Itmust be acknowledged that Tom’s heart had sunk a little when he saw the flat in Bloomsbury. The thought of May, with her queenly Madonna-like beauty, moving through the low rooms or sitting by the small-paned window seemed dreadfully incongruous. But when May came, as she did a few days later, Tom found that the effect was that the rooms were glorified.
It was characteristic of him that before settling into his new narrow house he made a clean sweep of everything which was unnecessary and marketable. He argued that they had better start with a little capital rather than a few bibelots, and that a couple of pieces of Dresden china or a valuable terra-cotta from Tanagra would only look absurdly out of place among the appurtenances of cheap lodgings. He and May had a small tussle over a few pictures which old Mr. Carlingford had given him during his lifetime.
“But they are not good pictures,” argued Tom, “and I don’t in any case see what we want with them. Besides, it appears that there’s a half-year’s rent owing for the Grosvenor Square house. No, we must sell everything, May. I only hope there will be something over. I suppose the blue blood of allthe Carlingfords ought to be up; but as far as I am concerned it isn’t.”
“I think you might keep a picture or two,” said May.
“My dear May, it’s impossible. I can’t think what we should do if we had nothing over. But I suppose some one would lend us something.”
May frowned; the idea grated on her.
“We can’t do that, Tom—that’s impossible. Besides, who is there?”
“Perhaps Lady Ramsden might,” said Tom. “She certainly would if it occurred to her; but I don’t think things occur to her much. But I quite feel with you about borrowing.”
The outstanding debts when added together made a total which rather appalled Tom, and it was with some anxiety that he awaited the result of his sales. The upshot was that they were the possessors of £150 capital. Tom drew rather a long face when he thought of the rapidity with which money used to melt in the old days. But Demeter would be finished in a few weeks.
They had settled in during the first week of July, and as they sat together after dinner they talked matters over. To both of them it appeared rather amusing than otherwise to dine off leg of mutton and rice pudding at the top of a house in Bloomsbury. May, with a view to being useful, had had an interview with the cook, and retailed it to Tom.
“We shall have poached eggs for breakfast,” she said, “and at lunch the rest of the mutton as hash. I think hash is delicious!”
Tom was looking over some figures.
“£151 4s.3d.is the exact amount, May,” he said.
“Isn’t that an awful lot?” said May. “Why, Ted used to live on £200 at Cambridge, I know, and he said it was possible to get on on much less.”
Tom grinned.
“I wonder what I used to spend at Cambridge,” he said. “I wish I had some of that now.”
May sat down by him.
“Tom, I think it will be great fun,” she said. “I’ve always wanted to work for my living; and I can help you, can’t I, by seeing the cook and arranging about hash, and mending things.”
“I shouldn’t mind if it wasn’t for you,” said Tom.
“Oh, but I enjoy it awfully—I do really! And you know, dear, I shall see more of you. I shan’t have to make any calls, and we shan’t have to go out to dinner; also I shall mend your socks.”
“I’m glad I followed Wallingthorpe’s advice about one thing,” said Tom, “and learned how to finish a statue myself. If I hadn’t learned that I should have had to hire two of those Italian fellows, and that would have been no end of expense. Six weeks from now will see it done, May.”
It is difficult to realize, unless one has tried it, how hard it is for a man who has been accustomed to live, if not luxuriously, at least extremely comfortably, to maintain his cheerfulness when he has to make every shilling go as far as it can. Tom, who had been always very extravagant, simply because he had never been obliged to learn the value of money, was suddenly brought face to face with the widely-known fact that wanting a thing is not the same as getting it. Neither he nor May had the least realized what it was to live in an atmosphere of slight discomfort, to have thesmell of dinner steal up an hour before dinner-time and invade every corner of the house, to be waited upon by a slatternly girl who breathed very hard and had dirty hands, to sit on horse-hair sofas, to have a cracked mirror over the fireplace, to be obliged to consider the relative prices of beef and mutton, and to banish once and for ever the idea of eating well-cooked food. These details seem small enough, but when all the details of life are slightly disagreeable, however trifling each is in itself, they make up anensemblewhich is slightly disagreeable too. Before they lost their money both Tom and May would have declared that it could not possibly make any difference to either of them, provided they were together, that the house should smell of dinner, or that as soon as one castor of the table was repaired another broke; but even as water will wear away a stone, these little things wore away the edge of their serenity.
July was broiling hot that year, and day by day the sun baked the studio where Tom worked till it was like an oven. The blinds of the skylight were tattered, and rays of light came hotly down as if through a magnifying glass, making little bright spots on the dingy walls. Tom got rather exasperated one morning, because in adjusting the blind he had torn it further, and a long jagged slit of light fell on his face as he worked. It would have to be mended in the evening, but something must be done at once, and with a brilliant inspiration he got the blacking-pot and painted the offending glass with it. Then the brush slipped from his hand and fell on the top of Demeter’s head, and it took Tom ten minutes to get a sponge and clean it. It was certainly more comfortable inGrosvenor Square; but he tried to persuade himself that these things were details, as indeed they were.
Soon the blacking caked off with the heat of the sun and came filtering down in tiny flakes, and the gash of light fell down into the studio again. Tom lost his temper a little, and climbed up again to paste some paper over it. The paste would not stick at first, and he pressed the thin glass too hard and a small pane broke. It was only a small pane, but it had to be mended. Then the smell of food began.
Consequently when the slatternly servant came in to say that lunch was ready, Tom was not very serene. He said that they must keep the smell of cooking down; it was only because they forgot to shut a door or open a window, and it must not occur again. He put on his coat and went fuming into the dining-room.
“May dear,” he said, “the smell of cooking is quite intolerable. I should think on these hot days we could do with cold lunch, couldn’t we? It makes one perfectly sick!”
“I told them to get a rabbit for lunch,” she said. “You know you told me you were tired of mutton.”
“The studio smelt like a menagerie,” grumbled Tom.
May was a little hurt in her mind. She had hoped Tom would be pleased at her remembering to get something instead of the mutton, and she was silent. In a moment Tom spoke again.
“And I’ve broken a pane of glass in the skylight. That blind is torn to rags. You haven’t been in this morning.”
“I had to take the baby out,” said May; “and there was some shopping to be done.”
Tom suddenly laid down his knife and fork.
“I draw the line at high rabbit,” he said. “I should think this particular one died a natural death some time in June.”
“It’s very hard to get good meat in this weather,” said May; “it won’t keep. But mine isn’t so very bad.”
“Where’s the beer?” asked Tom in his lowest audible voice.
May looked vaguely round the table. She was vexed that Tom should behave like this; and yet, after all, it was nothing.
“I think Sally’s forgotten it,” she said.
Tom sighed resignedly and rang the bell, and sat drumming with his fingers on the table waiting for it to be answered. Nothing happened, and he rang again, this time louder; and soon the shuffling of ill-shod feet was heard on the stairs.
“Beer,” said Tom, curtly.
The feet shuffled away again and the two sat in silence. May had given the rabbit up as a bad job, and for the time she felt inclined to treat Tom in the same way. When people were in great trouble she knew exactly what to do, but when they were suffering from merely an absence of beer and a height of rabbit she was completely at a loss. Tom sat in gloomy silence and stared at the darned tablecloth and the plated forks. What an idiot he had been, he thought, to sell everything. It would have been much better to have taken unfurnished lodgings, and have forks which it didn’t make you ill to eat off. The entrance of the slovenly servant with a jug put an end for the moment to his regrets. He poured out a glass and drank some.
“Tepid,” he said.
It was too ridiculous, and May broke out into a laugh.
“Don’t be so cross, Tom,” she said. “What does it matter? You haven’t said a word to me all lunch time except to blame me for something.”
Tom made the necessary effort and laughed too.
“I’m very sorry, dear,” he said. “I’ve been behaving like a pig. As you say, it doesn’t matter. But a lot of things which don’t matter, one on the top of the other, are trying. First it was the sun, and then the blacking, and then the broken glass, and then the menagerie smell, and then no beer and high rabbit, and then hot beer.”
Tom left his seat and took a cigarette. He had resolved to smoke pipes for the future as being cheaper, but it was no use selling the remainder of his cigarettes. Even his clean sweep did not include them.
Pleasant things and disagreeable things alike leave a little taste behind. A pleasant episode may be succeeded by an unpleasant one, or a disagreeable episode by an agreeable one, but the effect of neither wholly perishes. May and Tom alike asked themselves what could matter less than a smell in the studio or a stray slop-pail on the stairs; but an atmosphere, however slightly sordid, of things even so unimportant as a rabbit-smell or a slop-pail, produces its effect on all but those who are genuine Bohemians, and who would rather miss squalor and sordidness. Unfortunately neither May nor Tom had the slightest strain of Bohemian blood in them, and they were not inoculated against the subtle poisons of slop-pails and kitchen smells.
But Demeter progressed and the baby throve, and July went by with hot footsteps. During the day the heat was too scorching to render walking agreeable, and it was almost worse in their sunbaked flat than in the streets. More than once they thought of moving to some cooler house, but shillings were no longer to be treated lightly. The hot spell, they told themselves, could not last long, and it had been business enough to get Demeter up the flights of stairs. Her progress had been regal and dignified, and she had congested the traffic of the house for three-quarters of an hour. So May used often to take the baby into the British Museum, where the gods and goddesses seem to live in a perpetually equable atmosphere; and it was here that Mr. Thomas made his first piece of deductive reasoning. He pointed one day with a little pink fist to the horse’s head in the Parthenon pediment and distinctly said, “Gee gee.” Tom was delighted, and considered Manvers entirely refuted in his belief that the Elgin marbles were unintelligible: even a baby could understand them. Two days later Mr. Thomas conferred a similar distinction on Tom’s own work when, after a prolonged wide-eyed inspection, he said, “Lady.”
Tom worked as much as he could without a model, copying exactly his clay sketch; but for the “lady’s” arms one was necessary. And she too helped to melt the £150. She certainly had superb arms, and she stood splendidly. She also added her contribution—a not unimportant one—to the little jars which sometimes occurred between Tom and May.
She was a young woman of unquestionably fine physique, but her tongue was a rather unruly member,and she spoke freely. Tom used to tell her to be quiet and stand, but sometimes she came out with something very breezy and sudden. She once made a particularly breezy remark when May was there. May turned to Tom flushing, and asked him in French to tell her to be quiet. Tom, who had a great sympathy with life in all its forms—the model’s remark was not a particularly vicious form—smiled, but told her to be silent. May left the room.
The girl’s eyes followed her out of the room, and then without moving she spoke to Tom.
“Well, ayn’t she perticler? A lydy friend of mine, she——”
“Never mind about your lady friends. You’ve moved your arm. A little more forward, please and the wrist more bent.”
May was sitting in the dining-room when Tom came in for lunch, looking angry and flushed.
“Tom, you mustn’t have that woman in the house,” she said. “She is abominable.”
“Who?” asked Tom, who had forgotten the occurence.
“The model, of course.”
Tom raised his eyebrows.
“Why?—Oh, I remember. Do you mean that thing she said this morning?”
“Of course I do.”
“But, my dear May, it really doesn’t matter much, does it? I don’t let her talk, and as a model she is one in a thousand. Besides, what did she say? I’ve forgotten. Nothing very bad, was it?”
May put down her knife and fork.
“Tom, can’t you see? It hurts me that she shouldbe here. It makes me feel ill. It is not right to have a girl like that in the house.”
Tom crumbled his bread attentively.
“I think you take rather an exaggerated view of it, dear,” he said. “Of course that class of young woman is not very particular in its language; but what has that to do with me?”
“She is wicked,” said May.
“Really you seem to me to build a good deal on one remark. Of course I am sorry you heard it. She expected to be allowed to talk as much as she pleased at first; but I stopped that.”
“Tom, how can you condone that sort of thing? Oh——”
“I don’t condone it. I don’t allow her to talk. Besides, one doesn’t select a model for her morals, but for her muscles.”
“Do you refuse to dismiss her?”
Tom looked up in surprise.
“You surely can’t expect me to send her away, and spend perhaps a week, perhaps more, in getting another? In addition to that, I have engaged her for a week more.”
“Pay her the money and let her go,” said May.
“My dear May, we can’t afford to throw models and money about in that manner. She has most beautiful hands. Wallingthorpe told me he had never seen such a lovely piece of modelling from elbow to finger tips.”
“Ah,” said May, suddenly, “you don’t know—you don’t understand. Will you never understand me? Can’t you see what it means to me?”
Tom could be very patient and gentle.
“I think you’ve worked yourself up about it, May,” he said. “We won’t talk of it just now. Let us talk of it this evening. I must get back to my work. And don’t be unreasonable.”
“You will not dismiss the model at once?”
“Do you mean now—this afternoon?”
May got up too, and went to the window and threw it open.
“Ah, yes, of course I mean now,” she said. “When there is a right and a wrong, how do you dare to put off your choice?”
“May, you ask an impossibility,” said he.
May felt she was losing control over herself. She had a headache, the heat was stifling, and her equilibrium was upset.
“You don’t care, you don’t care!” she said with passion.
“I care very much that you should speak to me like that,” said Tom. “I will promise to think it over. This afternoon I shall go on working with the same model.”
He turned and left the room, his hands thrust deep down in his pockets, puzzled and vexed. He was really unable to understand his wife. She seemed to him wholly unreasonable. The girl was one of the ordinary class. Wallingthorpe had often employed her, and he, as Tom knew, was rather particular and fanciful in his choice. He had once told Tom, in his florid manner, that it made him unable to work if he knew that a woman, whom he was using to help out his idea of what a thing should be, did not live up to the splendid possibilities which—which—just so.
His model had made an improper remark—aremark, by the way, which would have passed with a laugh if made by a man among men—and he was seriously expected to dismiss her, to pay her for an extra week, and lose his time in hunting for another, who could not possibly be as good. Tom had begun to get in a fever to have Demeter finished. He felt it was to be his challenge. If Demeter was not good—was not of the best—he had been wrong, he had done what Wallingthorpe had told him he was doing, trying to fly, and only succeeding in standing on tiptoe. The sort of scene he had been through with May, threw him out of gear—it dimmed his eye and unnerved his hand. Why could she not be more tolerant, less apt to judge? Of course, Tom confessed, she was right in principle. If he could get two identical models, one of whom was breezy and the other not, he would choose the unbreezy one. But what had a model’s character to do with her muscles? Besides, May was building an absurd superstructure on a very slight foundation. It was ridiculous; and he set to work.
Meantime, May, in the other room, was scarcely more content. Her fastidiousness had been touched; she had winced at what the girl said, as if under physical pain. Tom did not know, he did not care to know, she told herself bitterly, how much she disliked the thought of his having the girl in the house. The face of the Demeter was May’s face, and that the arms should be the arms of such a woman seemed to her positively insulting. This she had not told Tom; she felt it too keenly, and it was a grievance the force of which he could not appreciate if he did not appreciate the other. She felthot, tired, ill-used, misunderstood, and the worst of it all was that she was afraid she had been a little unreasonable. She was, she had a suspicion, a little unreasonable still, and she felt convinced that she would continue to be a little unreasonable. Then she veered round and told herself that she was perfectly right, and that Tom was hard and unfeeling, and then, between the heat and the headache and the worry, she had a dismal little cry all to herself.
Tears are a secretion, but they are sometimes a solution; they seem occasionally to carry off the cause of the irritation; and the upshot was that the prevailing feeling in May’s mind when she had finished was that she was sorry to have vexed Tom. He really had behaved with great patience to her; he didn’t wholly understand her, that is true, but he was a dear, good boy, and she had been a little exasperating.
Fate, in fact, seemed just to have woke up to the existence of Tom. For twenty-five years she really appeared to have forgotten about him, and let him go on in his own pleasant way exactly as he chose. But some malignant spirit had reminded her of his existence, and she was just reminding him that he was not his own master. She made him another little visit the same afternoon, while he was working, in the shape of a tradesman’s boy with a bill.
Tom tore open the envelope and was confronted by a request to pay thirty pounds for a block of Carrara marble which he had bought for a relief he was working at. It had been ordered before the smash came, and he had supposed that it had been paid with the other bills. He dismissed the boy, and wrote a note to the agent who had managed hisaffairs, asking whether a bill of thirty pounds, for a block of Carrara, had not been paid. He had given orders that every bill should be paid. He clung desperately to the hope that a mistake had occurred, and that the bill had been sent in twice. And then for the first time he felt that emotion, which is stronger than all others—fear, blank fear. Thirty pounds was a solid fraction of their capital. And what would happen next?
He could not pay it. Surely they would wait. Tom thought, with a regretful sigh, of the patient tradesmen who had so often waited till he could bother himself to draw a cheque. But somehow, by a strange unreasonableness, now that he was in want of money, he was almost eager to pay his debts, whereas, when he never thought about money at all, he never felt the slightest inclination to do so. But Fate was playing with him and frightening him. He had a horrible dread of these surprises, and he felt that the inner knowledge of this sum owing would be poison. Besides, it would be necessary to keep it from May, and the thought of concealing things from May was untenable.
The answer came back from the agent; no, the bill had not been sent in before. Tom went on working with mechanical accuracy, thinking of that horrible thirty pounds. After all, why pay it at once? Of course there would be no kind of difficulty with the tradesman. He remembered ordering the block with Wallingthorpe. The price was a large one, and he had not dealt at the shop before, and the man had hesitated, wondering if his master would wish him to send it before it had been paid for. Butwhen Tom gave the Grosvenor Square address he was perfectly satisfied.
What he wanted was to gain time. Thirty pounds represented so many days’ work, and why cut that off? Demeter must be finished; he must show the world what he meant. The artist’s need of expressing himself cried aloud in him. To finish Demeter, and do, if only once, the best he could, was necessary. Necessary? It was the only necessary thing in the world for him except—except May and the baby.
Tom put down his chisel.
“You can go,” he said to the model. “It is close on four.”
The girl stretched herself. She had posed for nearly an hour, and she was a little stiff, and for the moment Tom forgot about bills and everything else, looking at the splendid line of her form from shoulder to ankle beneath the clinging drapery.
“At ten to-morrow?” she asked.
With a flash the whole scene with May came back over him. He walked to the window, putting on his coat, and stood there a moment. She repeated her question.
“Unless you hear to the contrary,” said Tom. “It’s all right. You will be paid all the same. Put your address down here. I will send if I don’t want you.”
She retired behind the screen to change her clothes, and Tom still stood where he was. Just as she was passing out he stopped her.
“I don’t want to be inquisitive,” he said, “but tell me this: you are straight, aren’t you?”
The girl flushed.
“Strite! Who says I’m not strite? Your wife, I’ll be bound.”
“Never mind my wife,” said Tom. “Just tell me, will you? I shall believe you, of course.”
But the lower classes, when they happen to be respectable, are just as proud of it as the upper classes—perhaps more proud. The girl was thoroughly angry.
“I’ll thank you to tell her not to say things agin me what are not true, and never likely to be, s’elp me Gawd. An’ what does she know about me? You’re too good for her, Mr. Carlingford, with her narsty back-biting ways. I knew she was up to some mischief this morning. Strite? I’m as strite as she is, an’ striter, too, for I don’t talk ill of folks behind their backs. An’ good night to you, sir!”
She flounced out of the room and left Tom to make the best of what she had said.
“Well, that’s all right, at any rate,” he thought to himself. “I shall tell May.”
He filled a pipe and sat in the window, his elbows on the sash. Forty feet below lay the hot street, down which the sun shone pitilessly; but soon it sank below the house-roofs, and a merciful little breeze sprang up from the west. Tom leant out to enjoy it more and let it ruffle his hair. He was tired and weary, but his brain went back to the same old incessant question, “What next? what next?”
Supposing Demeter was a success—not in his sense of the word, but in the financial sense, well and good. If not, what? Three weeks more. There was money for three weeks more, including the wages of the model; and if this bill was not paid, for six. If all went well Demeter would be finished in a month. What next? what next? There were May and the baby, there was the nurse, there was himself. Heleft himself out of the reckoning. But the others had to be reckoned for. He must get money somehow. But if Demeter brought him none, where was it to come from? He thought of the horrible little statuette which May kept on the mantelpiece, and he went to look at it. It was not finished, but it would not take long to finish it. Would it come to that? Was that the shrunken reality to which all his dreams of art were going to awake? For he felt conclusively within himself that he could not do both. If he abandoned his great aim for a moment he abandoned it for ever. There was no going back. He could not earn his living with things like that, and with the other hand, so to speak, do sacrifice to his mistress. The house of Rimmon or the temple of the Lord—one or the other, but not possibly both.
When his day’s work was over he and May usually went out for an hour or two before dinner, and before many minutes were up she came to look for him. She wanted to say she was sorry, but she very much wished that Tom would help her out with it. But as they drank tea before going out, Tom was silent, thinking of other things.
But at last he looked up.
“Another week with the model,” he said, “and then I can get on alone for a time. Oh, by the way, May, I think you judged her harshly to-day; in fact, I am sure you did.”
“Yes, Tom. I am sorry,” said May. “I’ve been wanting to tell you.”
“Poor old girl, you look rather done up with the heat! There’s nothing wrong, is there, May?”
“No. It’s only the heat and—and being sorry.”
“I wish we could get away,” said Tom; “but I can’t move till this thing is off my hands. But why don’t you go down to Applethorpe for a week?”
“Not without you. But you’ll come away when it’s finished?”
Tom walked up and down the room.
“May, I’m frightened,” he said, “horribly frightened, and it’s a bad feeling. A bill came in this afternoon, which of course I thought had been paid with the rest.”
“A bill? How much for?”
“Thirty pounds?”
“Oh, Tom!”
“It frightened me. I’m losing nerve. I don’t see that we can pay it now. There is no reason why it shouldn’t stand over. If no one will buy Demeter the time will come, and come soon, when we must get money somehow, and I think I shall let it stand over till she’s finished. I hope to goodness I shan’t be dunned for it. I used not to mind being dunned when I was at Cambridge, and had plenty of money; but it’s no fun now. They county-courted me once—I’ve got the summons still. I think if I was county-courted now I should die of it.”
“But what are we to do?”
“I only want to finish Demeter. There will be money enough for that, if the bill stands over.”
“And when Demeter is finished?” asked May.
“When she is finished I shall have done my best. And if others do not think my best good——”
Tom left the sentence unfinished.
Maudspent a month with Lady Ramsden—four epoch-making weeks. The note of change which had been struck in her when she met Violet had expanded into a harmonious chord. Just as healthy physical surroundings produce physical health, so intimacy with healthy-minded people produces a corresponding well-being in the soul. And thus recuperated, she was able to make the effort she had been unable to make before, and when she returned to London at the end of July she congratulated herself on the change that she alone knew of, as much as her friends congratulated her on the change they could all see.
Parliament was not to rise before the 10th of August, and the Chathams were to remain in London till then. During that fortnight Maud saw Tom constantly, often going to see him and May in Bloomsbury, and Tom, with or without May, more than once coming to see her.
The oldcamaraderiedays of Athens seemed to be renewing themselves. Tom found Maud stimulating in a way that May could not be, partly because he loved his wife, partly although he loved her. With May his responsibility asserted itself; he was always aware of an increasing anxiety as to what would happen to them all, crouching in his mind, ready to spring.And he knew—he could not help knowing—that May did not really understand how essential his art was to him, how inexorable was his inner need of producing the best he could; how bad, how immoral, the statuette of the boy with the rifle seemed to him. She had not an artistic nature, and she had never, except in him, known a man who served that most exacting of all mistresses, whose service is a passion to her slaves. For Manvers, as he often said himself, was not like those poets who sing because they must, but those who sing because they choose to sing. He was clever, diabolically clever, and he liked to exercise his intelligence.
With Maud then Tom could both throw off, or at least not be scourged by, his responsibilities, and also he knew that she understood how terrible the struggle he might have to go through would be. There was always the possibility ahead that no one would want to possess any of the shining gods and goddesses, and if so it was financially impossible for him to go on producing them.
The three were sitting on the balcony where Manvers and Maud had sat alone one night only a month or two ago, and, as usual in her presence, Tom’s Promethean eagle had ceased pecking at him for the time, and had hopped away out of sight.
May was feeling a little out of it, and a little neglected, for Tom was talking to Maud in a way he did not talk to her. He was never anything but kind and considerate to her; but the hurried luncheons which they ate together in their grilling little flat, were often rather silent affairs. If the morning’s work had been satisfactory, Tom was only eager tofinish and get to work again; if he had got on badly, the Promethean eagle always seemed aware of it, and applied its claws and beak to the tenderest places with the accuracy of experience. But with Maud he was altogether different, partly, no doubt, for reasons stated above, and partly also because the most well-mannered and loving husbands do not trouble themselves to talk, if they are not inclined to talk, in the privacy of the domestic luncheon-table. Thirdly, as May knew herself, she was not, as Maud expressed it, a “dialogist,” and it was of dialogists she and Tom were talking now. Incidentally, they were both behaving like dialogists.
“I think,” Maud was saying, “that I’m about the best sort of dialogist. Not only can I talk quite intelligently and agreeably—can’t I, May?—but I’m a first-rate listener.”
“Good listening is not necessary for a dialogist,” said Tom. “Dialogists enjoy themselves most when they both talk together, as we used to do at Athens.”
“Oh, you’re wrong,” said Maud. “Each dialogist must know that the other issympathique, and the easiest way of conveying that is by listening well.”
“Yes; but I know you aresympathiqueto me,” said Tom, “so I don’t care whether you listen or not. Besides, listening is rather a despicable quality. I don’t think you’ve got it, you know, so I’m not being rude.”
May got up.
“Well, we must go,” she said. “I said I’d be back by three to take Mr. Thomas out.”
“Oh, don’t go yet,” said Maud. “Why, you’ve only just finished lunch!”
“I must; but Tom can stop here.”
May was conscious that it required a little magnanimity to say this, and at the same time that she threw a pinch of bitterness into her magnanimity. She wished Maud to know that she knew that it was Tom, not herself, Maud wanted to talk to; and though she had not spoken with any idea of her words conveying this, she was not sorry that they might bear such an interpretation.
But Tom did not dive into such feminine subtleties, though Maud suspected them.
“I shall stop a bit if I’m not in the way,” he said. “I meant to take a holiday this afternoon, and I shall take it here.”
Maud stood drumming with her fingers on the balustrade for a moment or two after May had gone. This was the first time she had been alone with Tom since her stay in Norfolk, and she revelled in her sense of security, for she felt all the oldcamaraderiefeeling, and no touch of any more disturbing results from the companionship, and it was with the air and the words of a comrade that she spoke.
“I think you ought to have gone with May,” she said. “I can say that to you, for you know how glad I am personally that you stayed.”
Tom looked up.
“Why?”
“Because she wanted you to go. I am sure of that.”
“I don’t think so.”
“But I do,” said Maud. “Don’t be banal, and say you ought to know because you are her husband. That’s no argument. You are a man, and it is impossible for you to understand a woman as a woman can.”
“But it’s unreasonable.”
“That, again, is no argument. Oh, good heavens, Tom, if we were all reasonable, what a simple world it would be! And how dull!”
“I’m not sure I don’t prefer dulness to excitement,” said Tom. “Wait till you’ve had a fright, and then see how you appreciate uneventfulness.”
“Ah, but dulness is not a synonym for content,” said Maud, speaking from her new experiences. “It is a great mistake to suppose that.”
Tom flicked off the end of his cigarette ash. For the last few weeks he had deliberately stifled certain thoughts, but with Maud there was no need to stifle them.
“I am not sure,” he said. “Of course one aims at content—one aims at nothing else. But one aims at it, I think, because one knows it is unattainable. There is no such thing as content for people who are alive—you know what I mean by alive. I think we have talked about it before. For human beings to be content is to be limited.”
“Yes, and to be human is to be limited. I am talking like a maiden aunt, I know.”
Tom looked up smiling.
“You have the distinction of having invented the least applicable definition possible of yourself. What’s the opposite to maiden aunt? Married niece, I suppose. There is your label.”
“But I am not married.”
“No; but you unite qualities which are rarely united. You are experienced and you are fresh. How do you do it?”
“I might much more reasonably ask you that.”
“Not at all. At present I feel like ablasébaby.”
“You?”
Tom suddenly became overwhelmingly conscious of all he had stifled so long. His anxieties over petty money matters, the sordidness of the life in the little flat in Bloomsbury—all these were trifles; but there were other things which were not trifles. He and May loved each other—that he believed; but apart from their love to each other their passions lay as far sundered as the two poles. Each was invisible and incomprehensible to the other.
“It is this,” he said. “I have felt and feel a passion for something which I shall, I am afraid, have to abandon. I am telling you things I have told to no one, hardly to myself. But, as you know, art is a passion to me. There is one art, so I think, and I am trying to realize it. But I have to face the probability that it will not be appreciated—already I call it a probability—and if so, I shall have to abandon it because I have other ties, and the need for bread and butter rightly outweighs all else. Not that I am less enthusiastic; but one can neither live nor triumph by enthusiasm. There are claims which outweigh all enthusiasms or artistic convictions.”
“Oh, but the two could not actually come in conflict,” said Maud. “It is absurd to suppose that you will have to abandon your ideas of art at the very outset because they are not marketable. Besides, most purchasers are Philistines.”
“That is exactly what I fear,” said Tom. “Of course I don’t say for a moment that I can produce good things, but I have an idea of beauty, and I mustwork for that as long as I can. Perhaps great encouragement from any one would mend my case, but the world regards me with disconcerting indifference. Manvers thinks me a delver after uninteresting survivals. He may be right, but again I may be. That the majority of purchasers think Manvers right is of course indisputable.”
“But all this need not make youblasé,” said Maud.
Tom was silent. What he hungered for was active, sincere sympathy from May, but that was not to be had. She seemed to regard the possible abandonment of his practice of art as she would regard any other change of employment, as if, for instance, Tom was a butcher and found it necessary to become a baker. He had, as he acknowledged to himself, taken an impossible view of all she might be to him. He was in love with her still, as much as, or even more than when they married, but he had realized that she did not and could not sympathize fully with his aims. At first it had seemed as if there was nothing she could not do for him, as if they two were wholly and inevitably one. But, without loving her the less, he had learned that it was not so. She had one passion, he another, and they had to support their passions singly. But the most rudimentary code of loyalty forbade his saying anything of the kind to Maud.
“No; you are right,” he said. “I have a great many illusions left, and one can’t beblaséif one has illusions. Of course I still have the illusion that the Demeter is going to be a masterpiece. But the necessity of wondering whether the masterpiece is marketable clouds the illusion a little.”
“Oh, you are certainly notblasé,” said Maud, withconviction. “How can a man married to a woman he loves, working at what he loves, not only for its sake but to supply her actual needs, beblasé. You ought to keep young for ever.”
“I am a quarter of a century old,” said Tom, “and I should like to live till a hundred. It’s a good thing to be alive. Do you know that line of Whitman’s?—I can’t quote it exactly—‘Let us take hands and help each other to-day, because we are alive together.’”
Maud’s eye kindled.
“I like great big common ideas like that,” she said. “Mr. Manvers would think it was a sign of approachingbourgeoisieor old age. After all we are alive, and who is to help us except—except each other?” she added, with a fine superiority to grammar, and holding out her hand to Tom.
Tom smiled, and the dimples came. Just now it struck Maud that he was so like his cousin, instead of the other way about.
“I believe you understand me,” he said. “And to understand any one is the greatest benefit you can do him!”
Lady Chatham returned before long from an unnecessary call, undertaken chiefly because the carriage had to go that way, and it was the most convenient thing in the world. She urged Tom to stop for tea, and it was consequently nearly six when he left the house.
His way lay across the park from the Albert Gate to the Marble Arch, and he loitered, for Maud had replenished his serenity, and when we are serene we are not in a hurry. It was a hot afternoon, and by the time he got to the Serpentine the banks were crowdedwith bathers. The grass underneath the big elm trees on the side of the Row was covered with heaps of clothes, and multitudes of boys and young men were standing about on the bank, or swimming. The soft persuasive colour of an English evening was there, and the warm languor of the south, and Tom stood watching them for some time, feeling rather as if a gallery of antique statues had come to life. Some of the bathers were very well made, one particularly, a boy of about eighteen, who was standing on the bank resting on his foremost foot, the other just touching the ground with the toes, his hands clasped behind his head. He was long in the leg, short and slight in the body, and his hair curled crisply on his forehead as in a Greek bronze. Tom told himself that he was Lysippian, and went on his way thinking what a fine subject for a statue Isaac would make—Isaac waiting with the faggots of wood on his shoulder, standing gracefully, unthinkingly, like the boy he had just seen, not knowing who the victim should be.
May meanwhile had taken Mr. Thomas out for his airing, had had tea alone, and was feeling a little ill-used. Maud had been quite right. Tom, she thought, ought to have come away with her. Why? Well, for no reason except the very important one that he wanted to stop. Then it occurred to her that a candid enemy might say she was in danger of becoming jealous of Maud, and the thought of that made her quite angry. But no one had suggested it except herself.
In Tom’s mind the vision of Isaac was supplanted by other thoughts. He wondered whether he hadsaid too much, whether by any chance Maud could guess his trouble, for he knew she was skilful at reading between the lines, and on his way down Oxford Street he determined to write her a line in order to counteract any such undesirable possibility.
May was not in the drawing-room when he got in, and taking up a postcard—for there was nothing private in what he meant to say—he wrote: “I am notblaséat all. Don’t think I am.”
He directed it, and leaving it with two or three others for the post, went to see if May was in yet. He found her with Mr. Thomas, who was a little fractious, and who, on Tom’s entrance, began yelling in a way that shouted volumes for his lungs and larynx. Tom bore it for a minute or two, but as it did not subside he shouted out to May across the tumult—
“I’ve only just come in, and if I stop here I shall be deafened. I shall be in the studio till dinner.”
Mr. Thomas condescended to go to sleep after a quarter of an hour or so, and May went to the drawing-room. Tom’s post-card was lying address downwards, and not thinking what she was doing she read it. It was quite natural and innocent to see to whom he was writing, but when she saw the address she felt a little more ill-used than before.
About a week after this, Maud Wrexham came to see them in Bloomsbury. May was out, and Tom was in despair because the breezy model had taken it into her head to demand a higher wage for standing, and Tom could not afford either to pay her more, or to part with her. He had engaged her till the end of the week at the higher rate, but he knew he could not continue to do so indefinitely. He was walkingup and down the studio when Maud was sloppily announced by the slip-shod maid—wondering what on earth was to be done.
“May not here,” she said, “and you be-thunder-clouded! What’s the matter?”
Tom related the woes of the afternoon, and commented bitterly on the rapacity of the human race.
“I really don’t know what to do,” he said. “I can’t possibly keep her on at this rate. It’s hard enough as it is.”
Maud flushed suddenly, and seemed to have something to say.
“We are old friends,” she began at length, “and I don’t think you will be offended at what I am going to say. Will you do me a favour? Will you let me lend you some money?”
Tom stopped suddenly in his walk.
“How could I be offended?” he asked. “It is awfully kind of you. For myself I should say ‘Yes’ at once. Why not? But there is May.”
Maud was silent a moment. A vague impatience came over her, for she had understood rather more than Tom had meant her to understand a week ago.
“Why should she know?” she asked at length. “It is a matter between you and me. I know some people would refuse such a thing at once. It is such a comfort that you are sensible. I have too much money, you have too little. There can be no reason why I should not lend you some.”
Despite herself she felt a great anxiety that Tom should acquiesce. The thing was of no importance, but she could not help longing that Tom should takeher offer, and not let May know. The feeling in her mind was too undefined to lend itself to analysis, but she was conscious of desiring this in some subtle manner beyond her control.
But Tom answered her at once.
“No, I must tell May. It would be out of the question not to tell her. You see that surely. But I thank you again for your offer. I will tell her to-night. Perhaps she will not object; on the other hand, I am afraid she may. I have no such feelings about it. Of course we can go on for a month or so, but what is to happen then? If I could get Demeter finished, and the clay sketch of the other done, I shall have done my best, and if no one buys them——”
Maud looked up inquiringly.
“God knows what next,” said Tom. “If May and the baby keep well I can’t bring myself to feel desperate. But if anything demanding expense happens to either of them I don’t know what we shall do.”
“You’re fussed and worried this afternoon,” said Maud, sympathetically. “It’s this bother about the model, and the heat, and so on. This room is awfully hot. Why don’t you have a new blind up?”
Tom laughed rather bitterly.
“New blinds!” he said. “I’m thankful we’ve got some old ones. Thank God May doesn’t know about it all, how near we are to actual want! But I lie awake at night wondering if I ought to tell her. I am worried, I confess it; and I thought I was so sure of myself. I aim at what I believe to be best. I would sooner have produced that”—and he pointedto the Demeter—“than all Manvers’ things, for which he gets what he asks. It will be finished next week, and two or three dealers are coming here to look at it. They bought those miserable statuettes of mine readily enough.”
“Of course you can’t make any more of those,” said Maud. “I understand that.”
Tom flushed with pleasure.
“I believe you do,” he said, “though I don’t think any one else does. Manvers and Wallingthorpe think it is half out of sheer perversity that I make what they call heathen goddesses. But they are wrong. I do it because I must. I may be quite wrong about myself, but I believe I am an artist. If I didn’t think that I should have taken to the statuettes again the moment we lost all our money. They might as well tell me to make plush brackets—which I could probably do tolerably well. If I am not an artist, of course I am wasting my time when I might be earning money, but I can’t sterilize that possibility just yet. When you have a passion for a thing, it is not easy to give it all up because you have no bank-notes.”
“It’s hard,” said Maud.
“I cannot serve two masters,” continued Tom, earnestly. “I cannot use the gifts I believe I may possess in any other way than the way I believe to be best. If the worst comes to the worst, if I cannot get my living by—oh, it’s impossible, impossible!” he cried.
Before Maud had time to reply the door opened, and May came in. She, too, saw by Tom’s face that something had happened.
“Why, what’s the matter, Tom?” she asked quickly.
“Nothing, dear,” said he, getting up and recovering himself with an effort. “I have had a row with a model, and she says she won’t sit for me any more at the present terms; and so we parted. May, give us some tea, dear, will you? I want tea badly, and so does Miss Wrexham.”
May looked a little vexed; she felt she had not been told all. She shook hands with Maud, and remarked, a little curtly, that she did not know the Chathams were still in London.
“Only a few days more,” said Maud. “How splendidly the Demeter has got on.”
May was a little mollified.
“Yes, Tom’s been working very hard—too hard, I think. He doesn’t take enough exercise.”
“Oh, there’ll be plenty of time for that when she’s finished,” said Tom; “and it’s exercise enough chipping away at that stone.”
“I saw Mr. Holders this afternoon,” said May. “Mr. Holders bought one of Tom’s things last winter,” she explained to Maud, “and he wants to know if you have anything else for him. I said there was one unfinished statuette, but I couldn’t get you to finish it. Besides, you’d given it me.”
Tom grinned and stirred his tea.
“No, dear, I should just think you couldn’t get me to finish it,” he said. “May means that little abortion on the chimney-piece in the sitting-room, you know. There’s a horror for you!”
Maud Wrexham soon went away, and the two were left together. May’s thoughts went back to thetrouble she had seen on Tom’s face when she entered, and presently she said—
“Tom, what was the matter when I came in?”
“We had been talking about what I told you,” he said. “I can’t possibly afford to give more than I do for models, and I am rather in a hole.”
“Poor old boy!” said she. “But what can we do? You must have a model, you say, and you have to pay her.”
“Unfortunately I have very little to pay her with. We must make the little we have last as long as possible.”
“What did Maud Wrexham say?”
“She offered to lend me some.”
May got up from where she had been sitting next to him with her cheeks blazing. The idea of borrowing at all had been distasteful to her, and the idea that Maud should have offered it was intolerable.
“She offered to lend you money—you? And you—what did you say to her?”
“May dear, don’t behave like that. I said, of course, that I must ask you.”
May was all on fire with indignation. The offer appeared to her an insult, and she smarted under it as a horse under a lash. She felt that her vague disquietude for the last week or so was explained and justified. What business had Tom to be on such terms with another? Her anger included Tom too. He had not rejected it with surprise and scorn.
“You said you would consult me?” she asked. “And what answer did you suppose I should give you? Did you think I should say, ‘Take it’? Tom, you know me very little.”
“May, do be reasonable,” said Tom. “Perhaps I ought to have told you sooner, but the state is this: if no one offers to buy the Demeter, we have to face the fact that in a limited time we shall have no money left. What am I to do?”
But May hardly seemed to hear what he said.
“You accepted her offer provisionally!” she exclaimed. “Tom, how could you do it? And you said you would consult me? you told her that? And she knows that you and I are talking the matter over, discussing whether we should be her pensioners!”
Tom grew impatient.
“My dear, you really are talking nonsense,” he said; “there is no question of being anybody’s pensioners. It is to a certain extent always a matter of time before one is recognized. If I can manage to work on at the things I think worth doing, good. If not, what is to happen to us? Maud Wrexham is an old and great friend of mine. But you are unreasonable. Do not be unreasonable. It is not like you. You have given me your answer, and of course I accept your decision. Don’t let us discuss it any more. It is no manner of use.”
He walked to the door and paused, looking at her. But she made no sign, and he left the room.
Tom stood still for a moment on the narrow landing outside the room. A patch of ruddy sunlight came through the window which lit the stairs and struck on the narrow strip of oilcloth which did duty for a carpet. The window was bordered with hideous orange-coloured glass, and a ray through it fell on Tom’s foot as he stood there, and the orange on theblacking made an abhorrent tone. He felt beaten and dispirited, and the whole place suddenly seemed intolerably sordid. The narrow strip of oilcloth was continued along the landing, and was bordered on each side by a foot or two of imperfectly stained board. The banisters were of that particularly flimsy build which is characteristic of cheap lodgings. There were two bad prints on the walls, one of King Alfred and the cakes, the other of the Duke of Wellington with an impressionist background of the battle of Waterloo. To Tom in his present mood the whole scene seemed to him to be a sort of spectre reflected on to space from his own mind. Everything was unlovely and impossible.
He felt sore and angry with May. She did not understand what his art was to him. She did not understand Maud Wrexham’s offer. She did not understand him. More than once the impulse came on him to go back into the room and try to explain, but it seemed useless. She was angry and indignant, and anger is a bandage over our eyes. And he knew, and was honest enough to confess, that he was angry too, disappointed chiefly, but also angry. Maud’s offer had come to him like manna. For himself he would as soon have thought of not drinking of a spring that suddenly welled up in a desert when he was dying of thirst, as of not accepting it. But May could not understand that. She felt it as an insult to him and to herself, and to disregard May’s feelings was impossible.
He took his hat and went downstairs. It was a broiling August afternoon, and the world seemed dying of heat-apoplexy. The streets were breathlessand baked, and the sky was brass. At the corner of the street a watercart had just passed, and Tom stood still a moment inhaling a whiff of air which had a certain freshness in it. It reminded him of the smell of a morning in the country, after a rainy night. He knew that he ought to go back and work, but it was not to be done. His heart was heavy and his eye was dull. Well, there was the British Museum only a hundred yards off, and a man must be in a very bad state, he reflected, if the Elgin marbles have nothing to say to him. The place was nearly empty, and he sat down in front of the eternal figures from the Parthenon pediments with a little sigh of relief.
He had made up accounts that morning with infinite difficulty, for it was an operation to which he was not accustomed. The rapidity with which twos and threes added up into tens and twenties seemed to him simply amazing. And really it was absurd that there should only be twenty shillings in a pound. There ought to have been at least twenty-five or thirty. And the net result had been that at their present rate of living they could go on for three weeks more, still leaving the bill for the piece of Carrara unpaid. He had faced the situation manfully. He had determined to go on for three weeks more, giving his heart and soul to what he thought best in art. But at the end of those three weeks there stood a blank wall, separating him completely and irrevocably from those shining gods and goddesses who were of the golden age. May’s five hundred pounds he had determined quite definitely he could not touch. More than once she had wanted him to let her sell out, and though he had thrilled all over with pleasure that she should make theoffer, it was impossible to say yes. There was too much at stake; he might die and leave her alone with the baby. Mr. Markham’s tithes had been falling off lately, and if she went to live with him, as she would have to do, she must be able to help in household expenses.
But for the half-hour that he sat before the marbles he forgot it all. What did it matter after all ifheproduced beautiful things or not? Beautiful things had been produced; the high-water mark of art had been touched. A race of men had produced a race of gods, and he felt himself becoming sanely and healthily small in his own eyes. Meantime May was at home; they had parted in anger and indignation. Poor darling! perhaps she was unhappy, perhaps she thought he did not care—that he was angry with her. Tom smiled inwardly at the absurdity of the thought, and half unconsciously took off his hat as he looked his last at the still marble figures and thanked them for what they had taught him.
But into May’s mind there had definitely entered that afternoon a certain subtle poison. For such a poison there is one unfailing antidote which Tom held, and it is pure love. But when that poison, which is as minute in dose as a drop of morphia injected from a silver syringe, has once entered the system, however plentifully the antidote is administered the body is never quite as healthy again as it was before. Where the syringe has pricked the skin there is a little sore spot, and now and again the nerves shrink instinctively at the thought that perhaps it may be introduced again. And the clear drop which it holds is called jealousy. For the last week, and once before that—one night soon afterthey had come up to London for the first time, when she and Maud and Manvers and Tom had dined together—she had seen the little green-eyed fiend hovering round her, and been vaguely disquieted at him. She thought that Tom felt more interest in Maud than he did in her. She could not talk smartly, she could not say those rather amusing things, which meant nothing, with which Maud was so glib, and which Tom apparently enjoyed hearing. But after that the baby had been born, and the little green-eyed fiend had put his syringe in his pocket and gone away. But for the last week he had been about, and this afternoon he had come again, and had said, “Allow me—or would you rather do it for yourself?” and had just pricked her with that fine point, and the poison was coursing through her veins.
Anger is blinding, but jealousy is blind: she could not be reasonable, and she would not. Tom had disgraced himself and degraded her, and his step was on the stairs. Her anger would have allowed her to throw herself into his arms, and say, “Forgive me, Tom, I was angry,” but her jealousy forbade her. So she stood where she was with her back to the window, so that her face was in shadow, and when he came in she neither spoke nor gave any sign.
He sat down near her, and after a moment’s silence held out his hand to her. May had long white fingers, and they often sat together talking, she twining her fingers into his, and the action was common with him. But she stood quite still, and his hand dropped again to his side. At length he spoke.
“May, how can you treat me like this?” he said. “What have I not done that I can do? It was notvery pleasant to have you speak to me as you spoke this afternoon; but I accepted your decision at once; I did not attempt to persuade you?”
“It would not have been much use trying,” said May in a high cool voice.
“I should not have tried in any case,” said he. “I only wished to know what you thought, and I was content to abide absolutely by your decision.”
“Why did you open the subject again, then,” said she with a sudden spasm of jealousy, “unless it was to try to persuade me?”
Tom thought of the marble figures he had been looking at, and remembered what they had taught him.
“May dear, please don’t speak to me like that,” he said quietly. “You know—you know that was not the reason.”
“Then what was the reason?”
“The look of your face and the tone of your voice was the reason. You are not generous to me; you will not meet me halfway or go a step towards me.”
“No, you are right. Do you expect me to come towards you on that road?”
“On what road?” asked Tom, wonderingly.
Then quite suddenly and for the first time the real reason for his wife’s attitude struck him. He got up and stood before her, and at that moment she was desperately afraid of him. The anger which had possessed her seemed to have transferred itself to him.
“May, how dare you think that?” he asked. “Are you not ashamed of yourself?”
The least tremor passed through her, and she stood there not daring to meet his eyes. The next moment he had turned from her and was walking towards thedoor. Once she tried to find her voice and failed, but before he had left the room she managed to speak.
“Tom, wait a minute,” she said.
He turned at once. He had been longing with all his soul that she should say just that one word. He had been horribly wounded by her. Yet he felt that he had never cared for her before as he cared now. He crossed the room, sat down where he had sat before, and waited. The next moment she had flung herself on her knees by him, and her face was buried on his shoulder.
“My poor darling! what is it?” whispered Tom. “No, dear, don’t tell me yet; wait a moment—yes, wait so. Come closer to me, May, closer. Your place is here.”
In a few minutes her wild sobbing had become less passionate, and she raised her face to his.
“I want to tell you,” she said. “I could never look you in the face again unless I told you. You know, but I must tell you. I thought—oh, Tom, Tom, what a brute I have been—I thought you cared for her, that she amused you, when I didn’t. I can’t amuse you, I know. I’m not amusing by nature, dear. And—and I thought your being willing to accept money from her, when you wouldn’t let me sell out mine and give it you, meant just that. I wish you would take it, Tom. Tom, I can’t tell you how I want to do something for you. Or take hers—that would be better. It will show that I know what a brute I have been, if I ask you to. Please do, Tom. But say you forgive me first. Oh, I have spoiled it all—it can never be the same again!”
She spoke with the fatal conviction of experience.She had felt poisonous jealousy run through her veins—a poison that cannot but leave some trace behind. But of that Tom knew nothing.
And Tom forgave her from the fulness of his heart, and he believed that he could forget what had passed, hoping an impossible thing. All events and memories, as scientists tell us, write their record on our brains, as the sea writes its ripples on the sand, and there they remain till the sweet hand of death smooths the wrinkles out.
That evening Tom wrote to Maud, thanking her again for her offer, but refusing it. On that point he could not give way. He himself felt as acutely, or more acutely than May had done that afternoon, that to accept it now was impossible. And he began to learn at once that bitter lesson, even in the first glow of their reconciliation, the impossibility of forgetting. The thing had been like a thunderstorm which had passed over and left the air fresh and cool, but in the foreground stood the tree stripped and split by the lightning.
All that week Tom worked as he had never worked before. Doubts, fears, and disappointments left him when he took up his chisel. The statue was approaching completion, he had finished with the claw chisel, and was working only with the fine point. Sometimes as he entered the studio, his heart gave a sudden throb. Was his dream really coming true? Was the Demeter really good—of the best? An artist’s conceptions are his religion, and when he sees his religion becoming incarnate before him how can he but be filled with joy and trembling? He knew that he saw before him his conception. Thething was as he had meant it to be. He had realized his best.
And when she stood there finished, artists and others came and looked and admired, and went away again. The Academy, they thought, would be sure to take it; it was admirably conceived and wonderfully executed. But how on earth would Tom get it down those little front stairs? Ha, ha! he would have to take the roof off, or break off Demeter’s arm and say she was an antique.
But Tom felt singularly content. It was done: he had touched his own high-water mark, and if no one else cared what cause was there for blame or regret? The moment which he had feared and dreaded had come and passed. Manvers was quite right; no one wanted the Demeter. They said it was beautiful; some one had said it was Praxitelean, and that was enough. And for the next three or four days he waited, doing nothing, walking out with May when the day grew cooler, going through any amount of baby cult, serene and content, knowing that in a little while the pause would inevitably be over, and that he would have to do something—what he knew not. He spent two days in shaping a little wax model of Persephone, which was to have been his next statue, lingeringly, lovingly, regretfully, knowing he would never make it.
About a week after Demeter had been finished, the end came. The baby had not been well, and May, who was not usually anxious, had sent for the doctor. Tom was out when he came, and she sat alone in the gathering dusk waiting for him to come in. The room was nearly dark, and her chair wasin the shadow, so that when Tom entered the room he did not see her at once.