Tom, as he had mentioned on the previous evening, had come to a difficult place in his statue, and he could not get on. He was puzzled to know what the fault was, or where the difficulty was. He saw in his own mind what he wanted to do, but he could not visualize the vision. And when May arrived on the following day she found him inclined to rail at clay, models, drapery and himself. He had seen Manvers off in the morning at Victoria, and that evening he dined alone with May.
“I’m so sorry he’s gone,” he said to her. “He is so extraordinarily inspiring in a sort of back-handed way. He puts his own point of view so brilliantly, that I realize how diabolical it is, and that spurs me to work for mine. He has the same effect on me as the sight of a drunken man was supposed to have on Spartan boys. Their fathers used to make a slave drunk and then bring him in, and say, ‘Look at that. Isn’t it horrible! Take warning!’”
Tom moved over to where May was sitting, and possessed himself of her hand.
“You’ve grown thin, darling,” he said; “look how your rings slip about. May, I’m so glad you’ve come. I have been very bad company to myself lately. WhenI stick in my work, and you are not here, I don’t know what to do. But when I’ve got you, sticking doesn’t seem to depress me.”
“I’m afraid I can’t prevent your sticking though, Tom.”
“I believe there is nothing you can’t do for me.”
“No, dear,” said May, “I’m very sorry, but we must face it. I don’t understand about your work at all. I’m not the least artistic. If you are pleased, I am pleased; but when you are not pleased, I can’t help you. Mr. Manvers could; for that I am sorry he has gone.”
“Don’t you like him?” asked Tom.
May was silent a moment.
“Tom, you won’t be angry with me, will you,” she said at length, “because I am going to say something which I have had on my mind for a long time, and which I think I had better say. It is this. Do you think it is right for you to see much of him, to know him, to be at all intimate with him? Oh, Tom, he is not a good man! I don’t know about his life, and you probably do; but I am sure of that. He has no better aim in life than the success of his own wits. He has a bad effect on you. He makes you think lightly of things which are more important than anything else. Oh, I’ve got such a lot to say to you!”
Tom smiled.
“Say it, darling.”
May sat up and played rather nervously with her rings.
“And when you stick in your work, Tom,” she went on, “do you think it is well to stimulate yourself inthe sort of way you mention? You know you aim at the best, and all that is good comes from one quarter. Do you ever go there for help?”
“You mean, do I pray?”
“Yes, Tom.”
Tom got up and walked up and down the room.
“It is like this,” he said: “I believe in God, and I believe in good, but I also believe in things like laws of nature, and if God created all things, He created them. He has given me a brain which works in obedience to certain laws, and nothing in the world can alter them. We know a little about the brain, at least by experience we find that certain things stimulate it; it works best when it is keen and eager, and I use those things to make it keen and eager which I have found by experience do so. No, when I stick in my work, I don’t pray.”
“But that is the essence of good work,” said May; “it is that which makes it good—the fact that it is done in a spirit of dedication.”
“But, do you then think that a good man, in so far as he is good and dedicates his work to God, necessarily produces good work?” asked Tom.
“I mean that a man who has a gift in any line, uses his gift best and produces more beautiful things if he dedicates it. Why, Tom, look at the difference between your things and Mr. Manvers’. I think he is not a good man, and I think his things are not good for that reason.”
Tom sat down again.
“It all depends on what you mean by good and bad work,” he said. “I think the object of a beautifulthing is only to be beautiful, and I think his things are bad because they are ugly—at least, they seem to me ugly.”
“But the object of all beauty is to bring us nearer God,” said May.
“Yet a work of art which arouses religious emotions is not a better work of art than one which does not. Otherwise, a chromo-lithograph of the Sistine Madonna would be a better work of art than that terrible splendid Salome in the Louvre.”
“I think Mr. Manvers’ things are immoral,” said May.
“You don’t understand, dear,” he said. “His things, so I think, are bad because he has a debased taste. It is his artistic sense that is warped, and it is that which shows in his work, and not his character. Besides, I think you are not fair to him, May.”
“Oh, but, Tom,” she said, with indignation in her voice, “think of his life, that life among those Paris artists, that horrible vice, and carelessness of living.”
Tom smiled.
“Where did you learn about the life of Paris artists?” he asked. “Manvers says they are most inoffensive little people as a rule.”
“I read all about it in ‘David Grieve,’”said May seriously. “It is horrible.”
This time he laughed right out.
“Oh, May, you are a darling!” he said. “Oh dear, how funny! I’m so sorry for laughing; but really it is funny. Have you ever heard Manvers talk about that? He becomes quite virtuous and indignant over it. I don’t know much about Paris life myself, I wasonly there a month or two, but Manvers—he does not strike you as being very like David Grieve in Paris, does he?”
May joined in Tom’s laugh, but grew serious again.
“You know I feel about it very deeply,” she said; “there is nothing in the world I feel about so much. I think it is our first duty not to condone by word or deed what one knows is bad. To let people see that one will not tolerate it, to fight against it, to—to show that one loathes it.”
“Do you mean you want me never to see Manvers again?” asked Tom.
“No, not that,” said May, “because you know him well, and he is very fond of you, and I think you do him good. But couldn’t you do him more good? Couldn’t you talk to him about it, and bear your testimony?”
“No, dear,” said Tom, quietly, “I couldn’t possibly. It is not my business. I know Manvers as a friend, as an excellent companion, as a most amusing fellow. Why, May, he would think I was mad. Men do not talk to each other about such things.”
“But surely it is our business,” said May. “Tom, you don’t think me tiresome, do you?”
Tom smiled, and took up her hand again.
“My darling, I happen to love you,” he said, “and it does not occur to one to think a person one loves tiresome.”
May went on with gathering earnestness.
“Surely it is our business,” she said. “You believe in God, you believe in Christ, in His infinite love, His infinite care for all. Surely it is your first business tohelp in His work. I remember what you told me about that early celebration you went to. It completed my happiness: it was that I was waiting for, and I thank God for it day and night. I longed to see you more and talk about it, but you went up to London so soon after, and I have scarcely seen you since.”
Tom’s eyebrows contracted. It was impossible for him to let May be deceived, but what he had to do was a bitter thing. May’s eyes were fixed on his, full of love and trust, but with a question in them, a desire to be confirmed in what she had said.
“May, I am going to hurt you,” he said, looking away, “but I cannot help it; I cannot let you think something about me which is not true. I think I over-rated that—I mean that I thought more of it than it really meant to me. The day before I was in agonies of anxiety and fear for you, and that afternoon Ted and I met the funeral of a mother who had just died in child-bed, and on my way home, as I told you, I went into the church and prayed to an unknown God that you might be safe. I could not bear it alone. And then next morning I could not bear my joy alone. I had—I was obliged to thank some one for it, the some one who had heard my prayer the evening before. And now the whole thing has faded a little. I am less sure. I do not deny that God heard my prayer, and stretched out His hand to save you, but it is less real to me. Supposing you had died, should I have denied absolutely the existence of God? I hope not. Then why should I affirm it because you lived?”
Tom’s voice had sunk lower and lower, and heended in a whisper. But May’s hand still lay in his, and she pressed it tenderly.
“Tom, why were you afraid to tell me?” she said. “Ah, my dear, I should be a very weak, poor creature if this separated me at all from you, or made me doubt you. What did you think of me? Of course I am sorry, and yet I am hardly sorry. Am I to dictate to God by what way He shall lead you? He has not led you that way, it was not good. Tom, Tom!”
She bent forward and kissed him, her arm was pressed round his neck, and her head lay on his breast. As once before, on the evening when they reached Applethorpe before the baby’s birth, human love and longing had full possession of her; and as she lay there, she felt only that she loved him. And Tom too was content.
But good moments pass as well as bad ones, and the sense that May lived in a different world to him could not but come back again and again to Tom. He could not but feel that there was a passion in her life in which he had no share, and that passion was the strongest she knew. He had tried to grasp it; once he thought he had grasped it, but he was wrong. He was as honest to himself as he was to others, and he admitted that he did not believe in God in the way he believed in May or in Art. The life of Christ was beautiful beyond all other lives, but was it different in kind from the lives of noble unselfish men? Was Christ anything more than the most wonderful, the most unselfish man that the world has ever seen? And from the fact that he could ask himself thesequestions, Tom knew that he was not convinced. It was just this that was the most essential part of May’s life; her love and tenderness for him and others sprang from that, whereas Tom felt that all that was good in him did not descend from above, but grew up from below.
May was certainly less conscious of this than he. She, so to speak, was waiting for him to come, believing fully he would, while he was struggling towards her, afraid that his efforts were futile. The least he could do, he felt, and the most, was to avoid letting her know that he was so conscious of the gulf between them. He loved her, he thought, more and more as the days went by, and it should be easy to stifle that little ounce of bitter where all else was so sweet. So long as she loved him, he felt that it would be well with him.
Meantime the London season danced and laughed round them; the clay model of Demeter was finished and was to be put in the pointer’s hands at once. May produced a slight stir in a small circle, because she was beautiful, and there is quite an appreciable number of men who prefer that a woman should not talk much, because, as is very justly remarked, if everybody talked much, nobody would have any audience to address. She was always courteous, she always looked admirable, and the general opinion was that Tom had “done himself” uncommonly well.
Moreover—and this was particularly interesting, because it was never spoken above a whisper—Miss Wrexham was not looking at all well, and there really must have been something in what every one wassaying last year. Very sad for her, was it not? but a girl has no business to go about looking pale; of course that set every one talking, and a little rouge, you know, would both conceal the pallor and mitigate the blush. Oh yes, it happened many times; only last night, in fact, when we were dining there, Tom Carlingford’s name came up and she blushed—several people saw her. And she wasn’t at Ascot, nor was he, and that is quite conclusive. And besides, her going to Athens was so very extraordinary. Oh, she had a brother there, had she? We hadn’t heard that, and we shall probably forget it again.
Maud, it must be confessed, did not enjoy herself very much that season. In the natural course of things she met Tom often, and the task of unbuilding that most uncompromising blank wall seemed too disheartening. Every time she saw him she felt that things were getting more and more difficult. What made it worse was that May had unthawed to her, and often asked her to come out with her. May out of the fulness of her heart constantly spoke of Tom, and talking about Tom was rather emotional work for poor Maud. That terrible evening before Manvers went away had taken her and thrust her back into all her old hopelessness and blankness. “After all, what good to strive with a life awry?” she asked herself, and then because she was pure and good and sweet, she strove and strove till her strength began to give way. If only Tom would leave London, she thought, or if only she could, things would be more possible.
A little scene which had occurred long before, often came back to her during these weeks. One day attheir house in Cornwall, she was walking early before breakfast along a narrow country lane. She could almost smell again that sweet intangible scent of morning, the smell of clean things. Now and then a whiff of dogrose crossed her, and now and then a breeze which had blown through a gorse bush came over her face. At the lodge gate she had spoken to the old keeper’s wife, whose son had got into trouble. The poor old lady was rather tearful about it, and said: “Lor, miss, if we were good how happy we should be!” She had repeated the remark once to Manvers, who said he thought the old woman had got hold of the wrong end of the stick, and that she would have spoken more truthfully if she had said, “If we were happy, how good we should be!”
How extraordinarily happy she had been that morning! The whole world had seemed so clean and fresh and wholesome, so delightfully straightforward and uncomplicated. If only she could get back that feeling, just for a moment, she thought she would be rested and ready to begin again. In the old days nothing had seemed hard, nothing out of reach, nothing perplexing. And now her life was spoiled.
One evening early in June she was having tea with May, longing for Tom to come in, dreading that he would come. May had sent for the baby, and he was sitting on his mother’s knee regarding his toes, which apparently seemed to him very wonderful inventions and quite original, and his mother was taking a sympathetic interest in his discoveries. Maud, who had been quite fascinating to the infant mind till he found out about his toes, had been thrown over, andas May’s attention was riveted on her son, she felt just a little out of it. Suddenly May looked up.
“Just fancy,” she said, “this little mite is our own, Tom’s and mine: I never get quite used to that fact. Yes, darling”—she turned her attention to the baby—“how pretty, and that’s all yours. Oh, you angel!”
Maud felt her breath catch in her throat, and on the moment the door opened and Tom came in.
“Baby-cult as usual,” he said. “How are you, Maud?”
Maud could not quite command her voice, but she murmured something.
“That surprising infant usurps far too much of May’s time,” continued he. “May will never quite recognize that one baby is rather like another baby.”
May bent over the little sparsely be-haired head.
“What an unnatural papa he’s got!” she said; “he says you’re like other babies. You know quite well, and so does he, that there never was a baby like you, and never will be!”
Tom’s pleasant soul sat laughing in his eyes as he answered her.
“Mothers are said to be biassed in favour of their own young; never you believe that, my boy.”
Then he turned to Maud.
“May’s manners are cast to the winds when His Smallness is present,” he said; “she won’t attend to either of us, so we’ll attend to each other. Are you going to the Levesons’ to-morrow? I hear they are going to be very smart, and that it’s a case of red carpet. May, I must smoke a cigarette. I don’t care whether it’s the drawing-room or not.”
“And fill the room with horrid, horrid smoke,” said May to her son.
“I hardly know,” said Maud; “I’ve been overdoing it lately, and I think I shall go into my shell again for a bit. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a real shell, and curl yourself up in the middle of a dinner-party if you were bored.”
“I shall order one,” said Tom, thoughtfully. “You do look rather tired. Where are you going to put your shell? If I were you I should leave London for a week. It would be so original. You would of course let it be known that you were going to read ‘Sordello.’ ‘Sordello’ is the fashion now, I think. Of course nobody has read it and that’s why they talk about it. No one talks about a thing they really have read.”
“That has a slight flavour of Mr. Manvers,” remarked May.
“Manvers has such a pungent flavour, that one really can’t help catching a little of it, if one sees him at all,” said Tom. “But I wasn’t consciously Manveresque—I suppose he’s in Paris, associating with all the good dead Americans.”
May smiled.
“And now mammy’s going to take him upstairs,” she said, and left the room.
Tom poured himself out a cup of tea.
“Please talk nonsense to me,” he said; “I’ve been seeing Wallingthorpe, and—and of course he’s a delightful man, but he is so serious. He takes everybody and everything seriously, including himself. That is so clever of him—and the worst of it is hekeeps it up. He is always clever. How tiring he must find it!”
Maud laughed, but the laugh ended abruptly.
“Talk nonsense!” she said; “I have forgotten how. Oh, Tom, the world is a very serious place!”
Tom raised his eyebrows.
“When did you find that out?” he asked.
“I? Oh, ever so long ago!” she said rather wildly “If you take it lightly and pleasantly, it turns round on you somehow, and deals you sudden back-handed blows. I don’t know why I am saying all this.”
“Hit it back,” suggested Tom. “It deals blows back-handed possibly, but it caresses you back-handed too.”
Maud put on her gloves, and fitted her fingers carefully.
“I am out of sorts,” she said; “the world is grievously awry.”
“What’s the matter?”
“I am the matter. It’s nobody else. But what is one to do?”
Maud knew she was being unwise. She knew perfectly well that she would be sorry for this, but the hope that Tom might understand seemed to her the only thing worth caring for, and at the same time the one thing in all the world which she dreaded. She was afraid, desperately afraid, of saying too much, but she could not help herself. “Why will not he understand?” she thought, “and God forbid that he should.” But Tom was in a thoroughly superficial mood. He said to himself that Maud was out of sorts, that she was overtired and worried.
“Man disquieteth himself in vain,” he said. “It is best to take living very lightly. We all of us have something we want to do or be, and cannot do or be it. We are wise if we let it alone. There is much I want to do and be, and cannot manage it, and every one is in the same plight. After all, if we aim at being contented, that is enough.”
Maud got up.
“Aim at being contented? Aim at being in Heaven! We have to remember that we are on earth.”
Tom rose too.
“What is the matter?” he said; “do tell me.”
Again Maud felt stifled and choking.
“One is a creature of moods,” she said, “and the heavy moods come, as well as the light. Just now I have a heavy mood. By the way, I shall follow your advice. I am rather overdone, and I shall leave London for a time. I shall not say I am reading ‘Sordello.’ I think I shall say I am reading the Bible—it is the better book. I shall go before the end of the week: at present I am going now. Give my adieux to your wife. She is more charming than ever!”
But at this moment May came in, and Maud gave her adieux in person. Tom was vaguely puzzled.
“It’s very sudden,” he said. “Are you going really?”
“Certainly,” said Maud; “I really am going—I am going away for a whole fortnight. I want tone, and there is no such thing in London.”
Tom laughed.
“I am inclined to agree with you,” he said.
“Well, good-bye,” said Maud; “good-bye, May—that fascinating child is quite too fascinating.”
May sat still a moment after she had gone. “What is the matter with her?” she asked; “what have you been saying, Tom? I never saw her like that.”
“Nor have I,” said he. “I have said nothing. I have no idea what is the matter with her.”
Maud stood on the doorstep, and looked to see if the carriage was in sight, and finding it not there, remembered that her mother had “worked it in,” and began to walk home. But she felt hopelessly ill and weak, and told the man to fetch her a hansom. “O God! how tired I am of it all!” she said to herself.
Itis probably true that when things are at their worst they begin to mend, but the little complications common to man sometimes exhibit a ghastly ingenuity of contrivance before that most desirable point is reached. As Manvers said, we are wonderful creatures, and beautifully adapted for bearing things. But Nature has been merciful enough to give most of us a weak point, and when the weak point is touched we are privileged to break down.
Maud, whose moral nature was very robust, was not physically strong, and that night she fainted incontinently in the middle of dinner. The doctor came—a doctor whose words were literally words of gold—and said, worry, overstrain, change of air, out of doors, sunshine; and Maud’s determination to leave London was made easy for her.
Lady Ramsden had managed to survive her husband, and was continuing to enjoy unagitated widowhood and her usual ill-health in her house on the Norfolk coast. She had grown a little stouter, a shade duller, and a trifle more monosyllabic, but otherwise time seemed to have let her be. She replied to Lady Chatham’s letter that she would be delighted to see Maud, but that her health was indifferent, and that Maud would probably be rather lonely. But if she wanted sea air and sunshine, she couldnot do better than come. She would be charmed to have her, and would she say the day and hour of her arrival, and whether she was going to bring a maid.
Lady Ramsden’s house stood on the edge of the short-turfed Norfolk Downs, within a hundred yards of the sea. The sand-cliffs, nibbled off short by the waves, rose some thirty feet from the beach, and the grass, fine and smooth, covered them to the edge, fitting their mounds and hollows so exactly that they looked as if they had been measured for a green baize billiard cloth. A mile to the north the red-roofed little town of Cromer went trooping down to the shore, with its tall grave tower seeming to confer an air of safety to the whole, but not checking a terrible tendency in the town to run to seed, as it were, on all sides in rows of jerry-built villas. But at this time of the year the villas were still unoccupied for the most part, and the town was a fishing village once more.
Maud arrived in the afternoon, and she drew in long breaths of the fresh sea air with a sense of relief, of struggle over. She was tired and overdone—tired of life, of worry, of sensation, and she thought that here perhaps she could stay still, being cut off from any thought of agitating impossibilities, of fruitless self-restraint, and of thrice fruitless desires. There was an air of complete, contented repose about the big landscape and the wide flat sea. The tide was up, and the sea looked full and prosperous. Little curling ripples washed up over the sand, and now and then one more energetic than its fellows thrust out a sharp tongue to the very base of the sandy cliffs and then drew back again with a louder murmur of content.
Round the house were rambling, uneven lawns, only half broken in, as it were, and retaining something of the freedom of the grass-clad sandhills, and a satisfying medley of flower-beds, full of great hardy plants which cared nothing for the brisk salt air—nasturtiums, great flaring double poppies, the velvet tassels of love-lies-a-bleeding, and thick-leaved stone-crops. Sturdy health seemed the key-note of the place.
At tea she saw Lady Ramsden, who strove to convey to her that she was glad to see her, and that her niece was also staying with her—her coming had been very sudden and upsetting—but that she had gone over to Cromer for a tennis party, and would be back before dinner, and as soon as tea was over Maud went out again and struck for the edge of the sandy cliffs.
Ah! the relief of getting away from London, away from the possibility of seeing Tom, from the possibility of torturing herself, of leading herself into temptation. Surely it was possible here, with this great shining sea on one side, and the firm landscape on the other, to regain her belief in serenity, to recapture an uncomplicated outlook.
She took off her hat, and let the bracing air from the sea blow her hair about. A mile off shore the little fleet of herring-boats were tacking with full, stiff sails down the coast to begin their strange adventure of casting nets into that shifting immensity beneath the deep fathomless sky above the deep fathomless sea. How did morning look to them as it broke in thin red lines on the horizon? How interesting it would be to be able to see the world just for a moment with other eyes, to be rid forone deep-drawn breath of the weight of one’s own stale identity! It was in that direction her salvation lay. She meant to cease focussing her eyes on her own microscopic troubles, to gain a wider outlook. How much more attainable such an idea seemed here, where there was some breadth of vision, and a horizon not bounded by house-roofs! London was a mere warren, full of silly gossiping rabbits. You could never see beyond the street corner, nor through the smoke.
The light in the west flamed and paled, and Maud began to retrace her steps. She felt better already. Oh, how right Miss Vanderbilt had been about the seat of the emotions! She would dose herself with sea air, she would bathe herself in sun and sea, she would get back her old serenity, her interest in things, her uncomplicated outlook. How pretty the house looked, standing out against the still ruddy sky, with the lights in its windows! There was some one standing in the porch—a girl. It must be Lady Ramsden’s niece. Maud felt quite pleased to have a companion. They would walk and ride and bathe together. Lady Ramsden’s niece—on which side, Carlingford or Ramsden?
The door was opened just before Maud got up to it, and the girl was standing by the lamp in the hall, opening a note when she entered. As she looked at her Maud’s heart suddenly stood still, and then jumped up into her throat, poised and hammering. There was no need to ask on which side she was Lady Ramsden’s niece, for as Maud came in she turned, and for a moment—it came on her like a horrible dream—she almost thought she stood face to face with Tom himself.
The girl looked up with that little raising of the eyebrows which Maud had so often seen in Tom, and greeted her.
“You are surely Miss Wrexham, are you not?” she said, coming forward with boyish frankness. “It is too delightful to meet you. I think you know my cousin Tom? You have had tea? Yes? I wonder where my aunt is.”
Violet Carlingford led the way to the drawing-room, where Lady Ramsden was lying on a sofa by a carefully shaded lamp. Her wheezy asthmatic pug lay snoring at her feet. She looked the incarnation of incompetence.
“So you have met,” she said, “and introduced yourselves.”
Violet laughed.
“I don’t think we introduced ourselves much,” she said. “I said, ‘Aren’t you Miss Wrexham?’ How are you, aunty?”
“Not very well, dear,” she said; “and Flo isn’t very well either. Listen to her breathing.”
Violet smiled, and two dimples came into her face. They were hardly so deep as Tom’s, but in exactly the same place.
“There’s no need to listen,” she said.
“I shall not come to dinner,” went on Lady Ramsden in a thin voice. “You two will dine alone. What time do you like dinner, Maud? We usually have it at eight. Will that suit you? Oh yes; and what is your maid’s name?”
Lady Ramsden got the bell rung for her, and got herself taken out of the room. The pug was hoistedon to a velvet cushion and was carried before her. In such manner did the Greeks carry the emblems of their gods before their images.
As Maud looked at Violet she saw that the likeness was even more extraordinary, and went deeper than she had noticed at first. Violet could hardly have been more than twenty, and her features were still unsexed. She was tall for a girl, and slightly built, and her walk and way of sitting, or rather lolling, as she was lolling now, reminded Maud exactly of what Tom had been when he came to stay with them once while he was at Eton, and sat laughing and talking with them all at the end of five minutes as naturally as if he had known them all his life. She had Tom’s short square-tipped nose, his clear, open, brown eyes, with long fine eyelashes and thin straight eyebrows. Her mouth, like his, was rather full-lipped, and often even when she was not speaking the white of her teeth showed between the lips in a straight narrow line. But her manner was even more fundamentally his. She had Tom’s trick of wrinkling his nose up slightly when he was amused, of putting his head slightly on one side when he was listening or considering, and in speaking of just perceptibly slurring his r’s, of separating his words one from the other more like a foreigner with a perfect command of English than an Englishman.
Violet strolled about the room just as he did, putting a book or two straight, and making a little face at the pug’s saucer of tea with cream in it which lay untasted in the corner. Violet disliked that pug; he was fat, lazy, wheezy, and selfish, and she gaveMaud a little sketch of his character. Soon she sat down near her and began on more personal topics.
“It is delightful to have you here,” she said. “I hope we shall make great friends. I always want to be doing something all day, and if you like playing golf and tennis, and bathing and riding, I’m sure we shall get on.”
Maud was leaning back in her chair, feeling somehow unaccountably shy.
“I was quite startled when I came in,” she said; “you are so extraordinarily like your cousin.”
Violet crossed one leg over the other and clasped her hands behind her head.
“I haven’t seen Tom for an age,” she said; “but when we were younger we were exactly alike. Tom—it was wicked of him—once dressed up in a skirt and cloak, and hat of mine, and went into my mother’s room and asked if she wanted anything in the town as he was going there with the governess. My mother gave him all sorts of feminine commissions and never suspected him till he burst out laughing. His mother and mine were sisters, and our fathers brothers, you know. Has he changed much?”
“He is still exactly like you,” said Maud, who was beginning to feel more at her ease.
“Tom’s getting quite famous, isn’t he?” the girl went on. “That will serve to differentiate us. And he’s got a baby. How funny it seems! We always said he would never grow up.”
“He hasn’t grown up much,” said Maud. “He is just like a boy still in many ways.”
“It’s such a pity one has to get older,” remarkedViolet. “I’m sure I shall never enjoy myself so much when I am old, and I shall get stuffy and think about complications and worries. At present I never worry.”
Maud smiled.
“I am afraid I must be getting old,” she said; “in fact, I came here in order to forget complications and worries.”
Violet sat up with an air of surprise.
“Oh, please don’t worry,” she said, “or you will spoil it all. And we can have such a charming time if we like.”
Maud rose.
“I will do my best to worry no more,” she said. “And will you help me?”
Her voice had a wonderful sweetness and tenderness about it. Violet got up too and stood close to her.
“Why, that’s charming of you,” she said. “I don’t think I could ever help anybody; but I will promise never to worry, if that is any use, Miss Wrexham.”
“The utmost use,” said Maud; “and I am not Miss Wrexham. I have left Miss Wrexham in London. I have done with her. May you never see her: she is a wicked little fool.”
“Well, Maud, then,” said the girl.
Maud woke next morning slowly and blissfully, conscious of a new interest in life, of a step taken. To be quit of London and all its fuss and worry was the step taken, but the new interest was the more vital of the two.
She and Violet had sat up late the night before talking, and Maud found something exquisitely sweetin being able to look at almost a facsimile of all that had made life bitter to her, to be able to talk and almost hear Tom answering, to be able to see his eyes looking into hers with affection and tenderness. For Maud had told Violet, without of course mentioning the name, the story of her worry and break-down; that she had loved a man and that he had married another, and that the desire of meeting him and the strain of doing so had made London unbearable and had affected her health.
Maud was one of those people who do not often make friends of their own sex, and the relief merely of telling some one about it was great. But when she felt she was almost telling it to Tom, as Violet sat opposite her, the bitterness and struggle she had been enduring so many months seemed quenched at last. Already her perplexities seemed capable of a solution which she could not have anticipated.
And the new interest was Violet. She felt as if Manvers had been wrong when he remarked cynically that Nature did not happen to have given us two people to love in case one got married. She felt as if she had almost cheated Fate, as if a substitute had been provided for her to love. “I shall be with her all day,” thought Maud, as she watched her maid moving about the room, “and I must, I will make her fond of me. If I can do that I shall feel as if at last Tom cared.”
Indeed this seemed no very hard task. Maud had a great power of attraction when she cared to attract, and she had already won Violet’s heart by her confidence of the night before. There is nothing so exquisite as to feel that one is trusted.
The friendship a man may have for a man, or a woman for a woman, is often closer and more intimate than even between husband and wife. However close a man may be to a woman, there still stands between them the barrier of sex, which no one has yet succeeded in annihilating. Members of two different sexes must look at things with different eyes, and the attempt of the woman to become like the man seems only to emphasize the difference. Certainly Violet could do for Maud what no man could possibly do. A girl can say to a girl what no wife could say to her husband, for there are certain things a man can never understand, simply because he is not a woman, nor a woman because she is a woman.
It would have been impossible for Maud to tell the story of her trouble to any one but a girl, and it seemed to her that the very telling of it had taken away half its burden. And the burden removed, her body was able to recuperate itself, for when the body is hurt through the soul it cannot be cured until the soul is convalescent. Living all day in the open air drinking in the fresh saltness of the sea, returning to the first principles of healing, began to have their legitimate effect. And if the air was bracing, Violet was still more bracing. The convalescence of her body and soul kept pace with each other.
They had been playing tennis one morning, and had gone down to bathe afterwards, and the two were sitting on the edge of the beach, Violet with her hat off trying to persuade her hair to behave reasonably. Maud had already dried hers and was absorbed in attempting to hit the pug, who had accompaniedthem down to the sea, but absolutely refused to wash, with small pebbles and shells.
“I hate that dog,” remarked Violet. “I wish you could hit it.”
“I wish I could,” said Maud. “There! No, it went over it.”
“I think I can forgive any one anything,” said Violet, “except laziness and want of interest. Not to be interested in things, not to be thoroughly alive, is the only unpardonable sin.”
“I’ve been sinning unpardonably for the last six months. What a fool I have been making of myself!”
Violet wrinkled her nose.
“You poor darling! I didn’t refer to you. All the same it was foolish of you.”
“But the world is so hard,” said Maud.
Violet held up a forefinger warningly.
“Now you know that is one of the things you are not allowed to say. How old are you?”
“Twenty-five.”
“For how many years did you say you had been completely happy?”
“Twenty-three and a half.”
Violet flicked the warm sea-scented air with the end of her towel.
“Well, then, I should be ashamed, Maud, I should be ashamed, especially when you know you are beginning to be happy again.”
“That’s your doing.”
“We are talking about you, not me”—Violet’s voice came out of the middle of the towel—“andyou’ll please keep to the subject. Just fancy my ever being good for anybody. How funny it seems!”
Maud lay back on her rug tilting her hat over her eyes.
“It’s a very nice, warm, kind world just now,” she added; “but oh, Violet, will it last? Man is a creature of moods, especially woman!”
“Especially you, you mean. I never had a mood in my life.”
“But what would you do supposing something went wrong, supposing something happened to you like what happened to me?”
“I should send for you to come and stay with me at Aunt Julia’s,” said Violet, “and I should throw pebbles at that loathsome dog, and I should hit it too.”
Violet’s towel flapped through the air and descended on Flo’s head.
Maud laughed as the dog got up, shook herself free of the towel, and then lay down pathetically on the top of it.
“But seriously,” she went on, “if you wanted something very badly and couldn’t get it, what would you do?”
Violet rescued the towel and resumed her seat.
“I haven’t got many wants, you know,” she said, “so I can’t tell. But I hope I should be reasonable. I hope I should make a real effort to cease to want it. And then, you know, one gets over things; it takes time, no doubt, but everything worth doing takes time.”
“Ah, but that’s so terrible,” said Maud. “It just shows how limited we are. If we were only stronger we should never get used to being without the thingswe want. It is because we are weak and feeble that we begin to forget. I want to know how we are to be strong and yet to forget.”
Violet stared absently at the sea.
“I understand what you mean,” she said, “but I think you are wrong. After all we are human; we can’t get over that; and I think the woman who can’t make an effort to forget, who goes on nursing her sorrow, is feebler than the one who can. Of course time helps both. Oh yes, of course I am right. I am very old-fashioned, you know. I don’t care about dissecting myself and analyzing my tendencies, and thinking about limitations and aspirations. It seems to me that if you are inexperienced as I am you may kill yourself, as it were, in your analysis, or blind yourself altogether by peering too closely.”
“Go on,” said Maud, “you are so healthy.”
Violet turned to her and lay down close beside her.
“Yes, I want to be healthy anyhow,” she said, “and that is the main point. I think the way people dissect their own morbid selves, and put themselves in three-volumed pickle-jars, so to speak, for their friends to look at, is simply indecent. If you have a decayed tooth you don’t show it to all your friends and say, ‘It is much worse since last week’; you go to the dentist and have it stopped.”
“You dear dentist,” said Maud, “I’m so glad I came to you!”
“To tell yourself that life is hard and complicated,” continued Violet, “is to make it so, because one always believes one’s self. To say that it is simplesimplifies it. Of course some people like it complicated, and so I suppose they are right to tell themselves that it is. But to tell yourself that it is complicated, and then be sorry for it, is foolishness.”
“I hate complications,” said Maud. “I hate them as much as you hate that pug. But supposing you find simple things dull; at least, supposing after your complications you find the simple things which you liked before bore you? Complications change one, you know.”
“I don’t know,” remarked Violet. “Do you mean that you are bored with this place?”
“I mean nothing of the sort,” said Maud. “I was only speculating. And the bell for lunch went ten minutes ago.”
“The simplest lunch wouldn’t bore me to-day,” said Violet.
“Nor me.”
Violet whistled to the pug and stood for a moment with her head a little on one side looking at him disgustedly.
“You are most astonishingly like Tom,” said Maud; “he looked just like that when he was examining Mr. Manvers’ statuette.”
“And how did Mr. Manvers look when he looked at Tom’s statue?” she asked.
“He looked as the pug looks—rather hurt, but able to do without Tom’s appreciation.”
“How utterly different they must be!”
“All the difference in the world,” said Maud. Then to herself: “One is the man who loves me, the other”—she pulled herself up—“the man I used to love.”
Maywas driving home one afternoon towards the end of June with a sense of great well-being. The baby was thriving as heartily as the fondest mother could wish, and Tom was as lovable as ever. He had got rather tired of going out to dine or dance, and of late had more frequently spent his evenings alone with May. Two days before he saw her opening a note which obviously was an invitation, and before she had read it he said—
“May, if that is for dinner any time in the next week, I am engaged to dine with you at home.”
His guess had been correct, and they were going to spend this evening alone at home. There were always certain pieces of ritual connected with baby cult to be gone through, and though Tom expressed impatience sometimes at the length of the services, he knew that the sight of May bending over their first-born was a very pretty one, and often wished he were a painter as well as a sculptor. Demeter had passed through the hands of the pointers, and Tom was at work again on her, for he meant to finish her himself. Day after day he spent, chisel in hand, working down the whole surface, till he “found” the statue. Various people, remembering the two statuettes which Tom had exhibited eighteen months ago, wanted to know if there were any more to be had, for the two had sold at once for high prices, though Tom had, after his conversion, expressed an unmercenary intention of throwing the cheques into the fire. But when they asked whether he was working at anything, and were shown the Demeter, they became thoughtful and said, “Good morning.”
Altogether May was more than satisfied, and she went quickly up the steps and into the house, thinking how terrible it was that she had not set eyes on Tom or the baby since half-past eleven that morning. There was a note for her on the hall table, and she saw with a sudden spasm of anxiety that it was from her husband. She tore it open quickly, and read—
“Father’s business has failed. He heard this morning, and he has had a stroke. I have gone down there at once. You had better follow me.”
May read the note through twice before she thoroughly grasped its meaning. She waited only one moment to steady herself, and then went quickly upstairs to give orders for a small trunk to be packed for her, and to say good-bye to the baby.
Tom had received the news just after lunch, and was quite unable to remember where May had gone. She had come in to tell him that she would not be in till six, and that she was lunching somewhere, and then going somewhere else, but Tom was finishing a vein on the back of Demeter’s drooping hand, and had only said, “Yes, dear, yes,” without looking up. May felt one moment of slight pique, and hadnot repeated her message, saying to herself that if he did not care to know she did not care to tell him.
He had arrived at Applethorpe two hours afterwards, and there learned that there was probably no hope. His father was lying quite unconscious. They thought perhaps he might rally for a few minutes before the end, and so Tom sat and waited. The sun moved slowly round to the west, and it was not till the golden light had begun to be tinged with red that his father moved. He opened his eyes, saw Tom sitting by him, and snapped his fingers in the face of the King of Terrors.
“I’m stone broke, Tom,” he said, “and it’s lucky for you that you learned to break stones.”
And with a jest on his lips he went out without hope or fear into the Valley of the Shadow.
The suddenness of what had happened for a time stunned and obliterated thought in Tom’s mind. Though his father was old, no blurring decay had touched him with forewarning hand, and it was in a half-dream that Tom went down from the death chamber into the library. The telegram which announced the failure had fluttered down on to the floor, and the warm garden-scented breeze which streamed in through the open window stirred it every now and then as if it was twitched by some unseen hand. The book his father had been reading was still standing open on the desk of his reading-chair, where he had been sitting when the news came.
Everything was pitilessly unchanged. The servants had come in to draw down the blinds, butTom stopped them. What was the use of that unmeaning decorum? Tom had been very fond of his father, but the thought of May and the baby could not but make a picture in his mind. His father, like many very rich men, seldom or never spoke of his money, and Tom wondered vaguely, but with growing anxiety, how complete the smash was. The delights of poverty, of being out at elbows, and working passionately for a living at the work he loved, presented themselves in rather different colours to a man with a wife and infant son, from the glowing difficulties he had painted for himself as an ardent bachelor of twenty-two. What if the worst he feared were true—if they were absolute paupers!
His thoughts went back again to his father lying dead upstairs. Tom remembered so vividly the last time he had seen him, standing with May and the baby in the porch when he went up to London. He had taken an extraordinary interest in the baby, and used to hazard cynical speculations as to its future. He used to allude to it as Mr. Thomas, in order to differentiate it from Tom. “Mr. Thomas’s solemnity is overpowering,” he said once; “he makes me feel as if I was a small boy talking to a wise old gentleman, or a juvenile offender waiting for an awful judge to pronounce sentence on me. And he makes me realize what is meant by rich silences.” Mr. Thomas at the moment broke into his own rich silence by a very creditable howl, and his grandfather added, “And mark how opulently he cries.”
Tom met May at the door, and they went together up to the room where his father lay. He did not tellher what the old man’s last words had been. They found Mr. Markham waiting for them below when they came down, and the three talked together till it grew late. He stopped to dinner, and afterwards, when May had gone to bed, Tom mentioned the subject of the smash.
Mr. Markham shook his head gravely.
“Do either the London house or Applethorpe belong to you?” he asked.
“No, we rent them both.”
“My poor boy! I am sure I am right in telling you to prepare for the worst. I remember from a talk I had with your father once, that the greater part of his money was in this business, and the rest in two Australian banks which broke last year.”
Tom stood up and frowned.
“He never told me that. He never spoke about money, you know. I had not an idea of it.”
“He probably thought it was unnecessary, for I believe he had the most utter confidence in his partners. I have seen the evening papers, and it appears that there has never been so complete a smash, except perhaps the Argentines.”
“Have you got the paper?” asked Tom.
“Not with me. But don’t look at the papers about it.”
“Why not?”
“Because there are some very unjust things said about your father. Of course we all know quite well that he had nothing to do with the management of the company.”
“What an infernal slander!” said Tom, hotly.“And do you mean you think I have nothing—literally nothing?”
“It is possible it may mean that.”
“What is to happen to the bills I haven’t paid?” demanded Tom.
“You have a profession,” said Mr. Markham. “Ted told me Wallingthorpe’s opinion of your work.”
“Ah, those horrors!” said Tom, impatiently. “I shall not earn a penny by those.”
“But you say you have unpaid bills?”
“Yes, I suppose I have—every one has. Of course they must be paid. The furniture here belongs to us.”
“That is your father’s. Have you nothing except your income from him?”
“I have £1500 left me by my godmother, and May has £500, has she not? Eighty pounds a year between us—a ridiculously insignificant sum. But I have my profession, as you say. I shall work for my living, work for her and the baby. I long to do that. My God! how I shall work! The Demeter is nearly finished.”
“Are you doing it for an order?” asked Mr. Markham, tentatively.
“No. Why?”
“My dear Tom, you must be practical. It is a luxury for rich people only to work six months or a year at a thing if it has no market. I know nothing about art, but there is a practical point of view, which now you must take into consideration. Your work is not only the thing you love, but the thing which has to keep you in bread and cheese.”
“Well, we shall see,” said Tom. “Perhaps we are counting our cobras before they are hatched. Anyhow, I have now—what I always longed for—the opportunity to work for May.”
The two stopped at Applethorpe for a fortnight, and before that time was over they knew exactly how they stood. The smash was complete. A series of disasters had fallen, and Mr. Carlingford’s fortune of not less than a quarter of a million had gone. Upwards of £100,000 of this had been in two Australian banks, in which he held both deposit and shares. These two banks had failed; he was unable to withdraw his deposit, and there were heavy calls to be met on his shares. He had known this for some months, but the money he derived from his £150,000 in the business would have enabled him to meet these, for he lived considerably below his income. But for five years or so the business had been managed in a very different manner from that in which it had been carried on under Mr. Carlingford. The elder partner had about this time embarked on several investments, which, though not exactly risky, were not the kind of venture fit for a steady-going house. These had turned out well; he had lost his head a little when he saw a six months’ profit safely harvested in two, and he had been led on—by the prospect of making a fortune by a few successfulcoups—into speculations which were on the far side of risky. Luck had been against him, and he had attempted to get back his losses by even more adventurous means, and it appeared that for two years Mr. Carlingford’s income had been paid, notout of profits, but out of capital. Then came thecoup de grâce. The younger partner had got into the hands of money-lenders, had sunk deeper and deeper, and when he found that his own signature was considered valueless, had signed a note of hand in the name of the house. The father, trying to shield his son, had speculated wildly in certain South American securities, and these had failed. Inasmuch as Mr. Carlingford was still a partner, he was liable for the debts of the house, and it was feared that even a complete sale of his furniture and stables would hardly cover his liabilities, even after other stocks and shares which he held had been disposed of.
To Tom himself nothing remained but the £1500 left him by his godmother, which could not be touched by his father’s creditors. Against that he had to set his own outstanding bills, about which he felt unpleasantly vague. The anxiety he secretly felt he would scarcely confess even to himself. He had a full belief in his own powers, and it would have been a faithless thing to doubt them at the very moment when the test was to be applied. He talked the matter out fully and frankly with May, and if he had any private anxiety, at any rate she had not.
“We shall be awfully poor, dear,” he said. “I don’t know what there will be over when our bills are paid, but it won’t be much. Of course we won’t touch your £500; but we must live on the capital of the other until I have finished something to sell. I wish to goodness I had paid all my bills before. But they must be paid now at once. I want to start fresh.”
“Where shall we live?” asked May.
“Wallingthorpe wrote to me yesterday, and told me of a flat somewhere up in Bloomsbury, which could be had cheap. It’s up a lot of stairs, but it has a big room which has a good light for a studio.”
“We had better go at once, hadn’t we?”
“Well, yes. They will be clearing everything out of here in a day or two, and, of course, we can’t go back to Grosvenor Square.”
May smiled.
“I think it will be rather amusing,” she said, “living in a poky little house. I suppose it’s healthy, isn’t it?”
“Very, I believe. Manvers said it was rather nice being extraordinarily poor. I wonder if you will like it. I know I shan’t mind.”
“Tom, I mind nothing with you. You know that, don’t you?”
Tom wrinkled up his nose—a trick he had.
“Well, I didn’t anticipate that you would apply for a separation.”
“Do you know what father suggested? He wanted me to propose to you that I should bring the baby to the vicarage until things were more settled.”
“Yes. That sounds an excellent plan. I suppose you jumped at it.”
“Tom, you gaby!”
“And what was I to do?”
“You were to make a quantity of little statuettes, and sell them for £80 each. I don’t think he believes in the Demeter.”
Tom went up to London a day or two later to stay with Wallingthorpe, and superintend the preparations for making the new house habitable, while May and the baby remained at the vicarage. That artist, it must be confessed, was in his heart of hearts not at all displeased at Tom’s sudden change of fortune. He would be driven to do that which he could not be led to. Wallingthorpe had not a touch of an artist’s proverbial jealousy. If he saw or suspected talents he did his utmost to foster and encourage them, and in Tom he suspected something more. The boy’s persistence in working at his heathen goddess really had filled him with genuine pain. He ventured to touch on the subject one night when he and Tom were sitting together after dinner.
“And what will you work at next?” he began. “Your Demeter—that is the lady’s name, is it not?—is nearly finished, I believe?”
“Yes, she’s ready to be finished. I’m finishing her myself,” said Tom. “I don’t think you’ve seen her, have you?”
Wallingthorpe closed his eyes piously.
“I’m sure you’ll excuse my saying so, but God forbid! What are you going to do next?”
“Persephone. She is the daughter who is lost, you know, and Demeter is looking for her sorrowing. Well, she’ll find her next year, I hope.”
Wallingthorpe made an eloquent gesture expressing despair.
“You wretched boy, you don’t know what you are doing!” he cried. “You have talents, believe me; you perhaps have genius. You are wasting the bestyears of your life and prostituting your gifts. I must force you to believe it.”
Tom laughed.
“You’d better give it up,” he said. “I am quite hardened.”
“But you’ll starve,” said Wallingthorpe; “you’ve got to think of that. Life-size blocks of Carrara are not to be had for the asking, and on my sacred word of honour no one will buy Demeter or her daughter.”
“Well, then, I’ll starve,” said Tom, cheerfully. “But surely it would be prostituting my gifts if I simply used them to prevent my starving. Eh?”
Wallingthorpe was silent, and Tom continued—
“But, of course, I shan’t starve. Those things ‘don’t happen,’ as Mrs. Humphry Ward says of miracles. Anyhow, before I starve I shall finish the Demeter and her daughter, and then my blood will be on the heads of the British public.”
“You miserable boy!” ejaculated Wallingthorpe again, adjusting the end of his cigar. “You are an apostate, and in the good old days apostates were very justly looked down on by Christians and heretics alike. You have sacrificed to Demeter and Persephone, and all the hierarchy of Olympus.”
“You may call me apostate on the day I cease to,” said Tom, “and that will be not just yet.”