“The gentleman loved and rode away, you mean?”
“Something of the sort. Something went wrong.”
“I see.” Miss Howe was interested. “It’s a theory, anyhow. And then in sheer savage irony at her own weakness——”
“Not a bit. In sheer weak longing——”
“I see. If your theory is correct—I don’t know what you base it on——”
“Internal evidence,” said Anita airily.
“Then I can imagine thatThe Resting-placewas a relief to write. Poor Madala!”
“And then,” concluded Anita triumphantly, “then appears Carey, and she’s too worn out, too exhausted with her own frustrated emotions to care what happens. The book’s in her head still, and she her own heroine. He appears to her—I admit that it’s possible that even Carey might appear to her—as a refuge, a resting-place.”
“Yes, but you don’t like Mr. Carey,” said the Baxter girl. “But if Madala did? Isn’t it possible that in Madala’s eyes——? Why shouldn’t the hero be Mr. Carey himself?”
Anita’s eyes were bright with the cold anger that she always showed at the name.
“My good girl, you know nothing about John Carey, or you’d rule that out. Have you ever seen him? I thought not. And yet youhaveseen him. All day. Every day. When you talk of the man in the street, whom do you mean? What utterly common-place face is in your mind? Shall I tell you what is in mine? John Carey. Ordinary! Ordinary! The apotheosis of the uninspired! Oh, I haven’t any words. Look for yourself.” She rummaged furiously in the half-opened desk and flung out a fading snapshot on a mount. “There he is! That’s the thing she married!”
“What’s he doing in your holy of holies?” Mr. Flood’s eyes seemed to bore into her desk.
Anita, still thrusting down the overflowing papers, answered coldly—
“Madala sent it to Mother. She said that it wasn’t good enough but that it would give her an idea.”
“It certainly gives one an idea,” said the blonde lady languorously.
“And then she put in a post-script that it didn’t do him justice because the sun was in his eyes. Defiantly, as it were. Isn’t that significant? She’d never own to a mistake. Pride! She had the devil’s own pride. Look at the way she took her reviews! And in this case she would be bound to defend him. She’d defend anything she’d once taken under her wing.”
“Well, you know,” drawled the blonde lady, her eyes on the photograph, “according to this he topped her by two inches. I don’t somehow see himunderMadala’s wing.” And then—“After all, there’s something rather fascinating in bone and muscle.”
“Yes, and I don’t see,” the Baxter girl hurried into defiance, “honestly I don’t see, Miss Serle, why she shouldn’t have been in love with him. Of course, it’s not a clever face, but it’s good-tempered, and it’s good-looking, and there’s a twinkle. Madala loved a twinkle. And I don’t see——”
Anita crushed her.
“We’re discussing the standards of Madala Grey.”
“That’s not the point either, Anita.” Mr. Flood would sometimes rouse himself to defend the Baxter girl. “You know something. You own to it. What do you know?”
“Simply that she was in love with someone else. I’ve papers that prove it. Now it was either some man whom none of us know, whom for some reason she wouldn’t let us know, or——” she hesitated. Then she began again—“Mind you, I don’t commit myself, but—has the likeness never struck you?Hugh BarringtoninThe Resting-placeand——?” Her eyes flickered towards Kent Rehan.
Mr. Flood whistled.
“Be careful, Anita.”
“He?” Miss Howe laughed, but kindly. “He’s lost to the world. He’ll be worse than ever now.”
“There!” Anita dropped upon the sentence like a hawk upon a heather bird. “You see! You say that! And yet you tell me there was nothing—nothing—between them? Didn’t she rave about him? his talents? his personality? his charm? And then she goes and writes the story of an artist’s model!”
Miss Howe laughed again.
“When a thing’s as obvious as that, it probably isn’t so. Besides, the artist’s model marries the artist.”
“Exactly. She leaves them, and us, cloyed with love in a cottage. I repeat, the artist’s model marries the artist because Madala Grey didn’t. It’s the merest shadow of a solution as yet, but—isn’t that a living portrait inThe Resting-place? Oh, I know it by heart—
“Maybe it was his height that gave you the impression, less of weakness than of vagueness, as if his high forehead touched cloud-land, and were obscured by dreams; for his cold eyes guarded his mind from you, and his dark beard hid his mouth.”
“Youdoknow it by heart!” said Miss Howe.
“Of course I know it by heart. It was the first clue. Can anybody read those lines without recognizing him?”
The Baxter girl persisted—
“But I don’t see it. Oh, of course it is like him—but because she borrowed his face, the story needn’t be about him. Why couldn’t she just imagine the story? If she was a genius?”
“That remains the point,” said Mr. Flood.
“She was,” insisted Anita stubbornly.
Miss Howe smiled and said nothing.
He continued—
“The mere fact that she was a genius would prevent such a descent into milk and sugar, unless she were money-making or love-sick.”
The blonde lady spoke—
“Just so! Love-sick—sick of love—savage with love—savaging her holy of holies. A parody. Lila’s right.”
But Miss Howe shook her head.
“No, no. I didn’t mean that sort of parody. Madala may have had her emotions, but she’d always be good-tempered about them. She’s laughing at herself inThe Resting-placeas well as at us.”
“But why do you cavil at it so?” said the Baxter girl slowly.
“Only at its plain meaning. Grant the parody and——”
“But why can’t you just read it as it stands? Why do you say sentimental? I—I liked it.”
Anita took the book from her hand.
“But, my dear child,anybody can write this sort of thing. Where’s the passage the ladies’ papers rave about, where they have a day on the river together?” She whipped over the pages while I said to the Baxter girl—
“What is it? What’s it about? What’s the plot?”
“Oh, there isn’t any. That’s what they complain of. It’s just a little artist’s model who sits to an elderly, broken-down dreamer, and thinks him a god. The duke and door-mat touch. It’s just how two people fall in love and find it out. It’s as simple as A, B, C. But people ate it when it came out.”
“Treacle, I tell you,” insisted Mr. Flood.
Anita overheard him.
“Exactly! Listen to this—
... and they landed at last in a meadow of brilliant, brook-fed grass.
She had no words in which to say a thousand times ‘How beautiful!’ Words? She had never known a country June. She had never seen whole hedges clotted with bloom, she had never in all her life breathed the perfume of the may or heard a lark’s ecstasy. She had never—and to her simplicity there was no break in the chain of thought—she had never before been alone with him, unpaid, not his servant but his equal and companion. How should she have words?
She sat in the grass with the tall ox-eyes nodding at her elbow and looked at him from under her hat with a little eased sigh. This, after the dust of the journey, of the day, of her life, was bliss. She prepared herself for this bliss, deliberately, as she did everything. She was too poor and too hungry to be wasteful of her happiness: she must have every crumb. Therefore she had looked first at herself, critically, with her trained eye, fingering the frill of her blouse, flinging a scatter of skirt across her dusty city feet, lest her poverty should jar his thoughts of her.
Then she looked at him. She saw him for a moment with undazzled eyes, the blue sky enriched with clouds behind him. She was saying to herself—‘I’m not a fool. I can see straight. I know what he is. He’s just an ordinary man in a hot, black suit. He stoops, I suppose. He’s worn out with work. He’ll never be young again. And there’s nothing particular about him. Then what makes me like him? But I do. I do. He has only to turn and smile at me——’
Then he turned and smiled at her, and it seemed to her that the glamour of the gilded day passed over and into him as he smiled, glorifying him so that she caught her breath at his beauty. She knew her happiness. She knew herself and him. He was the sum of the blue sky and green, green grass, and the shining waters and the flowers with their sweet smell, and the singing birds and the hum of the little things of the air. All beauty was summed up in him: he was food to her and sunshine and music: he was her absolute good: and she thought that someone ought to see that his socks were mended properly, for there was a great ladder down one ankle, darned with wrong-coloured wool.
“Well?” She shut the book.
“I like it,” said the Baxter girl stubbornly.
Mr. Flood twisted uneasily in his seat.
“Oh, pretty, of course. Of course it’s pleasant enough in a way. But Madala oughtn’t to be pretty. Think of the stuff shecando.”
“But can’t you see,” Miss Howe broke in, “how it parodies the slush and sugar school?”
Anita shook her head.
“She used another manner when she was ironical. I wish you were right. Oh, you may be—I must consider—but I’m afraid that she is in earnest. That phrase now—‘The green, green grass,’ (why double the adjective?) ‘the shining waters, the singing birds’—pitiful! And that anti-climax—‘He was her absolute good: and she thought that someone ought to see that his socks were mended properly.’ I ask you—is it art?”
“Not as serious work, of course,” said Miss Howe, “but——”
“I wish I could think so,” said Anita.
“Well, I wish I could do it,” said the Baxter girl. “What do you say, Jenny?”
But it had brought back the country to me. It had brought back home. I hadn’t anything to say to them.
“And she wouldn’t discuss it, you know. She came in after supper that night, just as I was reading the last chapter. It had only been out a day. There she sat, where you are now, Lila, smiling, with her hands in her lap and her eyes fixed on her hands, waiting for me to finish.”
“Oh—” Miss Howe gave a little gushing scream, “that reminds me—d’you know, Anita, somebody actually told me that nobody had seenThe Resting-placebefore it was published, not even you. I was amused. I denied it, of course.”
“Why?” said Anita coldly.
Miss Howe screamed again.
“Then you didn’t? Oh, my dear?”
“Emancipation with a vengeance,” said Mr. Flood.
“It had to come, Anita,” said Miss Howe with deadly sympathy.
“It was not that. It was only—she was so extraordinarily sensitive about theResting-place—unlike herself altogether. I think, I’ve always thought that she herself knew how unworthy it was of her. She—what’s the use of disguising it?—she, at least, had a value for my judgment,” her eyes, wandering past Miss Howe, brooded upon the Baxter girl, “and she knew what my judgment would be. She owned it. She anticipated it. I had shut the book, you know, quietly. She sat so still that I thought she was asleep. She had had one of those insane mornings——”
“Of course. She used to take a crowd of children into the country, didn’t she?”
“Once a week. Slum children.”
“I know. ‘To eat buttercups,’ she told me,” said Miss Howe.
“It was ridiculous, you know. She couldn’t afford it. Look at the way she lived! I always said to her, ‘If you can afford mad extravagances of that sort, you can afford a decent flat in a decent neighbourhood’——”
“Oh, but I loved those rooms,” said the Baxter girl, “with the Spanish leather screen round the wash-hand-stand.”
Anita glanced behind her.
“Ah, you’ve noticed? I happened to admire it one day and—you know what she is—‘Would you like it? Why, of course, it would just suit the rest of your things. Oh, you must have it. I’d like you to. It’s far too big for this room.’ ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘if you want it housed——’ So that’s how it comes to be here. One couldn’t hurt her feelings. And you know, it was quite unsuitable to lodging-house furniture.”
Miss Howe laughed.
“It disguised the wash-hand-stand. That was all Madala cared. Only then she always took you round to show you how beautifully it did disguise it.”
“Typical,” said Mr. Flood. “Her reserves were topsy-turvy.”
“But she had her reserves,” said Miss Howe quickly.
“I doubt that,” he answered her.
“Oh, but she had.” Anita recovered her place in the talk. “Curious reserves. You know how she came to me overEden WallsandPloughed Fields. I saw every chapter. But as I was telling you, she wouldn’t hear a criticism ofThe Resting-place. That evening she pounced on me. She was as quick as light. She said—‘You don’t like it! I knew you wouldn’t! Never mind, Anita. Forget it! Put it in the fire! You like me. What do the books matter?’ She’d been watching me all the time.”
“She had eyes in the back of her head,” said Miss Howe.
“Kind eyes,” said the Baxter girl.
“And I assure you she wouldn’t have said another word on the subject if I hadn’t insisted. I told her not to be ridiculous. How could I help being disappointed? How could I separate her from her work? I was disappointed, bitterly. I made it clear. I said to her—‘Well, Madala, all I can say is that if your future output is to be on a level with this—this pot-boiler——’”
“It’s not a pot-boiler,” said the Baxter girl loudly and quite rudely. “I don’t know exactly what it is, but it’s not a pot-boiler.”
Anita stared her down.
“‘—pot-boiler,’ I said, ‘then—I wash my hands of you.’ I wanted to rouse her. I couldn’t understand her.”
“Well?” said Miss Howe.
They all laughed.
“Oh, you can guess.” Anita was petulant, but she, too, laughed a little. “You know her way. She just sat smiling and twisting a ring that she wore and looking like a scolded child.”
“But what did she say?” said the Baxter girl.
“Nothing to the point. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘but, Anita, if I’d never written anything, wouldn’t you be just as fond of me?’ Such a silly thing to say! She was distressing at times. She embarrassed me. Fond of her! She knew my interests were intellectual. Fond of her! For a woman of her brains her standard of values was childish.”
“But you were fond of her, you know,” said Miss Howe.
“Oh, as for that—there was something about her—she had a certain way——After all, if it gave her pleasure to be demonstrative, it was easier to acquiesce. But she made a fetish of such things. I was only trying to explain to her, as I tell you, that it was quite impossible to separate creator and creatures, and that to me she wasEden WallsandPloughed Fields, and if you believe me, she was upon me like a whirlwind, shaking me by the shoulders, and crying out—‘No, no, stop! You’re to stop! It’s me you like, not the books. I hate them. I hate all that. I shall get away from all that one day.’ And I said—‘I don’t wonder you’re ashamed ofThe Resting-place. I advise you to get to work at once on your new book. You’ll find that if you pull yourself together——’ And all she said was—‘Nita! Nita!Don’t!And she looked at me in such a curious way——”
“How?” somebody said.
“I don’t know—laughing—despairing. She’d no right to look at me like that. It was I who was in despair.”
“I’d like to have seen you two,” said Miss Howe.
“I didn’t know what had got into her. Of course I blame myself. I ought to have followed it out. I might have prevented things. But I was annoyed and she saw it, and she——”
Miss Howe twinkled.
“She wouldn’t let you be annoyed with her long. What did she do with you, Anita?”
“She? I don’t know what you mean. We changed the subject. And as a matter of fact I was much occupied at the time with theAnthology.” She paused. “She had excellent taste,” said Anita regretfully. “Naturally I reserved to myself the final decision, but——”
“Just so,” said Mr. Flood.
“Be quiet, Jasper.” The blonde lady’s draperies dusted his shoulder intimately.
“She’d brought me a delicious thing of Lady Nairn’s, I remember, that I’d overlooked. And from talking of theAnthologywe came, somehow, to talking about me. Yes—” Anita gave an embarrassed half laugh—“She began to talk to me, turning the tables as it were—about myself. She’s never, in all the years I’d known her, taken such a tone. Astonishing! As if—as if I were the younger.” She stared at them, as one combating an unuttered criticism. “I—liked it,” said Anita defiantly. “There was nothing impertinent. It was heartening. She made me feel that one person in the world, at least, knew me—knew my work. I realized, suddenly, that while I had been studying her, she must have been studying me, that she understood my capacities, my limitations, my possibilities, almost as well as I did myself. The relief of it—indescribable! She was extraordinarily plain-spoken. As a rule, you know, I thought her manner——”
“Insincere?” said the Baxter girl. “Yes, I’ve heard people say that.”
“It had that effect. It didn’t seem possible that she could like everyone as much as she made them think she did. But with me, at least, she was always frankness itself. She believes, you know,—she believed, that is, that all my work so far, even theAnthologyand theFamous Womenseries, not to mention the lighter work, is still preliminary: that my——” she hesitated—“my master-piece, she called it, was still to come. She said that, though she appreciated all my work, I hadn’t ‘found myself.’ Yes! from that child to me it was amusing. But right, you know. She said that my line, whether I dealt with a period or a person, would always be critical, but that I’d never had a big success because so far I’d been merely critical: that I’d never become identified with my subject: that I’d always remained aloof—inhuman. Yes, she said that. A curious theory—but it interested me. But she said that it was only the real theme I needed, the engrossing subject. She said that my chance would come: that ‘she felt it in her bones.’ I can hear her voice now—‘Don’t you worry, Nita! It’ll come to you one day. A big thing. Biography, I shouldn’t wonder. And I shall sit and say—I told you so—I told you so!’ Yes, she talked like that. Oh, it’s nothing when I repeat it, but if you knew how it seemed to pour new life into me. It was the belief in her voice!”
“She always believed in you,” said Miss Howe with a certain harshness. “Insincere! You should have heard her talk of yourFamousWomen!” And then—“Yes. She believed in you right enough.”
“More than I did in her that night. I couldn’t forgetThe Resting-place. It lay on the table, and every now and then, when I felt most comfort in her, my eyes would fall on it, and it would jar me. She felt it too. When I saw her off at last—it had grown very late—she stopped at the gate and turned and came running back. I thought that she had forgotten her handbag. She nearly always forgot her handbag. But no, it wasThe Resting-placethat was on her mind. It was—‘Nita! try it again. Maybe you’d like it better.’ And then—‘Nita! I enjoyed writing it so.’ ‘That’s something, at any rate,’ I said, not wanting, you know, to be unkind. Then she said—‘I wish you liked it. Because, you know, Nita—’ and stopped as if she wanted to tell me something and couldn’t make up her mind. ‘Well, what?’ I said. It was cold on the steps. She hesitated. She looked at me. For an instant I had an absurd impression that she was going to cry. Then she kissed me. She’d kissed me goodnight once already, though, you know, we never did as a rule. And then, off she went without another word. I was quite bewildered by her. I nearly called her back; but it was one of those deep dark blue nights: it seemed to swallow her up at once. But I heard her footsteps for a long while after—dragging steps, as if she were tired. I wasn’t. It was as if she had put something into me. I went back into the house and I worked till daylight. And all the next day I worked—worked well. I felt, I remember, so hopeful, so full of power. By the evening I had quite a mass of material to show her, if she came. I half expected her to come. But instead—” she fumbled among her papers—“I got this.”
It was a sheet of note-paper, a sheet that looked as if it had been crushed into a ball and then smoothed out again for careful folding. Anita’s fingers were still ironing out the crinkled edge while she read it aloud.
“I want to tell you something. I tried to tell you yesterday, but somehow I couldn’t. It oughtn’t to be difficult, yet all this afternoon I’ve been writing to you in an exercise book, and crossing out, and re-phrasing, and putting in again as carefully and dissatisfiedly as if it were Opus 4. I wish it were, because then you’d be very much pleased with Madala Grey and forget the dreadful shock of Opus 3! I was always afraid you wouldn’t like it, and sorry, because I like it more than all my other work put together. Have you never even begun to guess why? But how should you, when I didn’t know myself until after it was finished? Coming events, I suppose. It’s quite true—one isn’t overtaken by fate: one prepares one’s own fate: one carries it about inside one, like a child. I hear you say—‘Can’t you come to the point?’ No, I can’t. Partly because I’m afraid of what you’ll say, because I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed, and partly, selfishly, because there is a queer pleasure in beating about the bush that bears my flower. It’s too beautiful to pick straight away in one rough snatch of a sentence. Am I selfish? You’ve been so kind to me. I know you will be sorry and that troubles me. And yet—Anita, I am going to be married. You met him once in the churchyard at home, do you remember? I’ve seen him now and then when I took the children down there in the summer. He——
There’s something scratched out here,” said Anita.
“I think we shall be happy. When you get accustomed to the idea I hope you will like him.”
She paused.
“Now what do you make of that?” said Anita.
“It explains the expeditions with the children,” said Mr. Flood. “They were always too—philanthropic, to be quite—eh?”
“Oh, but she began those outings ages ago,” said Miss Howe quickly.
“Besides,” said Anita, “she didn’t go every week that summer. That’s the point. She told me herself that she was so busy that she had to get help—one of those mission women. Now why was she so busy?”
“Diversions in the countryandattractions in town?” said Mr. Flood. “It all takes time.”
Anita nodded.
“You think that? So do I.Andattractions in town! Exactly! At any rate I shall make that the big chapter, the convincing chapter, of theLife. I think I shall be able to prove that that summer was the climax of her affairs. I grant you that she met Carey that summer, but as she says herself, a few times only. We must look nearer home than Carey.”
“Oh, but there’s such a thing as love at first sight,” protested the Baxter girl, and Anita dealt with her in swift parenthesis—
“I was there when they first met. Shouldn’t I have realized——?” And then, continuing—“Well, reckon up my points. To begin with—the difference in her that we all noticed, the restlessness, the—unhappiness one might almost say, the aloofness—oh, don’t you know what I mean? as if she didn’t belong to us any more.”
“As if she didn’t belong to herself any more.”
“Yes, yes, that’s even more what I mean. Then comes the fact that we saw so little of her. What did she do with her time? WritingThe Resting-place, was her explanation, but—is that gospel? Do you really believe that she sat at home writing and dreaming all those long summer days and nights, except when she was—eating buttercups—with Carey and her chaperons? And then comesThe Resting-placewith its appalling falling-off, and following on that, this letter, this sudden engagement. Now doesn’t it look—I ask you, doesn’t it look as if something had been going on behind all our backs and had at last come to a head?”
“Oh, that she was in love is certain,” said Mr. Flood. “Was there ever a woman of genius who wasn’t?”
“Exactly. It’s a moral certainty. And this letter to me proves that, whoever it was, it wasn’t Carey. ‘I think we shall be happy.’ ‘I hope you will like him.’ Is that the way a woman writes of her first love or her first lover?”
“Oh, but that sentence just before——” the Baxter girl stretched out her hand for the letter—“‘The bush that bears my flower——’” She spoke sympathetically; but it jarred me. I wondered how I should feel if I thought that the Baxter girl would ever read my letters aloud.
“Ah, that’s the literary touch. Madala could never resist embroideries. Besides—she wants to confuse me. That means nothing. But here, you, see——” she took the letter out of the Baxter girl’s hand—“as soon as she comes to the point, the real point, the confession, the apologia—then the baldest sentences. Try to remember that Madala Grey has written one of the strongest love scenes of the decade, and all she can say of the man she is to marry is—‘I hope you will like him.’”
“H’m! It’s curious!” Miss Howe was frowning.
“Isn’t it? And then you know, the whole manner of the engagement was so unlike her usual triumphant way. She always swept one along, didn’t she? But in the matter of the marriage she seems, as far as I can make out, to have been perfectly passive. She left everything to the man—arrangements—furniture—I imagine she even bought her clothes to please him. And the wedding itself—no reception, no presents, no notice to anyone, so sudden, so private. Not a word even to her oldest friends——”
Great-aunt stirred in her corner.
“—there was something so furtive about it all: as if she were running away from something.”
Miss Howe sat up.
“D’you mean?—what do you mean, Anita? Are you hinting——?”
Anita looked at her in a puzzled way that relieved me, I hardly knew why.
“Why, only that it carries out my theory—of Carey as a refuge.”
“From what?”
“Life—frustration—what did you think I meant?”
“I don’t know. Nothing. It was my evil mind, I suppose.” She flushed.
“How she harps on the child!” the Baxter girl carried it on.
“That’s a mere simile——” said Miss Howe swiftly.
“But a queer simile!”
“The marriagewassudden,” said Mr. Flood from the floor in his silky voice. “Anita’s theory has its points.”
“A seven months’ child!” It was the first word that the blonde lady had said for some time. There was something sluggishly cold, slimily cold, in her abstracted voice.
Anita started.
“I never suggested that,” she said sharply. But there was a quiver in her voice that was more excitement than anger.
“My dear lady, nobody suggests anything. We are only remarking that the union of our Madala and her ‘refuge’—the soubriquet is yours, by the way—was as surprising as it was—er—sudden. That was your idea?” He turned to the shadows and from them the blonde lady nodded, smiling.
At the time, you know, I didn’t understand them. They were so quick and allusive. They said more in jerks and nods and pauses than in actual speech. But I saw the smile on that woman’s face, and heard the way he said ‘our Madala.’ I felt myself growing angry and panic-stricken, and I was quite helpless. I just went across the room to that big man sitting dully in his corner, in his dream, and I caught his arm and cried to him under my breath—
“You must come. You must come and stop them. They’re talking about her. Come quickly. They—they’re saying beastly things.”
He gave me one look. Then he got up and went swiftly from one room to the other. But swiftly as he moved and I followed, someone else was there before us to fight that battle.
It was Great-aunt Serle.
She was a heavy old woman and feeble. She never stirred as a rule without a helping arm; but somehow she had got herself out of her seat and across the floor to the table, and there she stood, her knitting gripped as if it were a weapon, the long thread of it stretched and taut from the ball that had rolled round the chair-leg, her free hand and her tremulous head jerking and snapping and poking at that amazed assembly as she rated them—
“I won’t allow such talk. Anita, I won’t have it. If I let you bring home friends—ought to know better! And you——” the blonde lady was spitted, as it were, on that unerring finger, “you’re a wicked woman. That’s what you are—a wicked, scandalous woman. And you, Anita, ought to be ashamed of yourself, to let her talk so of my girl. Such a woman! Paint and powder! Envy, hatred, malice! And in my house too! Tell her to wash her face!” She glowered at them.
There was a blank pause and then a sound somewhere, like the end of a spurting giggle. It must have been the Baxter girl. There was a most uncomfortable moment, before Anita cried out “Mother!” in a horrified voice, and Miss Howe said “Beryl!” in a voice not quite as horrified.
But the blonde lady sat through it all quite calmly, smiling and moistening her lips. At last she drawled out—
“Nita! Your dear mother’s quite upset. So sorry, Nita!” Then, a very little lower, but we could all hear it—“Poor dear Nita! Quite a trial for poor dear Nita!”
But Anita had jumped up. She was very much flustered and annoyed. I think, too, that she was startled. I know that I was startled. Great-aunt didn’t look like herself. She was like a witch in a picture-book, and her voice had been quite strong and commanding.
Anita tried to quiet her and get her away.
“Mother! You must be quiet! D’you hear me, Mother? You don’t know what you’re saying. You’ve been up too long. You’re overdone. It’s time you went to bed.”
She took her firmly by the arm. But Great-aunt struggled with her.
“I won’t. Leave me alone. It’s your fault, Anita. You sat and listened. You let them talk that way about my girl.”
“Now, Mother, what nonsense! Your girl! Madala’s not your daughter.” And then, in apology—“She’s always confusing us. She gets these ideas.”
“Not mine? Ah! That’s all you know! ‘Anita upstairs?’ That’s how she’d come running in to me. ‘Are you busy, Mrs. Serle?’ Always looked in to my room first. Brought me violets. Talked. Told me all her troubles.Younever knew. Not mine, eh? Didn’t I see her married, my pretty girl? ‘Hole-and-corner business!’ That’s what you tell them? ‘Nobody knew.’ But I knew.”
Anita’s hand dropped from her mother’s arm. She stared at her.
“You, Mother? You there?” And then, angrily, “Oh, I don’t believe it.”
“Don’t believe it, eh? But it’s true, for all I’m lumber in my own house. I’m to go to bed before the company comes, before she comes. Don’t she want to see me then? Who pinned her veil for her and kissed her and blessed her, and took her to church, and gave her to him? Not you, my daughter. She didn’t come to you for that.” And then, with a slacking and a wail, “Eh, but we were never to tell!”
“Mother, you’d better come to bed. I——” there was the faintest suggestion of menace in her voice—“I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
The old woman shrank away.
“I won’t come. I know. You want me out of the way. You don’t want me to see her. What are you going to say about me? You’ll say things to her about me. I’ve heard you.”
Quite obviously Anita restrained herself.
“Now, Mother, you know you don’t mean that.”
“Hush!” Great-aunt pulled away her hand. “Quiet, child, quiet! Wasn’t that the cab? I’ve listened all the evening, all the long evening.” Her old voice thinned and sharpened to a chirp. “Soft, soft, the wheels go by. The wheels never stop. Wait till the wheels stop. It’s the fog that’s keeping her. There’s fog everywhere. Maybe she’s lost in the fog.” Then she chuckled to herself. “Naughty girl to be so late. But she’s always late. Why should I go to bed? I’ve got to finish my knitting, Nita. Only two rows, Nita. They’ll just last me till she comes.” And then, “Anita, she will come?”
Anita turned to the others.
“Don’t be alarmed. It’s nothing. I’m afraid she hasn’t realized——” She began again—“Now, Mother! It’s bed-time, Mother dear.”
“‘Dear’—‘dear’—why do you speak kindly? Madala’s not here to listen.” And then—“Nita, Nita child, let me stay till she comes.”
Anita was quite patient with her, and quite unyielding.
“Now listen, Mother! It’s no use waiting. Come upstairs with me. She won’t——” her voice altered, “she can’t come tonight.”
Beside me Kent Rehan spoke—
“I can’t stand it,” he said. “I can’t stand it. I can’t stand it.” He didn’t seem to know that he was speaking.
But Great-aunt heard his voice if she didn’t hear the words. She broke away from Anita and went shuffling over the floor towards him with blind movements. She would have fallen if he hadn’t been beside her in an instant, holding her.
“Kent, d’you hear her? You know my daughter. You know Madala too. You speak to her! You tell her! Madala always comes, doesn’t she? Always comes. You tell her that! I want to see Madala. Very good to me, Madala. Brought me a bunch of violets.”
Anita followed.
“Kent, for goodness’ sake, try to help me. She’ll make herself ill. I shall have her in bed for days. Now, Mother——Now come, Mother!”
Great-aunt clung to his arm.
“She’s not kind. My daughter’s very hard on me.”
For the first time Anita showed signs of agitation. She was almost appealing.
“Kent! You mustn’t believe her. It’s not fair. You see my position. One has to be firm. And you don’t know how trying——What am I to do? Shall I tell her? She’s as obstinate—I’ll never get her to bed. Ought I to tell her? She’ll have to be told sooner or later. She’ll have to realize——”
He said—
“I’ll talk to her if you like.”
Anita looked at him intently.
“It’s good of you. She has always listened to you. Since you and I were children together. Do you remember, Kent? Yes, you talk to her.”
“What’s she saying?” demanded Great-aunt. Her old eyes were bright with suspicion. “Talking you over, eh? Talk anyone over, my daughter will—my clever daughter. So clever. Madala thinks so too. ‘Dripping with brains.’ That’s what Madala said. Made me laugh. Quite true, though. Hasn’t Madala come yet?”
“Now, look here, Mrs. Serle——” he put his arm round her bent shoulders, “it’s very foggy, you know, and it’s very late. Nobody could travel—nobody could come tonight. You’ll believe us, won’t you?”
“Wait! What’s that?” She stood a moment, her finger raised, listening intently. Then she straightened her bowed body and looked up at him. One so seldom saw her face lifted, shone upon by any light, that that alone, I suppose, was enough to change her. For changed she was—her countenance so wise and beaming that I hardly knew her. “Now I know,” she said, “she will come. Wait for her, Kent. She will come. I—I hear her coming. She’s not so far from us. She’s not so far away.”
They stared at each other for a moment, the man and the old woman. Then her face dropped forward again, downward into its accustomed shadow, as he said to her—
“It’s too late, Mrs. Serle. She won’t come—now. Not now any more. And Anita thinks—truly you’re very tired, aren’t you? Now, aren’t you?”
“Very tired,” she quavered.
“I know you are. Won’t you let me help you upstairs?”
“And stay a bit?” she said, clutching at him. “Stay and talk to me?”
“Yes, yes,” he humoured her.
“About Madala?”
He was very white.
“About Madala. Anita, take her other arm. That’s the way.”
They helped her out of the room, and we heard their slow progress up the stairs.
It was the blonde lady who broke the silence with her tinkling laugh—
“Poor dear Nita!”
“Kent’s a good sort,” said Miss Howe.
“What’s Hecuba to him now?” Mr. Flood’s smile glinted from one to another.
“A very old friend,” said the blonde lady. “You heard what dear Nita said to him.”
“‘Children together!’ I didn’t know that.” He was still smiling.
“And they always kept in touch,” put in Miss Howe.
“Trust Nita for that,” said the blonde lady.
Miss Howe nodded.
“She told me once that from the first she realized that he would do big things.”
“So Nita kept in touch!” Mr. Flood laughed outright.
“But it’s only the last few years that she’s been able to produce him at will, like a conjuror’s rabbit.”
“Since Madala’s advent, you mean,” said the blonde lady.
“‘Will you walk into my parlour?’ said Anita to the fly. ‘It’s a literary parlour——’” murmured Mr. Flood. And then—“No. Kent’s not likely to have walked in without a honey-pot in the parlour. Madala must have been useful.”
“That’s what Miss Serle will never forgive her,Ithink,” said the Baxter girl.
“What?”
“That she was useful. Doyoubelieve in the other man?”
“The unknown influence?” His eyes narrowed. “H’m!”
“And yet of course there’s been someone.” The Baxter girl never quite deserted Anita, even in her absence.
The blonde lady nodded.
“Of course. Nita’s always nearly right. The influence—the adventures—themariage de convenance—she’s got it all so pat—and the man too. She knows well enough; yet she fights against it. She won’t have it. I wonder why. ‘Very old friends’ I suppose.” She laughed again. “But of course it was Kent. Can’t you see that’s why Nita hates her? What aLifeit will be! I just long for it to come out. Nita’s a comedy.”
“A tragedy.”
“Nita? My dear Lila! What do you mean?”
“I’m only quoting,” said Miss Howe. And then—“But when she isn’t actually annoying me I think I agree.”
“Who said it?” said the Baxter girl inquisitively.
“Madala. It’s the only thing I’ve ever heard her say of Anita. She never discussed Anita. Now of Kent she would talk by the hour. Which proves to me, you know, that the affair with him didn’t go very deep. Nita quoted that description of Kent just now, but only so far as it served her. She carefully forgot how it goes on. Here, where is it? Ah——
He brooded like a lover over his colour-box, and as she watched him her thoughts flew to her own small brothers at home. Geoff with his steam-engine, Jimmy sorting stamps—there, there was to be found the same ruthlessness of absorption, achieving dignity by its sheer intensity. She smiled over him and them.
“Keep your face still,” he ordered.
She obeyed instantly, flushing; and as she did so she thought to herself—‘I could be afraid of that man,’ but a moment afterwards—‘Heislike a small boy.’
“Now that may be Kent—oh, it is Kent, of course—but it’s not Madala’s attitude to Kent. She was not in the least afraid of him.”
“Ah, but that later passage, the country passage—that’s pure Madala.”
“Yes. Just where it ceases to be Kent—‘He stoops, I suppose. He’s worn out with work. He’s quite ordinary.’ That’s not Kent.”
“No, that’s true. One doesn’t know where to have her. She muddles her trail,” said Mr. Flood.
“I call it weakness of touch not to let you know whom she drew from,” said the Baxter girl.
“Ah, but she always insisted that she didn’t draw portraits.”
“Of course. They always do. If one believedthemone would never get behind the scenes, and if one can’t get behind the scenes one might as well be mere public and read for the story,” said the Baxter girl indignantly.
“Well, you know,” Miss Howe sat turning over the pages ofThe Resting-placewith careful, almost with caressing fingers, “I don’t believe she meant to draw portraits. She had queer, old-fashioned notions. I think she would have thought it—treacherous.”
“The portraits are there though, if you look close enough,” insisted the Baxter girl.
“Yes, but they happened in spite of her. Anyone she was fond of she took into her, in a sense: and when her gift descended upon her and demanded expression, then, all unconsciously, she expressed them too. But gilded! We find ourselves in her books, and we never knew before how lovable we are. You’re right, Blanche,she liked whate’er she looked on. And you’re right too, Jasper,Grande amoureuse, she was that. That capacity for loving made her what she was. The technical facility was her talent and her luck; but it was her own personality that turned it into genius.”
“Then after all you admit the genius,” said the Baxter girl triumphantly.
“No. No. No. My judgment says no. When I read her books in cold blood—no. But we’ve been talking about her. It’s as if she were with us, and when she’s with us my judgment goes! That’s the secret of Madala Grey. She does what she likes with us. But the next generation, the people who don’t know her, whether they’ll find in her books what we do, is doubtful. Who wants a dried rose?”
“Yes, but Miss Serle—in theLife? Won’t she—preserve her?”
“Preserve—exactly! But not revive. No, I’d sooner pin my faith toThe Spring Song, although I haven’t seen it. It ought to be a revelation. She eluded Nita, impishly. I’ve seen her do it. But there’s no doubt that she gave Kent his chance.”
“Every chance. She’d deny it, I suppose.”
“Oh, she did.” Miss Howe laughed. “Have you ever seen her in a temper? I have. I was a fool. I told her one day (you know how things come up) just something of the gossip about Kent and her. I thought it only kind. But you should have heard her. She was as healthily furious as a schoolgirl. That was so comfortable about Madala. She hadn’t that terrible aloofness of really big people. She didn’t withdraw into dignity. She just stormed.” Miss Howe laughed again. “I can see her now, raging up and down the room—‘Do you mean to say that people——? I never heard of anything so monstrous! What has it got to do with them? Why can’t they leave me alone? I’ve never done them any harm. I wouldn’t have believed it, pretending they liked me, and letting me be friends with them, and then saying hateful things behind my back. I’ll never speak to them again—never! That they should go about twisting things—Why can’t they mind their own business? And dragging in Kent like that! Oh, it does make me so wild!’ ‘Oh, well, my dear,’ I said to her, ‘when two people see as much of each other as you and Kent do, there’s bound to be talk.’ At that she swung round on me. ‘But he’s myfriend,’ she said. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘that’s just it.’ ‘But I’m not expected to marry everyone I’m fond of!’ ‘Are you fond of him, Madala?’ I asked her. ‘Yes,’ she said directly, ‘I am. I’m awfully fond of him. I’d do anything for him, bless his heart!’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘you needn’t be so upset. That’s all that people mean. If you’re fond of him and he—he’s obviously in love with you——’ But at that she caught me up in her quick way—‘In love? Oh, you don’t understand him. Nobody understands Kent. He doesn’t understand himself. Dear old Kent!’ Then she began walking up and down the room again, but more quietly, and talking, half to herself, as if she had forgotten I was there, justifying herself, justifying him. ‘Dear old Kent! Poor old Kent! I’m awfully fond of Kent. So is he of me. But not in the right way. He’s got, when he happens to think of it, a great romantic idea of the woman he wants, of the wife he wants; but the truth is, you know, that he doesn’t want a wife. He wants a mother, and a sister, and a—a lover. A true lover. A patienter woman than I am. A woman who’ll delight in him for his own sake, not for what he gives her. A woman who’ll put him first and be content to come second with him. He’ll always put his work first. He can’t help it. He’s an artist. Oh, notcontent. I didn’t mean that. She must be too big for that—big enough to know what she misses. But a wise woman, such a loving, hungry woman. ‘Half a loaf,’ she’ll say to herself. But she’ll never have to let him hear. He’s chivalrous. He’d be horrified at giving her half a loaf. He’d say—“All or nothing!” But he couldn’t give her all. He couldn’t spare it. So he’d give her nothing out of sheer respect for her. That’s Kent. He’s got his dear queer theories of life—oh, they’re all right as theories—but he fits people to them, instead of them to people. Procrustes. He’d torture a woman from the kindest of motives. It’s lack of imagination. Haven’t you noticed?’ ‘Considering he’s one of the great imaginative artists of the day, Madala,’ I said to her, ‘that’s rather sweeping.’ ‘But that’s why,’ she said. ‘It’s just because he’s a genius. He lives on himself, in himself. Kent’s an island.’ I said—‘No chance of a bridge, Madala?’ She shook her head. ‘Not my job.’ I said I was sorry. I was, too. It would have been so ideal, that pair. I wanted to argue it with her; but she wouldn’t listen. She said—‘If I weren’t an artist too, then maybe—maybe. I’m very fond of Kent. But no—I’d want too much. But, you know, there’s a woman somewhere, rather like me—I hope he’ll marry her. I’d love her. She’d never be jealous of me. She’d understand. She’s me without the writing, without the outlet. She’ll pour it all into loving him. I hope she’s alive somewhere. He’d be awfully happy. And if he had children—that’s what he needs. I can just see him with children. But not my children. If I married——’ And then she flushed up to the eyes in that way she had, as if she were fifteen. ‘I—I’d like to be married for myself, for my faults, for the bits I don’t tell anyone. Kent would hate my faults. I’d have to hide my realest self.’ She stood staring out of the window. Then she said, still in that rueful, childish voice—‘I would like to be liked.’ ‘But, my dear girl,’ said I, ‘what nonsense you talk! If ever a woman had friends——’ She flung round at me again—‘If I’d not writtenEden Wallswould Anita have looked at me—or any of you?’ I said—‘That’s not a fair question. Your booksareyou, the quintessence, the very best of you.’ ‘But the rest of me?’ she said, ‘but therestof me?’ I laughed at her. ‘Well, what about the rest of you?’ Then she said, in a small voice—‘It feels rather out of it sometimes, Lila.’”
“I say,” Mr. Flood twinkled at her, “are you going to present all this to Anita? She’d be grateful.”
“Not she,” said Miss Howe sharply. “Too much fact would spoil her theory. Let her spin her own web.”
“Agreed. There’s room for more than one biography, eh?” They laughed together a little consciously.
“You know,” the blonde lady recalled them, “she must have been quite a good actress. She always seemed perfectly contented.”
“Imagine Madala Grey discontented,” said the Baxter girl. “How could she be?”
“Oh, Kent was at the root of that,” said Miss Howe, “for all her talk.”
Mr. Flood nodded.
“Yes, the lady did protest too much, if your report’s correct.”
“It’s the only explanation and, as you said, Blanche, in her heart Anita knows it. After all, he’s a somebody. Madala wouldn’t be the only one who’s found him attractive, eh?” She cocked an eyebrow.
“Don’t be scandalous, Lila,” said the blonde lady virtuously, and Mr. Flood gave his little sniff of enjoyment.
“Oh, give me five minutes,” said Miss Howe cosily. “She’ll be down in five minutes. I’ve been good all the evening. But I’m inclined to agree with her, you know, that Madala was attracted, just because Madala denied it so vehemently. Only Anita goes too far for me. She’s right, of course, when she says of Kent—‘Not a marrying man!’ but not in the way she means it. There are dark and awful things in the history of every unmarried man, to Anita. She scents intrigue everywhere. I’m a spinster myself, but I’m not such a spidery spinster. She may be partly right. Some other man, some question-mark of a man, may have treated Madala badly. But Kent didn’t. Kent isn’t that sort. Intrigue would bore him. Still, he wasn’t a marrying man in those days, and I think Madala was perfectly honest when she said—‘Just friends.’ But I think also, if you ask me, that they were far too good friends. It’s not wise to be friends with a man. You must be a woman first and let him know it. I don’t believe in these platonic friendships. So I think that in time Madala found out where they were making the mistake. And he didn’t, or wouldn’t. Oh well!” she paused expressively, “he’s finding it out now. He has been all the year. Didn’t you see his face when he came in tonight? Madala shouldn’t have hurried. Poor Madala! Though I don’t think it broke her heart, you know.”
“No.” The blonde lady nodded. “She was too serene, too placid, for real passion. She could draw it well enough, but always from the outside.”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” said the Baxter girl. “Think of the end ofPloughed Fields.”
“Let’s give her some credit for imagination, even if we don’t say ‘genius’! I agree with Blanche. Oh, perhaps her heart did crack just a little——”
The blonde lady struck in—
“But then Carey’s a doctor. So convenient!”
“Yes,” said Mr. Flood. “I always said he caught her on the rebound.”
“And then, to mix metaphors, the fat was in the fire. Then, Kent woke up to her. Isn’t it obvious? He was fond of Madala Grey, but it was Mrs. Carey that he fell in love with. Just like a man!”
“Oh, I hate you,” said Mr. Flood. “You destroy my illusions. I’m like Anita. I demand the tragic Madala.”
“You can have her, I should think,” said the Baxter girl thoughtfully. “Oh, of course your theory does seem probable as far as it goes, Miss Howe, but——”
“But what?” said Miss Howe.
“Well, she hardly ever came to town afterwards, did she?”
“Ah, Madala was always wise,” said the blonde lady.
Mr. Flood rubbed his hands.
“Thank you, Beryl. We’re in sympathy. And it’s quite a satisfying, tragical picture, isn’t it? The two artists—he with his lay figure and she with her Hodge, and the long year between them. Can’t you see them, cheated, desirous, stretching out to each other their impotent hands? One could make something out of that.”
“You could, Mr. Flood,” said the Baxter girl fervently.
“Out of what?” Anita was always noiseless. I jumped to hear her voice so close behind me.
Miss Howe looked up at her quizzingly.
“Madala and——WhereisKent?”
“With Mother still. He’s managed her extraordinarily. She’s getting sleepy, thank goodness! He’ll be down in a minute.” Then, with a change of tone—“Madala and Kent? I think not, Lila dear.”
“But you said yourself——” the Baxter girl interposed.
“Oh no! I flung it out—a suggestion—a possibility. I haven’t committed myself—yet. I wish I could be sure of Kent. He’s upset my conception of him tonight. I should have said—selfish. Especially over Madala. But all men are selfish. Yet, tonight——” she hesitated, playing with the papers that lay half in, half out of the open desk. “But who was it, if it wasn’t Kent? Because therewassomeone, you know——” And then, as if Miss Howe’s smile annoyed her beyond prudence—“Do you think I’m inventing? Do you think I’ve talked for amusement’s sake? I tell you, she was on the verge of an elopement.Withoutbenefit of clergy!”
“Anita!” Miss Howe half rose from her chair.
“We’re getting it at last.” Mr. Flood addressed the room. “I knew she had something up her sleeve.”
“I don’t believe—I won’t believe it,” said Miss Howe.
Then Anita smiled.
“Didn’t I say she was careless about her drafts? I’ve a fragment here—no, I’ve left it in my writing-table——” and she rose as she spoke—“no name, but it’s proof enough. It’s an answer to some man’s letter.”
“But does she definitely consent——?” began the Baxter girl.
“Not in so many words. But it’s obvious there was some cause or impediment, and he, whoever he is, has evidently had qualms of conscience about letting her call the world well lost for his sweet sake.”
“That would rule out Kent, of course,” said Miss Howe thoughtfully. “There was no reason why Kent shouldn’t marry.”
“We know of none,” said Anita in her suggestive voice. “Isn’t that as much as one can say of any man?”
“Ah!” said the Baxter girl, illuminated. I don’t know why—her round eyes, I suppose, and her pursed mouth—but she reminded me of the woodcut of Minerva’s owl inLarousse.
“So you see my prime difficulty. I’ve passed under review every man of her acquaintance, till I narrowed down the possible——”
“Affinities,” said the blonde lady.
“—to Kent Rehan, John Carey, and this probable but unknown third. There I hang fire. Until I make up my mind on which of the three her love story hinges, I can’t do more than trifle with theLife. And how shall I make up my mind?”
“Three?” said Mr. Flood. “Two. You can eliminate the husband. He’s fifth act, not third.”
“Yes, of course. But I never jump a step. Which leaves me the unknown—or Kent.”
The blonde lady leant forward rather eagerly—
“Nita! Where’s that letter?”
“I’ll get it.” She went across the room to her writing-table.
The Baxter girl twisted her head.
“I say! He’s coming down the stairs.”
“If she read aloud that draft——” the blonde lady’s drawl had disappeared. She glittered like an excited schoolgirl—“he might recognize——”
“You mean——?” Mr. Flood raised his eyebrows but Anita, fumbling with her keys, did not hear.
“It would be nice to be sure,” said the blonde lady.
“It’s rather cruel, isn’t it?” said Miss Howe uneasily.
“Why? It’ll be printed in theLife. Besides, it may not have been written to him.”
“That’s why,” said Miss Howe.
“It would be nice to bequitesure,” said the blonde lady again. And as she spoke Kent Rehan came into the room.
At once I got up, with some blind, blundering idea, I believe, of stopping him, of frustrating them, but Anita was nearer to him than I.
“Is she asleep? Very good of you, Kent. Sit here, Kent. Jenny, is the window open in the passage? Very cold. I never knew such a draught.”
I went out to see. I had to do as I was told. Besides, how could I have stopped them or him? Yet I was shaking with anger and disgust at them, and at myself for my hateful tongue-tied youth and insignificance. An older woman would have known what to do. Shaking with cold too—Anita was right—it was bitter cold in the passage. I could hardly see my way to the window for the fog. It was open an inch at the bottom, and at my touch it rattled down with a bang that echoed oddly. For an instant I thought it was a knock at the hall door. I stood a minute, quite startled, peering down into the black well of the hall. But there was no second knock, only the fog-laden draught of the passage came rushing up at me again, and again Anita called to me to come in and shut the door. I did so: and because it rattled, wedged it with the screw of paper that lay near it on the floor, the crumpled telegram that Kent Rehan had dropped when he first came in. Then, still shivering a little, I sat down where I was. I didn’t want to go nearer. I knew my face was tell-tale. I didn’t want to have the Baxter girl looking at me, and maybe saying something. I could hear them in the other room well enough. Anita’s voice seemed to cut through the thick air. There was a letter in her hand. She was twisting it about as if she couldn’t find the first page.
“—obviously a draft.” She held it away from her. Anita was long-sighted.
“Dear—dear——
Then it breaks off and begins again. You see?” She displayed it to them.
“Dearest——”
“Why, how clearly it’s written!” The Baxter girl peered at it. “That’s quite a beautiful hand. That’s not Madala’s scrawl.”
The blonde lady looked at them through half-shut lids.
“Ah! It’s been written slowly——”
“As if she loved writing it!” The Baxter girl flushed. “Didsheknow about that sort of thing—that sentimental sort of thing? I should have thought her too—oh, too splendid, removed—you know what I mean.”
“I don’t suppose she talked about it,” said Anita coldly. “She was not of your generation.” And then, to the others—“I assure you, this letter shook me. Even I never dreamed of this side of her. Listen.” She read aloud in her measured voice—
“Dearest—
I wanted your letter so. I reckoned out the posts, and the distances, and your busyness. I thought that in two days you would probably write, and then I gave you another day’s grace because you hate writing letters, and because I thought you couldn’t dream how much I missed you—how much, howsoon, I wanted to hear. And then to get your letter the very next day, before I could begin to look for it (but I did look!). Why, you must have written as soon as the train was out of the station! You missed me just as much then?
But it’s a mad letter, you know. It makes me laugh and cry. It’s so sensible—and so silly. ‘Fame,’ ‘career,’ ‘reputation,’ ‘position’—why do you fling these words at me?Iam making a sacrifice? Darling, haven’t you eyes? Don’t you understand that you’re my world? All these other things, since I’ve known you, they’re shadows, they’re toys, I don’t want them. The reviews of my new book—I’ve never been so delighted at getting any—but why? D’you know why? To show them to you—to watch you shake with laughter as you read them. When a flattering letter turns up, I save it to show you as if it were gold, because I think—‘Perhaps it’ll make him think more of me.’ Isn’t it idiotic? But I do. And all the while I glory in the knowledge that all these things, all the fuss and fame, don’t mean a brass button to you—or to me, my dear, or to me.
And yet you write me a solemn letter about ‘making a sacrifice,’ ‘abdicating a position.’
Don’t be—humble. And yet I like you in this mood. Because it won’t last! I won’tletit. It’s I who am not good enough. If you knew how I tip-toe sometimes. You’re so much bigger than I am. I lie in bed at nights, and all the things I’ve done wrong in my life, all the twisty, tortuous, feminine things, all the lies and cowardices and conceits, come and sting me. I’m so bitterly ashamed of them. I feel I’ve got to tell you about them all, and yet that if I do you’ll turn me out of your heart. If you did that—if you were disappointed—if you got tired of me—it turns me sick with fear.
I’m a fool to tear myself. I know you love me. And when you’re with me I forget all that. I’m just happy. When you’re there it’s like being in the blazing sunshine. Can ‘celebrity’ give me that sunshine? Can ‘literature’ All my emptiness? Are the books I write children to love me with your eyes? Oh, you fool!
Oh, of course, I know you don’t mean it. It’s just that you think you ought to protest. But suppose I took you at your word? Suppose I said that, on careful consideration, I felt that I wanted to lead my own life instead of yours? that—how does the list run?—my Work, my Circle of Friends, my Career, were too much to give up for—you? What would you say—no, do? for even I, (and the sun’s in my eyes) even I can’t call you eloquent! But what would you do if I wouldn’t come to you?
Oh, my darling, my darling, you needn’t be afraid. I’d rather be a door-keeper in the house of my God——
I’m changed. What have you done to me? Other people notice it. My friends are grown critical of me. Only yesterday someone (no one you know) sneered at me—‘In love? Oh well, you’ll get over it. It’s a phase.’ You know, they don’t understand. I’m not ‘in love,’ but I love you. There’s the difference. I love you. I shall love you till I die. Till——? As if death could blot you out for me! I used to believe in death. I used to believe it ended everything. But now, since I’ve known you, I can never die. You’ve poured into me an immortal spirit——”
“Go on,” breathed the Baxter girl.
“It breaks off there. It’s not signed. It was never sent.”
“She had that much wisdom, then.” The blonde lady’s laughter came to us over Mr. Flood’s shoulder. “That’s not the letter to send to any man. Giving herself away?—giving us all away——”