“Are you glad to see me, Hilda?” he asked; “I beg your pardon, but it comes naturally to call you that.”
“I am very glad to see you, Mr. Odd,” Hildasmiled. Her voice was very like the child’s voice saying, “I thank you very much,” ten years ago. The same voice, grave and gentle. Odd had expected some little warmth, some little embarrassment even, in the girl, considering the parting from the child. But Hilda did not show any warmth, neither did she seem at all embarrassed, and Odd felt rather as one does when an unnecessary downward stride reveals level ground where one expected another step. He had stumbled a little, and now, half ruefully, half humorously, he considered the child Hilda grown up. She sat down near her mother.
“I am so sorry. I am afraid you waited for me,” she said, bending towards her; “I really couldn’t help it, mamma.”
“No, I think it kindest to consider you irresponsible; there is certainly an element of insanity in your exaggerated devotion to your work.” Mrs. Archinard smiled acidly, and Hilda, Odd thought, did look a little embarrassed now. He had adjusted himself to the reality of the present, and was able to study her. The same Botticelli Madonna mouth, the same Gainsborough eyes; the skin of dazzling whiteness—an almost unnatural white—but she was evidently tired.
Certainly her black gown looked strangely beside Katherine’s velvet, Mrs. Archinard’s silk and laces. Odd saw that there was mud on the skirt, a very short skirt, and Hilda’s legs were very long. She had walked, then. His own paternal solicitude struck him as amusing, and rather touching, as he glanced at her slim feet, to see with satisfactionthat wet boots had been replaced by patent-leather shoes—heelless little shoes.
“I am afraid you work too much, you tire yourself,” he said, for after her mother’s rebuff she had sunk back in her chair with a weary lassitude of pose. Hilda immediately sat up straightly, giving him an almost frightened glance. How unchanged the little face, though the cloud of her hair no longer framed it. Hilda’s hair was as smooth as her sister’s, only it was brushed straight back, and the soft blue-black coils were massed from ear to ear, and showed, in a coronet-like effect above her head, almost too much hair; it emphasized the pale fragility of her look.
“Oh no, I am not tired,” she said, “not particularly. I walked home, you see. I am very fond of walking.”
“Hilda is fond of such funny things,” said Katherine, coming from the piano, “of walking in the mud and rain for instance. She is the most persistently, consistently energetic person I ever knew.” Katherine paused pleasantly as though for Hilda to speak, but Hilda said nothing and looked even more vague than before, almost dull in fact.
“Well, she has had no tea,” said Odd, “and after mud and rain that is rather cruel, even as a punishment.”
Again Hilda gave him the alarmed quick glance; his eyes were humorously kind, and she smiled a slight little smile.
“Some tea!” Katherine cried; “my poor Hilda, I’m afraid it is hard-boiled by this time”—she laidher hand on the teapot—“andalmostcold. Shall I heat some more water, dear?”
“Oh! don’t think of it, Katherine, it is almost dinner-time.”
“Must I be off?” asked Odd, laughing.
“How absurd; we don’t dine till eight,” Katherine said.
“It wasn’t a hint to me, then, Hilda?” Hilda looked helplessly distressed.
“A hint? Oh no, no. How could you think that?”
“I was only joking. I didn’t really believe you so anxious to get rid of an old friend.” Odd, with some determination, crossed the room and sat down beside her.
“I want to see a great deal of you if you will let me.”
“No one sees much of Hilda, not even her own mother,” said Mrs. Archinard from her sofa. “It is terrible indeed to feel oneself a cumberer of the earth, unable to suffice to oneself, far less to others. With my failing eyesight I simply cannot read by lamplight, and there are three or four hours at this season when I am absolutely without resources. Yet even those hours Hilda cannot give me.”
Hilda now looked so painfully embarrassed that Odd was perforce obliged, for very pity’s sake, to avert his eyes from her face.
“Ah, Mr. Odd,” Mrs. Archinard went on, “you do not know what that is. To lie in the gray dusk and watch one’s own gray, gray thoughts.”
“It must be very unpleasant,” Odd owned unwillingly, feeling that his character of old friend wasbeing rather imposed upon; this degree of intimacy was certainly unwarranted.
“Now, mamma, you usually have friends every afternoon,” said Katherine, in her pleasant, even voice. She was preparing some fresh tea. “You make me as well as Hilda feel a culprit.”
“No, my dear.” Mrs. Archinard’s deep sense of accumulated injury evidently got quite the better of her manners. “No, my dear, you nevercouldread aloud and neverdid. I never asked it of you. You are really occupied as a girl should be. At all events you fulfil your social duties. You see that people come to see me. As I cannot go out, as Hilda will not, I really don’t know what I should do were it not for you. And, as it is, no one came this afternoon until Mr. Odd made his welcome appearance.”
“But Mr. Odd came at five, and you always read till then.” Katherine’s voice was gently playful. Hilda had not said one word, and her expression seemed now absolutely dogged.
“At this season, Katherine! You forget that it is night by four! And how a girl with any regard for her mother’s wishes can walk about the streets of Paris alone after that hour it passes my comprehension to understand.”
“Do you care about bicycling, Mr. Odd?” The change was abrupt but welcome. “Because I am going to the Bois to-morrow morning, and alone for once.” Katherine smiled at him over the kettle which she was lifting. “Papa has deserted me.”
“I should enjoy it immensely. And you,” he looked at Hilda, “won’t you come?”
“Oh, I can’t,” said Hilda, with a troubled look. “Thanks so much.”
“Oh no, Hilda can’t,” laughed Mrs. Archinard.
“And where is the Captain off to?” queried Peter hastily. He felt that he would like to shake Mrs. Archinard. Hilda’s stubborn silence might certainly be irritating, and Odd had sympathy for parental claims and wishes, especially concerning the advisability of a beautiful girl walking in the streets at night unescorted, sacrificed to youthful conceit; but Mrs. Archinard’s personality certainly weakened all claims, and her taste was as certainly atrocious.
“Papa,” said Katherine, pouring out the tea, “is going to-morrow morning to the Riviera. Lucky papa!” Odd thought with some amusement of the £120 that constituted papa’s “luck.” “I have only been once to Monte Carlo, and I won such a lot. Only imagine how forty pounds turned my head. I revelled in hats and gloves for a whole year. Then we go to-morrow, Mr. Odd? I have my own bicycle. I have kept it near the Porte Dauphine, and you can hire a very nice one at the same place.”
“May I call for you here at ten, then? Will that suit you?”
“Very well.” Odd watched Katherine as she carried the tea and cake to her sister. Hilda gave a little start.
“O Katherine, how good of you! I didn’t realize what you were doing.”
“It is you who are good, my pet,” said Katherine in a low, gentle voice. Peter thought it a pretty little scene.
“A great deal of latitude must be granted to theyoung person who invented that teapot,” he said to Hilda. “One must work hard to do anything in art, mustn’t one? A most lovely teapot, Hilda.”
“I am glad you like it.” Hilda smiled her thanks, but her eyes still expressed that distance and reserve that showed no consciousness of the past, no intention of admitting it as a link to the present. She did not seem exactly shy, but her whole manner was passive—negative. Katherine probably thought that Mr. Odd had by this time realized the futility of an attempt to draw out the unresponsive artist, for she seated herself between Odd and the sofa, thus protecting Hilda from Mrs. Archinard’s severities and Odd from the ineffectual necessity for talking to Hilda. Odd thought that were Katherine and Mrs. Archinard not there he might have “come at” Hilda, but the sense of ease Katherine brought with her was undeniable. She was charmingly mistress of herself, made him talk, appealed prettily to her mother, who even gave more than one melancholy laugh, and, with a tactful give and take, yet kept the reins of conversation well within her own hands.
Odd found her a nice girl, but the undercurrent of his thought dwelt on Hilda, and at every gayety of Katherine’s, his eyes sought her sister’s face; Hilda’s eyes were always fixed on Katherine, and she smiled a certain dumbly admiring smile. As he sat near her, he could see that the little black dress was very shabby. He could not have associated Hilda with real untidiness, and indeed the dress with its white linen cuffs and collar, its inevitable grace of severely simple outline, was neat to an almostpainful degree. Hilda’s artistic proclivities perhaps showed themselves in shiny seams and careful darns and patches.
When he rose to go he took her hands again; he hoped that his persistency did not make him appear rather foolish.
“I am sorry you won’t come to-morrow. May I hope for another day?”
“I can’t come to-morrow”—there was a touch of self-defence in Hilda’s smile—“but perhaps some other day. I should love to,” she finished rather abruptly.
“But you will be different—I will be different. We will both be changed,” repeated itself in Odd’s mind as he walked down the Rue Pierre Charron. Poor little child-voice! how sadly it sounded. How true had been the prophecy.
PETER ODD, at this epoch of his life, felt that he was resting on his oars and drifting. He had spent his life in strenuous rowing. He had seen much, thought much, done much; yet he had made for no goal, and had won no race; how should he, when he had not yet made up his mind that racing for anything was worth while?
Perhaps the two years in Parliament had most closely savored of consciously applied contest, and in that contest Odd considered himself beaten, and its efforts as though they had never been. Every one had told him that to bring the student’s ideals into the political arena was to insure defeat; one’s friends would consider a carefully discriminating honesty and broad-mindedness mere disloyal luke-warmness, foolish hair-splitting feebleness; one’s enemies would rejoice and triumph in the impartiality of an opponent. Certainly he had been defeated, and he could not see that his example had in any way been effectual. At all events, he had held to the ideals.
His fine critical taste found even his own books but crude and partial expressions of still groping thoughts. His unexpressed intention, good indeed, if one might so call its indefiniteness, had been to make the world better for having lived in it; better,or at least wiser. But he doubted the saving power of his own sceptical utterances; the world could not be saved by the balancings of a mind that saw the tolerant point of view of every question, a mind itself so unassured of results. A strong dash of fanaticism is necessary for success, and Odd had not the slightest flavor of fanaticism. Perhaps he had given a little pleasure in his more purely literary studies, and Peter thought that he would stick to them in the future, but he had put the future away from him just now. He had only returned from the great passivity of the Orient a few weeks ago, and its example seemed to denote drifting as the supreme wisdom. No effort, no desire; a peaceful receptivity, a peaceful acceptance of the smiles or buffets of fate; that was Odd’s ideal—for the present. He was a little sick of everything. The Occidental’s energy for combat was lulled within him, and the Occidental’s individualistic tendencies seemed to stretch themselves in a long yawn expressive of an amused and tolerant observation free from striving; and, for an Occidental, this mood is dangerous. Odd also did a good deal of listening to very modern and very clever French talk. He knew many clever Frenchmen. He did not agree with all of them, but, as he was not sure of his own grounds for disagreement, he held his peace and listened smilingly. Certainly the exclusively artistic standpoint was a most comforting and absorbing plaything to fall back on.
Peter’s friends talked of the amusing and touching spectacle of the universe. The representation of each man’s illusion on the subject, and the mannerof that representation, were never-ceasing sources of interest. Peter also read a little at the Bibliothèque Nationale, paid a few calls, dined out pretty constantly, and bicycled a great deal in the mornings with Katherine Archinard. She understood things well, and her taste was as sure and as delicate as even Odd could ask. Katherine had absorbed a great deal of culture during her wanderings, and it would have taken a long time for any one to find out that it was of a rather second-hand quality, and sought more for attainment than for enjoyment. Katherine talked with clever people and read clever reviews, and being clever herself, with a very acute critical taste, she knew with the utmost refinement of perception just what to like and just what to dislike; and as she tolerated only the very best, her liking gave value. Yetau fondKatherine did not really care even for the very very best. Her appreciation was negative. She excelled in a finely smiling, superior scorn, and could pick flaws in almost any one’s enjoyment, if she chose to do so. Katherine, however, was kind-hearted and tactful, and did not arouse dislike by displaying her cleverness except to people who would like it. Enthusiasm was banal, and Katherine was not often required to feign where she did not feel it; her very rigor and exclusiveness of taste implied an appreciation too high for expression; but Katherine had no enthusiasm.
Her rebellious and iconoclastic young energy amused Odd. He thought her rather pathetic in a way. There was a look of daring and revolt in her eye that pleased his lazy spirit. Meanwhile Hilda troubled him.
Would she never bicycle? Katherine, wheeling lightly erect beside him, gave the little shake of the head and shrug of the shoulders characteristic of her. She evidently found no fault with Hilda. Others might do so—the shrug implied that, implied as well that Katherine herself perhaps owned that her sister’s impracticable unreason gave grounds for fault-finding—but Hilda was near her heart.
When could he see her? That, too, seemed wrapped in the general cloud of vagueness, unaccountableness that surrounded Hilda. Odd called twice in the evening; once to be received by Katherine alone, Hilda was already indèshabilleit seemed, and once to find not even Katherine; she was dining out, and Miss Hilda in bed. In bed at nine! “Was she ill?” he asked of Taylor. Wilson had evidently accompanied the Captain.
“No wonder if she were, sir,” Taylor had replied, with a touch of the grievance in her tone that Hilda always seemed to arouse in those about her; “but no, she’s only that tired!” and Odd departed with a deepened sense of Hilda’s wilful immolation. Katherine brought him home to lunch on several occasions after the bicycling, but Hilda was never there. She lunched at her studio.
On a third call Hilda appeared, but only as he was on the point of going. She wore the same black dress, and the same look of unnatural pallor.
“Hilda,” said Odd, for amid these unfamiliar conditions he still used the familiar appellation, “I must see the cause of all this.”
“Of what?” Her smile was certainly the sweet smile he remembered.
“Of this unearthly devotion; these white cheeks.”
“Hilda is naturally pale,” put in Mrs Archinard; “she has my skin. But, of course, now she is a ghost.”
“Well, I want to see the haunted studio. I want to see the masterpieces.” Odd spoke with a touch of gentle irony that did not seem to offend Hilda.
“You will see nothing either uncanny or unusual.”
“Well, at all events, when can I come to see you in your studio?” The vague look crossed Hilda’s smile.
“You see—I work very hard;” she hesitated, seemed even to cast a beseeching glance at Katherine, standing near. Katherine was watching her.
“She is getting ready her pictures for the Champs de Mars. But, Hilda, Mr. Odd may come some morning.”
“Oh yes. Some morning. I thought you always bicycled in the morning. I wish youwouldcome, it would be so nice to see you there!” she spoke with a gay and sudden warmth; “only you must tell me when to expect you. My studio must be looking nicely and my model presentable.”
“I will take Mr. Odd to-morrow,” said Katherine, “he would never find his way.”
“Thanks, that will be very jolly,” said Odd, conscious that an unescorted visit would have been more so, yet wondering whether Hilda alone might not be more disconcerting than Hilda aided and abetted by her sister.
So the next morning he called for Katherine, andthey walked to a veritable nest ofateliersnear the Place des Ternes, where they climbed interminable stairs to the very highest studio of all, and here, in very bare and business-like surroundings, they found Hilda. She left her easel to open the door to them. A red-haired woman was lying on a sofa in a far, dim corner, a vase of white flowers at her head. There was a big linen apron of butcher’s blue over the black dress, and Hilda looked very neat, less pallid, too, than Odd had seen her look as yet. Her skin had blue shadows under the chin and nose, and a blue shadow made a mystery beneath the long sweep of her eyebrows and about her beautiful eyes. But when she turned her head to the light, Odd saw that the lips were red and the cheeks freshly and faintly tinted.
He was surprised by the picture on the big easel; the teapot had not prepared him for it. A rather small picture, the figure flung to its graceful, lazy length, only a fourth life-size. It was a picture of elusive shadows, touched with warmer lights in its grays and greens. The woman’s half-hidden face was exquisite in color. The sweep of her pale gown, half lost in demi-tint, lay over her like the folded wings of a tired moth. The white flowers stood like dreams in the dreamy atmosphere.
“Hilda, I can almost forgive you.” Odd stood staring before the canvas; he had put on his eye-glass. “Really this atones.”
“Isn’t it wonderfully simple, wonderfully decorative?” said Katherine, “all those long, sleepy lines. My clever little Hilda!”
“My clever, clever little Hilda!” Odd repeated,turning to look at the young artist. Her eyes met his with their wide, sweet gaze that said nothing. Hilda was evidently only capable of saying things on canvas.
“It is lovely.”
“You like it really?”
“I really think it is about as charming a picture as I have seen a woman do. So womanly too.” Odd turned to Katherine, it was difficult not to merge Hilda in her art, not to talk about her talent as a thing apart from her personality: “She expresses herself, she doesn’t imitate.”
“Perhaps that is rather unwomanly,” laughed Katherine: “a crawling imitativeness seems unfortunately characteristic. Certainly Hilda has none of it. She has inspired me with hopes for my sex.”
“Really cleverer than Madame Morisot,” said Odd, looking back to the canvas, “delightful as she is! She could touch a few notes surely, gracefully; Hilda has got hold of a chord. Yes, Hilda, you are an artist. Have you any others?”
Hilda brought forward two. One was a small study of a branch of pink blossoms in a white porcelain vase; the other a woman in white standing at a window and looking out at the twilight. This last was, perhaps, the cleverest of the three; the lines of the woman’s back, shoulder,profil perdu, astonishingly beautiful.
“You are fond of dreams and shadows, aren’t you?”
“I haven’t a very wide range, but one can only try to do the things one is fitted for. I like all sortsof pictures, but I like to paint demi-tints and twilights and soft lamplight effects.”
“‘Car nous voulons la nuance encor—pas la couleur, rien que la nuance,’”
“‘Car nous voulons la nuance encor—pas la couleur, rien que la nuance,’”
chanted Katharine. “Hilda lives in dreams and shadows, I think, Mr. Odd, so naturally she paints them. ‘L’art c’est la nature, vue à travers un temperament’. Excuse my spouting.”
“So your temperament is a stuff that dreams are made of. Well, Hilda, make as many as you can. Hello! is that another old friend I see?” On turning to Hilda he had caught sight of a dachshund—rather white about the muzzle, but very luminous and gentle of eye—stretching himself from a nap behind the little stove in the corner. He came toward them with a kindly wag of the tail.
“Is this Palamon or Arcite?”
A change came over Hilda’s face.
“That is Palamon; poor old Palamon. Arcite fulfilled his character by dying first.”
“And Darwin and Spencer?”
“Dead, too; Spencer was run over.”
“Poor old Palamon! Poor old dog!” Odd had lifted the dog in his arms, and was scratching the silky smooth ears as only a dog-lover knows how. Palamon’s head slowly turned to one side in an ecstasy of appreciation. Odd looked down at Hilda. Katherine was behind him. “Poor Palamon, ‘allone, withouten any companye.’” Hilda’s eyes met his in a sad, startled look, then she dropped them to Palamon, who was now putting out his tongue towards Odd’s face with grateful emotion.
“Yes,” she said gently, putting her hand caressinglyon the dog’s head; her slim, cold fingers just brushed Odd’s; “yes, poor Palamon.” She was silent, and there was silence behind them, for Katherine, with her usual good-humored tact, was examining the picture. The model on the sofa stretched her arms and yawned a long, scraping yawn. Palamon gave a short, brisk bark, and looked quickly and suspiciously round the studio. Both Odd and Hilda laughed.
“But not ‘allone,’ after all,” said Odd. “Is he a great deal with you? That is a different kind of company, but Palamon is the gainer.”
“We mustn’t judge Palamon by our own standards,” smiled Hilda, “though highly civilized dogs like him don’t show many social instincts towards their own kind. He did miss Arcite though, at first, I am sure; but he certainly is not lonely. I bring him here with me, and when I am at home he is always in my room. I think all the walking he gets is good for him. You see in what good condition he is.”
Palamon still showing signs of restlessness over the yawn, Odd put him down. He was evidently on cordial terms with the model, for he trotted affably toward her, standing with a lazy, smiling wave of the tail before her, while she addressed him with discreetly low-toned, whispering warmth as “Mon chou! Mon bijou! Mon petit lapin à la sauce blanche!”
“Don’t you get very tired working here all day?” Odd asked.
“Sometimes. But anything worth doing makes one tired, doesn’t it?”
“You take your art very seriously, Hilda?”
“Sometimes—yes—I take it seriously.” Hilda smiled her slight, reserved smile.
“Well, I can’t blame you; you really have something to say.”
“Hilda, I am afraid we are becomingde trop. I must carry you off, Mr. Odd. Hilda’s moments are golden.”
“That is a sisterly exaggeration,” said Hilda. Had all her personality gone into her pictures? was she a self-centred little egotist? Odd wondered, as he and Katherine walked away together. Katherine’s warmly human qualities seemed particularly consoling after the chill of the abstract one felt in Hilda’s studio.
“Peter, she is a nice, a clever, a delightful girl,” said Mary Apswith.
Mrs. Apswith sat in a bright little salon overlooking the Rue de la Paix. For her holiday week of shopping Peter’s hotel was not central enough, but Peter himself was at her command from morning till night. He stood before her now, his back to the flaming logs in the fireplace, looking alternately down at his boots and up at his sister. Peter’s face wore an amused but pleasant smile. Katherine must certainly be nice, clever, and delightful, to have won Mary, usually so slow in friendship.
“Whether she is deep—deeply good, I mean—I don’t know; one can’t tell. But, at all events, she is sincere to the core.” Mary had called on the Archinards some days ago, and had seen Katherine every day since then.
Mary’s stateliness had not become buxom. The fine lines of her face had lost their former touch of heaviness. Her gray hair—grayer than Peter’s—and fresh skin gave her a look of merely perfected maturity. Life had gone well with her; everybody said that; yet Mary knew the sadness of life. She had lost two of her babies, and sorrow had softened, ripened her. The Mary of ten years ago had not had that tender look in her eyes, those lines of sympatheticsensibility about the lips. Her decisively friendly sentence was followed by a little sigh of disapprobation.
“As for Hilda!”
“As for Hilda?”
“I am disappointed, Peter. Yes; we went to her studio this morning; Katherine took me there; Katherine’s pride in her is pretty. Yes; I suppose the pictures are very clever, if one likes those rather misty things. They look as though they were painted in the back drawing-room behind the sofa!” Peter laughed. “I don’t pretend to know. I supposeau fondI am a Philistine, with a craving for a story on the canvas. I don’t really appreciate Whistler, so of course I haven’t a right to an opinion at all. But however clever they may be, I don’t think those pictures should fill her life to the exclusion ofeverything. The girl owes a duty to herself; I don’t speak of her duty to others. I have no patience with Mrs. Archinard, she is simply insufferable! Katherine’s patience with her is admirable; but Hilda is completely one-sided, and she is not great enough for that. But she will fancy herself great before long. Lady—— told me that she was never seen with her sister—there is that cut off, you see—how natural that they should go out together! Of course she will grow morbidly egotistic, people who never meet other people always do; they fancy themselves grandly misunderstood. So unhealthy, too! She looked like a ghost.”
“Poor little Hilda! She probably fancies an artist’s mission the highest. Perhaps it is, Mary.”
“Not in a woman’s case”—Mrs. Apswith spokewith a vigorous decision that would have stamped her with ignominy in the eyes of the perhaps mythical New Woman; “woman’s art is never serious enough for heroics.”
“Perhaps it would be, if they would show a consistent heroism for it.” Peter opposed Mary for the sake of the argument, and for the sake of an old loyalty.Au fondhe agreed with her.
“A female Palissy would revolutionize our ideas of woman’s art.”
“A pleasant creature she would be! Tearing up the flooring and breaking the chairs for firewood! An abominable desecration of the housewifely instincts! I don’t know what Allan Hope will do about it,” Mary pursued.
“Ah! That is an accepted fact, then?”
“Dear me, yes. Lady Mainwaring is very anxious for it. It shows what Allan’s steady persistency has accomplished. The child hasn’t a penny, you know.”
“You think she’d have him?”
“Of course she will have him. And a lucky girl she is for the chance! But, before the definite acceptance, she will, of course, lead him the usual dance; it’s quite the thing now among girls of that type. Individuality; their own life to be lived, their Art—in capitals—to be lived for; home, husband, children, degrading impediments. Such tiresome rubbish! I am very sorry for poor Allan.” Peter studied his boots.
“Allan probably accounts for that general absent-mindedness I observed in her; perhaps Allan accounts for more than we give her credit for; this desperate devotion to her painting, her last struggleto hold to her ideal. Really the theory that she is badly in love explains everything. Poor child!”
“Why poor, Peter? Allan Hope is certainly the very nicest man I know, barring yourself and Jack. He has done more than creditably in the House, and now that he is already on the Treasury Bench, has only to wait for indefinite promotion. He is clever, kind, honest as the day. He will be an earl when the dear old earl dies, and that that is a pretty frame to the picture no one can deny. What more can a girl ask?”
“This girl probably asks some impossible dream. I’m sorry for people who haven’t done dreaming.”
“Between you and me, Peter, I don’t think Hilda is really clever enough to do much dreaming—of the pathetic sort. Her eyes are clever; she sees things prettily, and puts them down prettily; but there is nothing more. She struck me as a trifle stupid—really dull, you know.”
Odd shifted his position uncomfortably.
“That may be shyness, reserve, inability for self-expression.” He leaned his arm on the mantelpiece and studied the fire with a puzzled frown. “That exquisite face mustmeansomething.”
“I don’t know. By the law of compensation Katherine has the brains, the heart, and Hilda the beauty.Ididn’t find her shy. She seemed perfectly mistress of herself. It may be a case of absorption in her love affair, as you say. I am not sure that he has asked her yet. He is a most modest lover.”
Mary saw a great deal of Katherine during her stay, and her first impression was strengthened.
Katherine shopped with her; they considered gowns together. Katherine’s taste was exquisite, and the bonnets of her choice the most becoming Mrs. Apswith had ever worn. The girl was not above liking pretty things—that was already nice in her—for the girl was clever enough to pose indifference. Mary saw at once that she was clever. Katherine was very independent, but very attentive. Her sincerity was charmingly gay, and not priggish. She said just what she thought; but she thought things that were worth saying. She made little display of learning, but one felt it—like the silk lining in a plain serge gown. She did not talk too much; she made Mrs. Apswith feel like talking. Mary took her twice to the play with Peter and herself. Hilda was once invited and came. Odd sat in the back of the box and watched for the effect on her face of the clever play interpreted by the best talent of the Théâtre Français. The quiet absorption of her look might imply much intelligent appreciation; but Katherine’s little ripples of glad enjoyment, clever little thrusts of criticism, made Hilda’s silence seem peculiarly impassive, and while between the acts Katherine analyzed keenly, woke a scintillating sense of intellectual enjoyment about her in flashes of gay discussion, Hilda sat listening with that same smile of admiration that almost irritated Odd by its seeming acceptance of inability—inferiority.
The smile, from its very lack of all self-reference, was rather touching; and Mary owned that Hilda was “sweet,” but the adjective did not mitigate the former severity of judgment—that was definite.
When Mary went, she begged Katherine to accept the prettiest gown Doucet could make her, and Katherine accepted with graceful ease and frankness. The gown was exquisite. Mary sent to Hilda a fine Braun photograph, which Hilda received with surprised delight, for she had done nothing to make Mrs. Apswith’s stay in Paris pleasant. She thought such kindness touching, and Katherine’s gown the loveliest she had ever seen.
MARY gone, the bicycling tête-à-têtes were resumed, and Odd, too, began to call more frequently at the houses where he met Katherine. They were bon camarades in the best sense of the term, and Peter found it a very pleasant sense. He realized that he had been lonely, and loneliness in his present désœuvrée condition would have been intolerable. The melancholy of laziness could not creep to him while this girl laughed beside him. The frank, sympathetic relation—almost that of man to man—was untouched by the faintest infusion of sentiment; delicious breeziness and freedom of intercourse was the result. Peter listened to Katherine, laughed at her sometimes, and liked her to laugh at him. He told her a good many of his thoughts; she criticised them, approved of them, encouraged him to action. But Odd felt his present contemplativeness too wide to be limited by any affirmation. He had never felt so little sure of anything nor so conscious of everything in general. Writing in such a mood seemed folly, and he continued to drift. He still read in an objectless way at the Bibliothèque, hunting out old references, pleasing himself by a circuit through the points of view of all times. Katherine offered to help him, and in the morning he would bring her his notes tolook over; her quick comprehension formed another link. He was very sorry for Katherine too. She had no taste for drifting. In her eye he read a dissatisfaction, a thirst for wider vision, wider action, a restless impatience with the narrowness, the ineffectiveness of her lot, that made him muse on her probable future with a sense of pathos. Hilda’s wide gaze showed no such rebellion with the actual; her art had filled it with a distant content that shut strife and the defeat of yearnings from her: or was it merely the placid consciousness of Allan Hope—a future assured and fully satisfactory? Under Katherine’s gayety there was a fierce beating of caged wings, and Odd fancied at times that, freed, the imprisoned birds might be strong and beautiful. He fancied this especially when she played to him; she played well, with surprising sureness of taste, and, as the winter came and it grew too cold for bicycling, Peter often spent the morning in listening to her. Mrs. Archinard did not appear until the afternoon in the drawing-room, and in the evenings he usually met her dining out or at some reception; their intimacy once noticed, they were invited together. Lady—— was especially anxious that Odd should have every opportunity for meeting her favorite.
But with all this intimacy, to Peter’s consciousness thoroughly, paternally platonic, under all its daily interests and quiet pleasure lay a half-felt hurt, a sense of injury and loss. The little voice, seldom thought of during the last ten years, now repeated often: “But you will be different; I will be different; we will both be changed.”
Captain Archinard returned from the Riviera ina temper that could mean but one thing; he had gambled at Monte Carlo, and he had lost. He did not mention the fact in the family circle; indeed, by a tacit agreement, money matters were never alluded to before Mrs. Archinard. Her years of successful invalidism had compelled even her husband’s acquiescence in the decision early arrived at by Hilda and Katherine: mamma must be spared the torments to which they had grown accustomed. But to Katherine the Captain freed his querulous soul, never to Hilda. There was a look in Hilda’s eyes that made the Captain very uncomfortable, very angry; conscious of those cases of wonderful champagne, the races, the clubs, the boxes at the play, and all the infinite array of his wardrobe—a sad, wondering look. Katherine’s scoldings were far preferable, for Katherine was not so devilish superior to human weaknesses; she had plenty of unpaid bills on her own conscience, and understood the necessities of an aristocratic taste. He and Katherine had their little secrets, and were mutually on the defensive. Hilda never criticised, to be sure, but her very difference was a daily criticism. The Captain thought his younger daughter rather dull; Katherine, of finer calibre than her father, admired such dulness, and found some difficulty in stilling self-reproachful comparisons; temperament, circumstance, made a comforting philosophy. And then Hilda’s art made things easy for Hilda; with such a refuge, would she, Katherine, ask for more? Katherine rather wondered now, after her father’s exasperated recountal of ill-luck, where papa had got the money to lose; but papa on this point wasprudently reticent, and borrowed two one-hundred-franc notes from Peter while the latter waited in the drawing-room for Katherine one morning.
Katherine and her father were making a round of calls one day, and the Captain stopped at his bank to cash a check. Katherine stood beside him, and, although he manœuvred concealment with hand and shoulder, her keen eyes read the name.
Her mouth was stern as they walked away—the Captain had folded the notes and put them in his pocket.
“A good deal of money that, papa.”
“I suppose I owe twice as much to my tailor,” Captain Archinard replied, with irritation.
“Has Mr. Odd lent you money before this?”
“I really don’t know that Mr. Odd’s affairs—or mine—are any business of yours, Katherine.”
“Yours certainly are, papa. When a father puts his daughter in a false position, his affairs decidedly become her business.”
“What rubbish, Katherine. Better men than Odd have been glad to give me a lift. I can’t see that Odd has been ill-used. He is rolling in money.”
“I don’t quite believe that, papa. Allersley is not such a rich property. But it is not of Mr. Odd’s ill-usage I complain, it is of mine; for if this borrowing goes on, I hardly think I can continue my relations with Mr. Odd. It would rather look like—decoying.”
The Captain stopped and fixed a look of futile dignity on his daughter.
“That’s a strange word for you to use, Katherine.I would horsewhip the man who would suggest it. Odd is a gentleman.”
“Decidedly. I did not speak of his point of view but of mine. All frankness of intercourse between us is impossible if you are going to sponge on him.”
“Katherine! I can’t allow such impertinence! Outrageous! It really is! Sponge! Can’t a man borrow a few paltry hundreds from another without exposing himself to such insulting language?—especially as Odd is to become my son-in-law, I suppose. He is always hanging about you.”
“That is what I meant, papa.” Katherine’s tone was icy. “Your suppositions were apparent to me, you drain Mr. Odd on the strength of them. Borrow from any one else you like as much as you can get, but, if you have any self-respect, you won’t borrow from Mr. Odd in the hope that I will marry him.”
“Devilish impertinent! Upon my word, devilish impertinent!” the Captain muttered. He drew out his cigar-case with a hand that trembled. Katherine’s bitter look was very unpleasant.
Katherine expected Odd the next morning; he was reading a manuscript to her, and would come early.
She was waiting for him at ten. She had put on her oldest dress. The severe black lines, a silk sash, knotted at the side, suggested a soutane—the slim buckled shoes with their square tips carried out the monastic effect, and Katherine’s strong young face was cold and stern.
“Shall we put off our work for a little while? I want to speak to you,” she said, after Odd had come, and greetings had passed between them.
“Shall we? You have been too patient all along, Miss Archinard.” Odd smiled down at her as he held her hand. “You make me feel that I have been driving you—arrantly egotistic.”
“No; I like our work immensely, as you know.” Katherine remained standing by the fireplace. She leaned her arm on the mantelpiece, and turned her head to look directly at him. “I am not at all happy this morning, Mr. Odd.” Odd’s kind eyes showed an almost boyish dismay.
“What is it? Can I help you?” His tone was all sympathetic anxiety and friendly warmth.
“No; just the contrary. Mr. Odd, I am ashamed that you should have seen the depths of our poverty. It is not a poverty one can be proud of. Poverty to be honorable must work, and must not borrow.”
Odd flushed.
“You exaggerate,” he said, but he liked her for the exaggeration.
“I did not know till yesterday that papa owed to you his Riviera trip.”
“Really, Katherine”—he had not used her name before, it came now most naturally with this new sense of intimacy—“you mustn’t misunderstand, misjudge your father. He couldn’t work; his life has unfitted him for it; it would be a false pride that would make him hesitate to ask an old friend for a loan; an old friend so well able to lend as I am. You women judge these things far too loftily.” And Peter liked her for the loftiness.
“Would you mind telling me how much you lent him last time? I was with him when he cashed the check. I saw the name, not the amount.”
“It was nothing of any importance,” said Odd shortly. He exaggerated now. The Captain had told him that the furniture would be seized unless some creditors were satisfied, and, with a very decided hint as to the inadvisability of another trip for retrievement to the Riviera, Peter had given him the money, ten thousand francs; a sum certainly of importance, for Odd was no millionaire.
Katherine looked hard at him.
“You won’t tell me because you want to spare me.”
“My dear Katherine, I certainly want to spare you anything that would add a straw’s weight to your distress; you have no need, no right to shoulder this. It is your father’s affair—and mine. You must not give it another thought.”
“That is so easy!” Katherine clenched her hand on the mantelpiece. She was not given to vehemence of demonstration; the little gesture showed a concentration of bitter rebellion. Odd, standing beside her, put his own hand over hers; patted it soothingly.
“It’s rather hard on me, you know, a slur on my friendship, that you should take a merely conventional obligation so to heart.”
Katherine now looked down into the fire.
“Take it to heart? What else have I had on my heart for years and years? It is a mere variation on the same theme, a little more poignantly painful than usual, that is all! What a life to lead. What a future to look forward to. I wonder what else I shall have to endure.” Odd had never seen her before in this mood of fierce hopelessness.
“Our poverty has poisoned everything, everything. I have had no youth, no happiness. Every moment of forgetfulness means redoubled keenness of gnawing anxiety. Debts! Duns! harassing, sordid cares that drag one down. Mr. Odd, I have had to coax butchers and bakers; I have had to plead with horrible men with documents of all varieties! I have had to pawn my trinkets, and all with surface gayety; everything must be kept from mamma, and papa’s extravagance is incorrigible.”
Odd was all grave amazement, grave pity, and admiration.
“You are a brave woman, Katherine.”
“No, no; I am not brave. I am frightened—frightened to death sometimes. I see before me either a hideous struggle with want or—amariage de convenance. I have none of the classified, pigeon-holed knowledge one needs nowadays to become a teaching drudge, and I can’t make up my mind to sell myself, though, in spite of my lack of beauty and lack of money, that means of escape has often presented itself. I have had many offers of marriage. Only Ican’t.”
Odd was silent under the stress of a new thought, an entirely new thought.
“For Hilda I have no fear,” Katherine continued, still speaking with the same steady quiet voice, still looking into the fire. “In the past her art has absorbed and protected her, and her future is assured. She will marry a good husband.” A flash as of Hilda’s beauty crossed the growing definiteness of Peter’s new thought. That old undoing, that mirage of beauty; he put it aside with some self-disgust,feeling, as he did so, a queer sense of impersonality as though putting away himself as he put away his weakness. He seemed to contemplate himself from an outside aloofness of observation. The trance-like feeling of the illusion of all things which he had felt more than once of late made him hold more firmly to the tonic thought of a fine common-sense.
“Of course, mamma will be safe when Hilda is Lady Hope,” Katherine said; “perhaps I shall be forced to accept the same charity.” Her voice broke a little, and she turned the sombre revolt of her look on Peter; her eyes were full of tears.
“Katherine,” he said, “will you marry me?”
Odd, five minutes before, had not had the remotest idea that he would ask Katherine Archinard to be his wife. Yet one could hardly call the sudden decision that had brought the words to his lips, impulsive. While Katherine spoke, the bitter struggle of the fine young life, surely meant for highest things; the courage of the cheerfulness she never before had failed in; the pride of that repulsion for the often offered solution to her difficulties—a solution many women would have accepted with a sense of the inevitable—became admirably apparent to Odd. Their mutual sympathy and good-fellowship and, almost unconsciously, Hilda’s assured future—Allan Hope—had defined the thought. He felt none of that passion which, now that he looked back on it, made of the miserable year of married life that followed but the logical retribution of its reckless and wilful blindness. The very lack of passion now seemed an added surety of better things. His lifewith Katherine could count on all that his life with Alicia had failed in. He did not reason on that unexcited sense of impersonality and detachment. He would like her to accept him. He would like to help this fine, proud young creature; he would like sympathetic companionship. He was sure of that. He had not surprised Katherine; she had seen, as clearly as he now saw, what Peter Odd would do. She had not exactly intended to bring him to a realization of this by the morning’s confession, for on the whole Katherine had been perfectly sincere in all that she had said, but she felt that she could rely on no better opportunity. Now she only turned her head towards him, without moving from her position before the fireplace. Katherine never took the trouble to act. She merely aimed at the most advantageous line of conduct and let taste and instinct lead her. Her taste now told her that quiet sincerity was very suitable; she felt, too, a most sincere little dash of proud hesitation.
“Are you generously offering me another form of charity, Mr. Odd? My distress was not conscious of an appeal.”
“You know your own value too well, Katherine, to ask me that.Iappeal.”
“Yet the apropos of your offer makes me smart. Another joy of poverty. One can’t trust.”
“It was apropos because a man who loves you would not see you suffer needlessly.” Peter, too, was sincere; he did not say “loved.”
“Shall I let you suffer needlessly?” asked Katherine, smiling a little. “I sha’n’t, if that implies that you love me.”
“Suppose I do. And suppose I stand on my dignity. Pretend to distrust your motives. Refuse to be married out of pity?”
“That sort of false dignity wouldn’t suit you; you have too much of the real.”
“Would you be good to me, Mr. Odd?”
“Very, very good, Katherine.”
Odd took her hand and kissed it, and Katherine’s smile shone out in all its frank gayety. “I think I can make you happy, dear.”
“I think you can, Mr. Odd.”
“You must manage ‘Peter’ now.”
“I think you can, Peter,” Katherine said obediently.
“And Katherine—I would not have dared say this before, you would have flung it back at me as bribery—but I can give you weapons.”
“Yes, I shall be able to fight now.” She looked up at him with her charming smile. “And you will help me, you must fight too. You must be great, Peter, great,great!”
“With such a fiery little engine throbbing beside my laggard bulk, I shall probably be towed into all sorts of combats and come off victorious.”
They sat down side by side on the sofa. Katherine was a delightfully comfortable person; no change, but a pleasant development of relation seemed to have occurred.
“You won’t expect any flaming protestations, will you, Katherine,” said Peter; “I was never good at that sort of thing.”
“Did you never flame, then?”
“I fancy I flamed out in about two months—along time ago; that is about the natural life of the feeling.”
“And you bring me ashes,” said Katherine, rallying him with her smile.
“You mustn’t tease me, Katherine,” said Peter. He found her very dear, and kissed her hand again.
“Well, Hilda, we have some news for you!” With these words, spoken in the triumphant tone of the news-breaker, the Captain greeted his daughter as she came into the drawing-room at half-past six. Odd had been paying his respects to his future parents-in-law, and was sitting near Mrs. Archinard’s sofa. He rose to his feet as Hilda entered and looked at her, smiling a trifle nervously.
“Guess what has happened, my dear,” said the Captain, whose good humor was apparent, while Mrs. Archinard murmured, “Shewould never guess. Hilda, only look at your hat in the mirror.” It was windy, and Hilda’s shabby little hat was on the back of her head.
“What must I guess? Is it about you?” she asked, turning her sweet bewildered eyes from Odd to her father, to her mother, and back to Odd again.
“Yes, about me and another person.”
“You are going to marry Katherine!” Her eyes dilated and their sweetness deepened to a smile; “you are going to marry Katherine, thatmustbe it.”
“That is it, Hilda. Congratulate me.” He took her hands in his and kissed her. “Welcome me, and tell me you are glad.”
“Oh! I am very glad. I welcome you. I congratulate you!”
“You will like your brother?”
“A brother is dearer than a friend, and you have always been a friend, haven’t you, Mr. Odd?”
“Always, always, Hilda; I didn’t know that you realized it.”
“Didyourealize it?”
“DidI, my dear Hilda! I did, I do, I always will.” Hilda’s face seemed subtly irradiated. Her listless look of pallor had brightened wonderfully. No one could have said that the lovely face was dull with this sudden change upon it. Peter felt that he himself was grave in comparison.
“And I am going to claim all a brother’s rights immediately, Hilda.”
“What are a brother’s rights?”
“I am going to look after you, to scold you, to see you don’t overwork yourself.”
“I give you leave, but you mustn’t presumetoomuch on the new rights.”
“Ah! but I have old ones as well.”
“You mustn’t be tyrannical!” she still laughed gently as she withdrew her hands; “I must go and see Katherine.”
“Yes, go and dress now, Hilda.” Mrs. Archinard spoke from the sofa, having watched the scene with a slight air of injury; Hilda’s unwonted gayety constituted a certain grievance. “Mr. Odd dines with us, and I really can’t bear to see you in that costume. The skirt especially is really ludicrous, my dear. I am glad that I don’t see you walking through the streets in it.”
“Hilda knows that her feet bear showing,” remarked the Captain, crossing his own with complacency; “she has her mother’s foot in size and mine in make—the Archinard foot; narrow, arched instep, and small heel.
“Really, Charles, I think the Maxwells will bear the comparison!” Mrs. Archinard, though she smiled, looked distinctly distressed.
Hilda found her sister before the long mirror in her room, Taylor fastening the nasturtium velvet. Katherine always had a commanding air, and it was quite regally apparent to-night; all things seemed made to serve her, and Taylor’s crouching attitude symbolic.
Hilda put her arms around her neck.
“My dear, dear Kathy, I am so glad! To think that good thingsdocome true!”
“You like my choice, pet?”
“Noone else would have done,” cried Hilda; “he is the only man I ever saw whom I could have thought of for you. Why, Katherine, from that first day when you told me you had met him at the dinner, Iknewit would happen.”
“Yes, I certainly felt a prophetic sense of proprietorship from the first,” Katherine owned musingly. She looked over her sister’s shoulder at the fine outline of her own head and neck in the glass.
“Aren’t you rather splashed and muddy, pet? Poor people can’t afford an affection that puts their velvet gowns in danger. There, I mustn’t rumple my lace.”
“I haven’t hurt, have I?” Hilda stood back hastily. “I forgot, Iamrather muddy. And, Katherine, you will help one another so much; that makes it so ideal.”
“Idealistic little Hilda!”
“But that is evident, isn’t it? You with all your energy and cleverness and generalsanity, and he so widely sympathetic that he is a bit impersonal. I mean that he doubts himself because he doubts everything rather; he sees how relative everything is; he probably thinks too much; I am sure that is dangerous. You will make him act.”
“I am to be the concrete to his abstract. He certainly does lack energy. I wonder if even I shall be able to prod him into initiative.”
Katherine patted down the fine old lace that edged her bodice, and looked a smiling question from her own reflection in the mirror to her sister. “Suppose I fail to arouse him.”
“You will understand him. He will have something to live for; that is what he needs. He won’t be able to say, ‘Is it worth while?’ aboutyourhappiness. As for initiative, you will probably have to have that for both. After all, he has made his name and place. He has the nicest kind of fame; the more apparent sort made up by the admiration of mediocrities isn’t half as nice.”
“Ah, pet, you are an intellectual aristocrat. Mypâteis coarser. I like the real thing; the donkey’s brayings make a noise, and one must take the whole world with all its donkeys conscious of one, to be famous. I like noise.” Katherine smiled as she spoke, and Hilda smiled, too, a little smile of humorous comprehension, for she did not take Katherine in this mood at all seriously. She was as stanch in her belief of Katherine’s ideals as she was in sticking to her own.
“We will be married in March,” said Katherine, pausing before her dressing-table to put on her rings—a fine antique engraved gem and a splendid opal. “You may go, Taylor; and Taylor, you may put out my opera-cloak after dinner. I think, Hilda, I will go to the opera; papa has a box. He and I and Peter might care about dropping in for the last two acts. You don’t care to come, do you?”
“Well, mamma expects me to read to her; it’s a charming book, too,” added Hilda, with tactful delicacy.
“Well, I shall envy you your quiet evening. I can’t ask Peter to spend his here in the bosom of my family. Yes, March, I think, unless I decide on making that round of visits in England; that would put it off for a month. I hope the ravens will fetch me a trousseau—for I don’t know who else will.”
“I shall have quite a lot by that time, Katherine. I haven’t heard from the dealer in London yet, but those two pictures will sell, I hope. And, at all events, with the other things, you know, I shall have about a hundred pounds.”
Katherine flushed a little when Hilda spoke of “other things,” and looked round at her sister.
“Ihateto think of taking the money, Hilda.”
“My dear, why should you? Except, of course—the debts,” Hilda sighed deeply: “but I think onthisoccasion you have a right to forget them.” Katherine’s flush perhaps showed a consciousness of having forgotten the debts on many occasions less pressing.
“I meant, in particular, taking the money from you.”
Hilda opened her wide eyes to their widest.
“Kathy! as if it were not my pleasure! my joy! I am lucky to be able to get it for you.Canyou get a trousseau for that much, Kathy?”
“Well, linen, yes. I don’t care how little I get, but it must be good—good lace. I shall manage; I don’t care about gowns, I can get them afterwards. Peter, I know, will be an indulgent husband.” A pleasant little smile flickered across Katherine’s lips. “Heisa dear! I only hope, pet, that you will be able to hold on to the money. Don’t let the duns worry it out of you!” The weary, pallid look came to Hilda’s face.
“I’ll try, Kathy dear. I’ll do my very best.”
“My precious Hilda! You need not tell methat!Run quickly and dress, dear, it must be almost dinner-time. Whathaveyou to wear? Shall I lend you anything?”
“Why, you forgot my gray silk! My fichu! Insulting Kathy!”
“So I did! And you look deliciously pretty in that dress, though shedidmake a fiasco of the back; let the fichu come well down over it. You really shouldn’t indulge your passion forpetites couturières, child. It doesn’t pay.”
ODD climbed the long flight of stairs that led to Hilda’s studio. The concièrge below at the entrance to the court had looked at him with the sourness common to her class, as she stood spaciously in her door. The gentleman had, evidently, definite intentions, for he had asked her no questions, and Madame Prinet felt his independence as a slur upon her Cerberus qualifications.
Odd was putting into practice his brotherly principles. He had spent the morning with Katherine—the fifth morning since their engagement—and time hanging unemployed and heavy on his hands this afternoon, a visit to Hilda seemed altogether desirable. It really behoved him to solve Hilda’s dubious position and, if possible, help her to a more normal outlook; he felt the task far more feasible since that glimpse of gayety and confidence. Indeed he was quite unconscious of Madame Prinet’s suspicious observation as he crossed the court, and the absorption in his pleasant duty held his mind while he wound up the interminable staircase.
His knock at Hilda’s door—there was no mistaking it, for a card bearing her name was neatly nailed thereon—was promptly answered, and Odd found himself face to face with a middle-aged maidenof the artistic type with which Paris swarms; thin, gray-haired, energetic eyes behind eyeglasses, and a huge palette on her arm, so huge that it gave Odd the impression of a misshapen table and blocked the distance out with its brave array of color. Over the lady’s shoulder, Odd caught sight of a canvas of heroic proportions.
“Oh! I thought it was the concièrge,” said the artist, evidently disappointed; “have you come to the right door? I don’t think I know you.”
“No; I don’t know you,” Odd replied, smiling and casting a futile glance around the studio, now fully revealed by the shifting of the palette to a horizontal position.
“I expected to find Miss Archinard. Are you working with her? Will she be back presently?”
The gray-haired lady smiled an answering and explanatory smile.
“Miss Archinard rents me her studio in the afternoon. She only uses it in the morning; she is never here in the afternoon.”
Odd felt a huge astonishment.
“Never here?”
“No; can I give her any message? I shall probably see her tomorrow if I come early enough.”
“Oh no, thanks. Thanks very much.” He realized that to reveal his dismay would stamp Hilda with an unpleasantly mysterious character.
“I shall see her this evening—at her mother’s. I am sorry to have interrupted you.”
“Oh! Don’t mention it!” The gray-haired lady still smiled kindly; Peter touched his hat and descended the stairs. Perhaps she worked in a largeatelier in the afternoon; strange that she had never mentioned it.
Madame Prinet, who had followed the visitor to the foot of the staircase and had located his errand, now stood in her door and surveyed his retreat with a fine air of impartiality; people who consulted her need not mount staircases for nothing.
“Monsieur did not find Mademoiselle.”
Odd paused; he certainly would ask no questions of the concièrge, but she might, of her own accord, throw some light on Hilda’s devious ways.
“No; I had hoped to find her. Mademoiselle was in when I last called with her sister. I did not know that she went out every afternoon.”
Odd thought this tactful, implying, as it did, that Miss Archinard’s friends were not in ignorance of her habits.
“Every afternoon, monsieur;elle et son chien.”
“Ah, indeed!” Odd wished her good day and walked off. He had stumbled upon a mystery only Hilda herself might divulge: it might be very simple, and yet a sense of anxiety weighed upon him.
At five he went to call on a pleasant and pretty woman, an American, who lived in the Boulevard Haussmann. He was to dine with the Archinards, and Katherine had said she might meet him at Mrs. Pope’s; if she were not there by five he need not wait for her. She was not there, and Mr. Pope took possession of him on his entrance and led him into the library to show him some new acquisitions in bindings. Mrs. Pope was not a grass widow, and her husband, a desultory dilettante, was always in evidence in her graceful, crowded salon. He was a verytall, thin man, with white hair and a mild, almost timid manner, dashed with the collector’s eagerness.
“Now, Mr. Odd, I have a treasure here; really a perfect treasure. A genuine Grolier; I captured it at the La Hire sale. Just look here, please; come to the light. Isn’t that a beauty?”
Mrs. Pope, after a time, came and captured Peter; she did not approve of the hiding of her lion in the library. She took him into the drawing-room, where a great many people were drinking tea and talking, and he was passed dexterously from group to group; Mrs. Pope, gay and stout, shuffling the pack and generously giving every one a glimpse of her trump. It was a fatiguing process, and he was glad to find himself at last in Mrs. Pope’s undivided possession. He was sitting on a sofa beside her, talking and drinking a well-concocted cup of tea, when a picture on the opposite wall attracted his attention. He put down the cup of tea and put up his eyeglasses to look at it. A woman in a dress of Japanese blue, holding a paper fan; pink azaleas in the foreground. The decorative outline and the peculiar tonality made it unmistakable. He got up to look more closely. Yes, there was the delicate flowing signature: “Hilda Archinard.”
He turned to Mrs. Pope in pleased surprise.
“I didn’t know that Hilda had reached this degree of popularity. You are very lucky. Did she give it to you?”
Katherine’s engagement was generally known, and Mrs. Pope reproached herself for having failed to draw Mr. Odd’s attention before this to the work of his future sister.
“Oh no; she is altogether too distinguished a little person to give away her pictures. That was in the Champs de Mars last year. I bought it. The two others sold as well. I believe she sells most of her things; for high prices, too. Always the way, you know; a starving genius is allowed to starve, but material success comes to a pretty girl who doesn’t need it. Katherine is so well known in Paris that Hilda’s public was already made for her; there was no waiting for the appreciation that is her due. Her work is certainly charming.”
Peter felt a growing sense of anxiety. He could not share Mrs. Pope’s feeling of easy pleasantness. Hildadidneed it. Certainly there was nothing pathetic in doing what she liked best and making money at it. Yet he wondered just how far Hilda’s earnings helped the family; kept the butcher and baker at bay. With a new keenness of conjecture he thought of the black serge dress; somewhere about Hilda’s artistic indifference there might well lurk a tragic element. Did she not really care to wear the amethyst velvets that her earnings perhaps went to provide? The vague distress that had never left him since his first disappointment at the Embassy dinner, that the afternoon’s discovery at the atelier had sharpened, now became acute.
“I always think it such a pretty compensation of Providence,” said Mrs. Pope, gracefully anxious to please, “that all the talent that Hilda Archinard expresses, puts on her canvas, is more personal in Katherine; is part of herself as it were, like a perfume about her.”
“Yes,” said Odd rather dully, not particularly pleased with the comparison.
“She is such a brilliant girl,” Mrs. Pope added, “such a splendid character. I can’t tell you how it delighted me to hear that Katherine had at last found the rare some one who could really appreciate her. It strengthened my pet theory of the fundamental fitness of things.”
“Yes,” Odd repeated, so vaguely that Mrs. Pope hurriedly wondered if she had been guilty of bad taste, and changed the subject.
When Peter reached the Archinards’ at half-past six that evening, he found the Captain and Mrs. Archinard alone in the drawing-room.
“Hilda not in yet?” he asked. His anxiety was so oppressive that he really could not forbear opening the old subject of grievance. Indeed, Odd fancied that in Mrs. Archinard’s jeremiads there was an element of maternal solicitude. That Hilda should voluntarily immolate herself, have no pretty dresses, show herself nowhere—these facts perhaps moved Mrs. Archinard as much as her own neglected condition. At least, so Peter charitably hoped, feeling almost cruel as he deliberately broached the painful subject.
Mrs. Archinard now gave a dismal sigh, and the Captain shook his head impatiently as he put downLe Temps.
Odd went on quite doggedly—
“I didn’t know that Hilda sold her pictures. I saw one of them at Mrs. Pope’s this afternoon.”
There could certainly be no indiscretion in thestatement, for Mrs. Pope herself had mentioned the fact of Hilda’s success as well known. Indeed, although the Captain’s face showed an uneasy little change, Mrs. Archinard’s retained its undisturbed pathos.
“Yes,” she said, “oh yes, Hilda has sold several things, I believe. She certainly needs the money. We are notrichpeople, Peter.” Mrs. Archinard had immediately adopted the affectionate intimacy of the Christian name. “And we could hardly indulge Hilda in her artistic career if, to some extent, she did not help herself. I fancy that Hilda makes few demands on her papa’s purse, and she must have many expenses. Models are expensive things, I hear. I cannot say that I rejoice in her success. It seems to justify her obstinacy—makes her independent of our desires—our requests.”
Odd felt that there was a depth of selfish ignorance in these remarks. The Captain’s purse he knew by experience to be very nearly mythical, and the Captain’s expression at this moment showed to Peter’s sharpened apprehension an uncomfortable consciousness. Peter was convinced that, far from making demands on papa’s purse, Hilda had replenished it, and further conjectures as to Hilda’s egotistic one-sidedness began to shape themselves.