LXIII
“I’mnot half as good looking as that,” said June.
“All depends, don’t you know, on the angle at which one happens to get you,” said William.
It was the tone of a gentleman in the Blues speaking to Miss Babraham. Yet it came so pat and so natural from the lips of an artist, that in spite of herself, June could not help being a little awed by it. She didn’t agree, yet she didn’t disagree; that is to say, as Miss Babraham would have done, she agreed to disagree without contradicting the artist flatly.
Besides it is the whole duty of an artist to know just how people look in all circumstances. Everybody looks better at some moments than at others. June had no pretensions to be considered an artist herself, but at that moment she knew just how William looked. In his new suit, neat rather than smart and smart rather than neat—all depends don’t you know on the angle at which one happened to get it!—with his mop of fair hair brushed away from his fine forehead, and his yellow tie, and the curves of that sensitive mouth, and those wonderful eyes and those slim fingers, he looked fitted by nature to marry a real lady. Indeed, in the course of the last few days, a suspicion had crossed June’s mind that Miss Babraham thought so too; thus the apparition of the Honourable Barrington and the definite fixing of the day had taken a load off her mind.
For all that other loads were still upon it. Since hernerve-storm in the Long Gallery a week had passed. She was feeling much better now, day by day she was growing stronger; nevertheless she was troubled about many things.
Foremost of these was the question so vital to a practical mind, of ways and means. They both had to live. And if William had really made up his mind to be an artist, he would need money and plenty of it for leisure and study and foreign travel. She was rather glad, if only for this reason, that he had been able to take such a bold decision. He would be the more likely to accept that which really belonged to him: the price of the Van Roon.
Sir Arthur had now informed her that the sum the committee proposed to offer for the Van Roon could be invested to produce a thousand a year free of tax, and he strongly urged its acceptance, as she would be relieved of all money difficulties for the rest of her life. To June it sounded fabulous. She knew in her heart, besides, that she would never be able to take this income for her own use. Every penny was William’s and the task now before her was to bring home to him this fact.
It did not take long to prove to her this morning that she was attempting the impossible. The thousand a year, he declared, was hers and nothing would induce him to touch a penny. Yielding in some ways, in others as she had discovered already, for all his gentleness he was a rock.
Desperation now drove June to confess that she had never intended to take the money. Even at the moment she had filched the Van Roon from him with her wicked pretences, at the back of her mind had beenthe wish to save him from himself. Always she had regarded herself as the Van Roon’s trustee, so that he should not be victimized by the cunning of Uncle Si, just as Sir Arthur was its trustee now, so that neither of them should be robbed by the cunning of the world.
She found all too soon, however, that it was vain to argue with him. What he had given, he had given. As far as he was concerned, that was the end of the whole matter.
“Very well then,” said June vexedly, “if you won’t, you won’t. And I shall present that picture to the nation in your name, and then you won’t have a penny to live on and you’ll have to go on working in a shop all your life for a small wage to make other people rich, instead of being able to study and travel and make yourself a great artist.”
She felt sure the half nelson was on him now. Even he, dreamer that he was, must really bend to the force of pure reasoning! Beyond a doubt she had got him. But he was not playing quite fair it seemed. With one of his little dancing blushes that would have been deadly in a girl, he was forced to own that he had not put all his cards on the table.
To June’s sheer amazement he was keeping a little matter of twelve hundred a year or so up his sleeve.
“Didn’t know you had a rich aunt,” said June amazedly.
“Not my rich aunt. Your rich uncle.” The odd creature grew tawnier, more girl-like than ever.
June lacking a clue as yet could only frown. “Come again. I don’t get you.” It was not the Miss Babraham idiom, but with her patience giving out and a new strength and sanity in her veins, she was in dangerof forgetting, just for a moment, that she was an honoured guest in the most famous Italian garden in Surrey.
Nevertheless in the very height of the eclipse a light shone. One of the advantages of a mind really practical is, that when it turns to financial matters, it works automatically at very high pressure. June’s brow was cleft with the harrow of thought. “Do you mean to say,” she figured slowly out, “that Uncle Si has left you all his property?”
“His lawyers say so.” The voice of William had a slight tremor.
“If his lawyers say so it is so,” said June with imperious finality.
A pause of which a thrush, a blackbird and an entire orchestra of skylarks took great advantage, came upon these inheritors in spite of themselves; and then June pensively remarked, a little in the manner of “Mr. Leopold” asking the Head Cashier what Consols had opened at this morning, “he must have bought some property very lucky.”
Quite simply William stated that such was the fact. “The lawyers say that in 1895 he bought what they call a block in New Cross Street, including Number 46, and that it’s been going up and up ever since, so that now it’s worth about eight times what he gave for it.”
In sheer incredulity June stared at him. She must be living in fairyland. And then the sun flamed out from the merest apology for a cloud which was all the April sky could boast at that moment and there came an answering gleam from the burnished image before her eyes in which they had lately planted a myrtle.
“Much good it did him,” she said with a heavy sigh.
William never told June the story of the old man lying dead before the Hoodoo, nor had he disclosed his own indirect share in that tragic end. He did not do so now, for this was not the time to enter into such an unhappy matter. Yet without coming to details, June seemed with that power of clairvoyance she had lately acquired, to divine the whole pitiful business. “Miserable old miser,” she said in a voice the birds could not hear. “He must have died like a dog.”
William’s tragic eyes could only be interpreted by his own heart.
A look so forlorn led June to notice the new lines in his face and his smouldering depth of eye. “I believe you were the only living thing he ever cared for, and yet it used to make my blood boil the way he——” The anguish in his eyes brought her up short.
In went the sun, as quickly as it had come out.La Signora Aprile e volubile, in England at any rate, whatever her mood in more genial climes. June shivered slightly as if a chill breath in the gentle wind had touched her. She glanced at the new wrist watch, whose acceptance William had craved two days before she left the Hospital. Nearly one o’clock already and it would never do to shew disrespect to Mrs. Chrystal’s famous chicken-broth.
They got up together, yet as they did so they felt that the best of the spring day was fled. Now that the sun had gone in, the Hoodoo yonder was monarch once more of all he looked upon.
What a thing life was! Yet by now both were wise enough not to think too much about it. God knew it could be ugly, but dwelling upon its complexities only made them seem worse.
Besides there was no time for deep thoughts. It was six minutes to one. Luncheon at the House, where William, as became a man of acknowledged genius, was an honoured guest, was sharp at the hour. The honoured guest would only just have time to wash his hands and brush his hair. And so he was not able to accompany June along the rectangular path which led from the main avenue direct to Mrs. Chrystal’s.
Moreover she didn’t want him to. She understood his hurry. Also he understood hers. Besides each craved a moment, after all, to consider life and just where they stood in it.
“I have to rest this afternoon,” said June. “And I suppose you have to get on with the cleaning of the Mathew Thingamy. But if it’s as fine to-morrow morning as it has been to-day, let us meet under this tree about eleven. And then you can put in the last touches while I read “Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austen that Miss Babraham’s lent me. Seems a bit old-fashioned, but it’s classic of course. I dare say it’ll improve as it gets better.”
Whereon June took the bypath abruptly, and William, his six minutes reduced to four, stepped out towards the House. Life and its complexities did not get therefore, much of a show at the moment, yet both of them must have been giving these high matters some little thought, for as June reached the eucalyptus tree she halted and half-turned and looked just for one instant back. And she found that William, now on a level with the second Cupid on the main gravel, and his four minutes reduced to three and a quarter, had also halted, and half-turned to follow her example.