"Certainly that would be a very weak curtain," said Frank, looking at his boots again.
There was no need for him to look at Charles: it was as certain as if they had gone over the scene till they knew it by heart that Charles would pick up his cue. But when Charles spoke Frank looked up at Craddock again. He wanted to see how he would take it.
Charles neither shifted his position nor cleared his throat.
"How much did Ward give you for Philip Wroughton's Reynolds?" he asked.
Frank watching Craddock's face saw only the very slightest change pass over it. But for the moment his eyes looked inwards, squinting a little.
"That I suppose is your business?" he observed.
"Yes, in a moment I will tell you how it is," said Charles. "But first I may say what I am going to tell you."
Still Craddock's face did not change.
"Do you mean by that what you have just asked me?"
"It is the same thing. It was not in order to get free of your options that I tell you this. That is a very minor concern. What matters is that you have swindled Mr. Wroughton. And it is my business, because the cheque that was paid you for the Reynolds included a certain sum for my copy of the picture. Of that you only gave me fifty pounds."
Then the change came. Craddock's face grew a shade whiter and his upper lip and forehead glistened. But in a moment he pulled himself together.
"Ah, so this is the real threat," he said. "We are going to have a weaker curtain than ever. I entirely decline to discuss my private affairs with you. Go and tell whom you please that I have swindled, to use your own word, my very good friend Philip Wroughton. Go down to Thorley and see how he will receive you and your news. Do you suppose he would listen to you? And do you suppose that I will do so any longer? Tell this story and any other you may have been concocting to the whole world, and at the proper time I will very effectually stop you. You and your friend seem to have so much money that libel actions are the only way in which you can get rid of it. But first tell Wroughton, whom I have swindled. The—the monstrous suggestion!"
For one moment his indignation flared up. The next he had mastered it again. But inflamed by this, or by some underlying emotion, he made an error, and allowed himself to say more, when he had (so rightly) intimated that enough had been said.
"It is lucky for me," he said, "with such fellows round me, that I was business-like in the matter. The cheque Ward drew me for five thousand pounds I passed straight on to my friend when the purchase was concluded, and have his receipt for it. And as for your miserable fifty pounds, you agreed, as you very well know, to make the copy for that sum. You were glad enough to get it, and your gratitude was quite pretty. And that is all I think. I have no more to say to either of you."
He got up and indicated the door. Neither Charles nor Frank moved. And then a second sign escaped him. His indicating hand dropped, and the one word he uttered to Charles stuck in his throat.
"Well?" he said.
"You have forgotten," said Charles, "that Ward gave you a cheque for five thousand pounds in payment for some Dutch pictures. There was a Van der Weyde among them. It was from Thistleton's Gallery, I may remind you."
"You are very copiously informed."
"Yes. You see my brother was your clerk there. He well remembers the purchase and the drawing of the cheque. That was in June. The cheque was post-dated by a few days."
Without doubt Craddock was listening now, though he had said he would listen no more. Frank watched him with the same hard devouring interest with which he would have watched a man pinioned and led out to the execution shed. Charles went on in a voice that sounded a little bored. It was as if he repeated some well known tiresome task he had learned.
"It was in October," he said, "that another cheque was drawn to you by Mr. Ward, under the same circumstances. He wrote it, that is to say, at Thistleton's Gallery, at my brother's desk. This time the cheque was larger, for it was of ten thousand and one hundred pounds. Reggie told me of it at the time. I did not connect it then with the Reynolds picture."
"Lies, a pack of lies," said Craddock under his breath, but still listening.
"No, not a pack of lies," said Charles. "You should not say that sort of thing. This morning I asked Mr. Ward how much he paid for the Reynolds. He told me not to tell anyone, but it is no news to you, and so I repeat it. He paid you ten thousand pounds. Also he said to me—you heard that—that he didn't suppose I would do many more copies for one hundred pounds each. I drew an inference. And the whole cheque is accounted for."
Suddenly Frank looked away from Craddock, and glanced at Charles, nodding.
"He's done," he said, as if some contest of boxing was in progress.
Frank was right. During the fall of these quiet words, Craddock had collapsed; there was no more fight left in him. He sat hunched up in his chair, a mere inert mass, with his eyes glazed and meaningless fixed on Charles, his mouth a little open and drooping. The shame of what he had done had, all these months, left no trace on him, but the shame of his detection was a vastly different matter. But he made one more protest, as forceless and unavailing as the last roll of a fish being pulled to land, dead-beat.
"Lies," he said just once, and was silent.
Charles got quickly out of his chair and stood up pointing at him. As yet he felt no spark of pity for him, for there was nothing to pity in a man who with his last effort reiterates the denial of his shame. And the tale of his indictment was not done yet. He spoke with raised voice, and vivid scorn.
"You should know a lie when you hear it better than that," he said. "Do I sound as if I was lying? Did you lie like that when you lied about me to Philip Wroughton last autumn? Not you: you let your damned poison just dribble from you. You just hinted that I was a disreputable fellow, not fit to associate with him and his. You said it with regret—oh, I can hear you do it—you felt you ought to tell him. Wasn't it like that? Go on, tell me whether what I am saying now is lies, too! You can't! You're done, as Frank said. There's a limit even to your power of falsehood. Now sit there and just think over what's best to be done. That's all; you know it all now."
No word came from Craddock. He had sunk a little more into himself, and his plump white hands hung ludicrously in front of him like the paws of a begging dog. A wisp of his long black hair that crossed the crown of his head had fallen forward and lay stuck to the moisture on his forehead. The two young men stood together away from him on the hearth-rug, looking at him, and a couple of minutes passed in absolute silence.
Then an impulse, not yet compassionate for this collapsed rogue, compassionate only for the collapse, came to Charles.
"You had better have a drink," he said, "it will do you good. Shall I get it for you?"
He received no answer, and went into the dining room next door. The table was already laid for dinner, and on the side-board stood syphon and spirit decanter. He poured out a stiff mixture and brought it back to him. And then as he held it out to him, and saw him take it in both his hands, that even together were scarcely steady enough to carry it to his mouth, pity awoke.
"I'm awfully sorry, you know, Mr. Craddock," he said. "I hate it all. It's a miserable business."
Craddock made no answer, but sip by sip he emptied the glass Charles had brought him. For a few minutes after that he sat with eyes shut, but he smoothed his fallen lock of hair into its place again.
"What do you mean to do, either of you?" he asked.
Charles nodded to Frank to speak.
"I don't know what Charles means to do," he said, "because we haven't talked it over. For myself, I mean to have back my contract with you, or to see it destroyed. When that is done, I shall have nothing more to ask from you."
He thought a moment.
"You mustn't do unfriendly things, you know," he said. "You mustn't systematically run down my work in your papers. That wouldn't be fair. I intend, I may tell you, to hold my tongue about you for the future. I shan't—I shan't even want to abuse you any more. As for what I have heard about you in this last hour, it is quite safe with me, unless you somehow or other provoke me to mention it. I just want my contract, and then I shall have done with you."
Craddock got up, and unlocked a pigeon-holed desk in the corner of the room. There were a quantity of papers in it. Of these he took out one from the pigeon-hole A, another from that of L. He glanced at these and handed one to each of the young men. Frank read carefully over what was written on his, and then folded it up, and put it in his pocket.
"Thank you, that is all," he said.
Charles stood with his contract in his hand, not glancing at it. Instead he looked at the large white-faced man in front of him.
"We have more to talk about," he said. "Shall we—wouldn't it be better if we got it over at once? If you wish I will come in later."
The uncontrolled irritability of nerves jangled and overstrung seized Craddock.
"For God's sake let us have finished with it now," he said, "unless you've got some fresh excitement to spring on me. What do you want me to do? And why does he wait there?" he said pointing to Frank.
Charles nodded to Frank.
"I'll go then," he said.
Charles' anger and hot indignation had burned itself out. Of it there was nothing left but ashes, grey feathery ashes, not smouldering even any longer. It was impossible to be angry with anything so abject as the man who sat inertly there. It was impossible to feel anything but regret that he sat convicted of such pitiful fraud and falsity. He saw only the wreck of a year's friendship, the stricken corpse of his own gratitude and loyalty. Here was the man who had first believed in and befriended him, and it was not in his nature to forget that. It had so long been to him an ever-present consciousness that it had become a permanent inmate of his mind, present to him in idle hours, but present most of all when he was at work, and thus wrought into the web of his life and his passion. In the extinction of his anger, this reasserted itself again, tarnished it might be, and stained, but existent. And with that awoke pity, sheer pity for the man who had made and marred it.
He waited till Frank had closed the door.
"It's wretched," he said, "absolutely wretched."
Even to Craddock in the shame of his detection, and in his miserable apprehension of what must yet follow, the ring of sincerity was apparent; it reached down to him in the inferno he had made for himself. And the pity was without patronage; it did not hurt.
"Thank you for that," he said. "Now tell me what you want done. Or perhaps you have done what you wanted already ..."
He broke off short and Charles waited. He guessed how terribly difficult any kind of speech must be.
"There is just one thing I should like to tell you," said Craddock at length. "I—I lied about you to Philip Wroughton, but my object was not to injure you. I didn't want to injure you. But I guessed that you were in love with Joyce. I guessed also that she—that she liked you. You stood in my way perhaps. My object was to reach her. That is all."
There was no justification attempted: it was a mere statement of fact. He paused a moment.
"But I was not sorry," he said, "even when I found that I had not advanced my own suit."
"I didn't seem to matter, I suppose," said Charles in a sudden flash.
"Exactly that," said Craddock. "But I ask your forgiveness. I always liked you."
Charles did not answer at once, because he did not know whether he forgave Craddock or not. Certainly he did not want to injure him, he felt he could go no further than that.
"I intend to forgive you," he said. "That will have to do ..."
Even as he spoke all the innate generosity of the boy surged up in rebellion at this shabby speech, and the shabbier hesitation of thought that had prompted it.
"No, that won't have to do," he said quickly. "I should be ashamed to let that do. Forgive you? Why yes, of course. And now for the rest. You owe Mr. Wroughton five thousand pounds. There is no reason, I suppose, why you should see him and explain? I take it that you will send him his money. Is that so?"
"That shall be done."
"Right. About me, what you said about me, I mean. You must write to him, I think. You must withdraw what you said. Perhaps you had better do that at once."
"Yes."
Charles got up.
"I will go then," he said. "My properties shall have left your studio by to-morrow evening. There is nothing more to settle, I think."
He held out his hand.
"Goodbye," he said. "I—I can't forget we have been friends and I don't want to. You have been awfully good to me in many ways. I always told Frank so. Goodbye."
Craddock was perfectly capable, indeed he had proved himself so, of the depths of meanness and falsity. But he was not in natural construction, like the villain of melodrama, who pursues his primrose path of nefarious dealing, calm and well-balanced, without one single decent impulse to clog his tripping feet. And when this boy, for whose gifts he had so profound an admiration, who knew the worst of him, could not forget as he said that they had been friends, he felt a pang of self-abasement that shot out beyond the mire and clay in which his feet were set.
"I wonder if you can possibly believe I am sorry," he said. "I know it is a good deal to expect.... If that is so, may I ask you, as a favour which I should so much appreciate, that you do not take your things away from my studio just yet anyhow? Won't you do that as a sign of your forgiveness? I won't come there, I won't bother you, or embarrass you with the sight of me. It isn't so very much to ask of you, Charles."
Charles had an instinctive repulsion from doing anything of the sort. He wanted to wash his hands clean of the man and of all that belonged to him, or could awaken remembrance of him. But, on the other hand, Craddock was so "down"; it was hardly possible to refuse so humble a petition. Besides he had said that he forgave him, and if that was not fully and unreservedly done, he might at least prop and solidify what he desired should be true in material and compassable ways. His mind needed but a moment to make itself up.
"But by all means, if you wish," he said. "I should be very glad to.... And perhaps soon, not just yet, but soon, you will come and see my work, if I ring you up? Do! Or when you feel you would like to see me again, you will tell me.... Goodbye."
Craddock heard him go downstairs, from Frank's door, and continue his journey. Not till then did he see that Charles had left on the edge of the chimneypiece the contract concerning options which he had given him back. For half-a-second the attitude of mind built and confirmed in him by the habit of years asserted itself, and he would have put it back into the dark from which he had taken it half an hour ago. But close on the heels of that came a more dominant impulse, and he tore it to bits, and threw the fragments into the fender.
Then he sat down at his table, drew out his cheque-book and wrote a cheque payable to Philip Wroughton for five thousand pounds. There was no difficulty about that; Mr. Ward's amazing friend who had carried off the complete nightmare decoration of post-Impressionists from the walls of Thistleton's Gallery had enabled his banking-balance to withstand an even larger call on its substantiality than that. But there was a letter to be written with it....
An hour later his servant came in to remind him that in half an hour he expected two friends to dinner. Already the waste-paper basket was choked with ineffectual beginnings, implying palliations, where no palliation was possible, telling half the truth and hinting at the rest, and still Craddock sat pen in hand, as far as ever from accomplishing this epistolary effort. And then an illuminating idea occurred to him: he would state just what had happened, neither more nor less, saying it in the simplest possible manner.... It took him a full half-hour always to dress for dinner, but he was ready to receive guests who were almost meticulously punctual, so short a time had his note taken him.
Philip Wroughton had become, so he often said to himself and Joyce, a perfectly different man, owing to his salutary wintering in Egypt, and in consequence (thinking himself, perhaps a differenter man than he really was) had just been knocked flat by an attack of lumbago, owing to a course of conduct that a few months ago he would have considered sheer insanity for one so physically handicapped as himself.
In consequence it was Joyce's mission to take his letters and morning-paper up to him, after breakfast, hear his account of himself, and any fresh comments on the origin of this painful attack which had occurred to him during the night, open his letters for him—there was seldom more than one—and entertain him with such news out of the paper as she thought would interest him. To-day the pain was a good deal better, and he had remembered a new and daring action of his own which quite accounted for his trouble.
"No doubt it was what I did on Thursday evening," he said, "for if you remember you called me to the window after dinner, saying what a beautiful night it was, and that the moon was full. I am not blaming you, my dear, I only blame myself for my imprudence, because if you remember I went out on the gravel path, in thin evening shoes, and dress-clothes, and stood there I daresay a couple of minutes. I remember I felt a little chilly, and I took a glass of hot whiskey and water before I went to bed. I had already had a glass of port at dinner, which in the old days was sufficient to give me a couple of days of rheumatism, and the whiskey on the top was indeed enough to finish me off. Do you not think that it was that, Joyce? Sometimes I feel that you are not really interested in this sort of thing, which means just heaven or hell to me; I am sure if a mere look at the moon and a glass of whiskey and water, without sugar, put you on your back for three days in agony and sleeplessness, I should show a little more curiosity about it. But I suppose you are accustomed to my being ill; it seems the natural state of things to you, and I'm sure I don't wonder considering that for years that has been my normal condition. Well, well, open the paper and let us try to find there something which appeals to you more than your father's health; aviation in France, perhaps, or the floods in the Netherlands."
Poor Joyce had not at present had a chance of speaking.
"But I am interested, father," she said, "and it was rather rash of you to take port, and then a stroll at night and the whiskey. I don't know what Dr. Symonds will say to you if you tell him that particularly when you told him yesterday that it was the draught in church on Sunday."
"It all helps, Joyce," said her father, now contentedly embarked on the only interesting topic. "As Dr. Symonds himself said, these attacks are cumulative, all the little pieces of unwisdom of which one is guilty add to the pile, and at last Nature revenges herself. I wonder if coffee should go too: I should miss my cup of coffee after dinner. But I used to take it in Egypt without the slightest hint of ill-effects. Perhaps if I had saccharine instead of sugar.... I will ask Dr. Symonds. What letters are there for me?"
"Only one. I think it's from Mr. Craddock."
Philip Wroughton frowned.
"Really what you told me when you came down from town yesterday about his slandering that young Lathom," he said, "seems to be quite upsetting, if true, if true. Certainly it took away my appetite for lunch; at least if I had eaten my lunch I feel sure it would have disagreed and so, briefly, I left it. But on thinking it over, Joyce,—I thought a great deal about it last night, for I slept most indifferently—I do not see why we should let it influence our bearing to Craddock. After all, what has happened? He said that young Lathom was not a very nice young fellow, and my mother has heard from his mother and his great friend that heisa very nice young fellow. What would you expect his mother and his friend to say? It is Craddock's word against theirs. As for flying out, as you did, into a state of wild indignation against Craddock (it was that which upset me for my lunch, I feel convinced) that is quite ludicrous.... And your grandmother's letter to me, giving me what she called a piece of her mind, I can only—now I am better—regard as the ravings of a very old and lunatic person. And on the top of that tirade, saying that she wishes to come down here next week, and bring her precious young Lathom with her! Luckily this attack gives me ample excuse for putting off a proposed visit from anybody."
"You need only see them as much as you feel inclined," said Joyce.
"On the contrary," said Philip with some excitement, "when one is ill, and there are visitors in the house, one is always meeting them when one does not want to. As you know, I do not take my hot bath till the middle of the morning; I am sure to meet one or other of them in the passage. And my mother invariably uses up all the hot water in the boiler.... It would all be very inconvenient. Besides, as I say, it was all hearsay about young Lathom being not quite steady; it is equally hearsay that he is. He may be as steady as a rock or as unsteady as—as that steamer from Marseilles to Port Said for all I care."
"But you acted on the report of his unsteadiness," said Joyce, "in not letting him come down to see his copy of your Reynolds."
Philip put a fretful hand to his face and closed his eyes.
"You are very persistent and argumentative, Joyce," he said, "and you know I am not up to these discussions. And this morning only I was planning that as soon as I could move, we would go and spend a fortnight at Torquay: I see they have been having a great deal of sunlight there. Pray let us not continue. I think you said there was a letter from Craddock, to whom you never did justice. You disappointed me very much, and him too of course. Please take his letter and see what he has to say."
Joyce tore open the envelope and took out the contents.
"There seems to be a cheque enclosed," she said.
Philip raised himself in bed, and put out his hand. An unexpected cheque by post is a pleasant excitement to all but the most apathetic Croesus.
"Give it me," he said. "I wonder what that can be for." He glanced at it.
"Good God, how slow you are, Joyce," he exclaimed, "read his letter. I don't know what it means."
Joyce read.
"I enclose my cheque for five thousand pounds, which is the balance of what I actually received from Mr. Ward, for your Reynolds. With regard to your subsequent proceedings I throw myself unreservedly on your mercy. I have also to tell you that the statements I made to you about the character of Charles Lathom are entirely unfounded. I unreservedly withdraw them."
"I enclose my cheque for five thousand pounds, which is the balance of what I actually received from Mr. Ward, for your Reynolds. With regard to your subsequent proceedings I throw myself unreservedly on your mercy. I have also to tell you that the statements I made to you about the character of Charles Lathom are entirely unfounded. I unreservedly withdraw them."
Philip made a quicker movement than he had done since 9.30 a.m. three mornings before, the same being the moment when the lumbago stabbed him.
"Five thousand pounds!" he exclaimed. "Why, the man's a thief! Joyce, five thousand pounds. A liar too! He acknowledges he told lies about that young Lathom. I've never had such a shock in my life. And the interest on all this money. Doesn't he owe me that as well? Is it that he means by throwing himself on my mercy? I am not sure that I am inclined to be merciful about that...."
Then he made an enormous concession.
"Joyce, we must certainly show young Lathom that—why, I am sitting quite upright in bed, and felt nothing when I moved—as I say young Lathom must certainly be told that he may come down to see his copy. It would not do to be less generous than Craddock about that. But I am very much shocked: I hardly know what to say. Anyhow I will have my bath at once. And you might look up the trains to Torquay, my dear. Your grandmother and young Lathom must come down after we get back. Really, even when I move, I feel no pain at all, only a little stiffness. They say a great shock sometimes produces miraculous results...."
Joyce never quite determined the nature of this shock: sometimes it seemed only reasonable to suppose it was the shock of joy at this unexpected and considerable sum of money, sometimes she construed it into a shock of horror at this self-revelation of their travelling companion. But certainly the lumbago ceased from troubling, and two days afterwards they started for Torquay.
It was the day of the private view of the Academy; all morning and afternoon a continuous stream of public persons had been flowing in and out of the gates into Piccadilly and the mysterious folk who tell the press who was there, and how they were dressed, and to whom they were seen talking, must have had a busy day of it, for everybody was very nicely dressed, and was talking rather more excitedly than usual to everybody else. In fact there was hubbub of a quite exceptional kind, connected, for once in a way, with the objects which, nominally, brought these crowds together. The crowd in fact was not so much excited with itself (a habit universal in crowds) as with something else. Indeed the sight of Akroyd, who had just been knighted, talking to Tranby (who just hadn't) roused far less attention than usual, and all sorts of people whom he was accustomed to converse with on the day of the private view hurried by him as he stood in an advantageous position in front of an extremely royal canvas at the end of the third room, catalogue in hand, scrutinizing not him, but the numbers affixed to the pictures. For a little while he was inclined to consider that a tinge of jealousy, perhaps, or of natural diffidence, more probably, prompted these inexplicable slights, but before long he became aware that there was something in the air besides himself. Opportunely enough, Craddock made his appearance at the moment, and Sir James annexed him.
"Something up: something up, is there, Craddock?" he asked. "Yes: many thanks, my lady is very much pleased about it. But surely, there is an unusual animation—how de do?—an unusual animation about us all this morning. Is it a picture, or a potentate, or a ballerina? Ah, there is young Armstrong. Armstrong, I hope you will come to the hundredth night this evening. I shall say something about you at the call. No doubt your friends in front will demand you also."
Frank looked Craddock full in the face for a moment, and decided to recognize him.
"Hullo, Craddock," he said. "What'll you give me for my portrait, or don't you do business in these sacred halls? No, I'm afraid no amount of demand will produce me this evening, Akroyd. Goodbye: I'm going to stand by my portrait again: it's the biggest lark out. Charles is up on top, isn't he, Craddock?"
Charles certainly was up on top, for it was he, and he alone, who was causing all this crowd to forget itself, in its excitement about him and his work. He had risen, this new amazing star, on the artistic horizon, and all eyes were turned towards it. In vain, for the moment anyhow, had Mr. Hoskyns conceived and executed his last masterpiece "Angelic Songs are Welling," in which a glory of evening sunlight fell through a stained glass window onto the profiled head of a girl with her mouth open, sitting at an organ, while four stupefied persons gazed heavily at her, in a room consisting of marble and polished woodwork and mother of pearl. In vain were acres of heather and Highland cattle interspersed with birch trees and coffee-brown burns; in vain did the whole gamut of other portraits, from staid railway directors in frock coats, and maps spread on the table by them, down to frisky blue and white youngest daughters of Somebody Esquire, frown or smile or frolic on the walls. There were just three focusses of interest, one in the second room, one here among the masterpieces of the masters, a third in the room just beyond. Here was the portrait of "The Artist's Mother," in the room beyond Mrs. Fortescue gallantly maintained her place by the presentment of herself, and received congratulations; in the second room, Frank scowled and wrestled with his play. It was a Boom, in fact, everybody wanted to see Charles' pictures without delay, and having done so, told everybody else to go and do likewise.
Craddock had made what is known as a good recovery after the painful operation recorded in the last chapter. He had suffered, it is true, one relapse, when, on giving Lady Crowborough a choice of three nights on which to come to dine with him, he had received a third-person note regretting (without cause assigned) her inability to do so, but it soon became apparent to him that nobody, not even she, had any intention of making the facts of his operation known to the world. And with his recovery there had come to him a certain shame at what he had done. True, that shame was inextricably mixed with another and less worthy kinsman, shame at his detection, but it was there, in its own right, though no doubt detection had been necessary to bring it forth. It had come, anyhow, cowering and crying into the world.
This morning, more especially, his shame grew and throve (even as his recovery grew) when he looked on those three superb canvases before which the whole world was agape. There was little under the sun that he reverenced, but his reverence was always ready to bow the knee before genius, and it seemed to him that of all the "low tricks" that his greed or his selfishness had ever prevailed upon him to accomplish, the lowest of all was when he let fall those little efficacious words about Charles. He had mocked and cheated the owner of the gift that compelled obeisance, the gift to which he, in all his tortuous spinnings, had never failed in homage. Surrounded as these three stars were now, with the smooth dark night, so to speak, of mere talent and more or less misplaced industry, it was easier to judge of their luminous shining, but he did not seek to excuse himself by any assurance of previous hesitation or doubt in his verdict of their quality. He had known from the first, when one summer morning close on a year ago he had stood by Thorley Weir that a star was rising.... He felt as if he had been picking Velasquez' pocket.
And yet the temptation at the time had been very acute. Just as there was no mistaking Charles' genius for any second rate quality, so there had been no mistake in his telling himself that he had been in love with Joyce, when he had succeeded, so easily and meanly, for the time, in removing from his path what undoubtedly stood materially in his way. He had cleared the path for himself, so he had hoped, but the path, when cleared, led, so far as he was concerned, nowhere at all, and he might just as well have left it cumbered to his passage and himself encumbered of his monstrous meanness. Joyce still stood impenetrably barred from him, no longer only by the barrier he so rightly had conjectured to be there, but by the fact of his own detection in its attempted removal. But he had accepted the second rejection of himself as final, and since his return from Egypt had forbade himself to dally with the subject of domestic happiness. Consolation of all sorts could be brought to play, like a hose, on a burning place; given time the most awkward wielder of it could not fail to quench the trouble, and—the house of life had many windows into which the sun shone, without risk of provoking internal conflagrations. Only, sometimes, his subtly-decorated and sumptuous flat seemed to him now a little lonely. There was no longer any thought of a girl's presence abiding there, turning it into that strange abode called home, and there came there no longer that eager and divinely-gifted boy, whose growth during this last year had been a thing to love and wonder at. He might have kept him: that at any rate had been in his power. Instead, he had grasped at a little more money, which he did not, except from habit, want, he had lied a little in the hope of entrapping that wild bird, love, and he had gained nothing whatever by it all. A certain morality, born perhaps of nothing higher than experience, had, in consequence, begun to make itself felt in him.
The crowd surged and thickened about him, and he found himself the bureau of a myriad of inquirers. All this last winter and spring London had vaguely heard of this amazing young genius who was going to burst on the world, and Craddock in this room, and Mrs. Fortescue, looking nearly as brilliant as her portrait, in the next, were seized on as fountains of original information. Elsewhere Lady Crowborough, in a large shady hat trimmed with rosebuds and daisies, could give news of her own portrait now approaching completion, and Mr. Ward, who had marked down half a dozen pictures as suitable for his New York Luxembourg, followed, faint but pursuing, wherever he could get news of Craddock having passed that way, to tempt him with fresh offers for the mother portrait. Round that the crowd was thickest, and there, those who could see it were silent. There were no epithets that seemed to be of any use in the presence of that noble simplicity and tenderness. Once in a shrill voice Mr. Ward exclaimed, "Well, he's honoured his mother anyhow!" but even that, though on the right lines, savoured of inadequacy, a fault to which she was mostly a stranger. Or, now and then, a critic would point out the wonderful modelling of the hand, or the high light on the typewriter, or even shrug a fastidious shoulder, and wonder whether the quality of the brush-work was such——But for the greater part, there was not much talking just in front of it. Somehow it lived: to criticise or appreciate was like making personal remarks to its face. It took hold of you: you did not want to talk.
Charles had not intended to appear on this day of private view, but considering how deep and true was the knowledge that his portrait showed of his mother, it was strange that it had not occurred to him that it was absolutely certain that she would insist on going herself and would not dream of considering any escort but his. She called for him in fact, at his studio about twelve, dressed and eager with anticipation, and Charles had the sense not to waste time in expostulation over so pre-ordained a fact, as he now perceived his visit to be, but accepted the inevitable and put on his best clothes, while his mother brushed his hat. It was thus about a quarter to one, when the galleries were most crowded and the ferment over the three portraits was at its highest, that they entered.
Probably until that moment there were scarce fifty people out of all the multitude who knew Charles by sight, scarce five who knew his mother. But even as they went their way up the steps and met the opposing crowd of out-goers, she was aware of eager unusual glances directed at her, she heard little whispered conversations beginning "Why surely"—she knew that people stopped and looked after them as she passed, and all the exultant pride uprose triumphant, and laughing in the sheer joy of its happiness, even as when first she knew she had borne a child. Vague and wild were the conjectures at first, but every chattering group that passed them, recognising suddenly, confirmed it, and from conjecture she passed to knowledge. Why did they all stare at her with her quiet unremarkable face, who always passed about so private and unobserved, unless something had happened to make her thus suddenly recognised and stared at? She cared not at all for the little accesses of shyness and timidity that kept breaking over her, making her sweet pale face flush like a girl's, for all her conscious self was drowned and forgotten in her son, in him who in an hour had caused her face to be famous and familiar. And how she longed that no inkling of this might reach Charles, so that her triumph might be prolonged and magnified, how she encouraged him to consult his catalogue, and tell her who this picture and that was by, fixing his attention by all means in her power on anything rather than the crowds that more and more openly stared and whispered about her. Well she knew that if once he guessed the cause of the whispers and glances, a horror-stricken face and flying coat-tails would be the last she would see of him. For the recognition of her she saw, just led to the recognition of him, and with ears pricked and eager, she could catch the sequels—"That must be he ... What a handsome boy ... But surely he's so young...." It was sweeter than honey and the honeycomb.
They had passed in through the sculpture-gallery into the third room where, as she knew, her own portrait hung, and with infinite craft, prolonging the time, she had immediately caught sight of something on the opposite wall, that claimed her instant attention. From one picture she passed to another, and furtively saw how dense a crowd was congregated on the other side of the room, and knew what it was that so absorbed them. And Charles was getting interested now in showing her what he had seen on that his first historic varnishing day, and was eager with speech and pointed finger.
"Look at that Sargent," he said, "it makes you hate to look at that sunshine. How on earth does he do it? Isn't it magic? Just blue and yellow, same as we've all got in our paint-boxes. But he sees so splendidly! That's half the battle, seeing——"
This was capital: at this rate her triumph would last all up the long wall, round the top of the room, and nearly half way down the other. Alas, it was already nearly over.
Charles looked up and saw the mass of people round the place where undoubtedly his picture was.
"Let's go and look at you, mother," he said, "as you said you wanted to see it hanging. I say, what a lot of people there are. There's a gorgeous thing of Lavery's hanging next it: it was rather bad luck, that, on me, though it's a miracle getting on to that wall at all. Come across: we'll get that over, and then can enjoy the rest."
They crossed the room and wedged themselves into the inter-shouldered crowd. Very slowly indeed those in front of them cleared away, and at length they stood opposite it. Then as they looked, those round them recognizing her, and making the infallible guess at Charles' identity, stood a little back for them, and still a little more back. Charles, still childlikely unconscious, was intent on his picture's neighbours: his mother knew exactly what was happening, and despite herself felt a gathering dimness in her eyes. In all her tale of unselfish years she had never felt so big with personal pride, into which not one atom of self entered.
"Well, if you'vefinishedlooking at yourself, mother dear," said he in rather a high voice.
He turned and horror glazed his eyes. It was quite impossible to mistake what that half-circle of pleasant well-dressed folk were staring at, not the picture's neighbours, not his picture itself this moment.
"For heaven's sake, let's get out of this," he said, blushing furiously. And the knot of people round his picture turned, smiling and pleased at the boy's modesty, and the mother's superb pride.
Charles in his retreat, with his mother in his wake, ran straight into Craddock. This was no great embarrassment, for Craddock had been to the studio not long before: also his mother knew nothing, except that Charles a month ago had been greatly upset in connection with Craddock. She might have guessed more, but Charles had told her no word. And at the moment in his confusion, any known face was a harbour of refuge.
"Hullo, Mr. Craddock," he said, "my mother wanted to come and look at herself. So I brought her. Here she is. What a jolly show."
Craddock made his answer to Mrs. Lathom.
"Are you proud?" he said. "Are you more than proud, satisfied?"
She shook hands with him.
"I am even that," she said. "And what am I to do with this foolish boy?"
"Lead him about, show him to everybody: he has got to get used to it. I expected a great deal myself, but I have yet to get used to this."
Charles' eyes went back to the crowd in front of his picture again.
"What has happened?" he asked. "Is it—do you mean it's a huge success, huge, you know?"
"Walk up and down again with your mother, my dear fellow, and judge."
Charles became wild-eyed again.
"But it's a dream," he said. "It's—oh, Lady Crowborough."
Lady Crowborough was sufficiently moved to recognize Craddock.
"How de do, Mr. Craddock?" she said. "Well, Charles, my dear, you've gone and done it. There ain't an artist here but what's cursing you. There never was such a private view, and I've seen somewhere about eighty of them. Now, I'm going to have my lunch. There's nobody as can say a sensible word this morning all along of your pictures. And don't you forget to be at Paddington in good time to-morrow afternoon for the train down to Thorley. And if you get there before me, lay hold of an empty carriage and put the windows tight up."
Charles was instantly and completely diverted by this new topic.
"Oh, Mr. Wroughton does expect me?" he asked.
"Yes, he told me to tell you. And if you find you're enjoying yourself we'll stop over till Tuesday. I hate those Saturday to Monday things, running away again before you get your boxes unpacked. I daresay you'll find enough to amuse you till Tuesday. You can bring down your paint-box if you want something to occupy you, and make a drawing of me or my maid or Joyce or something."
And with a very broad grin on her face she moved away.
Frank descended next on them.
"Libel-action imminent, Charles," he said, looking firmly at Craddock (this he found inevitable). "I've been standing in front of my portrait for an hour, and listening. Two timid little people come up to it and say 'Good gracious, what a dreadful-looking young man. Who is it? Turn up a hundred and seventy-five, Jane.' 'Sunrise on the Alps! It can't be! Youngest daughter of Lady Jellicoe. No, a hundred and seventy-five! Oh, Mr. Frank Armstrong, is it? Fancy! And we liked "Easter Eggs" so much.' I'll have damages for that sort of thing. You've spoiled my public."
"Lord, if I had wished to libel you," said Charles, "I wouldn't have let you off like that."
"Your mother too," said Frank. "Why, it's the kid seething its mother in its own vitriol. I haven't seen it yet, I was too occupied. Libellous fellow! What does she say to it all?"
Mrs. Lathom turned to him.
"She doesn't say much, Mr. Frank," she said. "But—but she's having rather a happy morning."
"Well, then take me to have a look at you, and I'll take you to have a look at me. After that, Charles' brass band which I've ordered will be ready. 'See the conquering,' you know."
Charles lingered with Craddock.
"Now tell me really," he said, "without chaff I mean, like Lady Crowborough and Frank."
"They have told you really," he said. "If you want it in other words, say that your price for a full-length is a thousand pounds. That's practical, isn't it?"
Charles shook his head.
"But I still don't understand," he said.
Then all the boyish spirits surged high, high too surged all his true artistic ambitions and passions, rising to that splendid point of humility which must always accompany triumphant achievement and its recognition. The utter surprise and the shock of this last quarter of an hour which had unsteadied and bewildered him cleared away: what had happened began to be real.
"But what gorgeous fun!" he cried. "And how I must work. There's everything to learn yet."
Craddock wondered whether he would find at Thorley that which should be the centre and the sun of his wakening. Almost he hoped that he would, for so radiant a completeness burned envy away, or at the most left a little negligible dross. Joyce a centre sun, loving and loved, and her lover this splendid star.... With that inspiring bliss what was there that this young hand and eager eye might not see and accomplish. The love of a son for his mother, the comradeship of a friend, the mere presence of a pretty woman, a brother's well-made limbs in act to spring, had been sufficient to bring forth the work of just one astounding year. What when the love-light of man and woman flashed back and forth between him and the exquisite girl down by the riverside? Might that not open a new chapter in the history and records of the beautiful? It did not seem to him an outrageous fantasy to imagine that the possibility was a real one.
It was seldom that those who were to travel with Lady Crowborough were privileged to reach the appointed station before her arrival; for no amount of contrary experience convinced her that trains were not capable of starting half an hour or so before their appointed times. Also she liked to get a carriage to herself, and dispose on all available seats so enormous a quantity of books, parasols, cloaks, rugs and handbags, that the question whether all these seats were taken could scarcely be ventured on, so heavily and potently were they occupied. Consequently on the next afternoon Charles found her already in possession, with the windows tightly shut, and a perfect bale of morning and evening papers by her. She had bought in fact a copy of every paper published that day, as far as she could ascertain, with the object of utterly overwhelming Philip with all the first notices of the Academy, in order to impress him as by a demonstration in force, with Charles' immensity. She had attempted to read some of these herself, but being unused to artistic jargon, had made very little of them. Still there could be no doubt as to what they meant to convey.
"That's right, my dear," she said as he appeared, "and jump in quick, for though there's time yet, you never can tell when they won't slide you out of the station. Clear a place for yourself, and then we'll both sit and look out of the window, and they'll take us for a couple on their honeymoon, and not dream of coming in, if they've any sense of what's right. And when we've started you can read all about yourself, and it's likely you'll find a lot you didn't know before. I can't make head or tail of it all: they talk of keys of colour and tones and what not, as if you'd been writing a bundle of music. And leit-motif: what's a leit-motif? They'll say your pictures are nothing but a lot of accidentals next. Chords and harmonies indeed, as if you'd put a musical-box in the frames. There's that Craddock got a column and a half about your keys and what not. But I was so pleased yesterday I had to pass the time of day with him."
"But what have you bought all these papers for?" asked Charles. "Oh, yes: here's Craddock."
"Don't you mind him. Why to let Philip see what they all think of you. But that's my affair, my dear. I'm going to stuff them under his nose one after the other. You'll see. And there we are off. Now don't expect me to talk in the train. You just read about yourself, and if you see me nodding, let me nod. There's half an hour yet before we need be thinking of putting my things together."
Great heat had come with the opening of May, and spring was riotous in field and hedgerow, with glory of early blossom and valour of young leafage. All this last month Charles had been town-tied among the unchanging bloomlessness of brick and stone and pavement—it had scarcely seemed to him that winter was overpast, and the time for buds and birds had come. Already on the lawn by the water-side the summer-batswing tent had been set up, and across the grass Joyce and the unbrothered Huz came to meet them, with a smile and a tail of welcome. A faint smell of eucalyptus had been apparent as they passed through the house and Lady Crowborough drew an unerring conclusion.
"Well, Joyce, my dear, here we are," she said, "and I won't ask after your father because I'll bet that he has got a cold. I smelt his stuff the moment I set foot in the house."
"Yes, darling grannie," said Joyce, "but it's not very bad. He's really more afraid of having one than—than it. How are you, Mr. Lathom?"
Lady Crowborough's maid was standing a little way behind, looking like Tweedledum prepared for battle, so encompassed was she by a mass of miscellaneous objects. Prominent among them was the file of to-day's papers.
"You'll find out how he is, my dear," said Lady Crowborough, "when you've dipped into that little lot. He's just a grand piano of keys and harmonies."
"Ah, I read the notice in the 'Daily Review,'" said Joyce. "I was so pleased. I long to see your pictures."
"Well, then, you'll have to wait your turn, my dear," said Lady Crowborough. "We all took our turns like a peep-show. Drat that dog; he's always licking my hand. Now take me and give me my tea at once, and then he'll get something else to lick. Are we to see your father?"
"Yes, he's coming down to dinner, if he feels up to it. Shall we have tea in the tent?"
"Well, it ain't so cold for the country!" said Lady Crowborough, as if the Arctic region began at the four mile radius.
"It's broiling, Grannie. And do you want quite all those cushions and wraps? They'll hardly go into the tent."
"Yes, I want them every one. And I want my tea after my journey. Go back to the house, Charles, my dear, and tell them to bring it out."
She waited till Charles had passed beyond earshot on his errand. "Now, Joyce," she said, "I don't want to see any fiddle-faddling between that boy and you, and talking about the moon and the stars and Mr. Browning's poetry and what not, as if that had anything to do with it."
"Grannie, darling," said Joyce with an agonized look at Tweedledum.
"She don't hear," said Lady Crowborough, "who could hear through that lot of cushions and veils. And what I say to you, Joyce, I'm going to say to him."
Joyce grew suddenly grave.
"Oh, indeed, you mustn't do anything of the kind, Grannie," said she. "Why how could I look him in the face, and have a moment's ease with him, if I thought you had?"
Lady Crowborough's face smiled all over.
"Very well, then," she said. "I don't want you not to look at the face. But you take my advice, Joyce. Lord, if I were seventy years younger I'd take it myself, in less than a jiffy. You make up your mind you're going to have him and let there be no nonsense about it. Mercy on us all, girls get red in the face and look away, and think one's a shocking old woman, when one advises them to do exactly what they want to do. You keep all the stuff about the moon and poetry till afterwards, my dear. It'll serve to talk about then, only I expect you'll find you've plenty else to say. He's a nice clean clever young fellow, with a good head and a good heart, and they're not too many of that sort going about. Lord, you should have seen all the girls and women, too, staring at him yesterday at the picture-show. I thought somebody would catch him up and marry him under my very nose. They'll be at him now like wasps round a jam-pot. But you get in first, my dear, and we'll put the lid on. Well, here he comes! Don't you look shocked. I've talked very good sense. You haven't got a mother, but if you had she'd tell you just the same, with no end of beautiful words scattered about like the flowers on a dinner-table, just to hide the victuals as she always did. But the victuals are there just the same: it wouldn't be much of a dinner without 'em."
Any intercourse, flippant or nugatory, or concerned with what Lady Crowborough summed up under the head of the "moon and Mr. Browning's poetry" is sufficient cover for the hidden approach of two souls that are stealing towards each other; any channel sufficient to conduct the conveyance of such streams; and when not long after, Lady Crowborough left them to go indoors to make her salutations to Philip, and get out of the "nasty damp draught" that was blowing up from the river, it was under the most insignificant of shelter that they crept nearer, ever nearer. But, for they talked over the happenings little and not so little, that concerned them jointly in the past, it was as if they gathered in the store that should so soon burst the doors of its granary, or sat telling their beads in some hushed sacred place before it blazed out into lights and music and banners.... All this was below, as leaven secretly working, on the surface a boy and girl by the Thames-side talked as comrades talk with laughter and unembarrassed pauses.
"Wonder if it'll be a June like last year," said Charles, sliding from his chair onto the grass. "I was camped up there, half a mile away, for three weeks of it and there was never a drop of rain. Oh, except one night for half an hour: it smelt so good."
"I know: the best watering carts in a dusty street," said she. "You were doing that picture of the weir and your brother."
"And then one afternoon you punted up with Craddock. And that's how it all began."
"All what?" asked Joyce, knowing he could give only one answer, but longing for the other answer.
"My career, large C," said Charles with pomp. "He came and bought the picture next morning. I couldn't believe it at first. I thought—I thought he was a fairy."
"Mr. Craddock does not answer my idea of a fairy," said Joyce after a little consideration. "Oh, you left out about Reggie—isn't he Reggie?—trying to make an omelette, and succeeding only in producing a degraded glue."
"I don't think I noticed that," said Charles, looking at her.
"No, you were staring at us as if we were all fairies. Oh, but you did notice it. It made you laugh, and me too."
Charles went back to a previous topic.
"No, strictly speaking, he isn't a fairy," he said. "At least not completely. But it was a fairylike proceeding. Oh, yes, grant him something fairylike. He got me the commission to copy your Reynolds, and he started me on my feet, and believed in me. I found him a fairy for—for quite a long time."
"Of course there are bad fairies as well," said Joyce, conceding the point.
"Yes: do you mind my asking you one thing? Did you ever——"
"Of course not," said Joyce. "What on earth do you think of me?"
"But you don't know what——"
"Yes, I do. I never,neverbelieved one word. Does that show you? Talk about something else. I don't want to be sick on such a lovely evening."
Charles relapsed into laughter.
"Isn't it so distressing on a wet day?" he asked.
"No. Do you know, I think what he did to father about the picture wasn't nearly so bad. That only made me feel rather unwell. Have you seen him since you knew about it all?"
Charles made a little conflagration of dry leaves with the match he had just lit before he answered.
"Yes, once or twice," he said. "I'm rather ashamed of not having seen him oftener. I believe he was sorry, and if people are sorry—well, it's all over, isn't it?"
"What a painfully noble sentiment," said Joyce. "But I don't think I should caress a scorpion, however grief-stricken. Besides, how can you say that it's all over, just because a person is sorry. He has become, to you, a different person if you find out he has done something mean, something—something like that. Not that I thought very much of Mr. Craddock before," she added.
"Well, I did," said Charles.
"Don't bias me," said Joyce.
She was silent a moment.
"In a way an injury done to oneself is easier to forgive than an injury done to somebody else——" she began.
Charles rudely interrupted.
"Painfully noble sentiment?" he enquired.
"Yes: perhaps it was. Let us be careful: we might die in the night if we became more edifying."
"And the real point is that Mr. Craddock's little plot didn't come off," said he. "At least that seems to me the most important thing."
For a moment their eyes met, and for that moment the huge underlying reality came close to the surface.
She smiled and nodded her assent to this.
"Leave it there," she said ... "and then, where were we? O, yes: then you came to copy the Reynolds. Up in my room, do you remember? And dear old Buz lay on the sofa and got worse and worse?"
She leaned back in her chair so that he could not see her face.
"Oh, what a coward I was!" she said. "I knew there was only one thing I could do for him, poor darling, and yet I let you do it instead of me."
"Well, there was no delay," said Charles. "It was done."
"Oh, but you understand better than that," she said. "It was I who failed: now that's a thing hard to forgive oneself. I loved Buz best: it was my privilege to help him in the only way possible. Yes, I know, the thing in itself was nothing, just to press a syringe. But there was the principle behind it, don't you see—of course you do—that I threw love's right away.... And I don't believe I ever thanked you for picking it up, so to speak. But I was grateful."
Charles' little conflagration had burned itself out.
"Poor Buz!" he said.
Joyce sat up.
"He didn't have such a bad time," she said, "though why I expect you to be interested in Buz I really don't know. But I've confessed. I always rather wanted to confess that to you—Penance?"
"I think a turn in the punt might do you good," said he, "especially if I take the pole."
That, for the present, was the end of anything serious. Charles exhibited the most complicated incompetence, as regards propulsion, though as a piece of aquatic juggling, his performance was supreme. Joyce told him how to stand, and like that he stood, and the juggling began. He thrust his pole into the water and it stuck fast: he pulled hard at it and the punt went a little backwards, but a second wrench landed a chunk of mud and water-weed on his trousers. He pushed again, this time with so firm and vigorous a stroke that they flew into mid-stream, and only by swift antic steps in the direction of the stern did he recover balance and pole. Once again he pushed, this time in unfathomable water, plunged his arm up to the shoulder in the astonished flood, and fell in an entangled heap of arms and legs on the top of the stupefied Huz.
"Are we going up or down the river?" asked Joyce.
Charles looked wildly round: the bows of the punt seemed if anything to be pointing down stream.
"Down," he said.
The punt thought not: it yawed in a slow half circle and directed itself up-stream.
"That is down-stream, isn't it?" said he ... and they slowly slid into the bank.
A swift circular motion began, and a fool-hardy swan coming within range narrowly escaped decapitation. Then Lady Crowborough, having made her visit, appeared at the edge of the lawn, and Charles rashly promised to pick her up.... But they moved westward instead into the crimson pools of reflected sunset. Joyce had never ached so much in all her healthy life.
Yet even these inanities brought them nearer.... Love has a use for laughter.
Six months ago on an evening of gale and autumn storm, when the chimneys smoked and the rain made fierce tattoo on the streaming window panes, Joyce had gone up to her bedroom leaving her father and another guest together, and had felt some wild primæval instinct stirring in her blood, that made her long to go out alone into the blackness and hurly-burly of the streaming heavens, to be herself, solitary and unencumbered by the presence and subtle silent influence of others. And to-night, when she and Lady Crowborough left Philip and Charles talking together—Philip's cold had miraculously almost, encouraged by eucalyptus, vanished altogether—she again felt herself prey to the same desire. But to-night, it was no pall of streaming blackness that drew her, but the still starry twilight, and the warm scents of spring. But now, even as then, she wanted to be alone, hidden and unsuspected in the deep dusk of the star-shine, to wander through the fresh-fallen dew in the meadows, to finger the new leaves on riverside willows, to lie, perhaps face downwards in the growing hay-fields, to listen to the mysterious noises of the night, to learn—to learn what? She did not know, or at any rate did not formulate the answer, but it was something that the dark and the spring-time were ready to tell her: something that concerned the Spirit of life that kept the world spinning on its secular journey, and made bright the eyes of the wild creatures of the wood, and set the rose a-budding, and made in her the red blood leap on its joyous errands.... Surely, somehow, in the dark of the spring night she could link the pulse that beat in her with the great indwelling rhythm of the world, make herself realise that all was one, she and the singing-bird whose time was come, and the rose that tingled on its stem with the potential blossoms.
She had taken off her dinner-dress and put on a dressing gown, and now, blowing out her light, she went across to her open window, drew up the blind and leaned out into the night. And then in a flash of newly-awakened knowledge, she was aware that she wanted to be alone no longer. She wanted a teacher who also would learn with her, one more human than the star-light, and dearer to her heart than the fragrant hay-fields. But leaning out into the dark, she was nearer him than in the house, and she opened her heart ... it stood wide.
Just below her the gravel path that bordered the lawn was illuminated by the light that came in yellow oblongs of glow from the long windows of her father's study. She heard some little stir of movement below, the sound of voices dim and unintelligible inside, and presently after the tread of a foot-step on the stairs and so along the passage past her room, where her father slept. Then the window below was thrown open and Charles stepped out onto the gravel. Like her, perhaps, he felt the call of the night; she wondered if, like her, he needed more than the night could give him. She could look out without risk of detection: from outside, her window would appear a mere black hole in the wall. He paused a moment, and then strolled onto the dewy lawn. And as he walked away towards the river, she heard him whistle softly to himself, the song he had sung last year to his guitar. "See the chariot at hand here of Love...."
Joyce lay long awake, when she got to bed, not tossing nor turning nor even desiring sleep, but very quiet with wide open eyes. She did not seem to herself to be thinking at all, it was no preoccupation that kept her awake: she but lived and breathed, was part of the spring night. But it seemed to her that she had never been alive till then. Sometimes for a little while she dozed, nonsense of some sort began to stir in her brain, but the drowsy moments were no more than moments. From the stable-clock not far away she heard the faint clanging of the hours and half-hours, which seemed to follow very rapidly, the one after the other. By her dressing-table in the window there came a very faint light through the unblinded casement from the remote noon-day of the shining stars, the rest of the room was muffled in soft darkness.
Then she missed the sound of one half-hour, and when she woke again, the light in her room was changed. Already the faint illumination by the window had spread over the rest of it, and there was a more conspicuous brightness on the table that stood there. Then from outside she heard the first chirruping of one bird, and the light grew, a light hueless and colourless, a mere mixture of white with the dark. More birds joined voices to the first heard in the earliest welcome of the day, and a breeze set some tendril of creeper tapping at her panes. Colour began to steal into the hueless light; she could guess there in the East were cloud-wisps that caught the morning.
Joyce got out of bed and went to the window, and the lure of the sunrise irresistibly beckoned her out. The message the night had seemed to hold for her, though contradicted afterwards, had been authentically transmitted to the dawn—something certainly called her now. She dressed herself quickly in some old boating-costume, went quietly along the passage, and down stairs. At the foot Huz was sleeping, but awoke at her step, and found it necessary to give a loud and joyful bark of welcome. It seemed to him an excellent plan to go out.
She crossed the lawn with her dog, for the river seemed to beckon, and would have taken her canoe, except that that meant that Huz must be left behind. She did not want Huz, but Huz wanted, and she stepped into the punt, that puzzled victim of Charles' aimlessness, and pushed off. The boom of Thorley Weir—that, or was it something else about Thorley Weir—determined her direction, and she slid away upstream. It was still not yet the hour of sunrise, and she would be at the weir before that.
A few minutes before, Charles had wakened also. He, too, had slept but little, and his awaking was sudden: he felt as if some noise had roused him, the shutting of a door perhaps, or the barking of a dog. The early light that preceded dawn was leaking into his room, and he got out of bed to draw up the blind. The magic of the hour, breeze of morning, chirruping of birds seized and held him, and into his mind—brighter than the approaching dawn—there came flooding back all that had kept sleep from him. Sleep was far away again now, and the morning beckoned.
He dressed and went out, and it was in his mind to wrestle with the punt, perhaps, to spring on Joyce a mysteriously-acquired adeptness. And then suddenly he saw that steps had preceded him across the lawn, wiping away the dew, and his heart leaped. Could it be she who had passed that way already? Would they meet—and his heart hammered in his throat—in this pearly and sacred hour, when only the birds were awake? It was not quite sunrise yet; should day, and another day lit by the dawn that from everlasting had moved the sun and the stars, dawn together? But where had she gone, where should he seek and find her?
The punt was gone: the canoe lay tapped by the ripples from the mill-stream. Right or left? Down stream or up? Then the boom of Thorley Weir decided him—that, or something else, some quivering line that she had left to guide him.
The imperfect chirrupings were forming themselves into "actual song"; on the smooth-flowing river reflections of the blue above began to stain the grey steel-colour, and the willow leaves were a-quiver with the breeze of morning. He hardly noticed these things as he plied his paddle round bend and promontory of the stream. Louder sounded the boom of the outpoured weir, and the last corner was turned, and on the spit of land where a year ago his tent had been pitched stood Joyce.
She had just tied her punt to the bank and stood looking up towards the weir itself. Huz was by her and hearing the splash of the paddle, turned and waved a welcoming tail that beat against Joyce's skirt. At that she turned also, and saw him. But she gave him no word of welcome, nor did he speak to her. In silence he ran the boat into the soft ground beside the punt, and stepped ashore. He had left his coat in the canoe and came towards her, hatless like herself, bare-armed to the elbow.
She looked at him, still silent, yet flooding him with her self, and his own identity, his very self and being, seemed to pass utterly away from him. He was conscious of nothing more than her.
"It had to be like this," he said.... "Joyce, Joyce."
Still she did not answer, but, quivering a little, bent towards him, as a young tree leans before the wind. Then her lips parted.
"Oh, Charles," she said, "have you come to me? I was waiting for you."