"The aunt at Sèvres also had something to say. She had managed to get on a semi-friendly footing with us whenLes Huit Jourswas running, and now she had the effrontery to take the tone of a mother-in-law with me. She 'knew I was devoted to her niece, but I was not being fair to her—I ought to realise that she had a right to a career, too.' What audacity!—a woman who had given nothing but phrases when her niece was penniless! I did not wrap up my answer in silver paper—and I fancy the aunt's influence was responsible for a good deal; I think she revenged herself by offering all the encouragement possible behind my back.
"Anyhow, my wife announced to me at last that she had determined to go her own road without my help. It was as if she had struck me.
"She meant to seek an opening in some minor company in the provinces—in the obscurest of the theatres ambulants, if she could do no better. It sounded so mad that at first I could hardly believe she was in earnest. The doggedness of her air soon convinced me; I would have welcomed the wildest hysteria in preference. Since I refused to further her ambition, she must resign herself to beginning in the humblest way, she told me quietly; she 'regretted to defy my wishes, but she was a woman, and I had been wrong to expect from her the blind obedience of a child—she could not consent to remain a nonentity any longer!' She dumfounded me. It meant actual separation, it meant the end of our life together—and she was telling me this composedly, coolly, as if our life together were the merest trifle, compared with the fascination of the footlights. I cursed the footlights and the day I first wrote for them. I swear I wished myself back in the Magasins du Louvre. My excitement was so violent that I could not articulate; I stuttered and stood mute. I went from her overwhelmed, asking myself what I was to do.
"There is one course that never fails to remedy marital unhappiness and bring husband and wife together again—on the stage. It is when he leads her to an ottoman, and, standing a pace or two behind her, proceeds with tender gravity to recite a catalogue of her defects. He contrasts them pathetically with the virtues that endeared her to him in the springtime of their union—and the wife, moved to tears, becomes immediately and for ever afterwards the girl that she used to be. The situation is pretty, it is popular, and it is quite untrue, for in real life one cannot recreate a character by making a speech. However, I was a dramatist, and more credulous than I am now, and I tried.
"For days I pondered what I should say. Arguments were plentiful, but the problem was how to present them forcefully enough to show her the wildness of her plan, and yet gently enough to avoid incensing her. Our future hung upon the scene, and I prayed to Heaven that not a tactless word should escape me. I knew that we had reached the crisis, that a mistaken adjective, even an impatient gesture, might be fatal. I considered and reconsidered that appeal with more tireless fervour than any lines that I have ever put into the mouth of a leading man. I thought about it so much that sometimes I was enraged to find the things I meant to say falling mentally into sentences too rhythmic and rounded, as if I had indeed been writing for the stage, and I damned my metier anew. You are an author yourself, my friend—you should understand: I longed to open my heart to her with all simplicity—never had any one sought to pour his heart out more earnestly, more freely, more unaffectedly than I—and it seemed to me in these moments that the artifices of the theatre were fighting against me to the very end. It was as if its influence were unconquerable—it had surmounted her love for me, and now it threatened even to mock my plea!
"Enfin, the opportunity came. She sat down on the couch—the ottoman of the stage situation—and I began to speak, with all the tenderness and gravity of the stage husband. Struggle as I would to banish the thought, I could not help being conscious of our resemblance to the hero and heroine of a thousand comedies in the last act. I say that I 'began' to speak, and that I felt constrained by a shoal of theatrical reminiscences, but our likeness to the hero and heroine was brief. She interrupted me, she defied the dramatic convention. In lieu of being moved to tears, she replied, with a world of dignity, that the faults were mine. She advised me, for my own sake, to try to attain a more unselfish view. With a flow of impromptu eloquence that I envied, she warned me that, though I was not intentionally unjust, I was allowing 'prejudice and egotism to warp my better nature.' Before I knew what had happened, I stood listening to a homily. The situation that meant my last hope had come out upside down!"
Aribaud paused again. On the little lawn the child had left the swing; the most devoted of wives and mothers was playingchat perchéwith him now. They made a pretty picture, but my thoughts were with her predecessor; I was mourning the love-story that had begun like an idyll, and that seemed to have had so bad an end.
The man's voice brought me back. "Yes, the infallible situation had failed," he repeated. "What do you suppose was the sequel?"
"I suppose," I sighed, "she had her way?"
"No," said Aribaud; "she had her baby." He waved a triumphant hand towards the garden. "And from the first promise of that God-sent gift, the glamour of the theatre faded from her mind and me talked only of her home. From that day to this we have been as happy together as you see us now."
My exclamation was cut short by the hostess whose history I had been hearing.
"Messieurs, are you really sure we aren't laughing too much for you?" she pealed up to us again.
"Sure, sure! It is well—it is as it should be—we come to join you," shouted Aribaud. "Laugh loud, my love—laugh on!"
Henri Vauquelin was a widower with one daughter, to whom he had denied nothing from the time she used to whimper for his watch and drop it on the floor. So, after she left the convent where she had been educated, and told him how much she was missing her friend Georgette, he said gaily, "Mais, ma petite, invite mademoiselle—whatever her name may be, to come to Paris and stay with us for a month."
His gaiety was a trifle forced, however. Though he was happy to give his daughter a companion, he was pained to learn that his own companionship hadn't been enough. "For I have done all I could," he mused. "The fact is, that though I feel fairly young, I am elderly. That's the trouble. To a girl of twenty-one, a father of forty-five is an ancient for the chimney corner. I must see about finding her a husband—I shall have to talk to madame Daudenarde about her son the first time I am in the neighbourhood." And after Blanche had flung her arms round his neck, and darted forth to send the invitation to her friend, he surveyed his reflection in a glass pensively, and noted that his moustache was much greyer than he had thought.
When the indispensable Georgette arrived, in a costume that became her admirably, and sat at dinner, in a dress that became her more admirably still, replying to him with composure and point, he was surprised at the girls' attraction for each other—and his surprise did not diminish as the days passed. Though not actually more than two or three years older than Blanche, mademoiselle Paumelle was in tone much older. Blanche was an ingenue; Georgette was a woman. Excepting in moments, when she romped like a schoolgirl, all spontaneity and high spirits.
"She is a queer compound, your chum," he remarked when she had been with them for a fortnight. "Alternately thirty, and thirteen!"
"You don't like her, papa?"
"Oh, yes, she is well enough, and not bad-looking. I am relieved she did not turn out to be ugly—that would have depressed me. But it is a trifle confusing to be uncertain whether I am about to be addressed by a woman of the world or a madcap from a nursery."
"She used always to be a madcap till she lost her mother—you see, there are only her stepfather and his two sisters now. It is that that has changed her so dreadfully."
"I find nothing 'dreadful' about her," said Vauquelin a shade sharply. "On the contrary, it—I suppose some people might find it rather fascinating. I merely observe that she is different from any other girl that I have met. What's the matter with her stepfather?"
"She tells me he never stops talking."
"His topics must be pretty catholic. This jeune fille from the country appears to know more of politics, finance, society, and sport than I, who have lived in Paris forty-five years."
"How you do exaggerate, papa!" rippled Blanche reprovingly.
"At any rate, I do not exaggerate the years," sighed Vauquelin. "Well, if she is not happy at home, why not ask her to stay with us fortwomonths? She is not in my way, you know."
But mademoiselle Paumelle declared that it would be impossible for her to prolong her visit. Blanche reported this to him with wistful lips, and he said, "I'll see ifIcan persuade her—I will speak to her about it in the morning when you go to take your music-lesson."
On the morrow, "Blanche tells me that she is greatly disappointed," he began. "She will miss you terribly when you leave us, mademoiselle. I wish you would think over your objection."
"It is infinitely kind of you, monsieur Vauquelin. I fear that a month is the very most I can manage."
"Even to do us a service?"
"Ah, a 'service'!" She smiled. "You will find plenty of people ready to do you such services."
"Not plenty of mesdemoiselles Paumelle. I am in earnest. It is dull here for Blanche, alone with me. I have done my best for her, I am not consciously selfish—I have sat at home when I wanted to go out, and gone out when I wanted to stop at home. I have taken her to the Français and pretended to enjoy myself, though I could have yawned my head off, and the question of her clothes has absorbed me more than the affairs of France. But I am old. All my tenderness for her cannot alter that."
"You do not seem to me old," said mademoiselle Paumelle.
"Don't I?" said Vauquelin, regarding her gratefully. "Look how grey my moustache is getting. And yet, do you know, when we're all laughing together I feel as young as ever I was."
"Your mannerisyoung. The face alters ever so long before the manner."
"I am forty-f—er—over forty, and Blanche is twenty-one. What will you? I must get her married soon. It is my paramount desire. I rather fancy that Daudenarde and she may not dislike each other—the gentleman you saw the other evening."
"She was doing her hair from seven o'clock till eight, and he sighed when he handed her the lemonade."
"Your observation is invaluable. I must have a chat with his mother soon. It would be an excellent match. In the meantime she stands in need of the companionship and counsel of a young lady like you; she needs it most urgently. If your stepfather can spare you——"
"Ah, my stepfather could spare me for ever," she put in; "there are others to listen to him."
"And if you are not bored here——"
"Bored? I am having the time of my life."
"Eh bien? Remain for two months, I beg. Be merciful to us. I need your advice, myself. There is a matter that is harassing me: I cannot determine whether her new jumper should be beaded, silk-broidered, or fringed."
"If it is telling on your health——" Her eyes laughed into his.
"You yield?"
"I weakly wobble."
"There is, further, the consuming question of a simple evening dress—what it should be made of."
"I succumb. Tulle would be all right, or Georgette."
"It shall be Georgette—we shall not lose you so utterly when you go."
"Oh, youare—priceless!" she pealed.
Vauquelin reflected, "She has three sterling qualities, this girl—she is pretty, she is nice, and she looks at me as if I were a young man."
During the next six weeks Vauquelin developed a zest for the Français that was astonishing. And not for the Français only, or for the Opéra Comique, and concerts, and kinemas. Blanche had never applauded her papa so ardently. He would be seized with captivating whims for expeditions, and picnics, and moonlight runs in the car. His frolicsomeness passed belief.
Not till the six weeks were over and mademoiselle Paumelle had departed, bearing Blanche with her, did his spirits fall. And then there would have been no buyers. The middle-aged gentleman was plunged into melancholy, the worse to bear from the fact that he was conscious of being comic. Trying to throw dust in his own eyes, "It is frightful how I miss Blanche," he would soliloquise at the elegiac dinner-table. But the eyes were fixed sentimentally on the place that had been Georgette's. And as the date approached for Blanche to return, and his heart sank before the necessity for resuming his capers, "It is clear," he told himself, "that the affection I entertained for that Georgette Paumelle was almost parental!"
The fatherliness of his feelings for her, however, did not avert increased regrets at the greying moustache; and he abandoned his shaving mirror, because it magnified the lines about his nose and mouth.
Blanche, on his knee again, had plenty to tell. She described the stepfather as a "trial," and his maiden sisters as "cats." She had enjoyed herself, because Georgette and she had been together all day, but it must be hideous there for Georgette alone. "She isn't going to stick it much longer. She is miserable with them."
"How distressing that is!" said Vauquelin. "To whom does she go?"
"Well, she has money of her own, you know—she can live where she likes."
"Mais—Comment donc? She cannot live by herself—une jeune fille, bien élevée! What an idea! Her people would never sanction it."
"I think they would be rather glad to get rid of her," said Blanche, choosing a chocolate with deliberation.
"But—but it is monstrous! To live like a bohemian,she! It is unheard of, terrible. Is she out of her mind? Listen, ma chérie, if her plight upsets you so violently, she can make her home with us."
"Ah, papa!" cried Blanche in ecstasy. "It is the very thing I thought of, but I was afraid it was too much to ask you."
"Now, when did I ever refuse you anything?"
"But such an enormous favour!"
"Not at all, not at all. I shall adapt myself to the arrangement well enough."
"But, papa, it might get on your nerves in time."
"Not at all, not at all. There is my study for me to retire to—I shall not see more of her than I want to."
"You promise that?"
"I can swear it."
"Oh, it will be adorable! I only wonder if I am being selfish to let you do it."
"I insist," said Vauquelin, with a noble gesture. "Say we entreat her to agree, that we shall be wounded if she declines. Say our flat is her home for as long as she will honour us—the longer, the better.Iwill write a few lines to her, too. Be tranquil, my sweet child—I do not sacrifice myself. Is it not my highest joy to indulge you?"
After many letters had been indited to her, mademoiselle Paumelle was prevailed upon to come; and after many remonstrances had been made to her, she ceased to speak of going. But for the fact that her gifts to the girl were expensive, it was as if she were a member of the family. Blanche was relieved to note that her papa was not driven to the seclusion of his study often; and never did he withdraw to it when Blanche was absent, to take her music-lesson. As he had predicted, Vauquelin adapted himself to the arrangement plastically. He approved it so much, especially the tête-à-tête during the music-lessons, that when six months had flashed by, he resented an incident which reminded him that it couldn't be permanent. A monsieur Brigard, an old comrade, arrived to advocate nothing less than that Blanche should espouse Brigard's boy.
"My friend, I have other views for my daughter," replied Vauquelin firmly.
But the arrival dejected him, in the knowledge that when Blanche should marry, Georgette would have to go. And in their next hour alone together, Georgette asked him what his worry was.
"Nothing. I am a little—we must all think of the future, our children's future. A father has responsibilities."
"À propos de—what? Am I inquisitive?"
"Do I not confide everything to you? Some pest has made matrimonial overtures about his son. Preposterous."
"The young man's position is not good enough?"
"Ah, his position is first rate. I say nothing against his position."
"It is his character that displeases you?"
"No. As for that, he is steady, and not unamiable."
"But what do you complain of?"
Vauquelin waved his hand vaguely. "The proposal does not accord with my ideas. I have different intentions for her."
"Ah, yes, that monsieur Daudenarde! I thought perhaps that affair had faded out."
"By no means," affirmed Vauquelin, clutching at the excuse. "Precisely. I wish her to marry monsieur Daudenarde. And that is a sound and laudable reason why I should resent being badgered by Brigard. I find such intrusions on my routine very offensive. Daudenarde's mother and I are going to have a little talk together some time or other."
"But——"
"What?"
"You decided to have a little talk with her nine or ten months ago."
"I must avoid precipitance. In such matters a father cannot act with too much caution."
"Blanche is a darling. But there are other girls in Paris. If you desire the match, be careful you don't let him slip."
"Have no misgiving," said Vauquelin irritably. "I am quite content. Madame Daudenarde will receive a visit from me—when Blanche is older. And we shall see what we shall see."
The captivating Georgette looked thoughtful. The more so after a chat with Blanche had drawn forth the nervous confession that she "thought monsieur Daudenarde very nice."
And then, when the volatile father had banished the menace of the future from his mind, and was again basking in the sunshine of the present, what should happen but that madame Daudenarde inconsiderately broached the matter to him, instead of waiting for him to approach her.
"Dear lady, my daughter is too young," replied Vauquelin promptly.
"How, too young?" demurred madame Daudenarde. "She is one-and-twenty. I was but nineteen when I married."
"Yes," said Vauquelin, "but my sainted mother did not marry till she was thirty-two, and she always impressed upon me that it was the best age."
"Thirty-two?" cried madame Daudenarde shrilly. "Do you ask me to adjourn our conference for eleven years?"
"My honoured friend, I do not make it a hard-and-fast condition," stammered the unhappy man, struggling for coherence. "It is possible there may be something to be said against it. But your gratifying proposal is so sudden—I had not contemplated the alliance—I need time to balance my parental duties against my reverence for my mother's views."
Now, Georgette, who could put two and two together as accurately as the Minister of Finance, had not failed to remark that the interview took place privately in the study, and noted that her host was evasive when Blanche inquired why madame Daudenarde had "called at such a funny time." Feelers during the next music-lesson found him evasive also. In the days that followed, when Blanche developed a tendency to sigh plaintively, and turned against chocolates, it grew clear to Georgette that this father must be shown the error of his ways.
"May I say that I hope that conversation with madame Daudenarde contented you?" she ventured.
"Hein?" said Vauquelin, starting.
"That the engagement will soon be announced?"
"Mon Dieu, is it not extraordinary how people seek to rob me of my child?" he moaned.
"Does that mean that nothing is arranged yet?"
"Why not leave well alone? Are we not all comfortable as we are? I have made no definite reply to madame Daudenarde—I cannot be bustled. Have you ever thought that when I part from Blanche, I shall be left here by myself?"
"Yes. It has even occurred to me that you have thought of it, too."
"Naturally. It is not strange that I should tremble at such a prospect. To be solitary is a sad thing."
"It is for your own sake, then, not hers, that you delay?"
"For the first time I find you lacking!" he broke out. "You do not seem to comprehend the workings of a father's heart."
"I have never had one."
"Don't split straws! When I lose her I shall be alone. You do not require to be a father to know that."
"You could always go to see her."
"Flûte!"
"And your grandchildren. Respectful grandchildren that clustered at your knee."
"I will not anticipate grandchildren—I am not a hundred!" exclaimed Vauquelin angrily. "I repeat that the present conditions are entirely to my taste, and I desire to prolong them."
"It is also possible you might re-marry."
"At my age? Who would have me? Some ripe and ruddled widow."
"Girls, quite young, marry men much older than you."
"But not for love. Tell me, what would you put me down at? Without flattery."
"I should call you in the prime of life."
"The friendly phrase for 'senile.' Depend upon it, people said that to Methuselah. Supposing—a man is never too old to make a fool of himself, you know—supposing, for the sake of argument, I felt a tenderness, a devotion for a girl scarcely older than Blanche: a devotion which I strove to think platonic, even while I sighed under her window, and which revived in me unsought, the emotions—all the sentiment, the throes, the absurdities—of the youth that had gone from me before I knew how divine it was. Would it—could it—is it imaginable that she might not laugh?"
"She would not laugh if she were worth it all."
"To marry me for love—a girl? To see me romantic without thinking me ridiculous—to melt to my tears, not shrink from the crows'-feet round my eyes? I wonder!"
"If you choose wisely, you will not wonder."
"In love, whochooses? Fate decides. What would you call 'wisely'? She should be—how old?"
"Old enough to know her mind. Young enough to attract you."
"For the rest?"
"She should have means, that you might never fear it had been yours that won her. She should have affection for your child, that she might know no jealousy of yours. She should take interest in your child's future, that, if you were wilful, she might guide you.... To revert to madame Daudenarde, I counsel you to write to-day that you consent."
Vauquelin stood gazing at her incredulously.
"Georgette! Georgette!" he panted. "Do you know you have given me your own portrait?"
"With my love," she told him, smiling.
In the Square d'Iéna, which teems with little Parisians in charge of English nurses, Vera Simpson wheeled the baby-carriage to a bench on fine mornings, and exchanged patriotic sentiments with her compeers. When disparagement of France flagged, Vera Simpson occasionally observed. So as she always entered the square at the same end and nearly always chose the same bench, she observed the eccentric proceedings of a young man who took to coming every morning to stare at the statue on the opposite grass plot. After standing before it as if he were glued there, the young man would reverse one of the chairs that faced the path in an orderly line, and then sit mooning at the statue, with his back to everybody, for nearly an hour. It was, Miss Simpson surmised, a statue to a departed Frenchy. She had never approached it to ascertain what name it bore, and could see nothing about the thing to account for the fellow's taking such stock of it. Some time before he had appeared for nine days in succession, she and her circle had nicknamed him the "rum 'un."
On the tenth day, instead of the young man, a woman went to the statue, and stood before it just as stupidly and as long as the man had done. The most comical bit was that, when she turned away at last, it was seen that the statue had been making the woman cry. After that, neither of the funny pair came back to the Square d'Iéna; but as Vera Simpson chooses the same bench still, she sometimes recalls their queerness and, before her mind wanders, tries again to guess their game. This was the game that Vera Simpson tries to guess.
Gaby Dupuy was wishing that the summer were over; she was a model. Not one of the wretched models that wait at the corner of the boulevards Raspail and Montparnasse on Mondays, to crave the vote of students in academies; she went by appointment to the ateliers of the successful. But now the painters and the sculptors were all at the seaside, and her appointment book had shown no sitting for ever so long.
Gaby's qualities had never placed her among the stars of her profession. Nobody had ever said of her, as a great man said of one of the most celebrated of models, that he had only to reproduce her faithfully; still less could it be asserted that she had the genius to penetrate an artist's purport and present the pose that was eluding him. But if she had neither the beauty of a Sarah Brown, nor the intuition of a Dubosc, her face possessed a certain attractiveness, and she could achieve the expression demanded of her when it was laboriously explained.
Once upon a time her face had been more attractive still; Gaby wasn't so young as she used to be.
While the woman was regretting that her scanty provision for the dreaded summer would not allow her a more adequate menu, she received a letter. A stranger, who signed himself Jacques Launay, earnestly desired an interview. He wrote that, being unfamiliar with Paris, he had had great difficulty in ascertaining her address, and added that, as his stay in the capital was drawing to a close, he would deeply appreciate the favour of an early reply. Her eyebrows climbed as she saw that, in lieu of requiring her to betake herself to his studio, he "begged for the privilege of calling upon her at any hour that she might find convenient." Probably, though, as a provincial, he hadn't got a studio here. Still, what deference! he had written to her as if she were of the ancienne noblesse.
But if he hadn't a studio, where did he expect her to pose? Did he want her to go to him in the country? Yes, that must be it. Flûte! Gaby didn't think it would be good enough—the end of the dead season was in sight at last, and in Paris she would often be booked for two studios a day. Nevertheless she was eager to hear what he had to say for himself. She answered that he could see her at seven o'clock the following evening at the Paradis des Artistes, round the corner. To meet him at a restaurant, she reflected, would at least ensure his asking her to have something to drink; and as the tables would be laid, by seven o'clock, he might even spring to a meal.
The Paradis des Artistes was a small establishment where, for three francs, one found a homely dinner, inclusive of wine, and a cripple who wore a red jacket, to look like a Tzigane, and chanted to a mandoline. The "artistes" were chiefly models, and the lesser lights of a café-concert. As most of the company knew one another, and the proprietress called many of the ladies by their Christian names, and played piquet with them between midnight and 2 a.m., the tone of the restaurant was as informal as a family party. When Gaby arrived, the only person present whom she had never seen there before was a young man, who sat at a table near the door, solitary and seemingly expectant. Their gaze met, but although he looked undecided, he did not salute her. Then, as she was greeted by acquaintances, somebody cried, "Gaby, comment va?" and the young man's head was turned again. If he was her correspondent, it was rather odd that he didn't know her when he saw her. But she gave him another opportunity.... He approached with marked hesitation.
"Mademoiselle Gabrielle Dupuy?"
"Mais oui, monsieur," she said, smiling graciously. "It is monsieur Launay?"
"Oh, mademoiselle, it is most kind of you!" faltered the stranger. His confusion was extraordinary, considering his age, for he could not have been less than eight- or nine-and-twenty. They stood mute for some seconds. As he remained too much embarrassed to suggest her taking a seat at his table, "I hope I have not kept you waiting?" she asked, carelessly moving towards it.
They sat down now, and the waitress, whose tone was informal too, whisked over with, "And for mademoiselle Dupuy?"
"Give me a glass of madère, Louise," she said.
Still the young man seemed unable to find his tongue, and she went on:
"I am afraid this place was rather out of the way for you? But I have got into the habit of dropping in here about this time; and it is cosy and one can talk."
"Yes," he assented. He stole a timid glance at her, and looked quickly away. "Oh yes."
"Who was it who gave you my address at last, monsieur?"
"I do not know," he said awkwardly. "It was a man who heard me inquiring. I had immense trouble to find it out."
"It is not a dead secret, however."
"I suppose not—no—but I have no friends in Paris; I have never been in Paris before. And at the start I did not even know who you were."
"You did not know who I was? Oh, you had seen something I had posed for?"
"Yes, it was like that. I was anxious to find you, but I did not know your name. And I had no one to help me," he stammered; "it was enormously difficult."
"You are a painter, monsieur Launay?"
"No, mademoiselle."
"Ah, a sculptor! That interests me still more."
"I am not a sculptor either, mademoiselle," he admitted. "I am a composer."
"A composer?" she echoed. "But—but a composer does not employ models."
"No, mademoiselle, but I beg you not to think my motive impudent," exclaimed the young man, with the first touch of spontaneity that he had shown yet.
"Mysterious merely," she smiled. Her expression offered him encouragement to elucidate the mystery, but nervousness seemed to overcome him again. He was boring her. She exchanged remarks across the room with a lady who wore one of the figured veils then in vogue, under which the victim of fashion appeared to have lost portions of her face.
"Going to feed, Gaby?"
"Yes, my dear, in a minute," she answered.
She saw her correspondent regard the announcement "DINER 3 Fr." His invitation was constrained, and her acceptance listless.
It no doubt surprised the young man to discover that the veiled lady was his guest as well; he must have wondered how it had happened. Also it may have startled him, when he made to fill Gaby's glass from one of the little decanters that stood before them, to learn that she "did not take it" and to see a bottle labelled "Pouilly Fuissé" display itself before he could say "Why?" for he had not heard it ordered. He heard no order given for the second bottle that he beheld, nor for the tarte aux cérises that graced their repast—a delicacy that was not a feature of the other people's. But though these incidents may have caused him disquietude, since he was far from having an air of wealth, he manifested no objection to them. Gaby allowed that that wasgentil. A singularly taciturn host, but an amenable one. And, briefly as he spoke, he yielded continuous attention to her prattle to the lady with the veil. It was queer that the more she prattled, the more despondent he grew. She found him piquing her curiosity.
When a bill for twenty-nine francs fifty was presented to him, after the café filtré and Egyptian cigarettes, Gaby put out her hand for it and knocked off four francs without discussion. "I don't let them make their little mistakes with friends of mine," she told him languidly, rising. "I am going home to get my coat—you can come with me." He accepted her invitation with as scant enthusiasm as she had shown for his own; and by way of a hint, forgetful of her earlier statement, she added, "This place is rotten—it's so noisy and one can't talk."
But he proved no more talkative in the street. One might almost have imagined that the task of explaining his petition for the interview was a duty that he sought to escape.
Her lodging was so close that the doorway took him aback. He followed her up the stairs submissively. She was not impatient for the coat. After lighting the lamp, she lit another of the cigarettes, and sat. The young man stood staring from the window.
"Well, chatterbox?" she said.
He swung round with unexpected vehemence. "I know I look a hopeless idiot," he cried.
"But ... what an idea!" Her gesture was all surprised denial.
"I prayed to see you—I said nothing all the evening, I stand like a dummy here. I must tell you why I wrote. But—but it is not so easy as I thought it would be."
"You make me curious."
"Listen," he exclaimed. "I had had two passions in my life—music, and the poetry of Richardière! No other poet has meant half—a tithe—so much to me as he. His work inspired me when I was a boy; if I had had the means, I would have taken the journey to Paris just to wait on the pavement and see his face when he went out. When he died——Of course all France mourned his loss, but none but his dearest friends, I think, could have felt as I did. Well, since I have been a man I have made an opera of hisArizath, and I came to Paris last week because there was a prospect of its being produced. Five minutes after I had found a room at an hotel, I was asking my way to the Square d'Iéna to see the statue to him. I knew nothing about it excepting that it had been erected there—and as I approached it my heart sank: I had always pictured a statue of the man, and I saw merely a bust of him—the statue was of a woman, recalling a verse."
She nodded. "I know. Beauvais kept me posing for three hours and a half without budging, and I had a chilblain that itched like mad on the finger inside the book."
"The disappointment was keen. I almost wished I had not come, for it had been a long walk, and I was very tired. And then, after I had stood looking at the bust, noting how handsome he had been, and thinking of his genius, I looked down at the statue of the woman, and I felt that it would have been worth coming simply to see that. It was so wonderful, so real! The naturalness of the attitude, the perfection of the toilette—I had never realised that the sculptor's art could do such things; I think I looked for minutes at the slippers. I admired the sleeves, the sweep of the gown, that seemed as if it must be soft to touch; I was amazed by a thousand trifles before my glance lingered on the face. And after my glance lingered on the face I saw nothing else; I could not even move to look at it in profile—it held me fixed."
"It is Beauvais' masterpiece," said Gaby; "they all say it is the finest thing he has done."
"It is a masterpiece, yes. But I was not thinking of the sculptor and his art any more—I was thinking of the face, without remembering how it had come about. It was as if a beautiful mind were really pondering behind that brow. The character of the mouth and chin impressed me as if the marble had been flesh and blood; the abstracted eyes couldn't have stirred me to more reverence if they had had sight. And while I looked at them, they seemed, by an optical illusion, to meet my own. Not with interest; with an unconsciousness that mortified me—they seemed to gaze through my insignificance into the greatness of Richardière. I blinked, I suppose, for the next instant they had been averted. I wanted them to come back, to realise my presence. I concentrated all my will upon the effort to trick myself once more—and I could have sworn they turned. Now, too, they seemed to notice me; there was a smile in them, an ironical smile—they smiled at the presumption of my linking an immortal poet's work with mine! Insane? But I felt it, I shrank from the derision. Again I raised my head to Richardière, and for the first time I remarked that his expression was a poor acknowledgment of the figure's homage. It was consequential and impertinent. A tinge of cruelty in it, even. He had an air of sensualism, of one who held women very light. I could imagine his having said horrible things to women. He was not worthy of the look in the statue's eyes....
"I went there the next day, after vowing that I would not go. The eyes discerned me sooner this time, and I contrived to fancy that their gaze was gentler. I was happy in the fancy that their gaze was gentler. When the eyes wandered from me I was humbled, and when they looked in mine I held my breath. I persuaded myself—no, I did not 'persuade myself,' the thought was born—that there was comprehension in the gaze, that my worship, though undesired, was understood. In the afternoon I had a business appointment that I had been thinking about for weeks, but instead of being excited by its nearness, I regretted that it obliged me to leave the Square d'Iéna. When I kept the appointment, the bad news that there had been a delay in the arrangements hardly troubled me—I was impatient only to be outside. Originally my plan had been to see the Louvre as soon as the business was over—now my one desire was to return to the statue. It was a delight to hasten to it; people must have thought me bound for a rendezvous, as I strode smiling through the streets. Not once did I regard the arrogance of Richardière on the pedestal, but it was only in moments that the musing figure ceased to remind me that her god was there. Though I never looked at it, an intense repugnance to the face of Richardière was in my blood—a jealousy, if you will! It possessed me while I was away—while I was reiterating that I had made my last visit to the square, knowing nevertheless that on the morrow I should yield again. The jealousy persisted when I turned the pages of my opera now, and the magic of the master's poetry was gone. I could not forget his domination of the figure—I wanted to think of the beautiful statue freed, aloof from him!"
He had left the window, and was moving restlessly about the room. Intent, her face propped by her hands, the model for the statue sat and watched him. The cigarette between her lips was out.
"The fact that there must have been a model for it was borne upon me quite suddenly. It had the thrill of a revelation, and nearly dazed me. This woman lived! Somewhere in the world she was walking, speaking! It was as if a miracle had happened, as if the statue had come to life. I repeated breathlessly that it was true, but it appeared fabulous. I had attributed emotions to the marble figure with ease—to grasp the simple truth of the woman's existence was inconceivably difficult. I trembled with the marvel of it; Pygmalion was not more stupefied than I. When my heart left off pounding so hard, I began to question how long it would take me to discover who she was. I did not even know the way to set about it. But I knew that if she was in France I meant to find her.... I need not talk about the rest."
After a silence Gaby stirred and spoke:
"It was a triumph to pose for the statue—your story makes me very proud."
"I could not avoid telling it to you," answered the young man drearily.
"But how you say it—as if you had done wrong! Shall I tell you what would have been wrong? Not to let me know. That would have been pathetic. Mon Dieu! it would be atrocious for a woman to have done all that and never to hear. And to think that at the beginning I fancied you were——You were so quiet while we dined."
"I was listening to you," he sighed.
"That's true. You were entitled to it by then—you had done much to get the chance!"
"Yes, I had done much to get the chance."
"It was beautiful of you. I mean it. Because you have spoken earnestly, from your heart, and I could see—I could see very well that what you were saying was true, that you were not exaggerating to please me. Oh, I am moved, believe me, I am really moved!" She put out her hand to him impulsively, and he took it, as in duty bound. But he did not raise it to his lips. Her body stiffened a little as the hand drooped slowly to her lap. A shade of apprehension aged her face. Again there was silence.
"Well?" she murmured.
"Well?"
"Enfin, when you sought the chance, when you wrote to me at last, you foresaw—what?"
"Infinitely less than you have granted, mademoiselle," he returned, with an obvious effort. "A briefer meeting, a more formal one. I thank you most gratefully for your patience, your kindness, the honour you have done me."
She gave a harsh laugh. "And now you 'regret that you must say good night'?"
"It is a fact that I have to see my man again this evening," he acknowledged hurriedly, glancing at his watch. "I had forgotten the time."
"Yes," said the woman, "you had forgotten the time—you had forgotten that the statue was modelled eleven years ago.... So you did not find her, after all! You began your search too late."
"It is not that!" he cried, distressed.
"Ah!" She had sprung to her feet, and stood panting. "Why lie to me? I am sorry for you, in a way—you haven't been a brute consciously."
"A brute?"
"What do you imagine you have been? A fool, you think, to yourself: I have changed, and you should have known I must have changed; it would have spared you the bother of seeking me, the disillusion when we met—there are no wrinkles creeping on the statue. Oh, it has been a fraud for you, I realise the sell! But you are not the only sufferer by your folly. A man can't talk to a woman as you have talked to me and leave her cold. He can't say, 'I felt all this for you before I saw you—now, good-bye,' and leave her proud; he can't adore her in the marble and disdain her in the flesh without her being ashamed. You have degraded me, jeered at me—you have taunted me with every blemish on my skin!"
"It isn't that!" he cried again. "I was a fool, I own it—a brute, if you choose to call me one—but it isn't that."
"What then? Is it my frock that alters me? I am poor, I can't afford such gowns as Beauvais put on me for the statue. Is it the way my hair is dressed? I can dress it like the statue again. The brow? You liked the brow. Well, look! time hasn't been so rough on me there—the brow is young. And you need not be jealous of my thoughts of Richardière, for I have never read a single word he wrote. What is there lacking in me? Tell me what you miss."
"I can't tell you," he groaned. But he had started.
"Youhavetold me," she said, shrinking. "I know now. My face is ignorant—the statue has moremindthan I!"
He no longer said, "It isn't that." He drooped before her, dumb, contrite.
After a long pause she quavered, dabbing at her eyes:
"Well, I'm not an idiot—I should improve."
"Is it an imbecile like me who could teach you?"
"I should be content."
"Never in a single hour! I fell in love with an ideal and went to look for it—failure was ordained. It is I who lack sense, not you."
A ghost of a smile twitched her lips. "It was all the fault of that Beauvais; he stuck an expression on me, with the clothes. I did look like that in his studio, though the chilblain was itching. But even if I made myself look like it now, it wouldn't take you in, would it? Don't look so frightened of me, I shan't go on at you again. Poor boy, you have had a deuce of an evening!... Well, I suppose you are right, failure was ordained—and it is wise to cut one's failures short. You may go. And don't flatter yourself that you have hurt me so much as I said—my vanity was stung for a minute, that's all; to-morrow I shall have forgotten all about you.... You can find your way downstairs?"
He hesitated—and took an irresolute step towards her, with half-opened arms.
"Good night," she said, not moving. "Good-bye."
On the tenth day, instead of the young man, a woman went to the statue, and stood before it just as stupidly and as long as he had done. The most comical bit was that, when she turned away at last, it was seen that the statue had been making the woman cry. After that, neither of the funny pair came back to the Square d'Iéna; but as Vera Simpson chooses the same bench still, she sometimes recalls their queerness and, before her mind wanders, tries again to guess their game. This was the game that an English nursemaid tries to guess.
Before boarding-houses in London were all called Hotels and while snobbery had advanced no further than to call them Establishments, there was one in a London square where two of the "visitors"—which is boarding-house English for "boarders"—were a girl and a young man. Irene Barton was a humble journalist, who wrote stories when she would have been wiser to go to bed, and yearned to be an admired author. Jack Humphreys was an athletic clerk, who was renouncing clerkships for Canada and foresaw himself prospering in a world of wheat. The young man and the girl used to confide their plans to each other—when they weren't saying how detestable all the other boarders were—and before the time came for him to sail they had complicated matters by falling in love.
When he had begged her to wait for him and she had explained that matrimony did not enter into her scheme of things, Miss Barton was miserable. But she did not let him guess that she was miserable, and she didn't change her mind. She had dreamed of being a celebrated novelist from the days when she wrote stories, in penny exercise books, at the nursery table, and his appeal amounted to asking her to sacrifice her aspirations and remain a nobody. She had scoffed too often at women who "ruined their careers for sickly sentiment" to be guilty of the same blunder. Still, she had had no suspicion that sentiment could lure so hard, and she viewed the women more leniently now.
She reflected that the experience of sickly sentiment at first hand should be of benefit to her fiction, but the thought failed to encourage her so much as she would have expected of it. "They learn in suffering what they teach in song," she reminded herself—and an old-fashioned instinct, which she rebuked, whispered, "But isn't it better to be happy than to teach?"
Because Jack Humphreys persisted they discussed the subject more than once. Sauntering round the garden of the square in the twilight, she expounded her philosophy to him.
"I am not," she insisted, "the least bit the kind of girl you ought to care for. It'll be five years at the very least before you can marry, and in five years' time I shall have written books, and—well, I hope I shall have done something worth while. Do you suppose I could be satisfied to give it all up? I know myself, I couldn't do it. Or, if I did do it, I should be wretched—and make you wretched too."
"But why should you give it all up?" he said miserably. "Don't you think I should be interested in it? Haven't I been interested here—have you found me so wooden? I don't know much about it, but Oh, my dear, I'm so fond of you! Whatever interestedyouwould be bound to interestme. You could write novels as my wife—I'd never put any difficulties in your way, heaven knows I wouldn't!"
She shook her head.
"You think all that now, but you'd know better then. You won't want a wife to write novels—you'll want one to bake the bread and feed the chickens and make herself useful. You'll want the domesticated article—and I'm an artist. I should be an encumbrance, not a wife. Besides, I should hate it all. Oh, I know I'm hurting you, but it's true! I should bore myself to death. To write, I need to live among men and women, to live in London, Paris, among other writers. I want to see pictures, and hear music—real music, not Verdi and that kind of treacle—and be in the movement. Perhaps by the time you wanted me to come to you Ishouldbe in the movement—five years is a long while, and I'm going to work hard. And you fancy I could turn my back on it all! Oh, Mr. Humphreys, don't let us talk about it any more!"
Trying to steady his voice, the young man asked:
"May I write to you sometimes, as a friend?"
"I think you had better not," she said, though her heart had jumped at the suggestion.
"I haven't any people who'd care much about hearing from me," he pleaded; "I shall be pretty humped over there at the start. I'd promise faithfully not to—er—I'd write to you just as I might write to any other chum, if I had one."
"Very well," she assented. "Write to me like that and I'll answer."
He did not write quite like that, but he suppressed two-thirds of what he wanted to say, and signed himself "Yours sincerely." Nobody could have found any definite endearment to object to in the pages. Though she checked the impulse to reply by the next mail, she replied at considerable length. She told him the latest details of the boarding-house—-that Mrs. Usher was looking seriously ill because she couldn't find out why Mrs. Dunphy received so many telegrams; and that because Mrs. Kenyon's husband wasn't able to come to England yet, Mrs. Wykes was suggesting that she hadn't a husband at all. She told him that she had "had enough of these awful people" and that he was to direct his next letter elsewhere. And always his next letter was awaited more eagerly than was consistent of a young woman who was quite sure that she preferred celebrity to love.
So, although they did not write to each other more than twice or thrice a year, they were still corresponding after both had made some progress. The homestead was the man's own property at last, and the woman had had a novel published. She sent a copy of it to him, with two or three of the best reviews. It had been reviewed very highly, and if the ex-clerk had sometimes questioned whether she mightn't be exaggerating her prospects, his doubt was banished when he read the compliments that the critics paid her.
He grinned a little wryly in the solitude of the homestead. Yes, it would have been a queer kind of life here for a woman of her talent! "I should bore myself to death." Like a knife through him when she said it. Of course, he had not grasped then what the life would be. If he had thoroughly divined——Looking back, he wondered whether he would have found the pluck to tackle it himself. That first awful year, when he had ploughed a bit of wilderness, craving in every hour for the sight of a girl in England!... Well, time worked wonders, and his labours interested him now. He pulled, and viewed proudly, a few heads of the wheat he had sown with his own hands. Jolly colour they were! Better than a clerkship; no more London forhim. Irene Barton was finding it a Tom Tiddler's ground, he supposed. Good luck to her! Oh, of course, she had done the sensible thing in refusing him—and, heaven be praised, he wasn't broken up about it any longer. One could get over any blow.
By way of thanks for the book, he scribbled a friendly letter, in which there was no endearment, definite or indefinite, to object to. It implied that her choice had been a wise one, and he congratulated her very cordially. The letter was sincere; he felt that it would give her pleasure. And when it reached her and she read between the lines, the woman's heart sank, and tears crept down her face.
He wondered mildly why he didn't hear from her any more.
The novel that the papers praised so warmly had enriched her by the sum of ten pounds; and when she was five years older than she had been on the day she said good-bye to him, she was writing in a boarding-house much like the one where he had met her. She remembered wistfully that within five years she had foreseen herself rejoicing in Upper Bohemia.
She wrote well. She did not think as well as she wrote, of course—her horizon was clouded by myths, like those that have it that Scots are all skinflints, and Jews are all rogues—but her work had beauty; and critics saw it, and she made a reputation. But the general public did not see it, or, seeing the beauty, were a Channel's width from perceiving that it was beautiful, so she did not make money. And without money she found a literary reputation was less ecstatic than she had presumed. It did not mean congenial society, because she could not afford to join the clubs where congenial society might be supposed to exist. It did not mean concerts, or picture-galleries, or less physical discomfort, or a breath of sea air when she was sick for it; it did not mean a single amelioration of her life's asperities, because Press notices were not to be tendered in lieu of cash. Even those who lauded her fiction remained strangers to her. Only for a few weeks after each book was issued, she read, in her boarding-house attic, that she was a "distinguished novelist," and then she was again ignored.
And meanwhile her youth was fading, and her eyes were dimming, and she looked in the glass and mourned. In the emptiness of her "distinction" she longed for laughter and a home. Desperate at last, she did join a club of professional women; but nominal as the fees were, considering the splendour of the place, it was an annual effort for her to pay the subscription. And she did not go there often enough to make any intimate friends, because she was generally too tired.
And every year she grew more tired still.
When she had been growing tired for sixteen years she was in a dreary lodging, in a dingy street, toiling at a novel, between the fashion articles by which she earned her daily bread. Mr. Humphreys, in easy circumstances by this time, was in London too, though when memories awoke in her she pictured him in Manitoba. He was indulging in a trip, and had been in England three weeks. One afternoon, in the hall of the new and expensive hotel, he picked up a book and came upon her name among the publisher's advertisements. It was an advertisement of one of her shattered hopes, but Mr. Humphreys didn't know that—he merely saw her referred to as a "distinguished novelist." She was, at the moment, trudging from a modiste's to a milliner's, to gather something to say in her inevitable article. It was raining, and she had a headache, and she would have to hammer out a sprightly column about Paris models before she could lie down. His holiday was proving rather dull, and he wondered idly whether it would be a foolish impulse to recall himself to such a prominent woman.
His formal note, re-directed by the publisher's clerk, and re-directed again, reached her some days later. "If you have not quite forgotten our old friendship, I should be glad of an opportunity to call and congratulate you on your triumphs." She read that line many times. Her face was white, and her eyes were wide. She looked again at the name of the expensive hotel, and stared at the sordid parlour in which she sat—the pitiable parlour with its atrocious oleographs on drab walls, and two mottled vases, from the tea-grocer's, on the dirty mantelpiece. He would be "glad to congratulate her"!
She remembered the unaffected cheeriness of the previous congratulations, the letter that had shown her his love was dead. She had fancied that nothing could hurt more deeply than that letter, but she had been wrong—to expose her mistake to him would be bitterer still. The humiliation of it, the punishment! All the arrogance of her rejection, all the boasts of her girlhood thronged back upon her tauntingly. God! if she could have seen ahead—if only she could have her life again.
She debated her reply. To say that she was leaving town would sound ungracious. The alternative was to receive him at the club. Almost for the first time she was devoutly thankful to be a member—the club would spare her the ignominy of revealing her parlour; the stationery would avert the need for betraying her address.
On the imposing stationery she wrote that she would be "pleased to see him here on either Wednesday or Thursday next." Her clothes, she supposed, wouldn't give her away, as he was a man.
Was he married? There was no hint of a wife in his letter. How much changed would she find him? Would the change in herself shock him greatly? There were women as old as she who were still spoken of as "young," but their lives had run on smoother lines than hers—and when he saw her last she had been twenty-two and sanguine. It seemed to her that he would meet a stranger. She trembled in the club on Wednesday afternoon, and began to hope that his choice would fall on "Thursday."
She was told that he had come. She rose with an effort. A big man, with greying hair, approached her uncertainly. She smiled with stiff lips. "Mr. Humphreys," she faltered. And a voice that she didn't remember, a new deep voice that wasn't like Jack's at all, was saying, "Why, Miss Barton! This is very kind of you."
"How d'ye do? So glad to see you again," she murmured. "Let—let us go and sit down." Her heart was thumping, and she felt a little deaf.
"So—er Well, how does London look to you after such a long time? Are you home for good?"
"No, about a couple of months. My home is on the other side now. Well, this is a real pleasure! I never expected—I was rather nervous about writing, but——"
"It would have been too bad if you hadn't," she said.
"Well, I thought I'd take my chance. Er—yes, London looks rather different. I managed to get lost in it the other day; I had to find a taxi to take me back. No taxis when I was here before!"
"You take tea?"
The alcove was very comfortable, and the long room was exquisite in all its tones. The beauty of the carpet, she felt, more than repaid her for that annual effort. And how deferential was the service!
"A fine place," said Mr. Humphreys admiringly.
"Yes, it's rather decent," she drawled; "they do one very well here. A club is one of the necessaries of life."
"I suppose so." He was remembering the way her tea had been served in the boarding-house. "Wealth buys more in the old country than over there—you get more for your money than I do."
"Do you have to rough it very badly?" Her tone was gentler. "Are you still in the same place?"
"Well, I haven't known I was roughing it of recent years, but I don't see luxury like this in Manitoba. Not bad. And I've got a gramophone. Pretty rotten records, I'm afraid. Verdi is about the most classical of them."
"Isn't it lovely, how Verdi reminds one?" she said. "If I hear Verdi, I'm about ten years old again, and—it's funny—I'm always in the same bow window, and it's always a summer's afternoon, though I suppose the organs used to come in the winter, too. Just as, if I hear that hymn with 'pilgrims of the night' in it, it's always the nursery, and the gas over the mantelpiece is lighted. Verdi gives me my childhood back. I hope to hear Verdi in heaven. You've nothing very dreadful to complain of, then? You aren't sorry you went?"
"Well, no—I'm glad I went. It has panned out all right. It has been a funny thing to walk down the Strand again and remember that the last time I was in it I was short of sixpences. The other day I looked in at the office where I used to clerk. Two of the boys I had known were there still—grown round-shouldered and pigeon-chested. I suppose they've had a rise of about fifty pounds a year in the meantime. They came round to dinner at the hotel last night, and it made me melancholy to hear them talk. I used to want them to chuck the office and go out to Canada with me—they'd got the stamina once—but they hadn't got the grit. Now it's too late.... You know, it's capital to see you flourishing like this! You're about the only survivor of the old days that it hasn't given me the hump to meet. You alwaysweresure you'd get on, weren't you?"
"I was," she said. "Yes, I used to say so."
"Do you remember the people in that house? And how we used to groan about the extras in the bills?"
"It was a bad time for us both," she stammered.
"But it's good to look back on now it's over. Helps one to appreciate. When you're feeling dull now, you can drive round here and have a chat with a friend, and say, 'Well, it used to be much worse—I used to be poor.' Isn't that so?"
She nodded helplessly. Her mind was strained to find another subject.
"I wishyou'dcome round to dinner with me one evening, if you've nothing better to do?"
"I'm not going out very much just now," she demurred. "I—-"
"It'd be a charity, I'm all alone, and—by the way, I don't know if 'Miss Barton' is just your literary name now? If there is a lucky man, I hope he will give me the pleasure, too?"
"No, I'm not married," she said.
"Like me, you've been too busy. You know, I really think our victories should be fêted. It'd be friendly of you to come. You can find one evening free before I go back?"
"I suppose," she said, trying to laugh, "I'm not so full of engagements that I can't do that!"
And, though neither of them had foreseen the invitation, she was pledged to dine with him. Heavily she reflected that, when the dinner finished, she would be obliged to ask him to send for a taxi and that it would probably cost her a half-crown.
She went by train. That her solitary evening gown was wrong, having been bought three years since, did not worry her, though as "Lady Veronica," in herThe Autocrat at the Toilet-Tablecolumn, she wrote of things being "hopelessly last season's" when their vogue had been declining for a week; but she was embarrassed by her lack of evening shoes. At the table she bore herself bravely, supported by the knowledge that the epoch of her sleeves was unsuspected by him, but when she rose she found it difficult to conceal her feet.
Yet, if it had not been that the shame of failure poisoned each mouthful that she took, the evening would have had its fascination. When she led him to speak of his early blunders on the homestead, while he told her how he had shrunk dismayed from the first bleak sight of that patch of prairie, she forgot she was pretending, and forgot to feel abased. In moments she even forgot to feel old. The story of his struggles bore her back. As she heard these things, the greying man became to her again the boy that had loved her—and as the woman leant listening, the man caught glimpses of the girl that she had been.
His trip was proving queerly unlike his forecast of it on the farm. When he packed his bags he had had no idea of seeing her, but he had looked for emotions that he hadn't obtained. The strangeness of sauntering on the London pavements as a prosperous man had been less exhilarating than his anticipation of it. To drive to a fashionable tailor's and order clothes had failed to induce a burst of high spirits, though on the way he had laudably reminded himself that once it would have been the day of his life. He was, in fact, feeling solitary, and to loll in stalls at the theatres, instead of being jammed in the pit, would have seemed livelier to him if he had had a companion. In the circumstances, it was not astonishing that he proposed to take Irene Barton to the theatre a night or two later—and as he insisted a good deal, she compromised with a matinée.
Somehow or other he was having tea with her, at the club again, the day afterwards. And on the day after that, there was something else.
They had always found much to say to each other in the old days—they found much to say now, when the constraint wore off. The man told himself that he felt a calm friendship for the woman whom he had once wanted for his wife. And the woman told herself that, since he would soon be gone, she'd snatch happy hours with the man she loved while he was here. Her philosophy had changed since she expounded it in the garden of the square.
And then—the claims ofThe Autocrat at the Toilet-Tablehad compelled her to break an appointment—it manifested itself to Mr. Humphreys that his feelings were not so calm as he had thought. Irritable in the hotel hall, he perceived that this "friendship" threatened his holiday with a disastrous end. He wanted no second experience of fevering in Canada for a face in England. Grimly he decided that the acquaintance must be dropped. If it came to that, why remain in England any longer? It was time for him to go.
On the morrow, in another charming corner of the familiar club, he told her his intention, and she tried to disguise how much it startled her. When she had "hoped that he hadn't received bad news" and he had said briefly that he hadn't, there was a pause. In his endeavour to be casual he had been curt, and both were conscious of it. He wondered if he had hurt her. Perhaps he should have offered an excuse for his sudden leave-taking? He began to invent one—and she politely dismissed it. He was certain now that he had hurt her. After all, why not be candid?
He leant forward, and spoke in a lowered tone:
"Do you know why I'm going? I'm going because, if I stopped, I should make a fool of myself again."
The cup in her hand jerked. She felt suffocating, voiceless. Not a word came from her.
"I'm remembering that discretion is the better part of valour, Miss Barton."
"How do you mean?" she faltered.
"I'm running away in time. You see, I—I made a mistake: I reckoned you wouldn't be dangerous to me any more, and I was wrong.... So you won't think me ungrateful for going, will you? You've given me some very happy hours; I don't want you to think I didn't appreciate them. But I appreciate, too, the fact that you're a successful woman and that I've even less to hope for now than I had before. I went through hell about you once, dear—I couldn't stick it twice."
Her hand was passed across her eyes, and she trailed it on her skirt.
"Are you running away from—from my success? If I cared for you, do you think my success would matter?"
"Do you care for me?" His voice shook, like hers. He hated the chattering groups about them, as he bent conventionally over the tea-table. "Do you mean you could give your position up to be my wife?"
She rose. Her lips twitched before her answer came. It came in a whisper:
"You've never seen my rooms. Will you drive me there?"
And on the way she was very quiet.
The taxi stopped. In a dingy street she took a latchkey from her pocket, and opened a door, from which a milk-can hung. Perplexed, he followed. She led him to a parlour—a pitiable parlour, with atrocious oleographs on drab walls, and two mottled vases on a dirty mantelpiece.
"This," she said dryly, "is where I live. You see the celebrity at home."
He tried to take her to him, and she drew swiftly back.
"I have failed," she cried; "no one has read my books; I'm as poor as when you knew me first. I've spent years in holes like this! I've shammed to you because I was ashamed. My talk of people I know, of places I go to has been lies—I know no one, I go nowhere. I refused to marry you, when I was a girl, because I didn't think it good enough for me; before you stoop to ask me again, go away and think whether it's good enough foryou. I've lost my hopes, my youth, my looks—you'd be giving me everything, and I should bring you nothing in return!"
His arms were quick now, and they held her fast.
"Nothing?" he demanded. His eyes challenged her. "Nothing, Irene?"
"Oh, my dearest," she wept, smiling, "if my love's enough——?"