“Of course. I never thought of it again. Nor did Madala for that matter, though she was quiet enough in the train. There she sat, looking out of the window and smiling to herself. But then she was always like that after any little excitement, very quiet for an hour, re-living it—literally. I think, you know,” she hesitated, “that that was the secret of her genius. Her genius was her memory.She liked whate’er she looked on——”
“And her looks were certainly everywhere,” said the blonde lady in her drawling voice.
“Just so. But it didn’t end there. She remembered. She remembered uncannily. She was like a child picking up pebbles from the beach every holiday, and spending all the rest of its year polishing. She turned them into jewels. The process used to fascinate me—professionally, you know. You could see her mind at work on some trifling incident, fidgeting with it, twisting it, dropping it, picking it up again, till one wearied. And then a year later, or two years, or three years, or ten years maybe, you’ll pick up a novel or a story, and there you’ll find it, cut, graved, polished, set in diamonds, but—the same pebble, if one has the wit to see.”
“Well, what did she say?” Miss Howe cut through the theory impatiently.
Anita frowned. She disliked being hurried.
“Oh, that day? Very little. I was surprised. She usually enjoyed pouring herself out to me. But no, she just sat and smiled. It irritated me. ‘What is it, Madala?’ I said at last. She stared at me as if she had never seen me before. ‘I don’t know,’ she said in her vague way. And then—‘Wasn’t it a lovely day?’ I waited. I knew she would go on sooner or later. Presently she said—‘That stone we sat onwasdamp. He was quite right.’ Then she said, thinking aloud as it were—‘You know, if a man has a really pleasant voice, I like it better than women’s voices. It’s so steady.’ And then—‘What did you think of him, Anita?’”
Miss Howe chuckled.
“And you said?”
“Oh, I said what I could. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. It was so obvious that the place and everyone in it was beglamoured for her. I said that he seemed a worthy, harmless person, or something to that effect. I forget exactly how I phrased it—I was tactful, of course. Oh, I remember, I said that she ought to put him into a book—that the old country doctors were disappearing, like the farmers and the parsons. I’m sure I appeared interested. But all she said was—‘Old? He’s not old. Would you call him old?’ ‘That was a figure of speech,’ I said. ‘I was thinking of the type. But all the same you can’t describe him as young, Madala.’ ‘Oh, he’s not a boy,’ she said. ‘No one ever said he was aboy.’ She didn’t say any more. But just as we were getting out at Victoria she cried—‘My cowslips! Anita, my cowslips! I’ve forgotten my cowslip ball.’ I told her that it wouldn’t have lasted anyway, with the stalks nipped off so short. But she looked as if she had lost a kingdom.”
“I believe I know that cowslip ball.” Miss Howe looked amused. “Acowslip ball, anyway. She had one sent to her once when I was there. I thought it was from her slum children.”
“Yes, he sent it on.” My cousin went on quickly with her own story. “How he knew the address puzzled me. Her publishers wouldn’t have given it and I know she didn’t.”
“Telephone book,” said the Baxter girl, as one experienced.
“Ah, possibly. I went round to her that morning, and—yes, you were there, Lila,” she conceded, “for I remember I wondered how Madala could compose herself to work with anyone else in the room. I always left her to herself when she stayed with me.”
“She didn’t mind me,” said Miss Howe firmly.
“She always said that she didn’t, I know. And of course I know that it is possible to withdraw oneself as it were, but I confess I disapproved. Her room was a regular clearing-house in those days. Oh, not you particularly, Lila, but——”
“You came in yourself that morning, didn’t you?” said Miss Howe very softly and sweetly.
“I was telling you so. And what did I find? Her desk littered over with string and paper and moss and damp cardboard, and that story Hooper published (it had been freshly typed only the day before) watering into purple under my eyes, while she sat and gloated over those wretched flowers. ‘Madala!’ I said, ‘your manuscript! Really, Madala!’”
“And Madala—” Miss Howe began to laugh—“Oh, I remember now.”
“What did Madala say?” demanded the Baxter girl.
“It wasn’t like her.” Anita fidgeted. “She knew how I disliked the modern manner.”
“But she said,” Miss Howe caught it up—
“I don’t know what possessed her,” said my cousin with a rush. “She actually stamped her foot at me. Yes, she did, and then held out her wretched posy and said—‘Oh, damn the manuscript, Nita! Smell!’”
“What did Nita do?” enquired the blonde lady softly of Miss Howe.
“Sniffed,” Mr. Flood struck in. “Obviously! Satisfied Madala and relieved her own feelings. That is called tact.”
“And just then, you know,” Miss Howe glanced over her shoulder and lowered her voice, “hecame in.”
“Kent?” The lady with Mr. Flood did not lower her voice. I believe she wanted him to hear. She was like a curious child poking at a hurt beastie. Her smile was infantine as she looked across at him. But the man at the window never stirred.
“Sh!” Miss Howe frowned at her. And then, still whispering—“Yes, don’t you remember? he had his studio in the same block all that year. He always came across to Madala when he wanted a sardine tin opened, or change for his gas, or someone to sit to him.”
“Someone was saying that he couldn’t keep a model.” Mr. Flood glanced at them in turn.
Miss Howe flushed surprisingly.
“It’s not that. You ought to know better, Jasper. It’s only that he’s exigeant—never knows how the time goes, and” (she lowered her voice still more), “and Madala spoilt him. She could sit by the hour looking like a Madonna, and getting all her own head-work done, and never stirring a hair. Of course he doesn’t like the shilling an hour type after her.”
“I know, I know! The explanation is quite unnecessary.” He smiled and waved his hand.
“Then why——?” She was still flushed and annoyed.
“One gets at other people’s views. I merely wondered how the—er—partnership appeared to your—er—intelligence. Now I know.”
“She did spoil him.” Anita disregarded them. “The time she wasted on him! In he came, you know, that day, and she went to meet him with the cowslips still in her hand, and shielding her eyes from the sun. That room of hers got all the morning sun.”
“What did she wear—the blue dress?” The Baxter girl was like a child being told a story.
“I forget. Anyway he stood looking her up and down till she reddened and began to laugh at him. And then he said—‘And cowslips too! What luck! Come along! Comealong!’ ‘Oh, my good man!’ I said, ‘she’s in the middle of her writing!’ But it was useless to expostulate. He wanted her and so she went. I heard him as he dragged her off. ‘Madala, I’ve got such a notion!’ No, it was the great fault of her character, I consider, that she could never deny anyone, not even for her work’s sake. Still, I suppose one had to forgive it in that case, for that was the beginning, you know, ofThe Spring Song. She is painted just as she stood there that morning, literally gilded over with sunshine, and the flowers in her hands.”
“It’s the best thing he’s ever done, isn’t it?” said the Baxter girl.
“Best thing? It’s a master-piece. It’s Madala Grey.”
“When is he going to show it?” asked Mr. Flood.
Anita shrugged.
“Heaven knows! He insists that it isn’t finished. I believe he sits and prays over it. He was annoyed that Madala took me there one day. You know how touchy he is.”
“He won’t show it now,” said the blonde lady.
“Why not? Why not?” Anita hovered, on the pounce, like a cat over a bowl of goldfish, and like a fish the blonde lady glided out of reach.
“Andsheasks!” she appealed to the others.
Anita frowned.
“You’re cryptic.”
“Well, wasn’t there a certain—rivalry? You should have a fellow-feeling.”
“Oh—” she resented quickly, “Kent always wanted to keep her to himself, if you mean that.”
The blonde lady smiled.
“And now he keeps her to himself. I mean just that. I go by your account, of course.Ihaven’t glimpsedThe Spring Song.”
“So that started it.” The Baxter girl mused aloud. “I think that’s romantic now—to make a famous picture and to pick up one’s husband, all in twenty-four hours.”
“‘Pick up!’”
“You know what I mean—fall in love.”
“‘Fall in love!’”
“Nita, don’t trample.” Miss Howe threw the Baxter girl a cigarette.
“I only mean—it was romantic, meeting like that so long ago and nobody knowing a word until just before they were married, except you, Miss Serle. And I don’t believe you guessed?” She questioned her with defiant eyebrows.
“How could I guess what never happened? ‘In love!’ I suppose it deceived some good folks.”
“It wasn’t so long ago,” Miss Howe soothered them. She had a funny little way of slipping people into another subject if she thought that they sounded quarrelsome. ‘Let’s be comfortable!’ was written all over her. And yet she could scratch. I think that a great many women are like Miss Howe.
“Long ago? Of course not!” Anita picked it up at once. “How long is it? A year? Eighteen months? April, wasn’t it? She wroteThe Resting-placein the next three months. Scamped. I shall always say so. She was three years overPloughed Fields. Yes, April began it.The Resting-placewas out for the Christmas sales. She married him at Easter. And now it’s November. The year’s not gone. But Madala Grey is gone.”
“Where?” said the Baxter girl intensely.
“Don’t!” said Miss Howe.
But the Baxter girl looked as if she couldn’t stop herself.
“We—we put her into the past tense—d’you notice how easily we’re doing it already?—but—is she less alive to you, less lovable, less Madala Grey to you, because of a telegram and a funeral service? is she?”
“No,” said Miss Howe. “If you put it like that—no.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Flood. “When you put it like that—yes.”
“She must be somewhere,” argued the Baxter girl. “She can’t just stop.”
“Why not?” said Mr. Flood, with his bored smile.
“She can’t. I feel it,” she said with her hand at her heart and her large eyes on him.
“I don’t,” he said to her, and he lost his smile. “‘Dust to dust——’”
The woman behind him moved restlessly.
“Jasper,dear! How trite!”
“But the spirit?” said the Baxter girl, “the spirit?”
Nobody answered. The little blue flames on the hearth capered and said ‘Chik-chik!’ Anita shivered.
“The room’s getting cold,” she said sharply. And then—“Jenny, is that door open? There’s such a draught.”
I got up and went to see. But the door was shut. When I came back they were talking again. Anita was answering the Baxter girl.
“Yes, I stayed there once. A pretty place. The sort of place she would choose. All roses. No conveniences. And what with the surgery and the socialism, the poor seemed to be always with us. Only one servant——”
“Sheoughtto have made money,” said Miss Howe.
“Oh, the first two books were asuccès d’estime, I wept over her contract. She did make a considerable amount of money onThe Resting-place. But it was all put by for the child. She told me so. He, you know, a poor man’s doctor! She told me that too—flung it at me. She had an extravagant way of talking, manner more than anything, of course, but to hear her you would almost think she was proud of the life they led. She was always unpractical.”
“I’d like to have gone down there once,” said Miss Howe. “If I’d known—heigh-ho!”
“I—I wished I hadn’t gone,” said Anita slowly. “It wasn’t a success.”
“The husband, I suppose,” the Baxter girl hinted delicately.
“No, I hardly saw him. It was Madala herself. Changed. Affectionate—she was always that to me but——I remember sitting with her once. We had been talking, about Aphra Behn I believe, and she had grown flushed and had begun to stammer a little. You know her way?”
“I know.” The Baxter girl leaned forward eagerly.
“And she was tracing a parallel between the development of the novel and the growth of the woman’s movement—her old vein. Brilliant, she was. And all at once she stopped and began staring in front of her. You know that trick she had of frowning out her thoughts. I was careful not to interrupt. I knew something big was coming. She could be—prophetic, sometimes. At last she said in a worried sort of way—‘I’ve a dreadful feeling that we’re out of coffee and it’s early closing.’ No, I’m not exaggerating—her very words. And then some long rigmarole about Carey’s appetite, and that if she made the coffee black strong she could persuade him to take more milk with it. Oh—pitiful! And in a moment she’d dashed off on a three mile walk to the next village where there was a grocer that did open on Wednesdays. Oh, it was most pathetic. It made me realize the effect that he was having on her—stultifying! I always did dislike him.”
“Well, I don’t know,” said Miss Howe.
“Just so—you don’t know. Naturally, you were not so intimate with Madala. Well, that very afternoon, I remember, he came in at tea-time. That was unusual: he was generally late for seven-thirty dinner, and then he didn’t change. I used to wonder how Madala allowed it. Well, as I was telling you, he came in, stamping through the hall, calling to her, and when he opened the drawing-room door and found that she was out, you should have seen his look! Sour! No other word! And off he went at once to meet her, on his bicycle, though I was prepared to give him tea. They didn’t come back for hours. In fact I had gone up to change. I saw them from the window, coming up the drive. And there was Madala Grey, perched onhisbicycle, with a great bunch of that white parsley that grows in the hedges, and a string bag dangling down, while he steadied her, and both of themtalking! and as he helped her off, she kissed him—in front of the kitchen windows. And, if you please, not a word of apology to me. All she said was—why hadn’t I seen that he had some tea before he went after her? I think it’s the only time I’ve ever seen Madala annoyed. No, you can’t say the marriage improved her.” She paused. “It was so unlike her,” she meditated, “as if I could help it! You know, I’d always thought her so considerate. Carey’s influence, of course. Oh,” she cried out suddenly and angrily, “I’ve got nothing against Carey. I’m not prejudiced. But if he’d been the sort of man one could approve—someone——” Her eye wandered from Kent Rehan to Mr. Flood—“but he was dragging her down——”
Miss Howe shook her head.
“Anita, you’re wrong. I’ve only met him a couple of times but I liked what I saw of him. An honest, straightforward sort of person. Oh, not clever, of course. He’d have bored me in a week——”
“Ah?” said the woman behind Mr. Flood.
“Oh, yes, dull—distinctly. But I had the impression that if I’d been one of his patients I should have done everything he told me to do.”
Anita shrugged.
“Oh, I’ve no doubt he had every virtue, but it’s idle to pretend that he made any attempt to appreciate Madala Grey.”
“You don’t suggest that the man didn’t love his wife, do you?” said Miss Howe in her downright way.
“I suggest nothing. But the fact remains—I give it for what it is worth—but the fact does remain that John Carey has never read one of her books—not one!”
“What?” The Baxter girl’s mouth opened and stayed so.
“You don’t intend to say——” began Mr. Flood.
“I don’t believe it,” said Miss Howe contemptuously.
“Why not? I’ve known a man jealous of his wife before now. I suppose he knew enough to know that she had the brains.” The blonde lady was smiling.
Anita shook her head reluctantly.
“Jealousy? H’m—it might have been, of course. But I didn’t get that impression. I believe that it was a perfectly genuine lack of interest.”
“Yes, but I don’t believe it. How d’you know he didn’t? It’s not a thing he’d own to. Who told you?”
“Madala. Madala herself. She used to make a joke of it.”
“She never showed when she was hurt,” said the Baxter girl emotionally.
“Yes, but it almost seemed as if she were not hurt, as if her—her sensitiveness, her better feelings, had been blunted. I’ve known her use it as aweaponalmost,” said Anita conscientiously recollecting. “He—that annoyed me so—he was very peremptory with her sometimes, most rude in his manner. Of course, you know, shewasdreamy. Not that that excused him for a moment. I remember a regular scene——”
“Before you?” Miss Howe cast instant doubt upon it.
“My room was next to theirs. I could hear them through the wall. I can assure you that he stormed at her in a most ungentlemanly way——”
“What about?” said the Baxter girl breathlessly.
“Something about his razors. A parcel had come by the early post, and just because she had cut the string—but I couldn’t follow it all. He was a man who was easily irritated by trifles. Well, as I say, after he had raged at her for five minutes or more, till I could have gone in and spoken to him myself, all that that patient woman said, was—‘Darling, have you begunEden Wallsyet?’ I tell you the man never said another word.”
“He didn’t prevent her writing, did he?” said Miss Howe.
“There’s no doubt that he discouraged her. He was selfish. It was his wretched doctoring all day long—and you know how sensitive Madala was. I did persuade her to do some work while I was staying with them, but I soon saw that it was labour thrown away. Her heart wasn’t in it. When it wasn’t Carey it was the baby clothes. For the sake of her reputation,” her voice hardened, “it’s as well that she has died when she has.”
“Anita!”
“I mean it.” She was quick and fierce. “Do you think it was a little thing for me to see that pearl of great price—oh, not Madala Grey! I grew to hate her almost, that new Madala Grey—but the gift within her, her great, blazing genius—flung away, trampled on——”
Miss Howe turned her head in slow denial.
“No, Anita! Not genius. Charm, if you like. Talent, as much as you please. But Madala Grey wasn’t a genius, and she knew it.”
Anita flung up her head.
“She will be when I’ve done with her. She will be when I’ve written theLife.”
“Ah, the poor child!” said Great-aunt startlingly.
Anita never heeded. She was wrapt away in some cold passion of her own, a passion that amazed me. I had always thought of her as what she looked, an ordered, steely woman, all brain and will; yet now of a sudden she revealed herself, a creature convulsed, writhing in flames. But they were cold flames. Cold fire, is there such a thing? Ice burns. There is phosphorus. There is the light of stars. I know what I mean if only I had the words. Star-fire—that’s it. She was like a dead star. She warmed no one, she only burned herself up.
It was the impression of a moment. When I looked again it was as if I had been withdrawn from a telescope. She was herself once more. The volcano had shrunk to a diamond twinkle, to a tiny, gesticulating creature with a needle tongue. It was bewildering: while I listened to her I was still thinking—‘Yes, but which is Anita? Diamond or star? What makes the glitter? Frost or flame?’
But that blonde woman in the shadows went off into noiseless laughter that woke the dragons and stirred Mr. Flood to an upward glance. Then he hunched himself closer against her knees, his chin low on his chest, so that his tiny beard and mouth and eyes were like triangles standing on their points. The pose gave him a glinting air of mockery and yet, somehow, you did not feel that he was amused. You only felt—‘Oh, he’s practised that at a looking-glass.’
He drawled out—
“TheLife, dear lady? Enlighten our darkness.”
“That,” came the murmur behind him, “is precisely what she is going to do. How dense you are, Jasper!”
And at the same moment from Miss Howe—
“Be quiet, you two! Tell us, Anita! A life of her? Is that it? Ah, well, I always suspected your note-book. Did she know you Boswellized?”
“She?” There was the strangest mixture of scorn and admiration in the voice. “As if one could let her know! That was the difficulty with Madala Grey: she wouldn’t take herself seriously. She had—” a pause and a search for the correct word—“what I can only call apervertedsense of humour. If she’d known that I—noted things, she’d have been quite capable of falsifying all her opinions, misrepresenting herself completely, just to—throw me out, as it were. Not maliciously, I don’t mean that. But she teases,” finished Anita petulantly. “She will do it. She laughs at the wrong things. Of course she’s young still.”
“Yes, she’s young—now. She stays young now. She gains that at least,” said the woman in the shadows.
Anita made a quick little sound, half titter and half gasp.
“Oh!” she cried—and her voice was as grey as her face—“I forgot. Do you know—I forgot! It’s going to be ghastly. I believe I shall always be forgetting.”
I glanced up at Kent Rehan. It made me realize that I had been listening with anxiety, that I was afraid of their expressive sentences. They had words, those writing people. They knew what they thought: they could say what they thought: and what they thought could hurt. I didn’t want him to be hurt. I said, under my breath—
“Oh, why do you stay here? They aren’t your sort.”
But he had heard nothing. He was poring over the long tassel of the blind, weaving it into a six-strand plait. I couldn’t help watching his fingers. He had the most beautiful hands that I’ve ever seen on a man. They looked like two alive and independent creatures. They looked as if they could do anything they chose, whether he were there to superintend or not. And he was miles away. I was glad. Anita’s voice was rising like a dreary wind.
“Just that is so strange. All the time I’ve known her I’ve thought of her in the past tense. Her moods, her ways, her actions, were finished things to me—chapters of theLife. Iwroteher all the time. But now, when sheismine, as it were, now that she exists only in my notes and papers and remembrance of her, now it comes that I’m shaken. I can’t think of her as a subject any more. I shall be wanting her—herself. I can’t think clearly. It’s frightening me, the work there is ahead of me. Because I’ve got to do it without her. She’s lying dead down there in Surrey—now—at this minute. And there’s that man—and a child. One’s overwhelmed. It’s so cruel. The only creature who ever cared for me. Think of Madala, quite still, not answering, not lighting up when you speak to her, staring at the ceiling, staring at her own coffin-lid. In two days she’ll be under the ground. Do you ever think what that means—burial—the corruption—the——”
“Stop it, Nita!” Miss Howe’s movement blotted out my cousin’s face. “Do you hear? I can’t stand it. Here—drink some coffee. Jasper! Say something!” I heard the coffee-cup dance in its saucer.
There came Aunt Serle’s anxious quaver—
“Anita! Nita! What’s the matter, my dear? What’s the matter with my daughter?”
Nobody answered. She was like a tortoise as she poked her head from the hood of her chair.
“Jenny!” she called cautiously. “Jenny!”
I slipped across the room to her.
“What’s it about, Jenny? Eh? Speak up, my dear! Not crying, is she? Temper, that’s it. Don’t say I said so.”
“It’s all right, Auntie. She—they—it’s the bad news. It’s upset them all.”
“Bad news? Fiddlesticks! Temper, I call it. Why shouldn’t the girl get married? Not much money, but a pleasant fellow. Time for her to settle. I said to her—‘My dear, you follow your heart.’ But Nita tried to stop it. Nita couldn’t get over it. Cried. Temper. That’s it. Look at her now. ’Sh! Don’t let her see you.”
But Anita wasn’t looking at me and she wasn’t crying. I suppose Great-aunt must have known what she was talking about; but it wasn’t easy to imagine my cousin soft and red-eyed like that great, good-natured Miss Howe. Her little sharp face looked as controlled as if it were carved. Yet, as she said herself, she was shaken. That showed in the jerkiness of her movements, the sharpening of her voice, in the break-up of her accustomed flow of words into staccato, like a river that has come to some rocks: and her hands had a clock-work, incessant movement, clutch-clutch, fingers on palm, that her eyes repeated. They were everywhere at once, resting, flitting, settling again, yet seeing nothing, I think, while she listened to Mr. Flood and grew more irritated with every word.
“Why bad news?” said Great-aunt in my ear. “It’s a son, isn’t it?”
I hesitated.
“Oh, Auntie, didn’t you hear?” (She had heard, you know. I had seen her shrinking back when Anita screamed at her, with that dreadful shrinking that you see in an animal threatened by a head-blow. She had been leaning forward, and eager. She must have heard.)
“Hear? They all talk,” she quavered. “‘Be quiet,’ says Anita. Ah, I’ve spoilt her. Now Madala——What’s the time, my dear? Why don’t she come?”
“Auntie—Auntie——”
“Eh?” she said. “Why don’t Madala come?”
“Auntie—you’ve forgotten. She’s been ill.”
“Ah—and she’ll be worse before she’s better,” said Great-aunt briskly. “’Sh! Listen to my daughter.”
We listened: at least, I listened. Great-aunt cocked her head on one side, still as a bird, for a minute; then, like a bird, she was re-assured and fell to her knitting again.
Anita and Mr. Flood were quarrelling.
“Why shouldn’t I? Tell me that! Is anyone better fitted? Who knows as much about her as I do? Didn’t I discover her, hacking on two pounds a week? Didn’t I recognize what she was? Who sent her to Mitchell and Bent? Who introduced her everywhere? Who bullied her into writingPloughed Fields? Who was the best friend she ever had—even if I didn’t make the parade of being fond of her that——Oh, I’ve no patience! What would the world know of Madala Grey if it weren’t for me?”
“But—oh, of course we all know how good you were to her, Miss Serle, indeed I can guess by what you’ve done for me——” began the Baxter girl.
Mr. Flood’s tongue tip showed between his red lips. I think he would have made some comment but for the hand pressing on his shoulder.
“But——?” said the woman behind the hand.
“I only mean—‘genius will out,’ won’t it?”
“Genius? Big word!” said Miss Howe.
“Not too big.” The Baxter girl reddened enthusiastically.
“‘Genius will out?’ Not Madala Grey’s. She didn’t know she had any. I don’t believe she ever fully realized——Why, it was the merest chance thatEden Wallsdidn’t go into the fire. If it hadn’t been for me—if it hadn’t been for me——”
“Ah—you!” Miss Howe squared up to her. “Now just what (among friends) have you stood to gain? Fond of her? Oh yes, you were, Anita! Don’t tell me! But in spite of yourself, eh? But that wasn’t what you were after. You didn’t get the pleasure out of her that—I did, for instance. You used to exhaust Madala. I’ve seen you do it. You—you drained her.”
“Yes, I did. I meant to,” said Anita with her laugh. “Pleasure!”
“And she thought you were fond of her. She used to flare if anyone attacked you. Poor Madala!”
“Poor? Why? I shall give it all back.” Anita gave her a long cool look. “I—I hate debts,” said Anita.
Miss Howe flushed brightly.
“If you were cursed with the artistic temperament——” She broke off and began again. “If I were a poor devil of a Bohemian in a hole, it’s not to you I’d go——”
“—twice!” said Anita.
Again they eyed each other. Miss Howe, still flushing, chose her words.
“Madala never lent. That wasn’t in her. She gave. Time, money, love—she gave. You took, it was understood, rather than hurt her feelings by refusing. But it was always free gift.”
“Not to me.” Anita held her head high. “I shall pay. And interest too.”
“Oh, theLife! Are you really going to attempt aLife?” Miss Howe recovered herself with a laugh, while Mr. Flood repeated curiously—
“Yes, but then what were you after, Anita? What do you stand to gain?”
“Reflected glory,” came from behind him.
She turned as if she had been stung.
“Reflected? Let her keep it! Reflected? Am I never to have anything of my own? Oh, wait!”
“You can’t get much of yourself into a life of Madala Grey though. You’ve too much sense of style for that,” Mr. Flood insisted. “We both hate a biographer who ‘I says, says I.’”
“Oh, it shall be all Madala Grey. I promise you that,” she said with her thin smile.
“Humph! It’s a notion.” Miss Howe was really interested, I could see—yet with a flush on her cheek still. “It’s your sort of work too, Anita! You’re—happier—in critical work.”
“Oh, don’t hedge. Don’t be delicate with me. I can’t create, that’s what you mean. Do you think that’s news to me? Is there a critic who has failed to make it clear to me? I can record—but I can’t create. Good! I can’t create. I can’t do what she did—what you do, Jasper—what even Beryl here does. But——” she paused an instant, “you should be afraid of me for all that. I can pry. Little, nasty, mean word, isn’t it? It’s me!”
The Baxter girl laughed uncertainly and then stopped because Anita’s eyes were on her.
“I’ve eyes. I”—she opened and shut her tiny hands before them—“I’ve claws. I can pry you open, any of you—if I choose. I haven’t chosen. You’ve not been worth while. But—Madala!” and here she released the uneasy Baxter girl—“Madala’s my chance—my chance—my chance! Madala Grey—look at her—coming into her kingdom at twenty—that babe! And me! Look at me! Do you know what my life has been, any of you? Oh, you come to my house to meet my lionets, and we’re very good friends, and you’re afraid of my reviews, and so I have my position, I suppose. But what do you know about me? When I was fifteen—and it’s thirty years ago—I said to myself, ‘Now what shall I do with my life?’ Mother—” she shot her a glance: she didn’t even trouble to lower her voice, “she’d have drudged me and dressed me and married me, I suppose, to three hundred a year and the city—oh, with the best of motives. I fought. I fought. That’s why I’m an ungrateful daughter. I’m supposed to be, I think. My people were so sorry for my mother. My people thought me a fool. I saw through them. Yes, and I saw through myself. That’s the kind of a fool I was. Didn’t I reckon it out? I hadn’t a charm. I hadn’t a talent. I had mywill. That’s all I had. I taught myself. Work? You don’t know what work means, you ten and five-talented. There’s not a book worth reading that I haven’t read. There’s not the style of a master that I haven’t studied, that I couldn’t reproduce at a pinch. There’s not a man or a woman in London today, worth knowing—from my point of view—that I haven’t contrived to know. The people who’ve arrived—how I’ve studied them, the ways of them, the methods of them. And what’s the end of it all? That” —she jerked her head to the row of her own books on the shelf behind her—“and my column in theMatins, and some comforting hundreds a year, and—my knowledge of myself. Oh, I’ve turned out good work. I know that. I have judgment. That’s why I judge myself. I’ve always been rigid with myself. And so I know when I look at my books—though I can say that they are sounder, better work, in better English, that they have more knowledge behind them, than the books of a dozen of you people who arrive—yet I know that they have failed. People don’t read me. People don’t want me. Why? I have my name. I’ve the name of a well-known critic, but—I’m only a name. I’m not alive. The public doesn’t touch hands with me. Now why? Oh, how I’ve tormented myself. Nearly thirty years I’ve given, of unremitting labour, to my art, to my career. There’s not a thought or a wish that I haven’t sacrificed to it. And then that child of twenty comes along, without knowledge, without training, without experience, and gets at one leap, mark you all, at one leap, more than I’ve achieved in thirty years. Some people, I suppose, would submit. Well, I won’t. I wouldn’t. Does my will go for nothing? Iwillhave my share. ‘Reflected glory,’ yes, I’ve stooped to that. I’ve exploited her, if you like to call it that. When I think of the day I discovered her——” She paused an instant, dragging her hand wearily over her eyes—“I was at my zero that day. TheFamous Womenhad been out a week. The reviews—oh, the reviews! Respectful, courteous, lukewarm. If they’d attacked me, if they’d slated, I’d have rejoiced. But they respect me and they’re bored. They know it’s sound work and they’re bored. I bore people. I bore you—all of you. Do you think I’m blind? That night I read the manuscript ofEden Walls. (Wasn’t it kind of me—it wasn’t even typed!) And then I saw my chance. I saw how far she’d got at twenty, and I thought—‘I’ll take my chance. I’ll take this genius. I’ll make her fond of me. I’ll help her. I’ll worm myself into her. I’ll abase myself. I’ll toady. I’ll do anything. But I will find out how she does it. I will find out the secret. I’ll find it and I’ll make it my own. I’ll serve for her as Jacob served for Rachel; but she shall serve me in the end.’ I have watched. I have studied. I have puzzled. I believe I’ve grasped it at last. I know myself and I know her. If genius is life—the power to give life—is it that?—then I’m barren. I can’t make life as Madala can. But—listen to me! Listen to me, all of you! I can take a living thing—I can cut it open alive. That’s what I shall do with this life-maker—this easy genius. I’ve taken her to pieces, flesh and blood, bone and ligament and muscle, every secret of her mind and her heart and her soul. The life, thereallife of Madala Grey, the rise and fall of a genius, that’s what I’m going to make plain. She’s been a puzzle to you all, with her gifts and her ways and her crazy marriage—she’s not a mystery to me. I tell you I’ve got her, naked, pinned down, and now I shall make her again. Isn’t it fair? She ought to thank me. ‘Dead,’ he says. Who’s to blame? She chose to kill herself. What right had she to take risks? I—I’ve refrained. She couldn’t. She threw away her lamp. But I—I take it. I light it again. Finding’s keeping. It’s mine.”
Her voice ripped on the high note like a rag on a nail, and she checked, panting. Her hand went up to her throat as the fumy air rasped it.
“Mine!” she cried again, coughing. There was wild-fire in her eyes as she challenged them.
The little space between her solitariness and their grouped attention was filled with fog and silence and lamp-light, woven as it were into a fifth element. It was like a pool to be crossed. And across it, in answer, a laugh rippled out.
I don’t know who it was that laughed. I did not recognize the voice. Sometimes, looking back, I think it was the laugh of their collective soul.
“Oh!” cried Anita, and stopped as if she had been awakened suddenly by a blow—as if the little wondering, wincing cry had been struck out of her by a blow on the face. She stood thus a moment, uncertain. Then she, too, laughed, nervously, apologetically.
“One talks,” she said, “among friends.”
Miss Howe made a wry face.
“Lord, we’re a queer set of friends! How we love one another!”
“You’ve all of you been awfully good to me,” said the Baxter girl. But her gratitude was too general to be acceptable. Even I could have told her that.
“Oh, we do our best for you,” said Mr. Flood.
She looked at him from under her lashes.
“Yes, and she’s thinking this minute what a nice little scene this would make for her new book—touched up, of course,” said the woman behind him.
“Art—selection—Jimmy Whistler——” Mr. Flood was one indistinct murmur.
“With herself her own heroine again, eh?” Miss Howe baited her.
“I didn’t. I wasn’t.”
“Better folk than you do it, child! Anita says so. Don’t they, Anita?”
“Oh,” said Anita heavily, “I wish Madala Grey were here. I wish she hadn’t died. If she were here she wouldn’t—you’d never—she wouldn’t let you laugh at me.”
Miss Howe looked at her intently. There was a quick little run of expression across her large handsome face, like a hand playing a scale. It showed, that easily moved, easily read face, surprise, interest, concern, and, in the end, the sentimental impulse of your kind fur-clad woman to the beggar on the curb. ‘Why! I believe she’s cold! I don’t like it! Give her tuppence, quick!’ She was out of her chair, overwhelming Anita, in one impetuous heave of drapery.
“You’re right, Nita! We’re pigs! Something’s wrong with us. ’Pologize. You know we don’t mean it.”
Anita endured her right-and-left kisses.
“You do mean it,” was all she said.
She was shrunk to such a small grey creature again. I thought to myself—‘Fire? It’s not even diamond-sparkle. She’s as dull as stone.’
Miss Howe was eagerly remorseful.
“We don’t. I don’t know what’s got into us tonight. It’s the fog. There’s something evil about a fog. Distorting. It yellows over one’s soul.”
“It isn’t only tonight,” said the Baxter girl, with her sidelong, ‘can-I-risk-it?’ look at them. “The fog’s been coming on for months.”
“And you mean——?” The blonde lady never snubbed the Baxter girl. It struck me suddenly, as their eyes met, that there was the beginning of a likeness between them. The Baxter girl at fifty—with dyed hair——? But it was only an idea of mine. I’m always seeing imaginary likenesses. I remember that those Academy pictures of Kent Rehan’s always set me to work wondering—‘That woman with the face turned away—I’ve seen her somewhere—of whom does she remind me?—where have I seen her?’ And yet, of course, in those days I knew nothing of Madala Grey.
But the Baxter girl was answering—
“It—it’s cheek, I know, but it’s true. When I first came—” then, with a swift propitiatory glance at Anita—“when you first let me come—the Nights weren’t like this. You weren’t like this, any of you——”
“Upon—my—word!” said Miss Howe with her benevolent chuckle. “Nita! Listen to the infant!”
“Like what?” Mr. Flood moved uneasily.
The Baxter girl turned to him enthusiastically.
“Oh, I used to think you such wonderful people——”
“Did you now?” Miss Howe teased her.
“Let be! let be!” said Mr. Flood impatiently. “Well, dear lady?”
“Oh, I did! I’d read all your stuff. I believe I could write outThe Orchid Housefrom memory still.”
His eyes lit up as he challenged her—