CHAPTER XIV
MRS. CARFAX FINISHES HER KNITTING
It was a curious coincidence that Mrs. Carfax should have come to the end of her white wool that night, put her pins aside and left her work unfinished.
It was the last time that Eve heard the familiar clicking of the ivory pins, for Mrs. Carfax died quietly in her sleep, and was found with a placid smile on her face, her white hair neatly parted into two plaits, and her hands lying folded on the coverlet. She had died like a child, dreaming, and smiling in the midst of her dreams.
For the moment Eve was incredulous as she bent over the bed, for her mother’s face looked so fresh and tranquil. Then the truth came to her, and she stood there, shocked and inarticulate, trying to realise what had happened. Sudden and poignant memories rose up and stung her. She remembered that she had almost despised the little old lady who lay there so quietly, and now, in death, she saw her as the child, a pathetic creature who had never escaped from a futile childishness, who had never known the greater anguish and the greater joys of those whose souls drink of the deep waters. A great pity swept Eve away, a choking compassion, an inarticulate remorse. She was conscious of sudden loneliness. All the memories of long ago, evoked by the dead face, rose up and wounded her. She knelt down, hid her face against the pillow, uttering in her heart that most human cry of “Mother.”
Canterton was strangely restless that morning. Up at six, he wandered about the gardens and nurseries, and Lavender, who came to him about some special work that had to be done in one of the glasshouses, found him absent and vague. The life of the day seemed in abeyance, remaining poised at yesterday, when the moon hung over the black ridge of the fir woods by Orchards Corner. Daylight had come, but Canterton was still in the moonlight, sitting in that chair on the dew-wet grass, dreaming, to be startled again by Eve’s sudden presence. He wondered what she had thought, whether she had suspected that he had been imagining her his wife, Orchards Corner their home, and he, the man, sitting there in the moonlight, while the woman he loved let down her dark hair before the mirror in their room.
If Lavender could not wake James Canterton, breakfast and Gertrude Canterton did. There were half a dozen of Gertrude’s friends staying in the house, serious women who had travelled with batches of pamphlets and earnest-minded magazines, and who could talk sociology even at breakfast. Canterton came in early and found Gertrude scribbling letters at the bureau in the window. None of her friends were down yet, and a maid was lighting the spirit lamps under the egg-boiler and the chafing dishes.
“Oh, James!”
“Yes.”
She was sitting in a glare of light, and Canterton was struck by the thinness of her neck, and the way her chin poked forward. She had done her hair in a hurry, and it looked streaky and meagre, and the colour of wet sand. And this sunny morning the physical repulsion she inspired in him came as a shock to his finer nature. It might be ungenerous, and even shameful, but he could not help considering her utter lack of feminine delicacy, and the hard, gaunt outlines of her face and figure.
“I want you to take Mrs. Grigg Batsby round the nurseries this morning. She is such an enthusiast.”
“I’ll see what time I have.”
“Do try to find time to oblige me sometimes. I don’t think you know how much work you make for me, especially when you find some eccentric way of insulting everybody at once.”
“What do you mean, Gertrude?”
The maid had left the room, and Gertrude Canterton half turned in her chair. Her shoulders were wriggling, and she kept fidgeting with her pen, rolling it to and fro between her thumb and forefinger.
“Can’t you imagine what people say when you put up wire fences, and have the gates locked on the day of our garden party?”
“Do you think that Whiteley would hold a party in his business premises?”
“Oh, don’t be so absurd! I wonder why people come here.”
“I really don’t know. Certainly not to look at the flowers.”
“Then why be so eccentrically offensive?”
“Because there are always a certain number of enthusiastic ladies who like to get something for nothing. I believe it is a feminine characteristic.”
Mrs. Grigg Batsby came sailing into the room, gracious as a great galleon freighted with the riches of Peru. She was an extremely wealthy person, and her consciousness of wealth shone like a golden lustre, a holy effulgence that penetrated into every corner. Her money had made her important, and filled her with a sort of after-dinner self-satisfaction. She issued commands with playful regality, ordered the clergy hither and thither, and had a half humorous and half stately way of referring to any male thing as “It.”
“My dear Mrs. Batsby, I have just asked James to take you round this morning.”
The lady rustled and beamed.
“And is ‘It’ agreeable? I have always heard that‘Its’ time is so precious.”
“James will be delighted.”
“Obliging thing.”
Canterton was reserved and a little stiff.
“I shall be ready at eleven. I can give you an hour, Mrs. Batsby.”
“‘It’ is really a humorist, Mrs. Canterton. That barbed wire! I don’t think I ever came across anything so delightfully original.”
Gertrude frowned and screwed her shoulders.
“I cannot see the humour.”
“But I think Mrs. Batsby does. I have a good many original plants on my premises.”
“Oh, you wicked, witty thing! And original sin?”
“Yes, it is still rather prevalent.”
There was no queen’s progress through the Fernhill grounds for Mrs. Grigg Batsby that morning, for by ten o’clock her very existence had been forgotten, and she was left reading theAthenæum, and wondering, with hauteur, what had become of the treacherous “It.” Women like Mrs. Grigg Batsby have a way of exacting as a right what the average man would not presume to ask as a favour. That they should happen to notice anything is in itself a sufficient honour conferred upon the recipient, who becomes a debtor to them in service.
Canterton had drifted in search of Eve, had failed to find her, and was posing himself with various questions, when one of the under-gardeners brought him a letter. It had taken the man twenty minutes of hide and seek to trace Canterton’s restless wanderings.
“Just come from Orchards Corner, sir. The young lady brought it.”
“Miss Carfax?”
“No, sir, the young lady.”
“I see. All right, Gibbs.”
Canterton opened the letter, and stood reading it in the shade of a row of cypresses.
“Dear Mr. Canterton,—Mother died in the night. She must have died in her sleep. I always knew it might happen, but I never suspected that it would happen so suddenly. It has numbed me, and yet made me think.“I wanted you to know why I did not come to-day.“Eve Carfax.”
“Dear Mr. Canterton,—Mother died in the night. She must have died in her sleep. I always knew it might happen, but I never suspected that it would happen so suddenly. It has numbed me, and yet made me think.
“I wanted you to know why I did not come to-day.
“Eve Carfax.”
Canterton stood stock still, his eyes staring at Eve’s letter. He was moved, strongly moved, as all big-hearted people must be by the sudden and capricious presence of Death. The little white-haired, chattering figure had seemed so much alive the night before, so far from the dark waters, with her child’s face and busy hands. And Eve had written to tell him the news, to warn him why she had not come to Fernhill. This letter of hers—it asked nothing, and yet its very muteness craved more than any words could ask. To Canterton it was full of many subtle and intimate messages. She wanted him to know why she had stayed away, though she did not ask him to come to her. She had let him know that she was stricken, and that was all.
He put the letter in his pocket, forgot about Mrs. Grigg Batsby, and started for Orchards Corner.
All the blinds were down, and the little house had a blank and puzzled look. The chair that he had used the previous night still stood in the middle of one of the lawns. Canterton opened and closed the gate noiselessly, and walked up the gravel path.
Eve herself came to the door. He had had a feeling that she had expected him to come to her, and when he looked into her eyes he knew that he had not been wrong. She was pale, and quite calm, though her eyes looked darker and more mysterious.
“Will you come in?”
There was no hesitation, no formalism. Each seemed to be obeying an inevitable impulse.
Canterton remained silent. Eve opened the door of the drawing-room, and he followed her. She sat down on one of the green plush chairs, and the dim light seemed part of the silence.
“I thought you might come.”
“Of course I came.”
He put his hat on the round table. Eve glanced round the room at the pictures, the furniture and the ornaments.
“I have been sitting here in this room. I came in here because I realised what a ghastly prig I have been at times. I wanted to be hurt—and hurt badly. Isn’t it wonderful how death strips off one’s conceit?”
He leant forward with his elbows on his knees, a listener—one who understood.
“How I used to hate these things, and to sneer at them. I called them Victorian, and felt superior. Tell me, what right have we ever to feel superior?”
“We are all guilty of that.”
“Guilty of despising other colour schemes that don’t tone with ours. I suppose each generation is more or less colour-blind in its sympathies. Why, she was just a child—just a child that had never grown up, and these were her toys. Oh, I understand it now! I understood it when I looked at her child’s face as she lay dead. The curse of being one of the clever little people!”
“You are not that.”
She lay back and covered her eyes with her hands. It was a still grief, the grief of a pride that humbles itself and makes no mere empty outcry.
Canterton watched her, still as a statue. But his eyes and mouth were alive, and within him the warm blood seemed to mount and tremble in his throat.
“I think she was quite happy.”
“Did I do very much?”
“She was very proud of you in her way. I could see that.”
“Don’t!”
“You are making things too deep, too difficult. You say, ‘She was just a child.’”
Her hands dropped from her face.
“Yes.”
“Your moods passed over her and were not noticed. Some people are not conscious of clouds.”
She mused.
“Yes, but that does not make me feel less guilty.”
“It might make you feel less bitter regret.”
Canterton sat back in his chair, spreading his shoulders and drawing in a deep breath.
“Have you wired to your relatives?”
“They don’t exist. Father was an only son, and mother had only one brother. He is a doctor in a colliery town, and one of the unlucky mortals. It would puzzle him to find the train fare. He married when he was fifty, and has about seven children.”
“Very well, you will let me do everything.”
He did not speak as a petitioner, but as a man who was calmly claiming a most natural right.
She glanced at him, and his eyes dominated hers.
“But—I can’t bother you——”
“I can arrange everything. If you will tell me what you wish—what your mother would have wished.”
“It will have to be very quiet. You see, we——”
“I understand all that. Would you like Lynette to come and see you?”
“Yes, oh, yes! I should like Lynette to come.”
He pondered a moment, staring at the carpet with its crude patterning of colours, and when again he began to speak he did not raise his head to look at her.
“Of course, this will make no difference to the future?”
“I don’t know.”
“Tell me exactly.”
“All mother’s income dies with her. I have the furniture, and a little money in hand.”
“Would you live on here, or take rooms?”
She hesitated.
“Perhaps.”
His eyes rose to meet hers.
“I want you to stay. We can work together. I’m not inventing work for you. It’s there. It has been there for the last two or three years.”
He spoke very gently, and yet some raw surface within her was touched and hurt. Her mouth quivered with sensitive cynicism.
“A woman, when she is alone, must get money—somehow. It is bitter bread that many of us have to eat.”
“I did not mean to make it taste bitter.”
Her mouth and eyes softened instantly.
“You? No. You are different. And that——”
“Well?”
“And that makes it more difficult, in a way.”
“Why should it?”
“It does.”
She bent her head as though trying to hide her face from him. He did not seem to be conscious of what was happening, and of what might happen. His eyes were clear and far sighted, but they missed the foreground and its complex details.
He left his chair and came and stood by her.
“Eve.”
“Yes?”
“Did I say one word about money? Well, let’s have it out, and the dross done with. I ask you to be my illustrator, colour expert, garden artist—call it what you like. The work is there, more work than you can manage. I offer you five hundred a year.”
She still hid her face from him.
“That is preposterous. But it is like you in its generosity. But I——”
“Think. You and I see things as no two other people see them. It is an age of gardens, and I am being more and more pestered by people who want to buy plants and ideas. Why, you and I could create some of the finest things in colour. Think of it. You only want a little more technical knowledge. The genius is there.”
She appealed to him with a gesture of the hand.
“Stop, let me think!”
He walked to the window and waited.
Presently Eve spoke, and the strange softness of her voice made him wonder.
“Yes, it might be possible.”
“Then you accept?”
“Yes, I accept.”
CHAPTER XV
LYNETTE PUTS ON BLACK
Lynette had a little black velvet frock that had been put away in a drawer, because it was somewhat tarnished and out of fashion. Moreover, Lynette had grown three or four inches since the black frock had been made, and even a Queen of the Fairies’ legs will lengthen. Over this dress rose a contest in which Lynette engaged both her mother and Miss Vance, and showed some of that tranquil and wise obstinacy that characterised her father.
Lynette appeared for lessons, clad in this same black frock, and Miss Vance, being a matter-of-fact and good-naturedly dictatorial adult, proceeded to raise objections.
“Lynette, what have you been doing?”
“What do you mean, Vancie?”
“Miss Vance, if you please. Who told you to put on that dress?”
“I told myself to do it.”
“Then please tell yourself to go and change it. It is not at all suitable.”
“But it is.”
“My dear, don’t argue! You are quite two years too old for that frock.”
“Mary can let it out.”
“Go and change it!”
Lynette had her moments of dignity, and this was an occasion for stateliness.
“Vancie, don’t dare to speak to me like that! I’m in mourning.”
“In mourning! For whom?”
“Miss Eve’s mother, of course! Miss Eve is in mourning, and I know father puts on a black tie.”
“My dear, don’t be——”
“Vancie, I am going to wear this frock. You’re not a great friend of Miss Eve’s, like me. She’s the dearest friend in the world.”
The governess felt that the dress was eccentric, and yet that Lynette had a sentimental conviction that carried her cause through. Miss Vance happened to be in a tactless mood, and appealed to Gertrude Canterton, and to Gertrude the idea of Lynette going into mourning because a certain young woman had lost her mother was whimsical and absurd.
“Lynette, go and change that dress immediately!”
It was then that Canterton came out in his child. She was serenely and demurely determined.
“I must wear it, mother!”
“You will do nothing of the kind. The skirt is perfectly indecent.”
“Why?”
“Your—your knees are showing.”
“I am not ashamed of my knees.”
“Lynette, don’t argue! Understand that I will be obeyed. Go and change that dress!”
“I am very sorry, mother, but I can’t. You don’t know what great deep friends me and Miss Eve are.”
Neither ridicule nor fussy attempts at intimidation had any effect. There was something in the child’s eyes and manner that forbade physical coercion. She was sure in her sentiment, standing out for some ideal of sympathy that was fine and convincing to herself. Lynette appealed to her father, and to her father the case was carried.
He sided with Lynette, but not in Lynette’s hearing.
“What on earth is there to object to, Gertrude?”
“It is quite absurd, the child wanting to go into mourning because old Mrs. Carfax is dead.”
“Children have a way of being absurd, and very often the gods are absurd with them. The child shall have a black frock.”
Gertrude twitched her shoulders, and refused to be responsible for Canterton’s methods.
“You are spoiling that child. I know it is quite useless for me to suggest anything.”
“You are not much of a child yourself, Gertrude. I am. That makes a difference.”
Canterton had his car out that afternoon and drove twenty miles to Reading, with Lynette on the seat beside him. He knew, better than any woman, what suited the child, so Lynette had a black frock and a little Quaker bonnet to wear for that other child, Mrs. Carfax, who was dead.
Within a week Eve was back at Fernhill, painting masses of hollyhocks and sweet peas, with giant sunflowers and purple-spiked buddlea for a background. Perhaps nothing had touched her more than Lynette’s black frock and the impulsive sympathy that had suggested it.
“I’m so sorry, Miss Eve, dear. I do love you ever so much more now.”
And Eve had never been nearer tears, with Lynette snuggling up to her, one arm round her neck, and her warm breath on Eve’s cheek.
It was holiday time, and Miss Vance’s authority was reduced to the supervision of country walks, and the giving of a daily piano lesson. Punch, the terrier, accompanied them on their walks, and Miss Vance hated the dog, feeling herself responsible for Punch’s improprieties. Her month’s holiday began in a few days, and Lynette had her eyes on five weeks of unblemished liberty.
“Vancie goes on Friday. Isn’t it grand!”
“But you ought not to be so glad, dear.”
“But I am glad. Aren’t you? I can paint all day like you, and we’ll have picnics, and make daddy take us on the river.”
“Of course, I’m glad you’ll be with me.”
“Vancie can’t play. You see she’s so very old and grown up.”
“I don’t think she is much older than I am.”
“Oh, Miss Eve, years and years! Besides, you’re so beautiful.”
“You wicked flatterer.”
“I’m not a flatterer. I’m sure daddy thinks so. I know he does.”
Eve felt herself flushing, and her heart misgave her, for the lips of the child made her thrill and feel afraid. She had accepted the new life tentatively yet recklessly, trying to shut her eyes to the possible complexities, and to carry things forward with a candour that could not be questioned. She was painting the full opulence of one of the August borders, with Lynette beside her on a stool, Lynette who pretended to dabble in colours, but loved to make Eve talk. It was a day without wind; all sunlight, blue sky, and white clouds, with haze on the hills, and somnolence everywhere. Yet Eve was haunted by the sound of the splashing of the water in the Latimer gardens, a seductive but restless memory that penetrated all her thoughts.
“Wasn’t it funny mother not wanting me to wear a black frock?”
“I don’t know, dear.”
“But why should she mind?”
Why, indeed? Eve found herself visualising Gertrude Canterton’s sallow face and thin, jerky figure, and she felt chilled and discouraged. What manner of woman was this Gertrude Canterton, this champion of charities, this eager egoist, this smiler of empty smiles? Had she the eyes and ears, the jealous instincts of a woman? Did she so much as realise that the place she called her home hid the dust and dry bones of something that should have been sacred? Was she, in truth, so blindly self-sufficient, so smothered in the little vanities of little public affairs that she had forgotten she was a wife? If so, what an impossible woman, and what a menace to herself and others.
“Mother doesn’t care for flowers, Miss Eve.”
“Oh, how do you know?”
“I’ve never seen her pick any. And she can’t arrange a vase. I’ve seen her try.”
“But she may be fond of them, all the same.”
“Then why doesn’t she come out here with daddy?”
“Perhaps she has too much to do.”
“But I never see her doing anything, like other people. I mean mending things, and all that. She’s always going out, or writing letters, or having headaches.”
Eve had a growing horror of letting Lynette discuss her mother. The child was innocent enough, but it seemed treacherous and unfair to listen, and made Eve despise herself, and shiver with a sense of nearness to those sexual problems that are covered with the merest crust of make-believe.
“Oh, here’s Vancie!”
Eve glanced up and saw the governess approaching along the brick-paved path. Miss Vance was a matter-of-fact young person, but she was a woman, with some of the more feminine attributes a little exaggerated. She was suburban, orthodox as to her beliefs, absolutely without imagination, yet healthily inquisitive.
“Music, Lynette! What a nice bit of colour to paint, Miss Carfax.”
“Quite Oriental, isn’t it?”
These two women looked at each other, and Eve did not miss the apprizing and critical interest in Miss Vance’s eyes. She was a little casual towards Eve, with a casualness that suggested tacit disapproval. The surface was hard, the poise unsympathetic.
“You ought to have good weather for your holiday. Where are you going?”
“Brighton!”
“Oh, Brighton!”
“We always go to Brighton!”
“A habit?”
“We are a family of habits.”
She held out a large and rather red hand to Lynette, but Lynette was an individualist. She, too, understood that Miss Vance was a habit, a time-table, a schedule, anything but a playmate. They went off together, Miss Vance with a last apprizing glance at Eve.
One woman’s attitude may have a very subtle influence on the mood of another. Most women understand each other instinctively, perhaps through some ancient sex-language that existed long before sounds became words. Eve knew quite well what had been exercising Miss Vance’s mind, that she had been handling other people’s intimacies, calculating their significance, and their possible developments. And Eve felt angry, rebellious, scornful, troubled. As a woman she resented the suggestiveness of this other woman’s curiosity.
Ten minutes later, when Canterton strolled into the walled garden, he found Eve sitting idle, her hands lying in her lap. He saw her as a slim black figure posed in thought, with the border unfurled before her like some rich tapestry, with threads of purple and gold upon a ground of green.
She turned to him with a smile.
“Lynette has just gone.”
He did not suspect that her smile was a defence and a screen.
“I hope the child does not interfere with your work.”
“No. She lets me be quiet when something particularly delicate has to be done.”
Canterton brought up a garden chair.
“Will it bother you if I take Lynette’s place?”
“No.”
“I think I am a little too big for her stool.”
Eve resumed her painting, but she soon discovered that her attention flowed more strongly towards the man beside her than towards the flowers in the border. The tapestry kept blurring its outlines and shifting its colours, and she played with the work, becoming more and more absorbed in what Canterton was saying. And yet she was striving all the while to keep a space clear for her own individuality, so that her thoughts could move without merely following his.
Before very long she realised that she was listening to a thinker thinking aloud in the presence of the one woman who understood. He was so confident, so strong, so much above the hedgerows of circumstance, that she began to be more afraid for his sake than for her own. His words seemed ready to sweep her away into a rare and intimate future. It was ideal, innocent, almost boyish. He mapped out plans for her; talked of what they would create; declared for a yearly show of her pictures at Fernhill, and that her work must be made known in London. They could take the Goethe Gallery. Then he wanted pictures of the French and Italian gardens. She could make a tour, sketch the Riviera, paint rhododendrons and roses by the Italian lakes, and bring him back studies of Swiss meadows all blue and green and white in May or June. She had a future. He talked of it almost with passion, as though it were something that was very precious to his pride.
Eve’s heart grew heavy. She began to feel a mute pity for Canterton and for herself. Her vision became so terribly clear and frank that she saw all that his idealist’s eyes did not see, and felt all that he was too big and too magnanimous to feel. He did not trouble to understand the little world about him. Its perspective was not his perspective, and it had no knowledge of colour.
She became more and more silent, until this silence of hers was like a pool of water without a ripple, yet its passivity had a positive effect upon Canterton’s consciousness. His eyes began to watch her face and to ask questions.
“Don’t you see all this?”
“Oh, yes, I see it all!”
He was puzzled.
“Perhaps it does not strike you as real?”
She turned her face away.
“Don’t you know that sometimes things may seem too real?”
He began to be absorbed into her silence of a minute ago. Eve made an effort, and picked up a brush. She guessed that something was happening in the heart of the man beside her, and she wondered whether the cold and conventional light of a more worldly wisdom would break in and enable him to understand.
“Eve!”
“Yes!”
She kept on with her work.
“Do you think that I have been talking like a fool?”
“Oh, no, not that.”
“Then——”
She made herself meet his eyes.
“Sometimes the really fine things are so impossible. That’s why life may be so sad.”
CHAPTER XVI
JAMES CANTERTON AWAKES
Being an individualist, a man who had always depended upon himself, Canterton had very little of the social sensitiveness that looks cautiously to the right and to the left before taking a certain path. All his grown life, from his University days onwards, he had been dealing with big problems, birth, growth, decay, the eternal sacrament of sex, the beauty of earth’s flowering. His vision went deep and far. His life had been so full of the fascination of his work that he had never been much of a social animal, as the social animal is understood in a country community. He observed trifles that were stupendously significant in the world of growth, but he had no mind for the social trifles round him. Had he had less brawn, less virility, less humour, it is possible that he would have been nothing more than an erudite fool, one of those pathetic figures, respected for its knowledge and pitied for its sappiness.
Canterton could convince men, and this was because he had long ago become a conviction to himself. It was not a self-conscious conviction, and that was why it had such mastery. It never occurred to him to think about the discretions and the formalities of life. If a thing seemed good to do, he did it; if it seemed bad, he never gave it a second thought. His men believed in him with an instinctive faith that would not suffer contradiction, and had Canterton touched tar, they would have sworn that the tar was the better for it, and Canterton’s hands clean. He was so big, so direct, so just, so ready to smile and see the humour of everything. And he was as clean-minded as his child Lynette, and no more conscious than she was of the little meannesses and dishonourable curiosities that make most men and nearly all women hypocrites.
Canterton’s eyes were open; but he saw only that which his long vision had taught him to see, and not the things that are focused by smaller people. That an idea seemed fine, and admirable, and good, was sufficient for him. He had not cultivated the habit of asking himself what other people might think. That was why such a man as Canterton may be so dangerous to himself and to others when he starts to do some big and unusual thing.
He knew now that he loved Eve Carfax. It was like the sudden rising of some enchanted island out of the sea, magical yet real, nor was he a gross beast to break down the boughs for the fruit and to crush the flowers for their perfumes. He had the atmosphere of a fine mind, and his scheme of values was different from the scheme of values recognised by more ordinary men. Perfumes, colours, beautiful outlines had spiritual and mystical meanings. He was not Pagan and not Christian, but a blend of all that was best in both.
To him this enchanted island had risen out of the sea, and floated, dew-drenched, in the pure light of the dawn. He saw no reason why he should bid so beautiful a thing sink back again and be lost under the waters. He had no desecrating impulses. Why should not two people look together at life with eyes that smiled and understood? They were harming no one, and they were transfiguring each other.
Canterton and his wife were dining alone, and for once he deliberately chose to talk to her of his work, and of his future plans. Gertrude would listen perfunctorily, but he was determined that she should listen. The intimate part of his life did not concern her, simply because she was no longer either in his personality or in his work. So little sympathy was there between them that they had never succeeded in rising to a serious quarrel.
“I am taking Miss Carfax into the business. I thought you might like to know.”
So dead was her personal pride in all that was male in him, that she did not remember to be jealous.
“That ought to be a great opportunity for the girl.”
“I shall benefit as much as she will. She has a very remarkable gift, just something I felt the need of and could not find.”
“Then she is quite a discovery?”
Canterton watched his wife’s face and saw no clouding of its complacency.
“She will be a very great help in many ways.”
“I see. You will make her a kind of fashion-plate artist to produce new designs.”
“Yes.”
“I had thought of doing something for the girl. I had suggested to her that she might paint miniatures.”
“I think I shall keep her pretty busy.”
“I have only spoken to her once or twice, and she struck me as rather reserved, and stiff. I suppose she and Lynette——”
“She and Lynette get on wonderfully.”
“So Miss Vance told me. And, of course, that black frock——I hope she doesn’t spoil the child.”
“Not a bit. She does her good.”
“Lynette wants someone with plenty of common sense to discipline her. I think Miss Vance is really excellent.”
“A very reliable young woman.”
“She’s not too sentimental and emotional.”
They had finished dessert, and Gertrude Canterton went straight to her desk to write some of those innumerable letters that took up such a large part of her life. Letter-writing was one of her methods of self-expression, and her busy audacity was never to be repelled. She wrote to an infinite number of charitable institutions for their literature; to authors for autograph copies of their books to sell at bazaars; to actors for their signatures and photographs; to cartoonists for some sketch or other on which money might be raised for some charitable purpose; to tradesmen for free goods, offering them her patronage and a fine advertisement on some stall.
Canterton did not wait for coffee, but lit a pipe and strolled out into the garden, and walking up and down in a state of wonder, tried to make himself realise that he and Gertrude were man and wife.
Had the conversation really taken place? Had they exchanged those cold commonplaces, those absurd phrases that should have meant so much? Had he known Gertrude less well, he might have been touched by the appearance of the limitless faith she had in him, by her blind and serene confidence that was not capable of being disturbed. But he knew her better than that. He was hardly so much as a shadow in her life, and when a second shadow appeared beside hers she did not notice it. She seemed to have no sense of possession, no sexual pride. Her mental poise was like some people’s idea of heaven, a place of beautiful and boundless indifference misnamed “sacred love,” a state that was guilty of no preferences, no passions, no anguish, no divine despair.
And then there leapt in him a sudden and subtle exultation. This splendid comradeship that life was offering to him, what could be cried against it, what was there that could be condemned? It touched no one but their two selves, could hurt no one. The one woman who might have complained was being robbed of nothing that she desired. As for marriage, he had tried it, and saw that it served a certain need. For five years he had lived the life of a celibate, and the god in him was master of the beast. He thought no such thoughts of Eve. She was sunlight, perfumes, the green gloom of the woods, water shining in the moonlight, all the music that was and would be, all the fairy tales that had been told, all the ardour of words spoken in faith. She was one whose eyes could quench all the thirsts of his manhood. To be with her, to be hers, was sufficient.
Canterton was hardly conscious of the physical part of himself, as he took a path along one of the cypress walks, passed out by a wicket gate, and crossed the road into the fir woods. Dusk had fallen, but there was still a faint grey light under the trees, and there was no undergrowth, so that one would walk along the woodland aisles as along the aisles of a church. A feeling of exultation possessed him. The very stillness of the woods, the darkness that began to drown all distances, were personal and all-enveloping.
A light was shining in one of the lower windows of the little house at Orchards Corner when Canterton came to the gate at the end of the lane. He paused there, leaning his arms on the gate. The blind was up and the curtain undrawn, and he could see Eve sitting at a table, and bending over a book or writing a letter.
Canterton crossed the lawn and stood looking in at the lighted window. Eve was sitting at the table with her back towards him, and he saw the outline of her head, and the glow of the light upon her hair. She was wearing a blouse cut low at the throat, and he could see the white curve of her neck as she bent over the table. There were books and papers before her. She appeared to be reading and making notes.
He spoke her name.
“Eve!”
Her profile came sharply against the lamplight. Then she pushed the chair back, rose, and walked to the window. The lower sash was up. She rested her hands on the sill.
“Is it you?”
The light was behind her, and her face vague and shadowy, but he had a feeling that she was afraid. Her bare white forearms, with the hands resting on the window-sill, looked hard and rigid.
“Have I frightened you?”
“Perhaps—a little.”
“I wanted to talk to you.”
She did not answer him for the moment.
“I am all alone to-night.”
“I thought you had the girl with you.”
“I let her go down to the village.”
He had come to her in a fog of mystical love, and through the haze of his vision her set and human face became the one real thing in the world. Her voice had a wounded sound, and she spoke as from a little distance. There was resistance here, a bleak dread of something, and yet a desire that what was inevitable should be understood.
“You’ll forgive me?”
“Perhaps.”
“I felt I must talk to you.”
“As you talked yesterday morning?”
“Why not?”
“I—I thought perhaps that you had understood.”
His full consciousness of all that was in his heart would not suffer him to feel such a thing as shame. But a great tenderness reached out to her, because he had heard her utter a cry of pain.
“Have I hurt you by coming here?”
She stared beyond him, trying to think.
“We were to live like good comrades, like fellow artists, were we not?”
“I told you how the future offers us beautiful friendship.”
She made a little impatient movement.
“I knew it would be difficult while you were talking. And now you are making it impossible.”
“I cannot see it.”
“You are blind—with a man’s blindness.”
She leant her weight on her arms, and bending slightly towards him, spoke with peculiar gentleness.
“You look at the horizon, you miss the little things. Perhaps I am more selfish and near-sighted, for your sake, if not for my own. Jim, don’t make me say what is hateful even to be thought.”
It was the first time that she had called him by the familiar name, the name sacred to his lad’s days, and to the lips of his men friends. He stood looking up at her, for she was a little above him.
“I like that word—Jim. But am I blind?”
“Hopelessly.”
“Can it hurt either of us, this comradeship? Why, Eve, child, how can I talk all the boyish stuff to you? It’s bigger, finer, less selfish than all that. I believe I could think of you as I think of Lynette—married some day to a good fellow——”
She broke in with sudden passion.
“No, you are wrong there—utterly wrong.”
“Am I wrong—everywhere?”
“Can’t you guess that it hurts terribly, all this? It’s so impossible, and you won’t see it. Let’s get back—back to yesterday.”
“Eve, is there ever a yesterday?”
She shivered and drew back a little.
“Jim, don’t try to come too near me. You make me say it. You make me say the mean things.”
“It’s not physical nearness.”
“Ah, you may think that! But you are forgetting all the little people.”
“The little people! Are we to be little because they are shorter than we are? The neighbourhood knows me well enough.”
She came forward again to the window with a kind of tender and stooping pity.
“Jim, how very innocent you are. Yes, I know—I know it is precious, and perilous. Listen! Supposing you were to lose Lynette—oh, why will you make me say the mean, hideous things?”
“Lose Lynette! Do you mean——”
“Jim, I am going to shut the window.”
He raised an arm.
“Wait! Good God!”
“No, no! Good night!”
She closed the window, and dragged the curtains across it.
Canterton stood at gaze a moment, before walking away across the grass.
Eve was listening, stricken, yet trying not to feel afraid.