It happened in a comfortable room on the ground floor, looking out into the garden. All afternoon he had been puzzling over what Harriet had told him. Mrs. Sheerug sat by the fire knitting; he dared not question her.
Muted by garden walls and distance, a muffin-man passed up and down the streets, ringing his bell and crying to the night like a troubadour in search of romance. He crouched against the window, watching the winter dusk come drifting down. While watching, he fell asleep.
As though he had been coldly touched, he awoke startled, all his senses on edge. On the other side of the glass, peering in, standing directly over him, was a figure which he recognized as Harriet’s. At first he thought that she was trying to attract his attention; then he saw that she seemed unaware of him and that her attention was held by something beyond. A voice broke the stillness. It must have been that same voice that had roused him.
“My God, I’m wretched! For years it’s been always the same: the restlessness when I’m with her; the heartache when I’m without her. She won’t send me away and she won’t have me, and—and I haven’t the strength to go away myself. No, it isn’t strength. It’s something that I can’t tell even to you. Something that keeps me tortured and binds me to her.”
Scarcely daring to stir, Teddy turned his eyes away from Harriet, and stared into the darkness of the room. The air was tense with tragedy. In the flickering half-circle of firelight a man was crouched against the armchair—kneeling like a child with his head in the faery-godmother’s lap. He was sobbing. Teddy had heard his mother cry; this was different. There was shame in the man’s crying and the dry choking sound of a horrible effort to regain self-mastery. The faery-godmother bent above him. Teddy could see the glint of her spectacles. She was whispering with her cheek against the flaxen head. The voice went on despairingly.
“Sometimes I wonder whether I do love her. Sometimes I feel hard and cold, so that I wouldn’t care if it were all ended. Sometimes I almost hate her. I want to start afresh—but I haven’t the courage. I know myself. If I were certain that I’d lost her, I should begin to idealize her as I did at first. God, if I could only forget!”
“My dear! My dear!” Mrs. Sheerug’s voice was broken. Her tired hands wandered over him, patting and caressing. “My poor Hal! To think that any woman should dare to use you so and that I can’t prevent it! Why, Hal, if I could bear your burdens, and see you glad, and hear your laughter in the house, I’d—I’d die for you, Hal, to have you young and happy as you were. Doesn’t it mean anything to you that your mother can love you like that?”
He raised his face and put his arms about her neck. “I haven’t been good to you, mother. It’s like you to say that I have; but I haven’t. I’ve ignored you and given the best of myself to some one for whom it has no value. I’ve been sharp and irritable to you. You’ve wanted to ask questions—you had a right to ask questions; I’ve kept you at arm’s length. You’ve wanted to do what you’re doing now—to hold me close and show me that you cared; and I’ve—I’ve felt like striking you. That’s the way with a man when he’s pitied. You know I have.”
The gray head nodded. “But I’ve always understood, and—and you don’t want to strike me any longer.”
“You’re dearer than any woman in the world.”
“Dearer, but not so much desired.” She drew back from him, holding his face between her hands. “Hal, you’re my son, and you must listen to me. Perhaps I’m only a prejudiced old woman, years behind the times and jealous for my son’s happiness. Put it down to that, Hal; but let me have my say out. When I was young, girls didn’t treat men as Vashti treats you. If they loved a man, they married him. If they didn’t love him, they told him. They didn’t play fast and loose with him, and take presents from him, and keep him in suspense, and waste his power of hoping. It’s the finest moment in a good girl’s life when a good man puts his life in her hands. If a girl can’t appreciate that, there’s something wrong with her—something so wrong that she can never make the most persistent lover happy. Vashti’s beautiful on the outside and she’s talented, but—but she’s not wholesome.”
There was a pause full of unspoken pleadings and threatenings. The man jerked sharply away from his mother. Her hands slipped from his face to his shoulders. They stayed there clinging to him. His attitude was alert with offense.
“Shall I go on?” she asked tremulously.
His answer came grimly. “Go on.”
“It’s the truth I’m telling you, Hal—the truth, as any one can see it except yourself. Beneath her charm she’s cold and selfish. Selfishness is like frost; it kills everything. In time it would kill your passion. She’s gracious till she gets a man in her power, then she’s capricious. You haven’t told me what she’s done to you, my dear. I’m a woman; I can guess—I can guess. She doesn’t love you. She loves to be loved; she never thinks of loving in return. She’s kept you begging like a dog—you, who are my son, of whom any girl might be proud. Perhaps you think that, if she were your wife, it would make a difference. It wouldn’t. You’d spend all your life sitting up like a dog, waiting for her to find time to pet you. You’re my son—the best son a mother ever had. It’s a woman’s business to worship her man, even though she blinds herself to do it You shan’t be a vain woman’s plaything.”
She waited for him to say something. She would have preferred the most brutal anger to this silence. It struck her down. He knelt before her rigid, breathing heavily, his face hard and set.
She spoke again, slowly. “If ever Vashti were to accept you, it would be the worst day’s work. The gods you worship are different. Hers are—hers are worthless.”
He sprang to his feet, pushing aside his mother’s hand. His voice was low and stabbing. “Worthless! I won’t hear you say that. You don’t know—don’t understand. I ought to have gone on keeping this to myself—ought not to have spoken to you. No, don’t touch me. She’s good, I tell you. It’s my fault if I’m such a fool that I can’t make her care.”
He spoke like a man in doubt, anxious to convince himself.
“It’s not your fault, Hal. The finest years of life! Could any man give more? You’re belittling yourself that you may defend her. You’re the little baby I carried in my bosom. I watched you grow up. I know you—all your strength and weakness. You’re the kind of man for whom love is as necessary as bread. Where there’s no kindness, you flicker out You lose your confidence with her and her friends; their flippancy stifles you. I don’t even doubt that you appear a fool. She’s a beautiful, heartless vampire; if she married you, she’d absorb your personality and leave you shrunken—a nonentity. She’s no standards, no religion, no sense of fairness; she wants luxury and a career and independence—and she wants you as well. Doesn’t want you as a comrade, but as anet cetera. She’s willing to accept all love’s privileges, none of its duties. She has plenty of self-pity, but no tenderness. Oh, my poor, poor Hal, what is it that you love in her? Is it her unresponsiveness?”
She seized both his hands, dragging herself up so that she leaned against his breast. “Hal, I’m afraid for you.” She kissed his mouth. “She’ll make you bad. She will. Oh, I know it. She’ll break your heart and appear all the time to be good herself. Can’t you see what your life would be with her?”
“I can see what it would be without her,” he said dully.
His mother’s voice fell flat “You can’t see that. God hides the future. There are good girls in the world. Life for you with her would be bitterness, while she went on smiling. She’s a woman who’ll always have a man in love with her—always a different man. She’ll never mean any harm, but every affection she breathes on will lose its freshness. She’s given you your chance to free yourself.”
She tried to draw him down to her. “Take it,” she urged.
He stooped, smoothed back the gray hair and kissed her wrinkled forehead.
“You’re going to?”
He loosed himself. “Mother, it’s shameful that we should speak so of a girl.”
Crossing the room, he opened the door and halted on the point of departure.
“Are you going to?”
“I can’t There are things I haven’t told you.”
As the door closed, she extended her arms to him, then buried her face in her hands. When the sound of his footsteps had died out utterly, she followed.
Teddy turned from gazing into the darkened room. The window was empty. The other silent witness had departed.
As if coming to uphold him in his allegiance to romance, the Invincible Armada of dreamers sailed out: cresting the sullen horizon of housetops, the white moon swam into the heavens—the admiral ship of illusion, with lesser moons of faint stars following. He remembered that through all his years that white fleet of stars would be watching, riding steadily at anchor. Nothing of bitterness could sink one ship of that celestial armada. He clenched his hands. And nothing that he might hear of bitterness should sink one hope of his great belief in the goodness and kindness of the world.
His exit from Orchid Lodge came hurriedly. Mrs. Sheerug had received a letter telling her that her daughter, Madge, and her younger son, Ruddy, were returning from the visit they had been paying. Consequently, one foggy winter’s afternoon with a tip of four shillings from Hal and of half-a-crown from Mrs. Sheerug—six shillings and sixpence in all towards the necessary five pounds—he was wrapped up and conducted the six doors lower down in the charge of Harriet.
It was as though a story-book had been snatched from his hands when he was halfway through the adventure. There were so many things that he wanted to know. It seemed to him that he had lost sight of Vashti for ever.
Jane, his own servant, admitted them. She was greatly excited, but not by his advent. Drawing Harriet into the hall, she at once began to make her her confidante.
“It wasn’t as though they ’adn’t been ’appy,” Jane was saying. “’Appy I They was that ’appy they got on my nerves. There was times when it was fair sick’ning to listen to ’em. Give me the pip, that’s wot it did. It was ’Dearie this’ and ’Jimmie Boy that,’ till it made a unmarried girl that angry she wanted to knock their ‘eads. Silly, I calls it, to be ’ave like that downstairs. Well, that’s ‘ow it was till the missus takes ill, and wot we’d expected didn’t ‘appen. Master Teddy goes ter stay with you; ‘is dear ma is safe in bed; and thenshecomes, this woman as says she wants to ’ave ‘er portrait painted. ’Er portrait painted!”
Jane beat her hands and sniffed derisively. Catching Teddy’s eye, she lowered her voice and bent nearer to Harriet “’Er portrait painted! It was all me eye and Betty Martin. Direckly I saw ’er I knew that, and I says to myself, ’Yer portrait painted! A fat lot you wants of that, my fine lady.’ And so it’s turned out When I opened the door to ’er fust, I nearly closed it in ’er face, she looked that daingerous. And there’s the missus on ’er back upstairs as flat as a pancake. I can’t tell ’er a thing of wot I suspeck.”
“Men’s all alike,” sighed Harriet, as though speaking out of a bitter marriage experience. “H’it’s always the newest skirt that attracks.”
Jane looked up sharply. It seemed to her that Teddy had grown too attentive. “‘Ere, Miss ’arriet, let’s go down to my kitching and talk this over. More private,” she added significantly. Then to Teddy, who was following, “No, you don’t, Master Theo. You stay ’ere till we comes back.”
High up in the darkness a door opened. Footsteps. They were descending. Huddling himself into an angle of the wall, he waited. A strange woman in a blue starched dress was coming down. As she passed him, he stretched out his hand, “If you please——”
She jumped away, startled and angry. “What a fright you did give me, hiding and snatching at me like that.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Sorry! But who are you?”
“I’m Teddy. Where’s—where’s mother?”
The woman’s voice became quiet and professional. “She’s sleeping. When she wakes, I’ll send for you. She’s not been well. I must go now.”
He listened to her footsteps till they died out in the basement. He must find his father. Cautiously he set to work, opening doors, peeping into darkened rooms and whispering, “It’s only Teddy.”
Indoors he had searched everywhere; only one other place was left
The garden was a brooding sea of yellow mist, obscured and featureless. Trees stood up vaguely stark, like cowled skeletons.
He groped his way down the path. Once he strayed on to the lawn and lost himself; it was only by feeling the gravel beneath his tread that he could be sure of his direction. A light loomed out of the darkness—the faintest blur, far above his head. It strengthened as he drew nearer. Stretching out his hands, he touched ivy. Following the wall, he came to a door, and raised the latch.
Inside the stable he held his breath. Stacked against the stalls were canvases: some of them blank; some of them the failures of finished work; others big compositions which were set aside till the artist’s enthusiasm should again be kindled. Leading out of the stable into the converted loft was a rickety stairway and a trap-door. Teddy could not see these things; through familiarity he was aware of their presence.
Voices! One low and grumbling, the other fluty and high up. Then a snatch of laughter. Was there any truth in what Jane had said? The trap-door was heavy. Placing his hands beneath it, he pushed and flung it back. It fell with a clatter. He stood white and trembling, dazzled by the glare, only his head showing.
“What on earth!”
Some one rose from a chair so hurriedly that it toppled over. Then the same voice exclaimed in a glad tone, “Why, it’s the shrimp!”
His father’s arms were about him, lifting him up. Teddy buried his face against the velvet jacket. Though he had been deaf and blind, he would have recognized his father by the friendly smell of tobacco and varnish. Because of that smell he felt that his father was unaltered.
“Turned you out, old chap, did they? I didn’t know you were coming. Perhaps Jane told me. I’ve been having one of my inspirations, Teddy—hard at it every moment while the light lasted. I’d be at it now, if this infernal fog hadn’t stopped me.” He tried to raise the boy’s face from his shoulder. “Want to see what I’ve been doing?”
Teddy felt himself a traitor. His father had had an inspiration—that accounted for Jane’s suspicions and for anything awkward that had occurred. It was always when his father’s soul groped nearest heaven that his earthly manners were at their worst. Odd! Teddy couldn’t understand it; a person like Jane, who wasn’t even related, could understand it still less. But he had let himself sink to Jane’s level. If he had wanted to confess, he couldn’t have told precisely what it was that he had dreaded. So in reply to all coaxing he hid his face deeper in the shoulder of the velvet jacket. Its smoky, varnishy, familiar smell gave him comfort: it seemed to forgive him without words.
“Frightened?” his father questioned. “You were always too sensitive, weren’t you? I oughtn’t to have forgotten you like that. But—I say, Teddy, look up, old man. I really had something to make me forget.”
“I think he’ll look up for me.”
At sound of that voice, before the sentence was ended, he had looked up.
“There!”
Her laughter rang through the raftered room like the shivering of silver bells.
Holding out his hands to her, Teddy struggled to free himself. When force failed, he leaned his cheek against his father’s, “Jimmie Boy, dear Jimmie Boy, let me down.”
“Hulloal What’s this?”
Combing his fingers through his curly black hair, his father looked on, humorously perplexed by this frantic reunion of his son and the strange lady. She bent tenderly, pressing his hands against her lips and holding him to her breast.
“I never, never thought I’d find you,” he was explaining, “never in the world. I searched everywhere. I was always hoping you’d come back. When you didn’t, I tried to ask Harriet, and I nearly asked Mrs. Sheerug.”
“Ah, she wouldn’t tell you,” the lady said.
“I know all about marriage now,” he whispered.
“You do?”
He clapped his hands. “Harriet told me.”
His father interrupted. “How did you and Teddy come to meet, Miss Jodrell?”
Vashti glanced up; her eyes slanted and flashed mischief. It was quite true; any woman would have shared Jane’s opinion—Vashti’s look was “daingerous” when it dwelt on a man. It lured, beckoned and caressed. It hinted at unspoken tenderness. It seemed to say gladly, “At last we are together. I understand you as no other woman can.” It was especially dangerous now, when the bronze hair shone beneath the gray breast of a bird, the red lips were parted in kindness, and the white throat, like a swan floating proudly, swayed delicately above ermine furs. In the studio with its hint of the exotic, its canvases where pale figures raced through woodlands, its infinite yearning after beauty, its red fire burning, swinging lamps and gaping chairs, and against the window the muffled silence, Vashti looked like the materialization of a man’s desire. One arm was flung about the boy, her face leant against his shoulder, brooding out across the narrow distance at the man’s.
“How did we meet!” she echoed. “How does any one meet? In a fog, by accident, after loneliness. Sometimes it’s for better; sometimes it’s for worse. One never knows until the end.” She stood up and drew her wraps about her, snuggling her chin against her furs. “I ought to be going now; your wife must be needing you, Mr. Gurney—— Oh, well, if you want to see me out.”
She dropped to her knees beside Teddy. “Good-by, little champion. Some day you and I will go away together and you must tell me all that you learnt from Harriet about—about our secret.”
When they had vanished through the hole in the floor, Teddy tiptoed over to the trap-door and peered down. With a glance across his shoulder, his father signaled to him not to follow. He ran to the window to get one last glimpse of her, but the fog prevented; all he could see was the moving of two disappearing shadows. He heard the sound of their footsteps growing fainter, and less certain on the gravel.
Left to himself, he pulled from his knickerbockers’ pocket a knotted handkerchief. Undoing it, he counted its contents: Hal’s four shillings and Mrs. Sheerug’s half-a-crown. He smiled seriously. Sitting down on the floor, he spread out the coins to make sure that he hadn’t lost any of them. Six-and-sixpence! To grown people it might not seem wealth; to him it was the beginning of five pounds.
But, my old pirate, who is she?
The orderliness of the room had been carried to excess; it suggested the austere orderliness of death. Life is untidy; it has no time for folded hands. The room’s garnished aspect had the chill of unkind preparedness.
From the window a bar of sunlight streamed across a woman lying on a white, unruffled bed. Its brilliance revealed the deep hollows of her eyes; they were like violets springing up in wells of ivory. Her arms, withdrawn from the sheets, stretched straightly by her side; the fingers were bloodless, as if molded from wax. Her head, which was narrow and shapely, lay cushioned on a mass of chestnut hair. She had the purged voluptuousness of one of Rossetti’s women who had turned saint. Her valiant mouth was smiling. Only her eyes and mouth, of all her body, seemed alive. She had spoken with effort. It was as though the bar of gold, which fell across her breast, was pinning her to the bed. Some such thought must have occurred to the man who was standing astraddle and bowed before the fire. He crossed the room and commenced to pull down the blind.
“Don’t, please. There’s to be no lowering of blinds—not yet.”
He paused rigid, as though he had been stabbed; then went slowly back to his old position before the fire.
“I didn’t mean to say it,” she whispered pleadingly. “I’m not going to die, Jimmie Boy—not so long as you need me. If I were lying here dead and you were to call, I—I should get up and come to you, Jimmie Boy. ’Dearie, I say unto thee arise’—that’s what you’d say, I expect, like Christ to the daughter of Jairus—‘Dearie, I say unto thee arise.’”
A third person, who had been sitting on the counterpane, playing with her hand, looked up. “And would you if I said it?”
“Perhaps, but I’m not going to give you the chance—not yet.”
“I’m glad,” sighed the little boy, “’cause, you know, I might forget the words.”
The ghost of a laugh escaped the woman’s lips and quickly spent itself. “Jimmie Boy’s glad too, only he’s such an old Awkward, he won’t tell. He hates being laughed at, even by his wife.”
The man raised his shaggy head. His voice sounded gruff and furious. “If you want to know, Jimmie Boy’s doing his best not to cry.”
His head jerked back upon his breast.
The woman lay still, gazing at him with adoring eyes. He cared—he was trying not to cry. She never quite knew what went on inside his head—never quite knew how to take him. When others would have said most, he was most silent He was noisy as a child over the little things of life. He did everything differently from other men. It was a proof of his genius.
In the presence of her frailty he looked more robust, more of a Phoenician pirate than ever. She gloried in his picturesque lawlessness, in the unrestraint of his gestures, in his uncouth silences. What a lover for a woman to have! As she lay there in her weakness she recalled the passion of his arms about her: how he had often hurt her with his kisses, and she had been glad. She wished that she might feel his arms about her now.
“Who is she?” she asked again.
Her question went unanswered. She turned her head wearily to the little boy. “Teddy, what’s my old pirate been doing? Who is she? You’ll tell.”
Before Teddy could answer, her husband laughed loudly. “If you’re jealous, you’re not going to die.”
The riot of relief in his voice explained his undemonstrativeness. Tears sprang into her eyes. How she had misjudged him! She rolled her head luxuriously from side to side. “You funny boy—die! How could I, when you’d be left?”
Running across the room, he sprawled himself out on the edge of the bed. Forgetting she was fragile, he leant across her breast and kissed her heavily on the mouth. She raised herself up to prolong the joy and fell back exhausted. “Oh, that was good!” she murmured. “The dear velvet jacket and the smoky smell—all that’s you! All that’s life! I’m not jealous any longer; but who is she?”
He pulled the loose ends of his tie and shook his head. “Don’t know, and that’s a fact. She just turned up and wanted to be painted. When I’d smarted, I lost my head; couldn’t stop; got carried away. Don’t know whether you’d like her, Dearie; she’s a wonderful person. Sings like a bird—sets me thinking—inspires. Work! Why, I’ve not worked so steadily since—I don’t know when. I was worried about you and glad to forget Hard luck on you, Dearie; I’m a stupid fellow to show my sorrow by stopping away. But as to who she is, seems to me that Teddy can tell you best.”
She squeezed the little boy’s hand. “Who is she, Teddy?” Teddy looked blank. “Don’t know—not exactly. She was in Mrs. Sheerug’s house with Hal, and—and then she came and sang to me in bed.”
“She did that?” His mother smiled. “She must be a good woman to love my little boy.” Then to her husband, after a moment’s reflection: “But what’s the picture?”
His face lit up with enthusiasm. “It’s going to do the trick this time. It’ll make us famous. We’ll move into a big house. You’ll have breakfast in bed with a boudoir cap, and all your gowns’ll come from Paris.”
She stroked the sleeve of his jacket affectionately. “Yes, that’s sure to happen. But what’s it all about?”
He commenced reciting, “‘She feedeth among the lilies. A garden enclosed is my sister: a spring shut up, a fountain sealed. Awake, O north wind, and come thou south. Blow upon my garden that the spices thereof may flow out.’ Catch the idea? It was mine; Teddy didn’t have a thing to do with it See what I’m driving at?”
He sat back from her to take in the effect. She drew him near again. “It sounds beautiful; but I don’t quite see all of it yet.”
He knotted his hands, trying to reduce his imagination to words. “It’s the women who aren’t like you, Dearie—the women who love themselves. They feed among lilies; the soul of love is in ’em, but they won’t let it out They’re gardens enclosed, fountains sealed, springs shut up. Now are you getting there? The symbolism of it caught me. There I have her, just as she is in her bang-up modern dress, feeding among the lilies of an Eastern garden. Everything’s heavy with fragrance, beautiful and lonely; the hot sun’s shining and nothing stirs. The windows of the harem are trellised and shut. From under clouds the north and south wind are staring and puffing their cheeks as though they’d burst. Through a locked gate in the garden you get a glimpse of an oriental street with the dust scurrying; but in my sister’s garden the air hangs listless. The fountain is dry; the well is boarded over. And here’s the last touch: halting in the street, peering in through the bars of the gate is the figure of Love. The woman doesn’t see him, though he’s whispering and beckoning. Love’s got to be stark naked; that’s how he always comes. Because he’s naked he looks the same in all ages. D’you get the contrast between Love and the girl’s modern dress? There’s where I’ll need you, Teddy.”
Teddy blushed. He spoke woefully. “But—but I’m not going to undress before her.”
For answer his father laughed.
“But can’t I have any clothes at all—not even my shirt?”
“Not even your shirt. She won’t see you, old man; in the picture she’s looking in the other direction. And as for the real live lady, we’ll paint you when she’s not on hand.”
“It’s roo-ude,” Teddy stammered. “Besides, it’s silly. Nobody eats lilies; they’re for Easter and funerals, and they’re too expensive. And—and can’t I wear just my trousers?”
His father frowned in mock displeasure. “For a boy of ideas and the son of an artist you’re surprisingly modest. Now if you were Jane I could understand it. Love would always put on trousers when he went to visit her. But you’re Dearie’s son. I’m disappointed in you, Teddy; you really ought to know more about love.”
“But I do know about love.” Teddy screwed up his mouth. “I’ve learnt from Harriet.”
“And who’s Harriet?”
“A kind of princess.”
“Pooh!” His father turned to Dearie. “What d’you think of ‘A Garden Enclosed Is My Sister’’?”
Dearie kissed his hand. “Splendid! But does the lady expect to be painted like that?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know and I don’t care. I’m not telling her.”
The violet eyes met his. “Dear old glorious Impractical. Perhaps she’s like Jane and’ll want her love in trousers.” Jimmie wagged his head from side to side in negation. “If I’m any judge of character, she isn’t easily shocked.” He rose and stood staring out of the window. His shadow blotted out the bar of sunlight and lay across her breast He turned. “This light’s too good to lose. I must get back to my work.”
She clung to his lips. Until he had completely vanished her eyes followed.
“Teddy, is she beautiful?” Her whisper came sharply. “The most beautiful—after you, mother, she’s the most beautiful person in the world.”
She closed her eyes and smiled. “After me! I’m glad you put me first.” She stretched out her hand and drew him to her. “Now I’m ill, he’s lonely. He’s got no one to care for him. Don’t let him be by himself.”
“Not at all, Mummie?”
“Not for a moment. You’d better go to him now.”
He was on his way to the door when she beckoned him back. “What’s she called, Teddy?”
“Vashti.”
“Vashti.” She repeated the word.
“Don’t let him be lonely, Teddy—not for a moment alone with her. Good-by, darling. Go to him now.”
On the wall a clock was ticking; that and the rustling of the fire as the coals sank lower were the only sounds. Like a white satin mantle that had drifted from God’s shoulders, the snow lay across the world. The sun flashed down; the studio was flooded with glory.
About the snow and how it came Jimmie Boy had been inventing stories. It was the angels’ washing day up there and some of their wings had blown off the clothes line. No, wa it wasn’t. This was how the snow really happened. The impatient little children who were waiting to be born had had a pillow-fight, and had burst their pillows.
But his father hadn’t spoken for a long time. The fire was going out. Vashti might arrive at almost any moment And, alas, Teddy was naked. He was posing for the figure of Love, peering in forlornly through the fast-locked gate. He hadn’t wanted to do it; even now he was filled with shame. But Jimmie Boy had offered him money—and he needed money; and Dearie had begged him not to leave Jimmie Boy for a single second. When he had crept up to her room to visit her, she had seized his hands and whispered reproachfully, “Go back to him. Go back.” The best way to be always with his father had been to pose for him.
And there was another reason: by making himself necessary to the picture he had been able to see Vashti. Day after day he had sat in the studio, mouse-quiet, watching her. At night he had made haste to go to sleep that the next day might come more quickly. In the morning, when he had wakened, his first thoughts had been of her; as he dressed, he had told himself, “I shall see her in three hours.” Vashti hadn’t seen her portrait yet; she had been promised that this time she should see it—that this time it should be done. The promise had been made before, but now it was to be kept. So to-day was the last day.
“Please, mayn’t I move?”
“Not yet That’s the sixth time you’ve asked me. I’d have finished if you’d kept quiet.”
“But—but I’m all aches and shivers.”
“Nonsense! You can’t be cold with that great fire.” His father was too absorbed; he hadn’t noticed that the fire had gone out “I know what’s the matter with you, Teddy: you’re afraid she’ll be here before you’re dressed. Pooh! What of it? Now stop just as you are for ten minutes, and then——”
He left his sentence unended and fell to work again with concentrated energy. His mind was aflame with the fury of his imagination. He was far away from reality. It wasn’t Teddy he was painting; it was Love, famished by indifference and tantalized by yearning—Love, bruising his face against the bars which forever shut him out. This wasn’t a London studio, ignobly contrived above a stable; it was a spice-fragrant garden of the East, stared at by the ravishing eye of the sun, where a lady of dreams stooped feeding among tall lilies.
“When am I to see it?” Teddy questioned.
“When she sees it.”
“Not till then?”
“Be still, and don’t ask so many questions.”
“I wanted to see it before her,” explained Teddy, “because I’m hoping I don’t show too much.”
His father wiped a brush on the sleeve of his jacket and wriggled his eyebrows. “Take my word for it, sonny, you look much better as you are now. It’s a shame that we ever have to cover you up.” He laid aside his palette. “There, that’s the last touch. It’s done. By Mohammed, it’s splendid. Jump into your duds, you shrimp. I’m going to tell Dearie before Miss Jodrell comes.”
The wild head vanished through the hole in the floor. Teddy heard his father laughing as he passed through the stable. Creeping to the window, he watched him cut across flower-beds towards the house, kicking up the snow as he ran.
It was done. The great exhilaration was ended. Tomorrow, when he awoke, it would be no good saying, “I shall see her again in three hours.” At night he would gain nothing by going to sleep quickly; the new day when it came would bring him nothing. The studio without her would seem empty and dull. If only he had been fortified by the possession of five pounds, he would have boldly reminded her of her promise. Six-and-sixpence was the sum total of his wealth; it was hidden away in an old cigar box which he had labeled MARRIAGE. If a husband didn’t have at least five pounds, his wife would have to go out charing. He couldn’t imagine Vashti doing that.
Shivering with cold, yet drenched in sunlight he stood hesitating by the window. His body gleamed white and lithe; behind him, tall as manhood, stretched his shadow. Clasping his hands in a silent argument he stepped back and glanced towards the easel. Her face was there, hidden from him behind the canvas. Only his father had seen it yet; but he, too, wanted to see it—he had more right than any one in the world.
He tiptoed a few steps nearer, his bare feet making no sound; halted doubtfully, then stole swiftly forward, lured on by irresistible desire.
He drew back amazed. What had his father done? It was intoxicating. The breath of the lilies drifted out; he could feel their listlessness. An atmosphere of satiety brooded over the garden—a sense of too much sweetness, too much beauty, too much loneliness. The skies, for all their blueness, sagged exhausted. The winds puffed their cheeks in vain, hurrying strength from the north and south. They could not rouse the garden from its contentment. It stifled.
Centermost a woman drooped above the lilies, an enchantress who was herself enchanted. Dreamy with contemplation, she gazed out sideways at the little boy. Her eyes slanted and beckoned, but they failed to read his eyes. Her lips, aloof with indifference, were wistful and scarlet as poppies.
The face was Vashti’s—a striking interpretation; but——
Some latent hint of expression had been over-emphasized. One searched for the difference and found it in the smile that hovered indolently about the edges of her mouth. It wounded and fascinated; it did not satisfy. It seemed to say, “To you I will be everything; to me you shall be nothing.”
Clenching his fists, Teddy stared at her. Tears sprang into his eyes. He was little, but he loved her. She called to him; even while she called, it was as though she shook her head in perpetual denial. Naked in the street outside the garden he saw himself. He was whispering to her, striving to awake her from the trance of the flowers. His face was pressed between the bars and drawn with impatience.
Slowly he bent forward, tiptoeing up, his arms spread back and balanced like wings. His lips touched hers. Hers moved under them. He dashed his fingers across his mouth; they came away blood-colored. He trembled with fear, knowing what he had done.
A rush of footsteps behind him. He was caught in her embrace. It was as though she had leapt out from the picture. She was kneeling beside him, her arms about him, kissing the warm ivory of his body. His sense of shame was overpowered by his sense of wonder.
“The poor little god!” she whispered. “That woman won’t look at him. But when you are Love, Teddy, I open the gate.”
Some one was in the stable; feet were ascending. Shame took the place of wonder at being found naked in her presence.
“Quick. Run behind the curtain and dress,” she muttered.
From his place of hiding he heard his father enter.
“Hulloa! So you got here and saw it without me! Why, what’s this?” And then, “Your lip’s bleeding, Miss Jodrell. Ah, I see now. Vanity! Been kissing yourself; didn’t know the paint was wet. Jove, that’s odd!” He was bending to examine. “The blurring of the lips has altered the expression. There’s something in the face that I never intended.”
“It makes me look kinder, don’t you think?”
James Gurney stood up; he was still intent upon his original conception. “I’ll put that right with half-an-hour’s work.”
“You won’t; it’s my picture. It’s more like me, and I like it better.” She spoke with settled defiance; her voice altered to a tone of taunting slyness. “You’re immensely clever, Mr. Gurney, but you don’t know everything about women.”
She liked it better! Teddy couldn’t confess that his lips had carried the redness from the picture to her mouth. There was a sense of gladness in his guilt. Because of this he believed her irrevocably pledged to him.
It was the early morning of the last day of the year. Staring out into the street, Teddy flattened his nose against the window. He was doing his best to make himself inconspicuous; neither Jane nor his father had yet noticed that he was wearing his Eton suit on a week-day. That his father hadn’t noticed was not surprising. For Jane’s blindness there was a reason.
Jane’s method of clearing the table would have told him that last night had been her night out. She would be like this all day. Dustpans would fall on the landings. Brooms would slide bumpity-bump down the stairs. The front-door bell would ring maddeningly, till an exasperated voice called not too loudly, “Jane, Jane. Are you deaf? Aren’t you ever going?” It was so that Vashti might not be kept waiting that Teddy was pressing his nose against the window.
This was to be his great day, when matters were to be brought to a crisis. In his secret heart he was wondering what marriage would be like. He was convinced he would enjoy it. Who wouldn’t enjoy living forever and forever alone with Vashti? Of course, at first he would miss his mother and father—he would miss them dreadfully; but then he could invite them to stay with him quite often. He was amused to remember that he was the only person in the world who knew that this was to be his wedding day. Even Vashti didn’t know it. He was saving the news to surprise her.
At each new outburst of noise his thoughts kept turning back to speculations as to what might have caused this terrific upsetting of Jane. She herself would tell him presently; she always did, and he would do his best to look politely sympathetic. Perhaps her middle-aged suitor from the country had pounced on her while out walking with her new young man. He might have struck him—might have killed him. Love brought her nothing but tragedy. It seemed silly of her to continue her adventures in loving.
Crash! He spun round. The tray had slipped from Jane’s hands. In a mood of penitence she stood gaping at the wreckage. His father lowered his paper and gazed at her with an air of complete self-mastery. He was always angriest when he appeared most quiet “Go on,” he encouraged. “Stamp on them. Don’t leave anything. You can do better than that.”
“If I don’t give satisfackshun——” Jane lifted her apron and dabbed at her eyes. “If I don’t give satisfackshun——-”
Teddy heard his father strike a match and settle back into his chair. In the quiet that followed, Teddy’s thoughts returned to the channels out of which they had been diverted.
Funny! Love was the happiest thing in the world, and yet—yet it hadn’t made the people whom he knew happy.
Harriet was in love; and Hal with Vashti; and Vashti——
He remembered another sequence of people who hadn’t been made happy by love. Mrs. Sheerug hadn’t, even though she was the daughter of a Lord Mayor of London and had run away with Alonzo to get him. Mr. Hughes hadn’t, for his Henrietta had gone up in a swing-boat and had failed to come down. Most distinctly Jane hadn’t. And his mother and his father—concerning them his memories contradicted one another. Was Dearie afraid of the ladies who came to have their portraits painted? Why should she be, when Jimmie Boy was already her husband?
He shifted his nose to a new place on the window; the old place was getting wet.
And then there was Mr. Yaffon. Mr. Yaffon lived next door and seemed to sum up the entire problem in a nutshell.
His neighbors accounted for his oddities by saying that long ago he had had an unfortunate heart affair.
He had a squeaky voice, was thin as a beanpole and very shabby. His legs caved in at the knees and his shoulders looked crushed, as if a heavy weight was perpetually pressing on his head. He didn’t go to business or paint pictures like other people. In winter he locked himself in a backroom and studied something called philosophy; the summers he spent in his garden, planting things and then digging them up. He was rarely seen in the street; when he did go out his chief object seemed to be to avoid attracting attention. By instinct he chose the side which was in shadow. Hugging the wall, he would creep along the pavement, wearily searching for something. At an interval of a dozen paces a fox terrier of immense age followed. Teddy had discovered the dog’s name by accident He had stopped to stroke it, saying, “He’s nearly blind, poor old fellow.” Mr. Yaffon had corrected him with squeaky severity: “Alice is not a fellow; she’s a lady-dog.” That was the only conversation he and Mr. Yaffon had ever held. Since then, without knowing why, he had taken it for granted that the adored one of the unfortunate heart affair had been named Alice. He accounted for their separation by supposing that Mr. Yaffon’s voice had done it. The reason for this supposition was the green parrot.
The green parrot was a reprobate-looking bird with broken tail-feathers and white eyelids which, when closed, gave him a sanctimonious expression. When open, they revealed Satanic black eyes which darted evilly in every direction. During the winter he disappeared entirely; but with the first day of spring he was brought out into the garden and lived there for the best part of the summer. From the bedroom windows Teddy could watch him rattling his chain and jigging up and down on his perch. He would make noises like a cork coming out of a bottle and follow them up with a fizzing sound; then he would lower his white lids in a pious manner and say, deep down in his throat, “Let us pray.” He seemed to be trying to create the impression that, whatever his master was now, there had been a time when he had been something of a hypocrite and a good deal of a devil.
But the parrot’s great moment came when his master pottered inoffensively up the path towards him. The bird would wait until he got opposite; then he would scream in a squeaky voice, an exact imitation of Mr. Yaffon’s, “But I love you. I love you.” The old gentleman would grow red and shuffle into the house, leaving the bird turning somersaults on his perch and flapping his wings in paroxysms of laughter.
That was why, whatever calamity had occurred, Teddy supposed that Mr. Yaffon’s voice had done it Try as he would, whichever way he turned, he could find no proof that love made people happy. That didn’t persuade him that love couldn’t. It only meant that grown people were stupid. In his experience they often were.
The bell of the front door rang. It rang a second time.
“Who is it?” asked his father.
Teddy turned; his face was glowing with excitement. “It’s Vashti.”