to her. Take her home with you."
"Yes, I can take her body, but not her spirit," answered the old man sadly.
His tone made me look at him keenly. Hitherto I had felt sorry for Suzee that she was his; now, as I heard his accent, I felt sorry for him that he was hers.
A great capacity for suffering looked out of the aged face, such as I knew could never look out of hers.
"If you lift your finger she would come to you! Promise me you will not see her again, not speak to her; that you will go. And if she comes to you, you will not accept her."
I was silent for a moment.
"My ship goes to-morrow morning," I answered; "I am not likely to see your wife again. I shall not seek her."
"That is not enough," moaned the old man; "she will find a way. She will come to you. Promise me you will not take her away with you; if you do you will have an old man's murder on your head."
I moved impatiently.
"I am not going to take her away," I answered.
"But promise me. If I have your promise I shall feel certain."
I hesitated, and looked across at Suzee, a patch of beautiful colour against the grey background of bent and aged trees.
What had I intended to do, I asked myself. I could not take her, in any case. I had not meant that. A virtuous American ship like the Cottage City would hardly admit a Suzee to share my cabin.
Then what did my promise matter if it but reflected the fact, and if it satisfied him?
"You are not willing to promise," he said, coming close to me and peering into my face; "I feel it."
I thought I heard his teeth close on an unuttered oath. Still he did not threaten me. As I remained silent he suddenly threw himself on the ground in front of me, and stretched out his hands and put them on my feet.
"Sir I implore you. Give me your word you will not take her, then I am satisfied. Better take my life than my wife."
I lifted my eyes for a moment in a glance towards Suzee and saw her make a scornful gesture at the prostrate figure. The gold bracelets on her arm below the yellow silk sleeve shewed in the action a contrast to the old, worn clothing of the poorest material that her husband wore.
I rose to my feet and raised him up.
"Get up, I hate to see you kneel to me. I have said I shall not take your wife. As far as I am concerned, that is a promise. I have said it."
"Thank you," he said, inclining his head, and then moved away, not without a certain dignity in his old form, lean and twisted though the work of years had made it.
I dropped back into my place where I had been sitting and watched the two figures before me almost in a dream.
He went up to the girl and spoke, apparently not unkindly, and some talk ensued. Then I saw him bend down and take her wrist and drag her to her feet.
Suzee hung back as one sees a child hang back from a nurse, but she moved forward though unwillingly, and so at last they passed from my sight, through the grey trees and the weeping moss, the thin old man stepping doggedly forward, the pretty, gay-clothed childish little figure dragging back.
Then all was still. The old grey wood was full of weird light, but the silence of the night had fallen on it. Beast and bird and insect had sought their lair and nest and cranny. Not a leaf moved. I felt entirely alone.
"One never knows in life," I thought, repeating my words to Morley.
I felt a keen sense of longing regret surge slowly, heavily through me. How exquisitely sweet and perfect her beauty was! And she had lain in my arms for that moment, one moment that was stamped into my brain in gold. I put my head into my hands and shut out the dim grey wood from vision and recalled that moment. It came back to me, the touch of her soft form, the smiling curve of the lips put up to me, the fire in the liquid depths of those almond eyes, the round throat delicate as polished ivory. The extraordinary triumph of beauty over the senses came before my mind suddenly, presenting the problem that always puzzles and eludes me.
Why should certain lines and colours in pleasing the eye so intoxicate and inflame the brain? For it is the brain to which beauty appeals. Youth and health in a loved object are sufficient to capture the physical senses, but they do not fill the brain with that exaltation, that delirium of joy, that divine elation that sweeps up through us at the sight of beauty. Divine fire, it seems to be lighted first in the glance of the eyes.
In an hour's time I left the wood and walked slowly shipwards. I felt tired and overstrained, exceedingly regretful, full of longing after that lovely vision that had come to me and that I had had to drive away.
The unearthly stillness combined with the brilliant, unabated, unfailing light had a curious mystery about it that charmed and delighted me. The sea, so blue and tranquil, sparkled softly on my left hand, the pellucid blue of the sky stretched overhead, and all the air was full of the sweet sunshine we associate with day. Yet it was midnight. I pulled out my watch and looked at it to assure myself of the fact. Sitka was wrapt in silence and sleep, my own footstep resounded strangely in the burning empty streets.
I had to pass the tea-shop on my way to the ship. One could see nothing of it from the street as the compound shut it off from view, and across the compound entrance a stout hurdle was now stretched and barred.
I passed on with a sigh, reached the ship lying motionless against the quay, went down to my cabin without encountering any one, threw off my clothes and myself in my berth, feeling a sense of fatigue obliterating thought.
The night before I had had no sleep, and the incessant golden glare, day and night alike, wearies the nerves not trained to it.
Suzee and almond eyes and injured husbands floated away from me on the dark wings of sleep.
It must have been an hour or so later that I woke suddenly with a sense of suffocation. Some soft, heavy thing lay across my breast. I started up and two arms clasped my neck and I heard Suzee's voice; saying in my ear:
"Treevor, dear Treevor, I have found you! Now I you will take me away, and we will stay for ever and ever together. I am so happy."
The cabin was full of the same steady yellow light as when I closed my eyes. Looking up I saw her sweet oval face above me.
She was lying on the berth leaning over me, supported on her elbows.
As I looked up she pressed her lips down on my face, kissing me on the eyes and mouth with passionate repetition and insistence.
"Dear little girl, dear little Suzee!" I answered, putting up my arms and folding them round her.
I was only half-awake, and for a moment the old Chinaman was forgotten. It was all rather like a delicious dream.
"I am quite, quite happy now," she said, laying down her head on my chest. "Oh, so happy, Treevor; you must never let me go. I love you so, like this," she added, putting her two hands round my throat, "when I can feel your neck and when you are sleeping. You looked beautiful, just now, when I found you. I am sorry you woke."
Clear consciousness was struggling back now with memory, but not before I had pressed her to me and returned those kisses. She had laid aside her little saffron silk coat, and her breast and arms shone softly through a filmy muslin covering.
I sat up regarding her; very lissom and soft and lovely she looked, and my whole brain swam suddenly with delight.
Surely I could not part with her! She was precious to me in that madness that comes over us at such moments.
I put my arms round her and held her to my breast with all my force in a clasp that must have been painful to her, but she only laughed delightedly.
Then my promise came back to me. It was impossible to break that. What was the good of torturing myself when I had made it impossible to take her. Why had she come here?
"Where is your husband?" I asked mechanically wondering if any strange fate had removed him from between us.
"Oh, I put him to sleep, he will give no trouble. I gave him opium, so much opium, he will sleep a long time."
"You have not killed him?" I said, in a sudden horror.
Her eyes were wide open and full of extraordinary fire, she seemed in those moments capable of anything.
She put up her little hands and ran them through my hair.
"Such black hair," she murmured. "Ah, how I love it! I love black hair. How it shines, how soft it is! I hate grey hair. It is horrid. No, I have not killed him. He will wake again when we have sailed and are far away from Sitka."
These words drove from me the last veil of clinging sleep. I kept my arms round her and said:
"But, Suzee, I can't take you with me. I promised your husband to-night I would not."
"That's nothing," she replied lightly; "promises are nothing when one loves. And you love me, Treevor; you must love me, and I am coming with you, you can't drive me away."
The ship's bells sounded overhead on deck as she spoke. The sound seemed a warning. I knew our ship was due to leave in the morning; I did not know quite when. If it left the quay with the girl on board, the horror of a broken promise would cling to me all my life.
"I can't take you, it is impossible. You must go back and try to forget you have ever seen me. You must go now at once, our ship is leaving soon."
"I know," said Suzee tranquilly; "and I shall be so happy when it starts."
I pushed her aside and got up from the berth. The cabin window stood wide open. In the position the ship was it was easy to come in and out through it from the quay. She must have entered that way.
"You must go," I said between my teeth. I was afraid of myself. Overhead I heard movements and clanking chains and shuffling feet. Our ship was leaving, and she was still on board with me.
"Go out of that window now, instantly, or I shall put you out."
"You will not, Treevor," beginning to cry; "you won't be so unkind. I only want to stay with you; let me stay."
She was half-sitting on the edge of my berth, clinging to it with both hands. She was pale with an ivory pallor, her breasts rose in sobs under the transparent muslin of her vest.
The ship gave a great heave under our feet.
The blood beat so in my head and round my eyes I could hardly see her. I moved to her, clinging to one blind object. I bent over her and lifted her up. She was like a doll in weight. She was nothing to me.
As she realised my intention she seemed to turn into a wild animal in my arms. She bit and tore at my wrists, and scratched my face with her long sharp nails.
The ship was moving now and I was desperate.
I walked with her to the window and put her feet over the ledge.
We neither of us spoke a word. She clung to my neck so I thought she must overbalance me and drag me through with her.
With all my force I pushed her outwards and away from me. Her hands broke from my neck and scratched down my face till the blood ran from it.
"Don't struggle so," I warned her; "you will drop into the sea if you do." For a blue crack opened already between the moving ship and the quay.
Words were useless. She bit and struggled and clung to me like a cat mad with fear and rage.
With an effort I leant forward and half threw, half dropped her on the woodwork. She fell there with a gasping cry, and I drew the window to and shut it.
The ship rose and fell now and the blue water gleamed in an ever-widening track between its side and the quay.
I leant against the window glass and watched her through it. She had struggled to her knees and now knelt there weeping and stretching out little ivory tinted hands to the departing ship. My own eyes were full, and only through a mist could I see her kneeling there, a brilliant spot of colour in dazzling light on the deserted quay.
I turned away at last as we struck out on the open water. There, on my berth, facing me as I stumbled back to it, lay a little yellow jacket.
I threw myself upon it and put my hand over my eyes, while the ship made out beyond the fairy islands. And the gold night passed over and melted into the new day.
I was back in London again, back in my studio with the dull grey light of the city falling through the windows, and all the vivid glory, the matchless splendour of the North lay like a past dream in the background of my memory. But still how clear the dream, how bright each moment of it, and how long to my retrospective vision! Was it possible I had only been there three or four months? It seemed like as many years. For time has this peculiarity, that joy and action shorten it while it is passing, but lengthen it when it is past. A week in which we have done nothing of note, but spent in stationary idleness, how long and tedious it seems, yet in looking back upon it, it appears short as a day; while a week in which we have travelled far, seen several cities and been glad in each, though the gilded moments have danced by on lightning feet, when we look back upon that week it seems as if we have lived a year.
It was there, bright, radiant in my mind, the picture of those blue days and golden northern nights, and how the light of the picture seemed to gather round, and centre in a sweet youthful face with the blue stone earrings, hanging against the creamy neck, beside the rounded cheek, and the cluster of red flowers bound on each temple against the smooth black hair!
I settled myself lower in the deep roomy armchair, and pushed my feet forward to the blazing fire. There was still half an hour before I could decently ring for tea, and it was too dark already to work. I had had a hard and disagreeable morning, too, and felt I needed rest and quiet thought. How the red flame leapt in the grate, and what a rich, warm, wine-dark colour it threw all round my red room! I rose and drew the heavy crimson curtains across the windows to shut out their steely patches of grey that spoiled the harmony of colour. I returned to my chair and glanced round with satisfaction. Fitted and furnished and hung with every beautiful shade of red, my studio always delighted and charmed my vision.
My friends said I had papered and furnished it in red to throw up the white limbs and contours of my models, and this had something to do with it, for hardly any colour shows off white flesh to better advantage, though pale blue in this matter runs it close; but this was not the prompting motive. Rather it was that in England where all is so cold and tame and grey, from morals to colours, I liked to surround myself with this glowing barbaric crimson, this warm inviting tint.
My eye in wandering from floor to ceiling rested finally on the empty easel, the numerous white unused sheets of paper near it. I felt in despair. Not even a sketch of a Phryne yet! Not even a model found! Not even the idea of where to find one!
I had been seeing models all the morning, and how wearisome and vexatious, and even, towards the end, how repulsive that becomes! The wearying search after something that corresponds to the perfect ideal in one's brain, the constant raising of hope and ensuing disappointment as a misshapen foot or crooked knee destroys the effect of neck and shoulder, produce at last an intolerable irritation. I had dismissed them all finally, and they had trailed away in the rain, a dismal procession of dark-clothed women.
A quarter of an hour of red stillness in that comfortable room had passed, and the warmth and quiet of it had crept over me and into me, gradually soothing away all vexations, when a knock came on the door and in answer to my, "Come in," some one entered the room behind me.
"I am so glad to find you."
I started to my feet at the sound of the soft voice, and went forward to the door.
"Viola! how good of you to come." I took both her hands and drew her into the firelight which sparkled gratefully on her tall slender figure and the fair waves of hair under her velvet hat.
"May I stay and have tea with you? I have shopping all the afternoon and as I was driving past I thought I would see if you were in and disengaged."
"I shall be delighted," I said as I wheeled another armchair up to the fire.
"You are sure? You have nothing else to do?"
"Nothing, really nothing," I said, walking to the electric lights and switching them on; "and if I had, I would leave it all to have tea with you."
She laughed, such a pretty dainty laugh! What a contrast to the rough giggles amongst the models this morning!
"Trevor! you are just the same as ever; all compliments. But I am immensely glad you are not going to turn me out, for I am chilly and tired and want my tea and a talk with you very badly." And she settled down in her large chair with a sigh of content.
I came back to the hearth and stood looking down upon her. The light was rose-coloured, falling through tinted globes, and soft as the firelight. She looked exquisite, and she must have seen the admiration in my eyes for she coloured under them.
She was wearing a dark green velvet gown edged fur and which fitted her lovely figure closely, being perhaps designed to display it.
"You have come like a glorious sunset to a gloomy day," I said. "I have had a horrid morning and been depressed all the afternoon."
"You have no inspiration, then, yet for the Phryne?" she answered, glancing round; "otherwise you would be in the seventh heaven."
"No," I groaned, "and the models are so dreadful; so far from giving one an inspiration, they would kill any one had. All last week I was trying to find a model, and all this morning again. I would give anything for a good one."
She murmured a sympathetic assent, and I went on, pursuing my own thoughts freely, for Viola was my cousin and no one else knew or understood me so well as she did. We had grown up together, and always talked on all sorts of subjects to each other.
"The difficulty is with most of these English models, they are so thick and heavy, so cart-horsey, or else they are so thin. The tall, graceful ones are too thin, I want those subtle, gracious lines, but I don't want sharp bones and corners. I want smooth, rounded contours, and yet the outlines to be delicate; I want slender grace and suppleness with roundness…."
I stopped suddenly, the blood mounting to my forehead. I was looking down at her as she lay back in the chair. She looked at me, and our gaze got locked together. A thought had sprung suddenly between us. I realised all at once I was describing the figure before me, realised that I was face to face with the most perfect, enchanting model of my dearest dreams.
There was a swift rush of red to her face, too, as I stopped. Up till then she had been quietly listening. But she saw my thought then. It was visible to both of us and for a moment a deadly silence dropped on us. Of course, I ought not to have stopped, but the thought came to me with such a blinding flash of sudden revelation that it paralysed me and took speech from my lips. Just in that moment the door opened and tea was brought in. I turned my attention immediately to making it, and what with asking her how much sugar she would have and pressing her to take hot toast and crumpets, the cloud of embarrassment passed and all was light and easy again. I dismissed the idea instantly, and we did not speak of the picture. I questioned her about her shopping, we recalled the last night's dance where we had been together, and spoke of a hundred other light matters in which we had common interests. Then a silence stole over us, and Viola sank far back in her chair, gazing with absent eyes into the fire.
Suddenly she sat up and turned to me. I saw her heart must be beating fast, for her face and lips had grown quite white.
"Trevor, I wish you would let me be your model for the Phryne."
Almost immediately she had spoken the colour rushed in a burning stream across her face, forcing the tears to her eyes. I saw them brim up, sparkling to the lids, in the firelight.
I sat up in my chair, leaning forwards towards her. My own heart seemed to rise with a leap into my throat.
"Dearest! I could not think of such a thing! It is so good of you, but…."
I stopped. She had sunk back in her chair. She was looking away from me. I saw the tears well up over the lids and roll slowly unchecked down her face.
"I should so like to be of use to you," she murmured in a low tone, "and I think I could be in that way, immense use."
I slid to my knees beside her chair, and took the slim, delicate white hand that hung over the arm in mine and pressed it, very greatly moved and hardly knowing what to answer her.
"I shall never forget you have offered it, never cease to be grateful, but…."
"There is no question of being grateful," she broke in gently, "unless it were on my side. I should think it an honour to be made part of your work, to live for ever in it, or at least much longer than in mortal life. What is one's body? It is nothing, it perishes so soon, but what you create will last for centuries at least."
I pressed my lips to her hand in silence. I felt overwhelmed by the suggestion, by the unselfishness, by the grandeur of it. I saw that the proposition stood before her mind in a totally different light from that in which it would present itself to most women. But, then, the outlook of an artist upon life and all the things in life is entirely different from that of the ordinary person. It takes in the wide horizon, it embraces a universe, and not a world, it sweeps up to the large ideals, the abstract form of things, passing over the concrete and the actual which to ordinary minds make up the all they see.
And Viola was an artist: she expressed herself in music as I did in painting. Our temperaments were alike though our gifts were different, and we served the same mystical Goddess though our appointments in her temple were not the same.
As an artist the idea was, to me, simple enough, as a man it horrified me.
"I could not allow it."
She turned upon me.
"Why?" she said simply.
"Well, because … because it is too great a sacrifice."
"I have said it is no sacrifice. It is an honour."
"It would injure you if it became known."
"It will not become known."
"Everything becomes known."
"Well, I shouldn't care if it did."
"By and by you might regret it. It might stand in the way of your marrying some one you loved."
"I don't believe I shall ever want to marry. Do I look like a domestic person? In any case, I am quite sure I shouldn't want to marry a man if he objected to my being a model for a great picture to my own cousin. Why, Trevor, we are part of each other, as it were. I am like your own sister. What can it matter? While you are painting me I shall be nothing, the picture will be everything. I am no more than a dream or vision which might come before you, and you will give me life, immortality on your canvas. As an old woman when all beauty has gone from me, I shall be there alive, young, beautiful still."
"It is all sophistry, dearest, I can't do it."
"You will when you have thought it all over," she said softly, "at least if you think I should do—are you sure of that?"
She rose and stood for a moment, one hand outstretched towards the mantelpiece, and resting there for support. The velvet gown clung to her, and almost every line of her form could be followed with the eye or divined. The throat was long, round, and full, the fall of the shoulder and the way its lines melted into the curves of the breast had the very intoxication of beauty in them, the waist was low, slender, and perfect, the main line to the knee and on to the ankle absolutely straight. To my practised eyes the clothing had little concealment. I knew that here was all that I wanted.
"I am supposed to have a very perfect figure," she said with a faint smile, "and it seems rather a pity to use it so little. To let it be of service to you, to give you just what you want, to create a great picture, to save you all further worry over it, which is quite knocking you up, would be a great happiness to me."
She paused. I said nothing.
"I do not think I must stay any longer," she said glancing at my clock, "nor shall I persuade you any more. I leave it entirely in your hands. Write to me if you want me to come. Perhaps you may find another model."
She smiled up at me. Her face had a curious delicate beauty hard to define. The beauty of a very transparent skin and sapphire eyes.
I bent over her and kissed her bright scarlet lips.
"Dearest! if you only knew how I appreciate all you have said, how good I think it of you! And I could never find a lovelier model; you know it is not that thought which influences me, but it is impossible. You must not think of it."
"Very well," she said with a laugh in her lovely eyes, "butyouwill!"
She disengaged herself from me, picked up a fur necklet from her chair, and went to the door.
"Good-night," she said softly, and went out.
Left to myself, I walked restlessly up and down the room. She was right. I could think of nothing but her words to me, and how her visit had changed my mood and all the atmosphere about me! It seemed as if she had filled it with electricity. My pulses were all beating hard. The quiet of the studio was intolerable. I was dining out that evening, and then going on to a dance. I would dress now a little early and then go to the club and spend the intermediate time there.
My bedroom opened out of the studio by a small door, before which I generally had a red and gold Japanese screen. I went in and switched on the light and began to dress, trying to get away from my crowding thoughts.
The temptation to accept Viola's suggestion was the greater because she was so absolutely free and mistress of her own actions.
If she chose of her own free will to do any particular thing there was practically no one else to be consulted and no one to trouble her with reproof or reproaches.
Early left an orphan and in possession of a small fortune in her own right, she had been brought up by an old aunt who simply worshipped her and never questioned nor allowed to be questioned anything which Viola did.
She had given her niece an elaborate education, believing that a girl's mental training should be as severe as a boy's, and Viola knew her Greek and Latin and mathematics better than I knew mine, though all these had lately given way to the study of music, for which she had a great and peculiar gift.
The old lady was delighted when she found her favourite niece was really one of the children of the gods, as she put it, and henceforth Viola's life was left still more unrestrained.
"She has genius, Trevor," she would say to me, "just as you have, and we ordinary people can't profess to guide or control those who in reality are so much greater than we are. I leave Viola to judge for herself about life, I always have since she was quite a little thing, and I have no fear for her. Whatever she does I know it will always be right."
Viola was just twenty, but this kind of training had given her an intelligence and developed her intellect far beyond her years.
In her outlook upon life she was more like a man than a woman, and, never having been to school nor mixed much with other girls of her own age, she was free from all those small, petty habits of mind, that littleness of mental vision that so mars and dwarfs the ordinary feminine character.
In this question of posing for the picture, to take her face also would, of course, be quite impossible, but I had my own ideal for the Phryne's face, nor was that important.
That the figure should be something of unusual beauty, something peculiarly distinctive seemed to me a necessity. For the form of the Grecian Phryne had, by the mere force of its perfect and triumphant beauty, swept away the reason of all that circle of grey-bearded hostile judges called upon to condemn it, had carved for itself a place in history for ever. There should in its presentment be something peculiarly arresting and enchanting, or the artistic idea, the spirit of the picture, would be lost.
The next morning I interviewed models again, and so strange is the human mind that while I honestly tried to find one that suited me, tried to be satisfied, I was full of feverish apprehension that I might do so, and when I had seen the last and could with perfect honesty reject her, I felt a rush of extraordinary elation all through me. I knew, and told myself so, every half second, that Viola's temptation was one I ought to and must resist, and yet the idea of yielding filled me with a wild instinctive delight that no reason could suppress. Yes, because once an artist has seen or conceived by his own imagination his perfect ideal, nothing else, nothing short of this will satisfy him. If it was difficult for me to find a model before, it was practically impossible to do so now. For, having once realised what it wanted, the mind impatiently rejected everything else, though it might possibly have accepted something less than its desire before that realisation of it.
These models were all well-formed women, but they were commonplace. The hold Viola's form had upon the eye was that it was not commonplace. Its beauty was distinctive, peculiar, arresting. I was not a painter of types, but of exceptions. The common things of life are not interesting, nor do I think they are worthy subjects for Art to concern itself with. Something unusually beautiful, transcending the common type, is surely the best for the artist to try to perpetuate.
Friday came, the end of the week, and I was still without a model. My nights had been nearly sleepless, and my days full of feverish anxiety: an active anxiety to accept another sitter and withstand the temptation of Viola, which fought desperately with the more passive anxiety not to be satisfied and to be obliged to yield. Between these two I had grown thin, as they fought within me, tearing me in the struggle.
To-day, Friday, the war was over. I had sent a note to Viola asking her to have tea with me. If she came, if she still held to her wish, I should accept, and the Phryne was assured. How my heart leapt at the thought! Those last hours before an artist gives the first concrete form to the brain children of his intangible dreams, how full of a double life he seems! I was back from lunch and in the studio early; I could not tell when she might come, and I closed all the windows and made up the fire till the room seemed like a hot-house. I arranged a dais with screens of flaming colour behind it reflecting the red rays of the fire.
If she consented, she should stand here after having changed into the Greek dress. And as the moment chosen for the picture was that in which Phryne is unveiling herself before her judges, I intended to let her discard the drapery as she liked. I should not attempt to pose her; I would not even direct her; I should simply watch her, and at some moment during the unveiling she would fall naturally into just the pose—some pose—I did not know myself yet which might give me my inspiration—that I wished. Then I would arrest her, ask her to remain in it. I thought so we should arrive nearest to the effect of that famous scene of long ago.
The dress I had chosen was of a dull red tint, not unlike that of Leighton's picture, but I had no fear of seeming to copy Leighton. What true artist ever fears he may be considered a copyist? He knows the strength and vitality of his conception will need no spokesman when it appears.
I felt frightfully restless and excited, a mad longing filled me to get the first sketch on paper. I hardly thought of Viola as Viola or my cousin then. She was already the Phryne of Athens for me, but when suddenly a light knock came on the door outside my heart seemed to stand still and I could hardly find voice to say, "Come in." When she entered, dressed in her modern clothes and hat, and held out her hand, all the modern, mundane atmosphere came back and brought confusion with it.
"You said come early, so here I am," she said lightly. "Trevor," she added, gazing at me closely, "you are looking awfully handsome, but so white and ill. What is the matter?"
"I have been utterly wretched about the picture. I know I ought not to accept your offer, but the temptation is too great. If you feel the same as you did about it, I am going to ask you to pose for me this afternoon."
"I do feel just the same, Trevor," she answered earnestly. "You can't think how happy and proud I am to be of use to you."
"You know what the picture is?" I asked her, holding her two hands and looking down into the great eyes raised confidently to mine.
"I want you to dress in all those red draperies, and then, standing on the dais, to drop them, let them fall from you."
"Yes, I think I know exactly. I will try, and, if I don't do it rightly, you must tell me and we must begin again."
She took off her hat and cloak and gloves. Then she turned to me and asked for the dress. I gave it to her and showed her how it fastened and unfastened with a clasp on the shoulder.
She listened quietly to my directions, then, gathering up all the thin drapery, walked to the screen and disappeared from my view.
I sat down waiting. A great nervous tension held me. I had ceased to think of the right or wrong of my action. I was too absorbed now in the thought of the picture to be conscious of anything else.
When she came from behind the screen clothed in the red Athenian draperies her face was quite white, but composed and calm. She did not look at me, but walked to the platform at once. I had withdrawn to a chair as far from it as was practicable, divining that the nearer I was the more my presence would weigh upon her. She faced me now on the dais, and very slowly began to unfasten the buckle on her shoulder. I sat watching her intently, hardly breathing, waiting for the moment.
She was to me nothing now but the Phryne, and I was nothing but a pencil held in the hand of Art.
The first folds of crimson fell, disclosing her throat and shoulders, the others followed, piling softly one on the other to her waist, where they stayed held by her girdle. The shoulders and breasts were revealed exquisite, gleaming white against the dull glow of the crimson stuff. I waited. It was a lovely, entrancing vision but I waited. She lowered her hand from her shoulder and brought it to her waist, firmly and without hesitation she unclasped the belt, and then taking the sides of it, one in each hand, with its enclosed drapery, which parted easily in the centre, she made a half step forwards to free herself from it, and stood revealed from head to foot. It was the moment. Her head thrown up, with her eyes fixed far above me, her throat and the perfect breast thrown outwards and forwards, the slight bend at the slim waist accentuating the round curves of the hips, one straight limb with the delicate foot advanced just before the other, the arms round, beautifully moulded, held tense at her sides, as the hands clutched tightly the falling folds behind her, these made up the physical pose, and the pride, the tense nervousness, the defiance of her own feelings gave its meaning expression. I raised my hand and called to her to pause just so, to be still, if she could, without stirring.
She quivered all through her frame at the sudden shock of hearing my voice; then stood rigid. I had my paper ready, and began to sketch rapidly.
How beautiful she was! In all my experience, in the whole of my career, I had never had such a model. The skin was a marvellous whiteness: there seemed no brown, red, or yellow shades upon it; nor any of that mottled soap appearance that ruins so many models. She was white, with the warm, true dazzling whiteness of the perfect blonde.
My head burned: I felt that great wave of inspiration roll through me that lifts the artist to the feet of heaven. There is no happiness like it. No, not even the divine transports and triumph of love can equal it.
I sketched rapidly, every line fell on the paper as I wished it. The time flew. I felt nothing, knew nothing, but that the glorious image was growing, taking life under my hand. I was in a world of utter silence, alone with the spirit of divine beauty directing me, creating through me.
Suddenly, from a long distance it seemed, a little cry or exclamation came to me.
"Trevor, I must move!"
I started, dropped the paper, and rose.
The light had grown dim, the fire had burned hollow. Viola had dropped to her knees, and was for the moment a huddled blot of whiteness amongst the crimson tones. I advanced, filled with self-reproach for my selfish absorption. But she rose almost directly, wrapped in some of the muslin, and walked from the dais to the screen. I hesitated to follow her there, and went back to the fallen picture. I picked it up and gazed on it with rapture—how perfect it was! The best thing of a lifetime! Viola seemed so long behind the screen I grew anxious and walked over to it. As I came round it, she was just drawing on her bodice, her arms and neck were still bare. She motioned me back imperatively, and I saw the colour stream across her face. I retreated. It was absurd in a way, that blush as my eyes rested on her then, I who just now … and yet perfectly reasonable, understandable. Then she was the Phryne, a vision to me, as she had said, in ancient Athens. And now we were modern man and woman again. All that we do in this life takes its colour from our attitude of mind towards it, and but for her artist's mind, a girl like Viola could never have done what she had at all.
In a moment more she came from behind the screen. She looked white and cold, and came towards the fire shivering. I drew her into my arms, strained her against my breast, and kissed her over and over again in a passion of gratitude.
"How can I thank you! You have done for me what no one else could. I can never tell you what I feel about it."
She put her arms round my neck, and kissed me in return.
"Any one would do all they could for you, I think," she said softly. "You are so beautiful and so nice about things I am only too happy to have been of use to you."
"What a brute I was to have forgotten you were standing so long. Was it very bad? Were you cold?"
"At the end I was, but I shouldn't have moved for that. I got so cramped. I couldn't keep my limbs still any longer. I was sorry to be so stupid and have to disturb you."
"I can't think how you stood so well," I said remorsefully, "and so long. It is so different for a practised model."
"Well, I did practise keeping quite still in one position every day all this last week, but of course a week is not long."
I had pressed the bell, and tea was brought in. I busied myself with making it for her. She looked white and ill. I felt burning with a sense of elation, of delighted triumph. The picture was there. It glimmered a white patch against the chair a little way off. The idea was realised, the inspiration caught, all the rest was only a matter of time.
We drank our tea in silence. Viola looked away from me into the fire. She did not seem constrained or embarrassed. Having decided to do, as she had, and conquer her own feelings, she did so simply, grandly, in a way that suited the greatness of her nature. There was no mincing modesty, no self-conscious affectation. The agony of confusion that she had felt in that moment when she had stood before me with her hand on the clasp of her girdle, had been evident to me, but her pride forced her to crush it out of sight.
I went over to her low chair and sat down at her feet.
"Do you know you have shown me this afternoon something which I did not believe existed—an absolutely perfect body without a fault or flaw anywhere. I did not believe there could be anything so exquisitely beautiful."
She coloured, but a warm happy look came into her eyes as she gazed back at me.
"So I did really satisfy you? I realised your expectations?" she murmured. I lifted one of her hands to my lips and kissed it.
"Satisfied is not the word," I returned, looking up into the dark blue eyes above me with my own burning with admiration. "I was entranced. May I shew it to you?"
"Yes, I should like to see it," she answered.
I rose and brought over to her the picture and set it so that we both could see it together. She gazed at it some time in silence.
"Do you like it?" I asked suddenly with keen anxiety.
"You have idealised me, Trevor!"
"It is impossible to idealise what is in itself divine," I replied quietly. She looked at me, her face full Of colour but her eyes alight and smiling.
"I am so glad, so happy that you are pleased. You have drawn it magnificently. What life you put into your things—they live and breathe."
She turned and looked at my clock.
"I must go now, I have been here ages." She began to put on her hat and cloak. When I had fastened the latter round her throat, I took both her hands in mine.
"May I expect you to-morrow?"
"To-morrow? Let me see. Well, I was going to the Carrington's to lunch. I promised to go, so I must; but I need not stay long. I can leave at three and be here at half past; only that will be too late in any case on account of the light, won't it?"
"Not if it is a bright day."
"You see, I need not accept any more invitations. I shan't, if I am coming here, but I have one or two old engagements I must keep."
I dropped her hands and turned away.
"But I can't let you give up your amusements, your time for me in this way!" I said.
Viola laughed.
"It's not much to give up—a few luncheons and teas! As long as I have time for my music I will give you all the rest."
She stood drawing on her gloves, facing the fire; her large soft, fearless eyes met mine across the red light.
I stepped forwards towards her impulsively.
"WhatcanI say? How can I thank you or express a hundredth part of my gratitude?"
Viola shook her head with her softest smile and a warm caressing light in her eyes.
"You look at it quite wrongly," she said lightly. "My reward is great enough, surely! You are giving me immortality."
Then she went out, and I was alone.
* * * * *
For a fortnight I was happy. Viola came regularly every day to the studio, and the picture grew rapidly, I was absorbed in it, lived for it, and had that strange peace and glowing content that Art bestows, and which like that other peace "passeth all understanding."
Then gradually a sense of unrest mingled with the calm. The whole afternoon while Viola was with me I worked happily, content to the point of being absolutely oblivious of everything except ourselves and the picture. Our tea together afterwards, when we discussed the progress made and the colour effects, was a delight. But the moment the door was closed after her, when she had left me, a blank seemed to spread round me. The picture itself could not console me. I gazed and gazed at it, but the gaze did not satisfy me nor soothe the feverish unrest. I longed for her presence beside me again.
One day after the posing she seemed so tired and exhausted that I begged her to lie down a little and drew up my great comfortable couch, like a Turkish divan, to the fire. She did as she was bid, and I heaped up a pile of blue cushions behind her fair head.
"I am so tired," she exclaimed and let her eyes close and her arms fall beside her.
I stood looking down on her. Her face was shell-like in its clear fairness and transparency, and the beautiful expressive eyebrows drawn delicately on the white forehead appealed to me.
The intimacy established between us, her complete willing sacrifice to me, her surrender, her trust in me, the knowledge of herself and her beauty she had allowed me gave birth suddenly in my heart to a great overwhelming tenderness and a necessity for its expression.
I bent over her, pressed my lips down on hers and held them there. She did not open her eyes, but raised her arms and put them round my neck, pressing me to her. In a joyous wave of emotion I threw myself beside her and drew the slender, supple figure into my arms.
"Trevor," she murmured, as soon as I would let her, "I am afraid you are falling in love with me."
"I have already," I answered. "I love you, I want for my own. You must marry me, and come and live at the studio."
"I don't think I can marry you," she replied in very soft tones, but she did not try to move from my clasp.
"Why not?"
"Artists should not marry: it prevents their development. How old are you?"
"Twenty-eight," I answered, half-submerged in the delight of the contact with her, of knowing her in my arms, hardly willing or able to listen to what she said.
"And how many women have you loved?"
"Oh, I don't know," I answered. "I have been with lots, of course, butI don't think I have ever loved at all till now."
"What about the little girl in the tea-shop at Sitka?"
"I don't think I loved her. I wanted her as an experience."
"Is it not just the same with me?"
"No, it isn't. It's quite different. Do not worry me with questions,Viola. Kiss me and tell me you love me."
She raised herself suddenly on one elbow and leant over me, kissing me on the eyes and lips, all over my face, with passionate intensity.
"I do love you. You are like my life to me, but I know I ought not to marry you. I should absorb you. You would love me. You would not want to be unfaithful to me. But fidelity to one person is madness an impossibility to an artist if he is to reach his highest development. It can't be. We must not think of it."
The blood went to my head in great waves. The supreme tenderness of a moment back seemed gone, her words had roused another phase of passion, the harsh fury of it.
"I don't care about the art, I don't care about anything. You shall marry me. I will make you love me."
"You don't understand. If you were fifty-eight I would marry you directly."
"You shall marry me before then," I answered, and kissed her again and put my hands up to her soft-haired head to pull it down to my breast and dragged loose some of its soft coils.
"Trevor, you are mad. Let me get up."
I rose myself, and left her free to get up. She sat up on the couch, white and trembling.
"Now you are going to say you won't come to me any more, I suppose?" I said angrily. The nervous excitement of the moment was so great; there was such a wild booming in my ears I could hardly hear my own voice.
She looked up. The tears welled into her luminous blue eyes.
"How unkind you are! and how unjust! Of course I shall come, must come every day if you want it till the Phryne is done. You don't know how I love you."
I took her dear little hand and kissed it.
"I am sorry," I said. "Forgive me, but you must not say such stupid things. Of course you will marry me; why, we are half married already. Most people would say we ought to be."
I turned on the lights and drew the table up to the fire, which I stirred, and began to make the tea.
Viola sat on the edge of the couch in silence, coiling up her hair.
She seemed very pale and tired, and I tried to soothe her with increased tenderness. I made her a cup of tea and came and sat beside her while she drank it. Then I put my arm round her waist and got her to lean against me, and put her soft fair-haired head down on my shoulder and rest there in silence.
I stroked one of her hands that lay cold and nerveless in her lap with my warm one.
"You have done so much for me," I said softly; "wonderful things which I can never forget, and now you must belong to me altogether. No two people could love each other more than we do. It would be absurd of us not to marry." I kissed her, and she accepted my caresses and did not argue with me any more; so I felt happier, and when she rose to leave our good-bye was very tender, our last kiss an ecstasy.
When she had gone I picked up one of the sketches I had first made of her and gazed long at it.
How extravagantly I had come to love her now. I realised in those moments how strong this passion was that had grown up, as it were, under cover of the work, and that I had not fully recognised till now.
How intensely the sight of these wonderful lines moved me! I felt that I could worship her, literally. That she had become to me as a religion is to the enthusiast.
I must be the possessor, the sole owner of her. I felt she was mine already. The agony and the loss, if she ever gave herself to another, would be unendurable. If that happened I should let a revolver end everything for me. I did not believe even the thought of my work would save me.
Yet how curious this same passion is, I reflected, gazing at the exquisite image on the paper before me. If one of these lines were bent out of shape, twisted, or crooked, this same passion would cease to be. The love and affection and esteem I had for her would remain, but this intense desire and longing for her to be my own property, which shook me now to the very depths of my system, would utterly vanish.
Yet it would be wrong to say that these lines alone had captured me, for had they enclosed a stupid or commonplace mind they would have stirred me as little as if they themselves had been imperfect.
No it is when we meet a Spirit that calls to us from within a form of outward beauty, and only then, that the greatest passion is born within us.
And that I felt for Viola now, and I knew—looking back through a vista of other and lighter loves—I had never known yet its equal. She loved me, too, that great fact was like a chord of triumphant music ringing through my heart. Then why this fancy that she would not marry me? How could I possibly break it down? persuade her of its folly?
I walked up and down the studio all that evening, unable to go out to dinner, unable to think of anything but her, and all through the night I tossed about, restless and sleepless, longing for the hour on the following day which should bring her to me again.