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Five Nights: A Novel

by Victoria Cross · English · Gutenberg #13017 · 452,041 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Five Nights: A Novel

Author: Victoria Cross


        
Release date: July 24, 2004 [eBook #13017]
                Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13017

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FIVE NIGHTS: A NOVEL ***

FIVE NIGHTS

A Novel

By

Victoria Cross

1908






By Victoria Cross

  Five Nights
  Life's Shop Window
  Anna Lombard
  Six Women
  Six Chapters of a Man's Life
  The Woman Who Didn't
  To-morrow?
  Paula
  A Girl of the Klondike
  The Religion of Evelyn Hastings
  Life of my Heart




CONTENTS


  PART I

  The Gold Night

      I THE TAKU INLET
     II THE TEA-SHOP
    III IN THE WOOD


  PART II

  The Violet Night

     IV AT THE STUDIO
      V THE CALL OF THE CUCKOO


  PART III

  The Black Night

     VI IN MAYFAIR
    VII FREEDOM


  PART IV

  The Crimson Night

   VIII LOSS
     IX IN 'FRISCO
      X IN THE SHADOW OF THE VOLCANO
     XI THE WAY OF THE GODS


  PART V

  The White Night

    XII THE FLAMES OF LIFE'S FURNACE




FIVE NIGHTS


    "The nights have different colours. Some nights are black, the
    nights of storm: some are electric blue, some are silver, the
    moon-filled nights: some are red under the hot planet Mars or the
    fierce harvest moon. Some are white, the white nights of the
    Arctic winter: but this was a violet night, a hot, mysterious,
    violet night of Midsummer."

    _LIFE'S SHOP WINDOW_.




INTRODUCTION


As one looks over any period of one's life, it appears behind one as
a shining maze of brilliant colour with spots in it here and there of
brighter or darker hue. Each spot represents a period of time when our
happiness has glowed brighter or waned; sometimes it is a day, more
often it is a night. Looking back now, over a stretch of my existence
I see many such spots gleaming brightly; they are nights of colour.
The history of many of these is too sacred to be written, but there
are Five Nights, which, though not the dearest to my memory, have yet
stamped themselves and their colour on it for ever. And the record of
these five nights is contained in the following pages.

TREVOR LONSDALE.




PART ONE

THE GOLD NIGHT




CHAPTER I

THE TAKU INLET


It was just striking three as I came up the companion-stairs on to the
deck of the Cottage City, into the clear topaz light of a June morning
in Alaska: light that had not failed through all the night, for in
this far northern latitude the sun only just dips beneath the horizon
at midnight for an hour, leaving all the earth and sky still bathed in
limpid yellow light, gently paling at that mystic time and glowing to
its full glory again as the sun rises above the rim.

Our steamer had left the open sea and entered the Taku Inlet, and we
were steaming very slowly up it, surrounded on every side by great
glittering blocks of ice, flashing in the sunshine as they floated by
on the buoyant blue water. How blue it was, the colouring of sea and
sky! Both were so vividly blue, the note of each so deep, so intense,
one seemed almost intoxicated with colour. I stepped to the vessel's
side, then made my way forward and stood there; I, the lover of the
East, dazzled by the beauty of the North! The marvellous picture
before me was painted in but three colours, blue, gold, and white.

The sides of the inlet were jagged lines of white, the sparkling
crystalline whiteness of eternal snow on sharp-pointed, almost
lance-like mountain peaks; the water a broad band of blue, the sky
above a canopy of blue, and there at the end of the inlet, closing it,
like some colossal monster crouched awaiting us, lay the Muir, the
huge glacier, a solid wedge of ice, white also, but a transparent
white full of blue shadows.

Who shall describe the wonderful air and atmosphere of the North? Its
brilliancy, its delicacy, its radiant diamond-like clearness? And the
silence, the enchanted stillness of the North? Now as we crept slowly
onwards over the vivid water between the flashing icebergs, there was
no sound. Complete silence round us, on earth and sea and in the blue
vault above, impressive, glittering silence. None of the passengers
had broken their sleep to come up to the glory above them, and I stood
alone at the forward part of the vessel gliding on through this dream
of lustrous blue. Slowly we advanced towards the Muir; very slowly,
for these shining bergs carried death with them if they should graze
hard against the steamer's side, and, cautiously, steered with
infinite pains, the little boat crept on, zigzagging between them. A
frail little toy of man, it seemed, to venture here alone; small,
black, impertinent atom forcing its way so hardily into this
magnificence of colour, this silent splendour, this radiant stillness
of the North. Into this very fastness of the most gigantic forces of
Nature it had penetrated, and the sapphire sea supported it, the
transparent light illumined it, the lance-like mountains looked down
upon it, and the glistening bergs forbore to crush it, as if
disdaining to harm so fragile a thing.

Very slowly we pushed up the inlet, approaching the shimmering
blue-green wall of ice that barred the upper end; seven hundred feet
down below the clear surface of the water descends this wall, while
three hundred feet of it rise above, forming a glorious shining
palisade across the entire width of the inlet. As the sun played on
the glittering façade, rays struck out from it as from a reflector, of
every shade of green and blue, the deepest hue of emerald mingling
with the lightest sapphire, iridescent, sparkling, wonderful. As we
crept still nearer, over the living blue of the water, the continual
fall of the icebergs from the front wall of the glacier became
apparent. At intervals of about five minutes, with a terrific crash
like thunder a great wedge of the glittering wall would fall forward
into the blue-green depths, and a cloud of snowy spray rise up
hundreds of feet into the air. The berg, thus detached, after a few
minutes would rise to the surface, glistening, dazzling, and begin
its joyous, buoyant voyage downwards to the sea. In all this brilliant
setting, with this glory of light around and the triumphal crash of
sound like the salute of cannon, amid this joyous movement and in this
blaze of colour, amid all that seemed to personify life, we were
watching the death of the glacier.

The colossal Muir Glacier, the remains of a world the history of which
is lost in the dim twilight none can now penetrate, is dying slowly
through a million years. From the mountains, eternally snow-covered,
where its huge body, three hundred and fifty miles in extent, has
rested through the centuries, it creeps forward slowly towards the sea
to meet its doom. Formerly its lip touched the open ocean where now
the Taku inlet commences to run inland. But the icy waters, that yet
are so much warmer than itself, caressed it with eroding caresses and
melted it, and broke bergs from it and rushed inwards, following it
till they formed the Taku Inlet, and now the process still goes on,
the gigantic body moves forward inch by inch and the green waves break
the bergs from its face as the sun invades its structure; and so it
lies there, dying slowly through the countless years, glorious,
miraculous.

The Captain had promised to approach the face of the glacier as near
as was reasonably safe and lie there at anchor for an hour, that the
passengers might land at the side of the inlet and those who wished
could explore the glacier.

An hour! What was an hour? Those sixty golden minutes would be gone in
a flash. Yet it would be an hour of life, of deep emotion, face to
face with this monster, strange relic of a forgotten world, stretched
on its glorious death-bed.

I was alone still. Not another passenger had yet come up, and I could
lean there undisturbed, trying to open my eyes still wider, to expand
my heart, to stretch my brain, that I might drink in more of the
inimitable grandeur and beauty round me.

The nearer we drew to the glacier the closer packed became the water
with the floating bergs; they threatened the ship now on every side,
and so slowly did we move we hardly seemed advancing. The bergs
flashed and shone as they passed us, rayed through with jewel-like
colours, and on one gliding by far from the ship's side I saw two
seals at play. For many hundred miles past these seals were the only
living things I had seen. The forests on the shore, so thick in the
first part of the journey by the Alaskan coast, had long since given
way to barren rocks, snow-capped peaks, and ice-filled clefts. No life
seemed possible there, the wide distant blue above had shown no bird
nor shadow of bird passing. There was no voice of insect nor the least
of Nature's children here. Between the thunderous crash of the
ice-falls that seemed to shiver the golden air there was intense and
solemn stillness.

But the seals played merrily on their floating berg as they passed me,
and I watched them long through field-glasses as the joyous, turbulent
blue waves carried them far out of my sight towards the open sea.

The clanging of the breakfast bell made me leave my place and go down
for a hurried breakfast. I was chilled through, for the early morning
air is keen, the pure breath of infinite snowfields, and I took my
coffee gratefully amongst the crowd of hungry passengers.

Rough miners some of them, going up to Sitka from the great Treadwell
mine at Juneau, traders on their way to Fort Wrangle, and some few
explorers. Amongst them were four men our boat had taken on board as
we passed the mouth of the Stickeen river. They had started from
Canada, lured by the light of the gold that lay under the snows of the
Klondike, intending to travel there overland. Losing their way, they
had wandered with their pack train for eighteen months in these vast
solitudes of ice and snow, groping blindly towards the coast.

Food had failed them, their horses had died by the way from want or
fatigue. Faced by starvation, the men had eaten those of their pack
animals that had survived, then, finally, when hope had almost left
them, they came in sight of the sea.

They were talking of this and their terrible conflict with snow-storm
and ice-floe as I joined them, of the plans for making money with
which they had started and their failure.

I got away from them all and went back to my place as soon as I could,
and spent the rest of the morning as I had begun it, alone at the
forward end.

There were very few passengers like myself. Not many people for mere
pleasure would take that hazardous voyage along the coast, for it was
new country and not a tenth of the sunken rocks and dangerous shoals
were yet on any chart. All the way up along that rocky and treacherous
shore we had seen the evidences of wreck and disaster everywhere.
Above the flats of shimmering water, where the gold or crimson of
sunset lay, rose constantly the tops of masts, shadowy and spectral,
telling of the sunken hull, the pale corpses beneath those gleaming
waves. Ship after ship went down out of those adventurous little
coasting vessels that plied up and down the coast trading with the
natives, and as we passed these half submerged masts, we often asked
ourselves--"Will the Cottage City be more lucky?" She was trading,
like all the other boats that go there, with the Alaskan natives, and
to go as far north as the Muir was no part of the official programme.

But the fares of the few passengers who really wished to take all
risks and go there was a temptation and overcame the fear of the
dreaded Taku Inlet with its monstrous crashing bergs and its
possibility of sudden and furious storms. So the little steamer was
here, creeping up slowly through this vision of mystic blue towards
the glacier, which lay there white, vast, shadowy, mysterious, and my
heart beat quicker and quicker as we approached.

I went off in one of the first boats and the moment it touched the
pebbly strand of the side of the inlet I jumped out and walked away,
eager to be alone to enjoy the glory of it all away from the rasping
voices, the worldly talk of my companions, the perpetual "littleness"
of ideas that humanity drags with it everywhere.

As I turned from the boat the voices followed me clearly, distinctly,
in the exquisite rarefied air.

Thin waves of laughter mingled with them from time to time, growing
faint behind me, then the distance closed up between us and I heard no
more.

The steamer had landed about thirty passengers and crew, and they
seemed immediately lost in these vast expanses. When I had walked a
few minutes up the beach from the water's edge, I looked round and was
apparently alone. Some few black dots here and there disfiguring the
snowy slopes and glittering ice-covered rocks was all that remained of
them. In the midst of the vivid blue-green of the inlet behind me, a
little wedge of black, lay the steamer, the only reminder that I was
one also of these miserable black dots and in an hour I should be
collected and taken away as one of them. For this hour, however, I was
free and at one with the divine glory about me.

It was just noon. The sky was of a pale and perfect blue, the air
still, of miraculous clearness and radiant with the pure light of the
North, unshaded, unsoftened by the smallest mist or cloud. The silence
was unbroken except for the regular thunder of the falling bergs, that
continued with absolute precision at the five-minute interval, and the
accompanying splash of the water. I walked on up the strand, having
the great glistening wall of the glacier's face somewhat on my left.
It was impossible to approach it on land, as the fervid green water
lay deep all about its base. It was only at the side of the inlet that
little beaches had been formed, and on one of these I stood. The
steamer could not get nearer the glacier for fear of the floating
bergs, and a small boat could only approach with deadliest peril at
the risk of being crushed beneath the falling ice or swamped by the
wild division and upheaval of the water that it caused.

But here, on the beach, was a world of enchantment second only in
beauty to the glacier itself, for many of the bergs had been stranded
there by the playful tides. They stood there now towering up in a
thousand different forms, hundreds of feet above one's head, drawing
all the light of the sunbeams into their glittering recesses, turning
them there into violet, purple, and crimson hues, mauve, saffron, and
emerald, blood-red and topaz, and then throwing them out in a million
lance-like rays of colour, dazzling and blinding the vision. Like the
most wonderful rainbows turned into solid masses they stood there, or
like the jewels, rubies, sapphires, and diamonds broken from some
giant's crown and scattered recklessly along the strand.

I went up to them and walked beneath an ice arch that glowed rose
without as the sun touched it and deepest violet within. Then on, into
a cave beyond where the last chamber was coldest white but the outer
rim seemed hung with blood-red fire and the middle wall glowed deepest
emerald. On, on from one to another, each like a perfect dream of
exquisite colour: sunrise and sunset, and all the hues of earth that
we ever see were blended together in those glorious bergs.

What a phantasmagoria of colour, what a wonderful vision! Wrapped up
in the delight of it, I passed on through some and round others,
pursuing my way up the beach, and ascended slowly the rocks, the huge
morain at the side of the glacier, while impressively from the inlet
came unvaryingly the thunder of the five-minute guns, hastening my
steps, dogging them, as it were, with warning of the passing time.

After a heavy climb taken too quickly, when I put my foot first on the
clear blue-green surface of the glacier, its immensity, its grandeur
came home to me. The idea of the huge size of it seems to take the
human mind in a curious grip and appal it. Three hundred and fifty
square miles of ice stretched round me, white, unbroken, except here
and there where gigantic fissures and ravines opened in its surface;
ravines where deep blue-green colour glowed in the sides, as if it
were the blue-green blood of the glacier. A tiny wind from the north,
keen as a knife blade, blew in my face as I stood there, out of the
calm blue sky, and seemed to whisper to me of the terrifying nights of
storm, of the deadly wind before which all life goes down like a
straw, that raged here in the winter. On every side, as far as the
eyes could reach, wide white plains of undulating ice and snow, broken
here and there by patches of barren rock, that seemed now by some
optical delusion, against the glaring white, to be of the brightest
mauve and violet tints. Only that; ice and snow and rock for mile upon
mile, until the tale of three hundred and fifty is told. No track or
trace of bird, no sweet companionship of little furred, four-footed
things, no blade of grass or smallest plant or flower, no sound but
the roar of the riven ice, the groans of the dying glacier.

I walked on slowly, looking inland towards the white fields
stretching away endlessly into the distance till the blue of the sky
seems to come down and mingle with the blue shadows in the snow.
Beneath my feet glimmered sometimes the green glass-like surface of
smooth ice, at others the thin crisp covering of drifted snow crackled
at every step. Sometimes the crevasses were so narrow one could easily
walk over them, others yawned widely, many yards across, necessitating
a long detour to pass round them.

Looking back from the side of one of them as I walked up it to find
the narrowest part, I saw the objectionable black dots had swarmed up
on to the edge of the glacier and through the thin, glittering air
their voices and laughter at intervals came faintly to me. I sprang
over the crevasse and walked on quickly to a point where the fissures
grew thick about my feet and the green-blue blood of the glacier
glowed in them on every side.

I was looking now down the inlet and was near enough to the face of
the glacier to hear, though dulled by distance, the crash of the
falling bergs into the foaming water beneath. I could not approach
nearer for crevasses hemmed me in; the ice showed itself clear of snow
and was so slippery I could hardly stand. One false step now, one
small slip and I should disappear down one of these green rents,
swallowed up in between those gleaming crystal sides to remain one
with the glacier for all time. My idea had been to approach the face
of the glacier from the top, but I found this to be as impossible, by
reason of the crevasses, as it had been to approach it from the sea on
account of the falling bergs.

Sacred, inaccessible, guarded above and below, the great gleaming wall
stood there through the centuries, defying the puny curiosity, the
feeble efforts of man to even gaze upon it and marvel over it, except
from a long distance. I would have given all I had to have been able
to advance to the very edge and, kneeling there, look over it down
those majestic palisades of white flushed through with green, throwing
back to the sun, their destroyer and conqueror, a thousand flashing
rays as if in defiance of the slow death being dealt out to them, like
one who dies brandishing to the last his sword in the face of his
enemy. I longed to look over, down the glimmering wall, to the
swelling rush of the green waters as they leapt up rejoicing to
receive the colossal diamond-like berg as it crashed down to them, to
see them seethe over it and fling their spray high up in the sunshine
in mocking revelry; but it was impossible. The fissures in the ice
multiplied themselves as one neared the edge and now were spread round
my feet in a perfect network, like the meshes of a snare. It was
impossible to go forward, and I was unwilling to go back. I stood
motionless on a little tongue of polished ice between two blue-green
chasms, so deep that they seemed riven down to the very heart of the
glacier; stood there, drinking in the keen gold air and the beauty of
the blue arch above, of the boundless spaces of glittering white round
me, of the narrow green inlet so far below from which echoed the
reverberating roar of the falling ice.

I was debating with myself, should I stay here alone for a time,
letting the steamer go, after having stored some provisions for me on
the shore, and call again for me a few weeks later, in any case before
the short summer of these northern latitudes was over, and winter
closed the inlet?

To stay here alone, the one single human being, in a thousand miles of
space, and not only the one human being, but the one _life_, with no
companionship of animal, bird, or insect, that would be an experience
of solitude indeed!

The idea attracted me; all day and all night to hear nothing but that
thunderous roar, and see nothing but the shining sea, the gleaming
ice-fields, and the glittering bergs, to be alone with Nature, to see
her, as it were, intimately in her awful beauty, with breast and brow
unveiled--and, perhaps, have death as one's reward!

There was fascination in the thought.

What ideas would come to one as one watched the little steamer, the
only link that held one still bound to the world of men, weigh anchor
and steam slowly down the green inlet, departing and leaving one
behind it, as one watched it growing smaller, dwindling ever, till it
was a mere speck, and then saw it vanish, leaving the green riband of
water unbroken save for the passing bergs? How one would realise
solitude when the boat had absolutely disappeared, and how that
solitude would thrill through and through one's blood as the long
light night rolled by and dawn and day succeeded with their unvarying
march of silent glittering hours!

And if death came on the wings of a storm such as rises suddenly in
these regions and piled high the snow over the camp, freezing the
inmate, or if it came by slow starvation, the steamer having been lost
on that dangerous rocky coast and none other having come in time, how
would death seem to one here, already so far removed from men and all
desire and lust of the world, here, where already all earthly things
had almost ceased to be and one's spirit had merged into the Infinite?

Death would seem to one in different guise from when he comes to us in
the midst of the delights of the world, with the baubles of life
around us, or in the stress of the battle-field in the moment of
victory, surrounded by our comrades.

Death here would come but as the crown, the climax to the solitude,
the detachment, the isolation, would seem but as the laying down the
head on the breast of Nature, becoming one with her immensity, her
grandeur.

For some minutes I was keenly tempted to stay, the idea held my mind
and fascinated it, but with the vision of death came the recoil from
it born from the remembrance of my art. The same recoil that had saved
me many times before, for youth is usually greatly inclined to
suicide, either directly or indirectly in the dangers it courts. But
in an artist this is strangely balanced by his love for his work. When
he has ceased to wish for life or heed it for himself he still feels
instinctive revolt against extinguishing that diviner spark than life
itself, his genius, lent him from the celestial fire.

The thought of my work dispelled the enchanted dream into which I had
fallen. Instinctively I turned and very slowly began to retrace my
steps amongst the yawning pitfalls. As I did so I heard a hoarse hoot
from the steamer lying below, to tell me it was about to leave,
another and another resounded dully from it, warning me to hasten my
return.

I made my way back to the shore where the boat and the impatient
sailors awaited me. I took my seat in it, turning my eyes to the
glistening, glimmering white palisade rising over the sapphire sea.

When we had reached the steamer and its head was turned round I stood
at the stern and watched that palisade for long, as it receded and
receded. At last the blue distance swallowed it up. I could see no
more than a silvery line dividing the blues of meeting sea and sky.
Then I went down to my cabin and locked the door and lay down on my
berth in the quiet, trying to live over again that one hour of close
contact with the beauty of the North.

After dinner that night I wrote a long letter to my cousin Viola about
the beauty of the Muir. She would understand, I knew. What I thought
she would feel, for our brains were cast in the same mould. The letter
finished, it was still too early to go to bed; so I picked up a
curious book called "Life's Shop Window" which I had been reading the
previous night, and read this passage which had struck me before, over
again:

"So, as we look into our future, we see ourselves beloved and wealthy;
victorious, famous, and free to wander through the sweetest paths of
the world, passing through a thousand scenes, sometimes loving,
sometimes warring, tasting and drinking of everything sweet and
stimulating, knowing all things, enjoying all in turn; but this is the
life of a God, not a man. And it is perhaps the God in us which so
savagely demands the life of a God."

"But it is not granted to us."

Yet this was the life I was trying to lead, and to some extent I
succeeded. Change, change, it is the life of life, perhaps especially
to the artist.

And I was an artist now, thanks to the decision of the Royal Academy
last year to accept the worst picture I had submitted to them for four
years. Ever since my fingers could clasp round anything at all they
had loved to hold a brush; for years in my teens I had studied
painting under the best teachers of technique in Italy. For two or
three years I had done really good work, with the divine afflatus
thrilling through every vein. And last year I had painted rather a
commonplace picture and it had been hung on the line in the Academy,
and so my friends all said I really was an artist now, and I modestly
accepted the style and title, with outward diffidence.

How little any of them guessed, as they congratulated me, of the wild
rapture of feeling, of intense gratitude with which I had listened to
the Divine whisper that had come to my ears as a boy of seventeen
sitting in a small bare bedroom, on the floor with the sheet of paper
before me on which I had drawn a woman's head. As I looked at it, I
knew suddenly my power, and the Voice that is above all others said
within me: "_I_ have made you an artist. None can undo or dispute MY
work."

From that moment I cared for neither praise nor blame. The opinion of
men affected me not at all. My gift was mine, and I knew it. I held it
straight from the Divine hands. I had the Divine promise with me for
as long as I should live on this earth.

And I was filled with a boundless delight in life and my own powers.

When I showed my original pictures all painted under inspiration to my
father, he carefully put on his pince-nez and studied them very
closely. After that he said he must reserve his judgment. When they
went to the Academy and were promptly refused, he drew a long face and
said I had better have gone into the Indian Civil Service as he
wished. Subsequently, when I had sold them all, and not one for less
than a thousand guineas, he began to enter upon a placid state of
contentment with me which induced him to say to other captious
relations--"Let the boy alone, he will be an artist some day." At
which I used to laugh inwardly and go away to my studio to listen to
the Divine voice dictating fresh pictures to me. For five years in
Italy I had studied closely and worked unremittingly, keeping myself
for my art alone and existing only in it. My teachers had called me
industrious. Another phrase which always must make an artist laugh
when applied to his art.

To those who know the wild pleasure, the almost mad joy of exercising
a really natural gift, it sounds as funny as to talk of a drunkard
industriously getting drunk.

However, this by the way. The world is the world, and artists are
artists; the artist may understand the world, but the world can never
understand the artist.

I was happy, life passed like a golden dream till I was twenty-two,
and my father was satisfied that I was an "industrious" student.

From twenty-two till now, when I was twenty-eight, life had opened out
into fuller colour still. My art remained the life of the soul, of all
that was best in me, but the brain and the senses had come forward,
demanding their share of recognition, too, and out of the many
coloured strands of which we can weave our web of life, I had chosen
that which gleams the next brightest to art, the strand of passion,
and woven much with that.

I had travelled, passing from country to country, city to city,
finding love and inspiration everywhere, for the world is full of both
for those who desire and look for them, and now I had come on this
coasting trip along the shores of Alaska in the same spirit, looking
for pictures in the golden atmosphere, for joy in the golden days and
nights.

My sketch-book was full of ideas and jottings, and I looked forward
much to the landing at Sitka where I hoped to find new and good
material. The hopeless ugliness of the Alaskan natives had so far
appalled me. An artist chiefly of the face and figure, as I was, could
not hope to find a model amongst them. As our steamer had come up the
coast I had looked in vain for even a decent-sized woman or child
amongst them. They seem a race without a single beauty, possessing
neither stature, nor colour, nor length of hair, nor even plump
shapeliness. Undersized, leather-skinned, small-eyed, thin, and
wizened, they never seem to be young. They seem to start middle-aged
and go on growing older.

No, I had really had no luck at present on my Alaskan tour, but I was
naturally sanguine and hoped still something from Sitka.

Most capitals give you something if you visit them, and Sitka was the
capital of Alaska.

As I lay in my berth that night, made wakeful by the bright light, I
was thinking over past incidents in my life and all the Minnies and
Marys that had been connected with them. They seemed all to have been
Mary or Minnie with Marias in Italy and France. I fell asleep at last,
hoping whatever Fate had in store for me at Sitka, it wouldn't be a
Mary or a Minnie, but some new name embodying a new idea.




CHAPTER II

THE TEA-SHOP


When we landed at Sitka I went ashore with a fellow passenger. He was
a clever man, and had made trips up there already for the sake of
taking photographs of the people and the scenery; he knew Sitka well
and came up to me just before we arrived there with the remark:

"If you come with me I'll take you to have tea with the prettiest girl
you've ever seen."

This certainly seemed an invitation to accept, and I did so on the
spot.

"She really is," he continued, observing my sceptically raised
eyebrows, "wonderfully pretty. She keeps a tea-shop and she is
Chinese." With that he bolted into his own cabin, which was next mine,
and as I heard him laughing, I concluded he was joking and thought no
more about it. However, as the ship glided up over flat sheets of
golden water to the landing-stage, he joined me again, and together we
stood looking up the principal street of Sitka which runs down to meet
the little quay.

It was just four in the afternoon, and everything was vivid living
gold, as the floods of yellow sunshine filled all the shining air. The
green copper dome of the church alone stood out a soft spot of
delicate colour in the dazzling burnished haze.

At the sides of the street sat and crouched the small squat figures of
the Alaskan Indians, each with a mat before it on which the owner had
set out his little store of wares--bottles of various-coloured sands,
reindeer slippers beautifully embroidered in blue beads, carved walrus
teeth.

We stepped on the shore and the Indians looked up at us with quaint
brown questioning eyes, like their own seals.

They did not ask you to buy, but watched you silently.

"Come along," said my friend, "we'll go up and get tea before there's
a crowd."

After about five minutes' walk, while I was gazing about interested in
this quaint little capital, my companion suddenly exclaimed:

"In here," and turned through an opening at the corner of a square
enclosure on our right hand. I followed, and saw we had entered a
little square court or compound, similar to those with which the
poorer classes in any Eastern community surround their huts.

The floor was dried and hardened mud, the walls about seven feet high,
and numerous small tables laid for tea stood round them.

My companion did not pause here, however, but went straight through in
at the low house door, and we found ourselves in a very small, dark
passage, hung with red and with red cloths dangling from the ceiling,
that swept our heads as we came in.

It seemed quite dark inside, coming from the fierce gold light of the
streets, but there was a dim little lamp in Eastern glass of many
colours swinging somewhere at the farther end, and we found our way
down to a low door in the side of the passage. This brought us into a
small square room which gave the impression of being sunk below the
level of the street. There were diminutive windows in the outer wall,
but they were close to the low ceiling and though the glorious light
from without tried hard to come in, it was successfully obstructed by
little rush blinds of red and green. The rushes were placed vertically
side by side and fastened together with string and painted in bright
tints. The breeze from the sea came through them and sang a low song
of its own. The walls were hung with red stuff curtains, over which
ramped wonderful Chinese dragons in green; the floor was spread with
something soft, on which the feet made no sound; in the corners of the
room stood some little tables.

To the farthest of these, under the rush-covered windows, we made our
way and sat down on some very ordinary American chairs, a hideous note
in the quaint surrounding, introduced as a concession, no doubt, to
Western taste.

"I rather like this, Morley," I said as I took my seat and looked
round.

"Thought you would," he returned, and pressed his hand on a tiny
bronze figure standing on the table. At the touch of his finger the
head of the figure disappeared between its shoulders, and then sprung
up again, producing a harsh clanging sound of a gong.

Hardly a moment later the red curtains that hung over the doorway
parted, and a figure came into the room.

Such a sweet figure, the very spirit of poetic girlhood seemed
incarnate before us.

In appearance she was a Chinese maiden of seventeen or eighteen years;
seventeen or eighteen according to our standard of looks, doubtless
she was in reality younger.

The face was wonderfully beautiful, a very rounded oval and of the
most perfect creamy tint, the nose, straight and fine, was rather
long, the upper lip short, and the mouth very small, soft, and
full-lipped. The eyes inclined a little to the Chinese shape, but were
large, wide, and well-opened and brimming to the lids with
extraordinary light and fire; delicately narrow black eyebrows arched
above on the low satiny forehead, from which was brushed upwards a
mass of shining black hair piled on the top of the small head and
apparently secured there by two weighty gold pins thrust through from
side to side.

The last touch of beauty, if any were needed, was added by the
earrings of turquoise-blue stone that swung against the ivory-tinted
softness of the full young throat.

Those blue stones against the creamy neck! For years afterwards how I
could see them again in the darkness that lies behind closed lids! How
often I was back in the crimson darkness of the tiny chamber with the
sea song of the Alaskan waves coming through the painted rushes above
my head!

She was very simply dressed, yet so fitly to her own beauty.

A straight pale blue jacket covered her shoulders and opened on the
breast over a white muslin vest. Her skirts hung like the full
trousers of Persian women, and were a deep yellow in colour. Her feet
were bare, and shone white on the red floor.

"How do you do, Suzee?" said Morley.

"How do you do, Mister Morlee," returned the girl lightly, smiling and
showing pretty little teeth as she did so.

"You two gentlemen want some tea? Very good. I make it."

She glided to the curtains and disappeared as rapidly and noiselessly
as she had entered.

I turned to Morley with enthusiasm.

"She's lovely, perfect."

"Isn't she just? I knew you'd say so. But she's married, old man, so
don't you think you can go playing any tricks with her."

"Married?" I gasped incredulously, "that child? Impossible! You're
joking."

"I'm not, 'pon my honour. She has a great roaring brute of a baby,
too."

"How horrible!" I exclaimed. "Yes, horrible. You've spoiled it all. It
seems a sacrilege."

"Fiddlesticks," returned my practical friend. "That's the sort that
does these things, isn't it? Would you expect her to turn into an old
maid?"

"No, but so young!" I faltered. In reality it was a shock to me. To
have such an exquisite sight float before one for a moment, and then
to be roughly dragged down to earth from the exaltation it had caused,
hurt and bruised me.

The next moment she was back again, bearing a tray in her hands which
she set on our table, and deftly arranged the steaming teapot and tiny
cups before us.

As she bent near us over the little table a strange sensation of
delight came over me, a faint scent of roses reached me from the
little buds behind her ear. The blue stones in the long gold earrings
swung against her neck of cream as she set out the tea things.

"How is your boy, Suzee?" asked Morley with a tone of mischief in his
voice.

"He is very well, thank you, Mister Morlee."

"I should like to see him. Will you bring him in?" he continued,
commencing to pour out the tea.

"Yes; he is asleep now, but I will wake him up," she returned
nonchalantly, and, in spite of a protestation from me, she went out to
do so.

After a minute we heard loud screams from across the passage and
presently Suzee reappeared dragging (I can use no other phrase) in her
arms an enormous baby. Its face was red, and it was roaring lustily.
The girl-mother did not seem disturbed in the least by its cries, but
staggered slowly over to us, clasping the child awkwardly round the
waist and holding it flat against her own body.

It seemed very large, out of all proportion to the small and
exquisitely dainty mother. She was short and small, and the child
really, as I looked at it, seemed to be quite half the length of her
own body.

"What a big boy he is," remarked Morley.

"Yes, isn't he?" said the mother proudly.

The baby roared its loudest, tears streamed down its scarlet face, and
it dug its clenched knuckles furiously into its eyes.

"Surely it's in pain," I suggested.

"Oh, he always cries when he is woken up," returned the mother
tranquilly. She did not seem to take the least notice of the child's
bellowing. She might have been deaf for all the effect it had upon
her. She stood there placidly holding it, though it seemed very heavy
for her, while the child screamed itself purple. She began a
conversation with Morley just precisely as if the child were
non-existent.

I never saw such a picture, and it struck me suddenly I should like to
paint it, just as it was there, and call the thing "Maternity."

But no. What would be the good? No one, certainly not the British
public, would ever believe its truth.

They would think it a joke, and a grotesque one at that. "Beauty and
the Beast" would do for a name, I mused, or "Fact and Fancy."

Nothing could be more delicately soul-absorbingly beautiful than the
mother; nothing so brutally hideous as the child.

Suzee had sat down on the floor now, and the baby, still roaring, had
rolled on to its face on the ground beside her. Still she took not the
smallest notice of it; she laid one shapely hand on the small of its
back, as if to make sure it was there, and continued her conversation
tranquilly with Morley. How she could hear what he said I could not
tell. I could hear nothing but the appalling row the child made.

"Do take it away," I said after a few moments more, in an interval of
yells, during which the baby rolled, apparently in the last stages of
suffocation, on the floor. "I can't stand that noise."

"Ah!" said Suzee meditatively, lifting her glorious almond eyes to
mine, "you do not like my boy-baby?"

"I do not like the noise he makes," I said evasively, "and I don't
think he can be well, either."

"Oh yes, he is quite well," she returned composedly; "but I will take
him away."

So saying, she began to haul at the loose things about the child's
waist, as a tired gardener hauls at a sack of potatoes prior to
lifting it up.

I thought really she would get the child into her arms head downwards,
so carelessly did she seem to manage it, and as she rose and carried
it to the door it seemed as if the awkward weight of it must strain
her own slight body.

When the curtain closed behind her and the screams got faint in the
distance as the unhappy child was hauled to a back room, I drew a
breath of relief and began to drink my tea, which really hitherto I
had been too nervous to do. Morley chuckled and remarked:

"Good for you to be disillusioned."

"I'm not in the least, with _her_. She is a divine piece of physical
beauty. I wish I could get her on my canvas."

"You won't be able to; that old curmudgeon of a husband of hers will
see to that."

"I should think he has the devil of a temper, judging by his
offspring," I answered. "She looks sweet enough."

Morley nodded, and we finished our tea in silence. Suzee came back
presently with cigarettes for us and sat down on the floor herself,
rolling one up between supple fingers. She had an air of extraordinary
unruffled placidity. The dragging about of the child had not disturbed
her dress nor heated her face. In cool, tranquil, placid beauty she
sat and rolled cigarettes while the child's cries dimly echoed in the
distance.

"Where's the boss, Suzee?" questioned Morley presently.

"He has gone down to Fort Wrangle for two days," she returned, and my
spirits leapt up at her words. Her husband away for two days! Perhaps
there was a chance for a picture....

My eyes swept over her seated on the floor in front of us. What
exquisite supple lines! What sweet little dainty curves showed beneath
the blue silk jacket and sleeve! What a glory of light and passionate
expression in the liquid dark eyes when she raised them to us!

After a few minutes Morley got up, and I saw him laying down on the
table the money for our tea. I added my share, and Morley remarked,

"We'd better go and walk about before dinner, hadn't we? You'd like a
look round?"

I was gazing at Suzee.

"Do you have any time to yourself?" I asked her. "Later in the evening
perhaps when you could come for a walk with me."

Suzee looked up. There was surprise in those wonderful eyes, but I
thought I saw pleasure too.

"At six," she said. "I close the restaurant for a short time, but I
don't walk, I smoke and go to sleep. But I will come with you if it is
not too far," she added as an after-thought.

Morley gave a whistle, indicative of surprise and disapproval, but I
answered composedly.

"Very well, I shall come here at six; so don't be asleep and fail to
let me in!"

Suzee laughed and shook her head, and we picked up our hats and went
out of the little room into the passage. In the outer court, as we
passed through, we saw most of the tables occupied, and an elderly
woman serving.

"We had the best of it," I remarked.

"Yes, rather. But you are going ahead with that girl. Do be careful or
you'll have the old terror of a husband down on you."

"You introduced me," I returned laughing. "You have all the
responsibility."

"You know dinner's at six on this unearthly boat. Aren't you going to
get any dinner to-night?"

"I'm not very particular about it. I shall pick up something. I
thought six when all the men would be back on board would be her free
time."

"But what are you going to do with her?"

"Get her to pose for me, if she will."

"Anything else?"

"One never knows in life," I answered smiling.

Morley regarded me thoughtfully.

"You artists do manage to have a good time."

"You could have just the same if you chose," I said.

"No, I don't think I could somehow," he answered slowly. "I am not so
devilishly good-looking as you are, for one thing."

"Oh, I don't know," I replied; "and does that make much difference
with women, do you think? Isn't it rather a passionate responsiveness,
a go-aheadness, that they like?"

"Yes, I think it is, but then that's it, you've got that. I don't
think I have. I don't seem to want the things, to see anything in
them, as you do."

I laughed outright. We were walking slowly down one of the gold,
light-filled streets towards the church now, and everything about us
seemed vibrating in the dazzling heat.

"If you don't want them I should think it's all right." I said.

"No, it isn't," returned my companion gravely. "You want a thing very
much and you get it, and have no end of fun. I don't want it and don't
get it, and don't have the fun. So it makes life very dull."

"Well, I _am_ very jolly," I admitted contentedly. "I think really,
artists--people with the artist's brain--do enjoy everything
tremendously. They have such a much wider field of desires, as you
say; and fewer limitations. They 'weave the web Desire,' as Swinburne
says, 'to snare the bird Delight.'"

"They get into a mess sometimes," said Morley sulkily; "as you will
with that girl if you don't look out. Here we are at the church.
There's a very fine picture inside; you'd like to see it, I expect."

We turned into the church and rested on the chairs for a few minutes,
enjoying the cool dark interior.

At six o'clock exactly I was in the little mud-yard again, before the
tea-shop; having sent Morley off to his dinner on board. I felt
elated: all my pulses were beating merrily. I was keenly alive. Morley
was right in what he said. An artist is Nature's pet, and she has
mixed all his blood with joy. Natural, instinctive joy, swamped
occasionally by melancholy, but always there surging up anew. Joy in
himself--joy in his powers--joy in life.

I knocked as arranged, and Suzee herself let me in. She had been
burning spice, apparently, before one of the idols that stood in each
corner of the tea-shop; for the whole place smelt of it.

"What have you been doing?" I said. "Holding service here?"

"Only burning spice-spills to chase away the evil spirits," replied
Suzee.

"Are there any here?" I inquired.

"They always come in with the white foreign devils," she returned with
engaging frankness.

I laughed.

"Well, Suzee, you are unkind," I expostulated. "Is that how you think
of me?"

She looked up with a calm smile.

"The devil is always welcomed by a woman," she answered sweetly--her
eyes were black lakes with fire moving in their depths--"that is one
of our proverbs. It is quite true."

The lips curled and the creamy satin of the cheeks dimpled and the
blue earrings shook against her neck.

"What lovely earrings," I said, smiling down upon her, and put up my
hand gently to touch one. She did not draw back nor seem to resent my
action.

"You think them pretty? I have others upstairs. Will you come up and
see my jewellery?"

I assented with the greatest willingness, and we went on down the
passage and then up the narrow, steep flight of stairs at the end.

"Don't wake up your child," I said in sudden horror, as we reached the
small square landing above of slender rickety uncovered boards.

"Oh, he never wakes till one pulls him up," she answered tranquilly,
and led the way into a little chamber. Did she sleep here? I wondered.
There was no bed, but a loose heap of red rugs in one corner. The
windows were mere narrow horizontal slits close to the ceiling. In the
centre, blocking up all the space, stood a high narrow chest. It
looked very old, of blackened wood and antique shape. I had never seen
such a thing. On the top of this, which nearly came to her chin, she
eagerly spread out heaps of little paper parcels she took from one of
the drawers.

"Have you any earrings just like those you are wearing?" I asked her.
If she had, I would buy them if I could for my cousin Viola, I
thought. Viola was excessively fair, and those blue stones would be
enchanting against her blonde hair.

"You want to buy them?" she said quickly. "I have a pair here just
like, only green. Buy those."

"No," I said. "It is the colour I like. Do you want to sell these blue
ones you are wearing?"

"No," she said quickly; "not these," and ran to a small mirror on the
wall and looked in hastily, fearfully, as if she thought that by
wishing for them I could charm them away from her out of her very
ears.

That she appreciated so well the effect of the colour harmony between
the blue stones and her own cream-hued skin, and the value of it in
setting off her beauty, pleased me. It seemed to augur well for her
artistic sense.

"May I sit down here?" I asked her, going to the pile of scarlet rugs
and cushions in the corner.

"Oh yes, Meester Treevor, sit down," and she came hastily forward to
rearrange them for me with Oriental politeness. I sat down, drawing up
my legs as I best could, and pointed to a place beside me.

"Come and sit down, Suzee," I said; "I have something to show you
now."

She came and sat beside me, but not very close, with her knees raised
and her smooth lissom little hands clasped round them. Her almond eyes
grew almost round with curiosity. I had brought with me a small
portfolio of some of my sketches with the object of introducing the
subject of her posing for me. I opened it and drew out the topmost
sketch. It was the figure of a young Italian girl lying on a green
bank beneath some vines. She was not wholly undraped, but most of her
attire was on the bank beside her, and the rest was of a transparent
gauzy nature suited to the heat suggested in the sunlit picture.

The moment Suzee's eyes fell upon it she gave a shriek of dismay and
covered her face with her hands. Over any portion I could still see
of it spread the Eastern's equivalent of a blush: a sort of dull heavy
red that seems to thicken the tissues.

"What is the matter?" I asked, surveying her in surprise. There was
nothing in the picture which would cause the least embarrassment to
any English girl.

"Oh, Treevor, it is dreadful to look at things like that," she
exclaimed, moving her fingers before her face and looking at me with
one eye through them. Then she made some rapid passes over her head,
as if to ward off the evil spirits I had conjured up.

I laughed.

"You may think so, Suzee," I said; "but in our country, and many
others, these 'things,' as you call them, are not only very much
looked at, but also admired, and bought and sold for great sums. What
do you see so very bad in it?"

Suzee ventured to peer through her fingers with both eyes at the
fearful object.

"Dreadful!" she exclaimed again, quickly shutting her fingers. "It is
a very bad woman, is it not?"

"No," I said, somewhat nettled; "certainly not. This was quite a
respectable girl. I have quantities of these portraits and sketches.
Look here," and I opened the portfolio and spread out several pictures
on the rug.

Suzee drew herself together, tightly pursed up her and looked down at
them with alarm,--as if I had let loose a number of snakes.

"They are very, very wicked things," she said, primly as a dissenting
minister's wife; and lowered her eyelids till the lashes lay like
black silk on the cheeks.

I gathered the offending sketches together and pushed them back under
cover.

"I wanted you to pose for me," I said, "that I might have your
picture, too; but I expect you won't do so for me?"

"I! I!" said Suzee, with virtuous indignation, "be put on paper like
that? I would die first." Her face had thickened all over as the blood
went into it. Her eyes looked stormy, alluring.

I leant towards her suddenly as we sat side by side, put my arms round
her waist, drew her to me, and pressed my lips on the ridiculous
little screwed-up mouth, with a sudden access of passion that left her
breathless.

"You are a horrid little humbug, and goose, and prude," I said,
laughing, as I released her. "What do you think of letting me kiss you
like that, then? Is that wrong?"

Suzee sighed heavily, swaying her pliable body only a very little way
from me.

"It may be--a little" she admitted; "but it's not like the pictures."

"Oh! It's not so bad--not so wicked?" I asked mockingly.

"Oh no, not nearly," she returned decisively.

"Well," I answered, "many people would think it much worse. Those
girls who have let me draw them would not let me kiss them--some of
them," I added. "So, you see, it's a matter of opinion and idea. Now,
will you say why the picture is so much worse than a kiss?"

"A kiss," murmured Suzee, "is just between two people. It is done, and
no one knows. It is gone." She spread out her hands and waved them in
the air with an expressive gesture. "Those things remain a monument of
shame for ever and ever."

I laughed. I was beginning to see there was not much chance of a
picture, but other prospects seemed fair. In life one must always take
exactly what it offers, and neither refuse its goods nor ask for more,
either in addition or exchange. Sitka would give me something, but
perhaps not a picture as I had hoped.

I looked at her in silence for some seconds, musing on her curious
beauty.

"I shall call you 'Sitkar-i-buccheesh,'" I said after a minute.

Suzee looked frightened and made a rapid pass over her head.

"What is that?" she asked. "It sounds a devil's name."

"It only means the gift of Sitka," I answered. "This city has given
you to me, has it not? or it will," I added in a lower tone.

I put my arm round her again, and she leant towards me as a flower
swayed by the breeze, her head drooped and rested against my shoulder.

"If it were the name of a devil," I said laughing, "it would suit you.
I believe you are an awful little devil."

"All women are devils," returned Suzee placidly.

I did not answer, but Viola's face swam suddenly before my vision--a
face all white and gold and rose and with eyes of celestial blue.

"What would your husband say to all this?" I asked jestingly.

"He will never know. I tell him quite different. He believes
everything I say."

Involuntarily I felt a little chill of disgust pass through me. Deceit
of any kind specially repels me, and deceit towards some one trusting,
confident, is the worst of all.

Perhaps she read my thoughts instinctively, for she said next, in a
pleading note, to enlist my sympathies:

"He is very, very cruel, he beats me all the time."

I looked down at her as she lay in the cradle of my arm, a little
sceptical.

From what I knew of the Chinese character it did not seem at all
likely that Hop Lee did beat his wife; moreover, the delicate,
fragile, untouched beauty of the girl did not allow one to imagine she
had suffered, or could suffer much violence.

Again she seemed to feel my doubt of her, for she pushed up suddenly
her sleeve with some trouble from one velvet-skinned arm and pushed it
up before my eyes. There was a deep dull crimson mark upon it the size
of a half-crown.

"Unbeliever! Look at this bruise."

I looked at it, then at her steadily.

"Suzee, did your husband make that bruise?"

"Yes. He pinched me so hard in a rage with me," she said a little
sulkily.

"Give me your arm," I said.

She held it out reluctantly. I looked at the bruise, then I rolled the
sleeve back a little farther, and in it found a heavy gold bangle with
a boss on one side corresponding with the size of the mark on the
flesh.

"I think it is the gold bracelet your kind old husband gave you that
you have pressed into the flesh," I said, "that has marked it. That is
about what his cruelty to you amounts to." I dropped her arm
contemptuously, and rose suddenly.

She had succeeded in dispelling for the moment the charm of her
beauty. Her prudery, her deceit, her lies made up to me a peculiarly
obnoxious mixture.

She sprang up, too, as I rose and threw herself on her knees,
clasping her arms round mine so that I could not move.

"Oh Treevor, I do love you so much. You are my real master, not he. A
woman loves a man who conquers her, but not by buying her. But because
he is better and stronger than she. Because he has great muscles, as
you have, and could kill her, and because she can't deceive him,
because he sees all her lies, as you do. Yes, Treevor, I love you now
very much indeed. Come here again, kiss me again."

But somehow her pleading did not move me. The moment when I had been
drawn to her had gone by, swallowed up in a feeling of disgust.

I stooped down and unlocked her hands and put her back among her
cushions.

"Good-bye, Suzee, for to-day," I said. "To-morrow I will come and take
you for a walk. You must let me go now. I do not want to stay any
longer."

She looked at me in silence, but did not offer to move from where I
had put her.

I gathered up my portfolio and left the room, went down the stairs and
through the passage and courtyard to the sun-filled street.

I went on slowly, and after a time found myself close to the church
again. I went in, for the interior interested me, and found service
was being held. A Russian priest, wholly in white clothing, stood
before the altar, the cross light from the aisle windows falling on
the long twist of fair hair that lay upon his shoulders. The whole air
was full of incense that rose in white clouds to the domed roof. I sat
down near the door and listened while the priest intoned a Latin hymn.
The figure of the young priest at the altar attracted me. I thought I
should like a sketch of it; but I hesitated to take one of him in the
church, even surreptitiously, so I fixed the picture of him as he
stood there on my eyes as far as I could, and then, in a convenient
pause of the service, quietly slipped outside.

Near the church was a great outcrop of rock surmounted by a
weather-beaten tree. In the shade thrown by these I got out a sheet of
loose paper and made a sketch of the fair, long-haired priest, with
the quaint frame building of the church, its green copper dome and
bell tower and double gold crosses behind him.

After I had been there some time I was suddenly surprised by Morley.

"Hullo!" he exclaimed. "You here? Why, I thought you would be in the
arms of the fair Suzee by this time."

"So I might have been," I answered, looking up from the sketch, "but I
got put off somehow, so I left her and went to church instead!"

Morley burst out laughing.

"You _are_ the funniest fellow," he exclaimed, taking his seat beside
me on the ground and clasping his hands round his knees. "So Suzee has
offended you, has she? Do you know, I think that's where we ordinary
people get ahead of fellows like you. You are too sensitive. We're not
so particular. When I'm stuck on Mary Ann it doesn't matter to me what
she says or does. It doesn't interfere with my happiness."

I went on painting in silence.

"Funny those chaps look with their long hair, don't they?" he remarked
after a moment, as I painted the light on the priest's long curl.

"Very picturesque, don't you think?" I said.

"No, I don't," returned the Briton stoutly. "I think it's beastly."

I laughed this time, and having completed the portrait, slipped it
into my portfolio and prepared to put away my paints.

"Don't you want any dinner?" asked Morley. "You must be hungry."

"Well, I hadn't thought of it," I answered. "But, now you mention it,
perhaps I am. Do you know of any place where one can get anything?"

"There's one place at the end of the town where you can have soup and
bread," replied Morley, and we started off to find it.

Later on, towards ten o'clock, when we were leaving the little, frame,
sailors' restaurant, I looked up to the western sky and saw that
strange colour in it of the Alaskan sunset that I have never found in
any other sky, a bright magenta, or deep heather pink, a crude colour
rather like an aniline dye, but brilliant and arresting in the clean,
clear gold of the heavens.

Great ribs and bars and long flat lines of it lay all across the West.
No other cloud, no other colour appeared anywhere in the sky. It was
painted in those two tints alone; the brightest magenta conceivable
and living gold.

Walking back slowly to the ship, I gazed at it with interest. No other
sky that I could recall ever shows this tone of colour. Pink, scarlet,
rose, and all the shades of blood or flame-colour are familiar in
every sunset, but this curious tint seemed to belong to Alaska alone.

I watched it glow and deepen, then fade, and softly disappear as the
sun dipped below the horizon.




CHAPTER III

IN THE WOOD


The next evening, after dinner, I left the ship and made my way to
Suzee's place to take her for the promised walk.

It was just seven when I stepped ashore, and light of the purest, most
exquisite gold lay over everything. The air had that special quality
of Alaska which I have never met anywhere else, an extreme humidity;
it hung upon the cheek as a mist hangs, only it was clear as crystal,
brilliant as a yellow diamond.

There was no wind, not a breath ruffled the stillness nor stirred the
motionless blue water.

The exquisite chain of islands off the mainland was mirrored in the
still, shining depths, and lifted their delicate outlines clothed with
fir and larch, soft as half-forgotten dreams, against the transparent
blue of the sky. Sitka was placid and restful, the streets quiet and
empty as I walked along in the sunny silence.

Suzee was at the door waiting for me. She had dressed herself
differently, entirely in yellow. The yellow silk of the little square
jacket contrasted well with her midnight hair, and the only dash of
other colour in the picture she presented was the blue stone in her
earrings.

"Good evening, Treevor," she said, smiling up at me. And I bent down
and pressed my lips to those little, soft, curved ones she put up for
me.

We started out at once. Suzee told me we were going for a long way to
see the wood, and had the important air of a person going on a lengthy
expedition. She had brought a Japanese sunshade with her which she put
up, and certainly the hot light falling through the rice-paper had a
wonderfully beautiful effect on her creamy skin and soft yellow silk
clothing. She walked easily, only with rather short steps. As she was
of the lower class, there had been no question of the "golden lilies"
or distortion of the feet for her, and they were small and prettily
shaped, bare, save for a sort of sandal, or as the Indians call them,
"guaraches," bound under the sole.

We passed up the main street and soon after turned into a narrow
winding road that leads along the coast, Sitka being on a promontory,
with a beautiful azure bay running inland behind it.

Our path ran sometimes inland, through portions of wood, part of that
great impenetrable primeval forest that at one time completely covered
the whole of Sitka, sometimes quite on the edge of the water. Here
there were rocks and boulders, and little coves of white sand and
stretches of miniature beaches, with the lip of the bay resting on
them.

Infinitesimal waves broke on the sunny white sand with a low musical
tinkle, across the bay one could see the delicate chain of islands
rising with their feathery trees into the blue, warding off the
breakers and the storms of the open sea beyond. In here, the peaceful
water murmured to itself and repeated tales of the beginning of the
world, of the first gold dawn that broke upon the earth, and of later
days, when the sombre black forests came to the water's edge and none
knew them but the great black bear, and when the seals played
joyously, undisturbed, in the fog-banks off the islands. I was in the
mood to appreciate deeply the beauty of the scene, and all the objects
round seemed to speak to me of their inner meaning, but my companion
was not at all moved by, nor interested in her surroundings. She
helped to make the picture more strange and lovely as she sat by me on
a rock, with her shining clothes and brilliant face under the gay
sunshade, but mentally she jarred on me by her complete indifference
to any influence of the scene. I almost wished I were alone here, to
sit upon this tremendous shore and dream.

"You are dull, Treevor," she exclaimed pettishly. "You really are."

I had kissed her twice in the last ten minutes, but she hated my eyes
to wander for a moment from her face to the sea. She hated the least
reference apparently to the landscape. As long as I was talking to
her and about her, admiring her dress or her hair, she was satisfied.

"Come along," she said impatiently; "let us go on to the wood, leave
off looking at that stupid sea."

I rose reluctantly and we followed the road which turned inland again.
The wood was a world of grey shadows. As we entered by a narrow trail
leading from the road, the golden day outside was soon closed from us
by the thick veils of hanging creeper and parasitical plants of all
sorts that entwined round the gnarled and aged trees, and crossing and
re-crossing from one to the other, netted them together.

Over the creepers again had grown grey-green lichens and long, shaggy
moss, so that strands and fringes of it fell on every side, filling
the interstices of the gigantic web that stretched from tree to tree,
excluding the light of the sunlit sky.

Beneath, the lower branches of the trees were sad and sodden,
overgrown with lichen, clogged with hanging wreaths of moss. A river
ran through the wood and at times, swelled by the melting snows,
burst, evidently, in roaring flood over its banks.

Everywhere there were traces of recent floods, roots washed bare and
places where the swirling waters had heaped up their débris of sticks
and mud-stained leaves. All along the damp ground the lowest branches
of the trees, weighted with tangled moss, trailed, broken and bruised
by the fierce rush of the current. The trees themselves seemed
centuries old, bent and gnarled and twisted into grotesque and ghostly
forms. In the dim twilight reigning here one could fancy one stood in
some hideous torture-chamber, surrounded by writhing and distorted
figures. There an elbow, there a withered arm, a fist clenched in
agony, seemed protruding from the sombre, sad-clothed trees, so
weirdly knotted and twisted were the old cinder-hued boughs.

As we neared the river we could hear it rushing by long before we
could see it, so thick was the undergrowth that hung low over it.

It seemed as if we might be approaching the black Styx through this
melancholy wood where all seemed weeping in torn veils and
ash-coloured garments.

No touch of depression affected my companion; she seemed as insensible
to the grey solemnity, the dim mystery of the wood, as she had been to
the vivid glory of the sea. She slipped a little velvet hand into
mine, and when we drew near to the hidden Styx, murmured softly:

"We will find a dry place, Treevor, on the other side, and sit down
among the trees. Then you must take me in your arms and I will be your
own Suzee. I do not want my old husband any more."

I stopped and looked down upon her. Not even the sad light could dim
the soft brilliance of her face. It seemed to bloom out of the ashy
shadows like an exquisite flower. Her eyes were wells of fire beneath
their velvet blackness.

"Do you love me very much?" I asked.

"Oh, yes, so much," she answered with passionate emphasis. "You are so
beautiful. Never have I seen any one so beautiful, and so tall and so
strong. Oh, it is _pain_ to me to love you so much."

And indeed she became quite white, as she drew her hand from mine and
clasped both of hers upon her breast as if to still some agony there.

My own heart beat hard. The grey wood seemed to lose its ashy tone and
become warm and rosy round us. I bent over her and took her up wholly
in my arms, and she laughed and threw hers around me in wild delight.

"Carry me, Treevor, over the bridge and up the slope at the side. It
is so nice to feel you carrying me."

It was no difficulty to carry her, and the waves of electricity from
her joyous little soul rushed through me till my arms and all the
veins of my body seemed alight and burning.

I ran with her, over the narrow bridge and up the slope, where, as she
said, there was drier ground. And there, on a bed of leaves under some
tangled branches, I fell on my knees with her still clasped to my
breast, and covered her small satin-skinned face with kisses.

"I am yours now. You must not let me go. I only want to look and look
at your face. I wish I could tell you how I love you. Oh, Treevor, I
can't tell you...."

As I looked down, breathless with running and kisses and the fires she
had kindled within me, I saw how her bosom heaved beneath the yellow
jacket, how all the delicate curves of her breast seemed broken up
with panting sighs and longing to express in words all that her body
expressed so much better.

"Darling, there is no need to tell me. I know." And I put my hand
round her soft column of throat, feeling all its quick pulses
throbbing hard into the palm of my hand.

"Put your head down on my heart, Treevor. Lie down beside me; now let
us think we have drunk a little opium, just a little, and we are going
to sleep through a long night together. Hush! What is that? Did you
hear anything?"

She lifted my hand from her throat and sat up, listening.

I had not heard anything. I had been too absorbed. All had vanished
now from me, except the fervent beauty of the girl before me.

The sea of desire had closed over my head, sealing the senses to
outside things; I drew her towards me impatiently.

"It is nothing," I murmured. "I heard nothing." But she sat up, gazing
straight across a small cleared space in front of us to where the
impenetrable thicket of undergrowth again stood forward like grey
screens between the twisted tree trunks.

"Yes, there was something; there, opposite! Look, something is
moving!" I followed her eyes and saw a strand of loose moss quiver and
heard a twig break in the quiet round us. We both watched the
undergrowth across the open space intently. For a second nothing
moved, then the boughs parted in front of us, and through the great
lichen streamers and rugged bands of grey-green moss depending from
them, peered an old, drawn-looking face.

Suzee gave a piercing shriek of dismay, and started to her feet.

"My husband!" she gasped.

I sprang to my feet, and my right hand went to my hip pocket. The head
pushed through the thicket, and a bent and aged form followed slowly.
I drew out my revolver, but the figure of the old man straightened
itself up and he waved his hand impatiently, as if deprecating
violence.

"Sir, I have come after my wife," he said, in a low, broken tone.

I slipped the weapon back in my pocket. I had had an idea that he
might attack Suzee, but voice and face showed he was in a different
mood.

Suzee clung to my hand on her knees, crying and trembling.

"Go and sit over there," he said peremptorily to her, pointing to the
other side of the glade, far enough from us to be out of hearing.

She did not move, only clung and shivered and wept as before.

I bent over her, loosening my hand.

"Do as he says," I whispered; "no harm can come to you while I am
here."

Suzee let go my fingers reluctantly and crept away, sobbing, to the
opposite edge of the thicket. The old Chinaman motioned me to sit
down. I did so, mechanically wondering whether his calmness was a ruse
under cover of which he would suddenly stab me. He sat down, too,
stiffly, beside me, resting on his heels, and his hard, wrinkled hands
supporting his withered face.

"Now," he said, in a thin old voice; "look at me! I am an old man, you
are a young one. You are strong, you are well; you are rich too, I
think." He looked critically over me. "You have everything that I have
not, already. Why do you come here to rob an old man of all he has in
this world?"

I felt myself colour with anger. All the blood in my body seemed to
rush to my head and stand singing in my ears.

I felt a furious impulse to knock him aside out of my way; but his age
and weakness held me motionless.

"All my youth, when I was strong and good-looking as you are now, and
women loved me, I worked hard like a slave, and starved and saved.
When others played I toiled, when they spent I hoarded up. What was I
saving for? That I might buy myself _that_." He waved his hand in the
direction of Suzee, sitting in a little crumpled heap against a
gnarled tree opposite us.

"I bought her," he went on with increasing excitement. "I bought her
from a woman who would have let her out, night by night, to
foreigners. I have given her a good home, she does no hard work. She
has a child, she has fine clothes. I work still all day and every day
that I may give money to her. She is my one joy, my treasure; don't
take her away from me, don't do it. You have all the world before you,
and all the women in it that are without husbands. Go to them, leave
me my wife in peace."

Tears were rolling fast down his face now, his clasped hands quivered
with emotion.

"When I was a young man I would not take any pleasure. No, pleasure
means money, and I was saving. When I am old I will buy, I said. It
needs money, when I am old I shall have it. I can buy then. But, ah!
when one is old it is all dust and ashes."

I looked at his thin shrunken form, poorly clad, at his face, deeply
lined with great furrows, made there by incessant toil and constant
pain. I felt my joy in Suzee to wither in the grey shadow of his
grief. Some people would have thought him doubtless an immoral old
scoundrel, and that he had no business in his old age to try to be
happy as younger men are, to wish, to expect it. But I cannot see that
joy is the exclusive right of any particular age. A young man or young
woman has no more right or title to enjoy than an old man or woman;
they have simply the right of might, which is no _right_ at all.

"Well, what do you want me to say or do?" I exclaimed impatiently.
"Take your wife back with you now, no harm has happened to her. Take
her home with you."

"Yes, I can take her body, but not her spirit," answered the old man
sadly.

His tone made me look at him keenly. Hitherto I had felt sorry for
Suzee that she was his; now, as I heard his accent, I felt sorry for
him that he was hers.

A great capacity for suffering looked out of the aged face, such as I
knew could never look out of hers.

"If you lift your finger she would come to you! Promise me you will
not see her again, not speak to her; that you will go. And if she
comes to you, you will not accept her."

I was silent for a moment.

"My ship goes to-morrow morning," I answered; "I am not likely to see
your wife again. I shall not seek her."

"That is not enough," moaned the old man; "she will find a way. She
will come to you. Promise me you will not take her away with you; if
you do you will have an old man's murder on your head."

I moved impatiently.

"I am not going to take her away," I answered.

"But promise me. If I have your promise I shall feel certain."

I hesitated, and looked across at Suzee, a patch of beautiful colour
against the grey background of bent and aged trees.

What had I intended to do, I asked myself. I could not take her, in
any case. I had not meant that. A virtuous American ship like the
Cottage City would hardly admit a Suzee to share my cabin.

Then what did my promise matter if it but reflected the fact, and if
it satisfied him?

"You are not willing to promise," he said, coming close to me and
peering into my face; "I feel it."

I thought I heard his teeth close on an unuttered oath. Still he did
not threaten me. As I remained silent he suddenly threw himself on the
ground in front of me, and stretched out his hands and put them on my
feet.

"Sir I implore you. Give me your word you will not take her, then I am
satisfied. Better take my life than my wife."

I lifted my eyes for a moment in a glance towards Suzee and saw her
make a scornful gesture at the prostrate figure. The gold bracelets on
her arm below the yellow silk sleeve shewed in the action a contrast
to the old, worn clothing of the poorest material that her husband
wore.

I rose to my feet and raised him up.

"Get up, I hate to see you kneel to me. I have said I shall not take
your wife. As far as I am concerned, that is a promise. I have said
it."

"Thank you," he said, inclining his head, and then moved away, not
without a certain dignity in his old form, lean and twisted though the
work of years had made it.

I dropped back into my place where I had been sitting and watched the
two figures before me almost in a dream.

He went up to the girl and spoke, apparently not unkindly, and some
talk ensued. Then I saw him bend down and take her wrist and drag her
to her feet.

Suzee hung back as one sees a child hang back from a nurse, but she
moved forward though unwillingly, and so at last they passed from my
sight, through the grey trees and the weeping moss, the thin old man
stepping doggedly forward, the pretty, gay-clothed childish little
figure dragging back.

Then all was still. The old grey wood was full of weird light, but the
silence of the night had fallen on it. Beast and bird and insect had
sought their lair and nest and cranny. Not a leaf moved. I felt
entirely alone.

"One never knows in life," I thought, repeating my words to Morley.

I felt a keen sense of longing regret surge slowly, heavily through
me. How exquisitely sweet and perfect her beauty was! And she had lain
in my arms for that moment, one moment that was stamped into my brain
in gold. I put my head into my hands and shut out the dim grey wood
from vision and recalled that moment. It came back to me, the touch of
her soft form, the smiling curve of the lips put up to me, the fire in
the liquid depths of those almond eyes, the round throat delicate as
polished ivory. The extraordinary triumph of beauty over the senses
came before my mind suddenly, presenting the problem that always
puzzles and eludes me.

Why should certain lines and colours in pleasing the eye so
intoxicate and inflame the brain? For it is the brain to which beauty
appeals. Youth and health in a loved object are sufficient to capture
the physical senses, but they do not fill the brain with that
exaltation, that delirium of joy, that divine elation that sweeps up
through us at the sight of beauty. Divine fire, it seems to be lighted
first in the glance of the eyes.

In an hour's time I left the wood and walked slowly shipwards. I felt
tired and overstrained, exceedingly regretful, full of longing after
that lovely vision that had come to me and that I had had to drive
away.

The unearthly stillness combined with the brilliant, unabated,
unfailing light had a curious mystery about it that charmed and
delighted me. The sea, so blue and tranquil, sparkled softly on my
left hand, the pellucid blue of the sky stretched overhead, and all
the air was full of the sweet sunshine we associate with day. Yet it
was midnight. I pulled out my watch and looked at it to assure myself
of the fact. Sitka was wrapt in silence and sleep, my own footstep
resounded strangely in the burning empty streets.

I had to pass the tea-shop on my way to the ship. One could see
nothing of it from the street as the compound shut it off from view,
and across the compound entrance a stout hurdle was now stretched and
barred.

I passed on with a sigh, reached the ship lying motionless against
the quay, went down to my cabin without encountering any one, threw
off my clothes and myself in my berth, feeling a sense of fatigue
obliterating thought.

The night before I had had no sleep, and the incessant golden glare,
day and night alike, wearies the nerves not trained to it.

Suzee and almond eyes and injured husbands floated away from me on the
dark wings of sleep.

It must have been an hour or so later that I woke suddenly with a
sense of suffocation. Some soft, heavy thing lay across my breast. I
started up and two arms clasped my neck and I heard Suzee's voice;
saying in my ear:

"Treevor, dear Treevor, I have found you! Now I you will take me away,
and we will stay for ever and ever together. I am so happy."

The cabin was full of the same steady yellow light as when I closed my
eyes. Looking up I saw her sweet oval face above me.

She was lying on the berth leaning over me, supported on her elbows.

As I looked up she pressed her lips down on my face, kissing me on the
eyes and mouth with passionate repetition and insistence.

"Dear little girl, dear little Suzee!" I answered, putting up my arms
and folding them round her.

I was only half-awake, and for a moment the old Chinaman was
forgotten. It was all rather like a delicious dream.

"I am quite, quite happy now," she said, laying down her head on my
chest. "Oh, so happy, Treevor; you must never let me go. I love you
so, like this," she added, putting her two hands round my throat,
"when I can feel your neck and when you are sleeping. You looked
beautiful, just now, when I found you. I am sorry you woke."

Clear consciousness was struggling back now with memory, but not
before I had pressed her to me and returned those kisses. She had laid
aside her little saffron silk coat, and her breast and arms shone
softly through a filmy muslin covering.

I sat up regarding her; very lissom and soft and lovely she looked,
and my whole brain swam suddenly with delight.

Surely I could not part with her! She was precious to me in that
madness that comes over us at such moments.

I put my arms round her and held her to my breast with all my force in
a clasp that must have been painful to her, but she only laughed
delightedly.

Then my promise came back to me. It was impossible to break that. What
was the good of torturing myself when I had made it impossible to take
her. Why had she come here?

"Where is your husband?" I asked mechanically wondering if any strange
fate had removed him from between us.

"Oh, I put him to sleep, he will give no trouble. I gave him opium, so
much opium, he will sleep a long time."

"You have not killed him?" I said, in a sudden horror.

Her eyes were wide open and full of extraordinary fire, she seemed in
those moments capable of anything.

She put up her little hands and ran them through my hair.

"Such black hair," she murmured. "Ah, how I love it! I love black
hair. How it shines, how soft it is! I hate grey hair. It is horrid.
No, I have not killed him. He will wake again when we have sailed and
are far away from Sitka."

These words drove from me the last veil of clinging sleep. I kept my
arms round her and said:

"But, Suzee, I can't take you with me. I promised your husband
to-night I would not."

"That's nothing," she replied lightly; "promises are nothing when one
loves. And you love me, Treevor; you must love me, and I am coming
with you, you can't drive me away."

The ship's bells sounded overhead on deck as she spoke. The sound
seemed a warning. I knew our ship was due to leave in the morning; I
did not know quite when. If it left the quay with the girl on board,
the horror of a broken promise would cling to me all my life.

"I can't take you, it is impossible. You must go back and try to
forget you have ever seen me. You must go now at once, our ship is
leaving soon."

"I know," said Suzee tranquilly; "and I shall be so happy when it
starts."

I pushed her aside and got up from the berth. The cabin window stood
wide open. In the position the ship was it was easy to come in and out
through it from the quay. She must have entered that way.

"You must go," I said between my teeth. I was afraid of myself.
Overhead I heard movements and clanking chains and shuffling feet. Our
ship was leaving, and she was still on board with me.

"Go out of that window now, instantly, or I shall put you out."

"You will not, Treevor," beginning to cry; "you won't be so unkind. I
only want to stay with you; let me stay."

She was half-sitting on the edge of my berth, clinging to it with both
hands. She was pale with an ivory pallor, her breasts rose in sobs
under the transparent muslin of her vest.

The ship gave a great heave under our feet.

The blood beat so in my head and round my eyes I could hardly see her.
I moved to her, clinging to one blind object. I bent over her and
lifted her up. She was like a doll in weight. She was nothing to me.

As she realised my intention she seemed to turn into a wild animal in
my arms. She bit and tore at my wrists, and scratched my face with her
long sharp nails.

The ship was moving now and I was desperate.

I walked with her to the window and put her feet over the ledge.

We neither of us spoke a word. She clung to my neck so I thought she
must overbalance me and drag me through with her.

With all my force I pushed her outwards and away from me. Her hands
broke from my neck and scratched down my face till the blood ran from
it.

"Don't struggle so," I warned her; "you will drop into the sea if you
do." For a blue crack opened already between the moving ship and the
quay.

Words were useless. She bit and struggled and clung to me like a cat
mad with fear and rage.

With an effort I leant forward and half threw, half dropped her on the
woodwork. She fell there with a gasping cry, and I drew the window to
and shut it.

The ship rose and fell now and the blue water gleamed in an
ever-widening track between its side and the quay.

I leant against the window glass and watched her through it. She had
struggled to her knees and now knelt there weeping and stretching out
little ivory tinted hands to the departing ship. My own eyes were
full, and only through a mist could I see her kneeling there, a
brilliant spot of colour in dazzling light on the deserted quay.

I turned away at last as we struck out on the open water. There, on my
berth, facing me as I stumbled back to it, lay a little yellow jacket.

I threw myself upon it and put my hand over my eyes, while the ship
made out beyond the fairy islands. And the gold night passed over and
melted into the new day.




PART TWO

THE VIOLET NIGHT




CHAPTER IV

AT THE STUDIO


I was back in London again, back in my studio with the dull grey light
of the city falling through the windows, and all the vivid glory, the
matchless splendour of the North lay like a past dream in the
background of my memory. But still how clear the dream, how bright
each moment of it, and how long to my retrospective vision! Was it
possible I had only been there three or four months? It seemed like as
many years. For time has this peculiarity, that joy and action shorten
it while it is passing, but lengthen it when it is past. A week in
which we have done nothing of note, but spent in stationary idleness,
how long and tedious it seems, yet in looking back upon it, it appears
short as a day; while a week in which we have travelled far, seen
several cities and been glad in each, though the gilded moments have
danced by on lightning feet, when we look back upon that week it seems
as if we have lived a year.

It was there, bright, radiant in my mind, the picture of those blue
days and golden northern nights, and how the light of the picture
seemed to gather round, and centre in a sweet youthful face with the
blue stone earrings, hanging against the creamy neck, beside the
rounded cheek, and the cluster of red flowers bound on each temple
against the smooth black hair!

I settled myself lower in the deep roomy armchair, and pushed my feet
forward to the blazing fire. There was still half an hour before I
could decently ring for tea, and it was too dark already to work. I
had had a hard and disagreeable morning, too, and felt I needed rest
and quiet thought. How the red flame leapt in the grate, and what a
rich, warm, wine-dark colour it threw all round my red room! I rose
and drew the heavy crimson curtains across the windows to shut out
their steely patches of grey that spoiled the harmony of colour. I
returned to my chair and glanced round with satisfaction. Fitted and
furnished and hung with every beautiful shade of red, my studio always
delighted and charmed my vision.

My friends said I had papered and furnished it in red to throw up the
white limbs and contours of my models, and this had something to do
with it, for hardly any colour shows off white flesh to better
advantage, though pale blue in this matter runs it close; but this was
not the prompting motive. Rather it was that in England where all is
so cold and tame and grey, from morals to colours, I liked to surround
myself with this glowing barbaric crimson, this warm inviting tint.

My eye in wandering from floor to ceiling rested finally on the empty
easel, the numerous white unused sheets of paper near it. I felt in
despair. Not even a sketch of a Phryne yet! Not even a model found!
Not even the idea of where to find one!

I had been seeing models all the morning, and how wearisome and
vexatious, and even, towards the end, how repulsive that becomes! The
wearying search after something that corresponds to the perfect ideal
in one's brain, the constant raising of hope and ensuing
disappointment as a misshapen foot or crooked knee destroys the effect
of neck and shoulder, produce at last an intolerable irritation. I had
dismissed them all finally, and they had trailed away in the rain, a
dismal procession of dark-clothed women.

A quarter of an hour of red stillness in that comfortable room had
passed, and the warmth and quiet of it had crept over me and into me,
gradually soothing away all vexations, when a knock came on the door
and in answer to my, "Come in," some one entered the room behind me.

"I am so glad to find you."

I started to my feet at the sound of the soft voice, and went forward
to the door.

"Viola! how good of you to come." I took both her hands and drew her
into the firelight which sparkled gratefully on her tall slender
figure and the fair waves of hair under her velvet hat.

"May I stay and have tea with you? I have shopping all the afternoon
and as I was driving past I thought I would see if you were in and
disengaged."

"I shall be delighted," I said as I wheeled another armchair up to the
fire.

"You are sure? You have nothing else to do?"

"Nothing, really nothing," I said, walking to the electric lights and
switching them on; "and if I had, I would leave it all to have tea
with you."

She laughed, such a pretty dainty laugh! What a contrast to the rough
giggles amongst the models this morning!

"Trevor! you are just the same as ever; all compliments. But I am
immensely glad you are not going to turn me out, for I am chilly and
tired and want my tea and a talk with you very badly." And she settled
down in her large chair with a sigh of content.

I came back to the hearth and stood looking down upon her. The light
was rose-coloured, falling through tinted globes, and soft as the
firelight. She looked exquisite, and she must have seen the admiration
in my eyes for she coloured under them.

She was wearing a dark green velvet gown edged fur and which fitted
her lovely figure closely, being perhaps designed to display it.

"You have come like a glorious sunset to a gloomy day," I said. "I
have had a horrid morning and been depressed all the afternoon."

"You have no inspiration, then, yet for the Phryne?" she answered,
glancing round; "otherwise you would be in the seventh heaven."

"No," I groaned, "and the models are so dreadful; so far from giving
one an inspiration, they would kill any one had. All last week I was
trying to find a model, and all this morning again. I would give
anything for a good one."

She murmured a sympathetic assent, and I went on, pursuing my own
thoughts freely, for Viola was my cousin and no one else knew or
understood me so well as she did. We had grown up together, and always
talked on all sorts of subjects to each other.

"The difficulty is with most of these English models, they are so
thick and heavy, so cart-horsey, or else they are so thin. The tall,
graceful ones are too thin, I want those subtle, gracious lines, but I
don't want sharp bones and corners. I want smooth, rounded contours,
and yet the outlines to be delicate; I want slender grace and
suppleness with roundness...."

I stopped suddenly, the blood mounting to my forehead. I was looking
down at her as she lay back in the chair. She looked at me, and our
gaze got locked together. A thought had sprung suddenly between us. I
realised all at once I was describing the figure before me, realised
that I was face to face with the most perfect, enchanting model of my
dearest dreams.

There was a swift rush of red to her face, too, as I stopped. Up till
then she had been quietly listening. But she saw my thought then. It
was visible to both of us and for a moment a deadly silence dropped on
us. Of course, I ought not to have stopped, but the thought came to me
with such a blinding flash of sudden revelation that it paralysed me
and took speech from my lips. Just in that moment the door opened and
tea was brought in. I turned my attention immediately to making it,
and what with asking her how much sugar she would have and pressing
her to take hot toast and crumpets, the cloud of embarrassment passed
and all was light and easy again. I dismissed the idea instantly, and
we did not speak of the picture. I questioned her about her shopping,
we recalled the last night's dance where we had been together, and
spoke of a hundred other light matters in which we had common
interests. Then a silence stole over us, and Viola sank far back in
her chair, gazing with absent eyes into the fire.

Suddenly she sat up and turned to me. I saw her heart must be beating
fast, for her face and lips had grown quite white.

"Trevor, I wish you would let me be your model for the Phryne."

Almost immediately she had spoken the colour rushed in a burning
stream across her face, forcing the tears to her eyes. I saw them brim
up, sparkling to the lids, in the firelight.

I sat up in my chair, leaning forwards towards her. My own heart
seemed to rise with a leap into my throat.

"Dearest! I could not think of such a thing! It is so good of you,
but...."

I stopped. She had sunk back in her chair. She was looking away from
me. I saw the tears well up over the lids and roll slowly unchecked
down her face.

"I should so like to be of use to you," she murmured in a low tone,
"and I think I could be in that way, immense use."

I slid to my knees beside her chair, and took the slim, delicate white
hand that hung over the arm in mine and pressed it, very greatly moved
and hardly knowing what to answer her.

"I shall never forget you have offered it, never cease to be grateful,
but...."

"There is no question of being grateful," she broke in gently, "unless
it were on my side. I should think it an honour to be made part of
your work, to live for ever in it, or at least much longer than in
mortal life. What is one's body? It is nothing, it perishes so soon,
but what you create will last for centuries at least."

I pressed my lips to her hand in silence. I felt overwhelmed by the
suggestion, by the unselfishness, by the grandeur of it. I saw that
the proposition stood before her mind in a totally different light
from that in which it would present itself to most women. But, then,
the outlook of an artist upon life and all the things in life is
entirely different from that of the ordinary person. It takes in the
wide horizon, it embraces a universe, and not a world, it sweeps up to
the large ideals, the abstract form of things, passing over the
concrete and the actual which to ordinary minds make up the all they
see.

And Viola was an artist: she expressed herself in music as I did in
painting. Our temperaments were alike though our gifts were different,
and we served the same mystical Goddess though our appointments in her
temple were not the same.

As an artist the idea was, to me, simple enough, as a man it horrified
me.

"I could not allow it."

She turned upon me.

"Why?" she said simply.

"Well, because ... because it is too great a sacrifice."

"I have said it is no sacrifice. It is an honour."

"It would injure you if it became known."

"It will not become known."

"Everything becomes known."

"Well, I shouldn't care if it did."

"By and by you might regret it. It might stand in the way of your
marrying some one you loved."

"I don't believe I shall ever want to marry. Do I look like a domestic
person? In any case, I am quite sure I shouldn't want to marry a man
if he objected to my being a model for a great picture to my own
cousin. Why, Trevor, we are part of each other, as it were. I am like
your own sister. What can it matter? While you are painting me I shall
be nothing, the picture will be everything. I am no more than a dream
or vision which might come before you, and you will give me life,
immortality on your canvas. As an old woman when all beauty has gone
from me, I shall be there alive, young, beautiful still."

"It is all sophistry, dearest, I can't do it."

"You will when you have thought it all over," she said softly, "at
least if you think I should do--are you sure of that?"

She rose and stood for a moment, one hand outstretched towards the
mantelpiece, and resting there for support. The velvet gown clung to
her, and almost every line of her form could be followed with the eye
or divined. The throat was long, round, and full, the fall of the
shoulder and the way its lines melted into the curves of the breast
had the very intoxication of beauty in them, the waist was low,
slender, and perfect, the main line to the knee and on to the ankle
absolutely straight. To my practised eyes the clothing had little
concealment. I knew that here was all that I wanted.

"I am supposed to have a very perfect figure," she said with a faint
smile, "and it seems rather a pity to use it so little. To let it be
of service to you, to give you just what you want, to create a great
picture, to save you all further worry over it, which is quite
knocking you up, would be a great happiness to me."

She paused. I said nothing.

"I do not think I must stay any longer," she said glancing at my
clock, "nor shall I persuade you any more. I leave it entirely in your
hands. Write to me if you want me to come. Perhaps you may find
another model."

She smiled up at me. Her face had a curious delicate beauty hard to
define. The beauty of a very transparent skin and sapphire eyes.

I bent over her and kissed her bright scarlet lips.

"Dearest! if you only knew how I appreciate all you have said, how
good I think it of you! And I could never find a lovelier model; you
know it is not that thought which influences me, but it is impossible.
You must not think of it."

"Very well," she said with a laugh in her lovely eyes, "but _you_
will!"

She disengaged herself from me, picked up a fur necklet from her
chair, and went to the door.

"Good-night," she said softly, and went out.

Left to myself, I walked restlessly up and down the room. She was
right. I could think of nothing but her words to me, and how her visit
had changed my mood and all the atmosphere about me! It seemed as if
she had filled it with electricity. My pulses were all beating hard.
The quiet of the studio was intolerable. I was dining out that
evening, and then going on to a dance. I would dress now a little
early and then go to the club and spend the intermediate time there.

My bedroom opened out of the studio by a small door, before which I
generally had a red and gold Japanese screen. I went in and switched
on the light and began to dress, trying to get away from my crowding
thoughts.

The temptation to accept Viola's suggestion was the greater because
she was so absolutely free and mistress of her own actions.

If she chose of her own free will to do any particular thing there was
practically no one else to be consulted and no one to trouble her with
reproof or reproaches.

Early left an orphan and in possession of a small fortune in her own
right, she had been brought up by an old aunt who simply worshipped
her and never questioned nor allowed to be questioned anything which
Viola did.

She had given her niece an elaborate education, believing that a
girl's mental training should be as severe as a boy's, and Viola knew
her Greek and Latin and mathematics better than I knew mine, though
all these had lately given way to the study of music, for which she
had a great and peculiar gift.

The old lady was delighted when she found her favourite niece was
really one of the children of the gods, as she put it, and henceforth
Viola's life was left still more unrestrained.

"She has genius, Trevor," she would say to me, "just as you have, and
we ordinary people can't profess to guide or control those who in
reality are so much greater than we are. I leave Viola to judge for
herself about life, I always have since she was quite a little thing,
and I have no fear for her. Whatever she does I know it will always be
right."

Viola was just twenty, but this kind of training had given her an
intelligence and developed her intellect far beyond her years.

In her outlook upon life she was more like a man than a woman, and,
never having been to school nor mixed much with other girls of her own
age, she was free from all those small, petty habits of mind, that
littleness of mental vision that so mars and dwarfs the ordinary
feminine character.

In this question of posing for the picture, to take her face also
would, of course, be quite impossible, but I had my own ideal for the
Phryne's face, nor was that important.

That the figure should be something of unusual beauty, something
peculiarly distinctive seemed to me a necessity. For the form of the
Grecian Phryne had, by the mere force of its perfect and triumphant
beauty, swept away the reason of all that circle of grey-bearded
hostile judges called upon to condemn it, had carved for itself a
place in history for ever. There should in its presentment be
something peculiarly arresting and enchanting, or the artistic idea,
the spirit of the picture, would be lost.

The next morning I interviewed models again, and so strange is the
human mind that while I honestly tried to find one that suited me,
tried to be satisfied, I was full of feverish apprehension that I
might do so, and when I had seen the last and could with perfect
honesty reject her, I felt a rush of extraordinary elation all through
me. I knew, and told myself so, every half second, that Viola's
temptation was one I ought to and must resist, and yet the idea of
yielding filled me with a wild instinctive delight that no reason
could suppress. Yes, because once an artist has seen or conceived by
his own imagination his perfect ideal, nothing else, nothing short of
this will satisfy him. If it was difficult for me to find a model
before, it was practically impossible to do so now. For, having once
realised what it wanted, the mind impatiently rejected everything
else, though it might possibly have accepted something less than its
desire before that realisation of it.

These models were all well-formed women, but they were commonplace.
The hold Viola's form had upon the eye was that it was not
commonplace. Its beauty was distinctive, peculiar, arresting. I was
not a painter of types, but of exceptions. The common things of life
are not interesting, nor do I think they are worthy subjects for Art
to concern itself with. Something unusually beautiful, transcending
the common type, is surely the best for the artist to try to
perpetuate.

Friday came, the end of the week, and I was still without a model. My
nights had been nearly sleepless, and my days full of feverish
anxiety: an active anxiety to accept another sitter and withstand the
temptation of Viola, which fought desperately with the more passive
anxiety not to be satisfied and to be obliged to yield. Between these
two I had grown thin, as they fought within me, tearing me in the
struggle.

To-day, Friday, the war was over. I had sent a note to Viola asking
her to have tea with me. If she came, if she still held to her wish, I
should accept, and the Phryne was assured. How my heart leapt at the
thought! Those last hours before an artist gives the first concrete
form to the brain children of his intangible dreams, how full of a
double life he seems! I was back from lunch and in the studio early; I
could not tell when she might come, and I closed all the windows and
made up the fire till the room seemed like a hot-house. I arranged a
dais with screens of flaming colour behind it reflecting the red rays
of the fire.

If she consented, she should stand here after having changed into the
Greek dress. And as the moment chosen for the picture was that in
which Phryne is unveiling herself before her judges, I intended to let
her discard the drapery as she liked. I should not attempt to pose
her; I would not even direct her; I should simply watch her, and at
some moment during the unveiling she would fall naturally into just
the pose--some pose--I did not know myself yet which might give me my
inspiration--that I wished. Then I would arrest her, ask her to remain
in it. I thought so we should arrive nearest to the effect of that
famous scene of long ago.

The dress I had chosen was of a dull red tint, not unlike that of
Leighton's picture, but I had no fear of seeming to copy Leighton.
What true artist ever fears he may be considered a copyist? He knows
the strength and vitality of his conception will need no spokesman
when it appears.

I felt frightfully restless and excited, a mad longing filled me to
get the first sketch on paper. I hardly thought of Viola as Viola or
my cousin then. She was already the Phryne of Athens for me, but when
suddenly a light knock came on the door outside my heart seemed to
stand still and I could hardly find voice to say, "Come in." When she
entered, dressed in her modern clothes and hat, and held out her hand,
all the modern, mundane atmosphere came back and brought confusion
with it.

"You said come early, so here I am," she said lightly. "Trevor," she
added, gazing at me closely, "you are looking awfully handsome, but so
white and ill. What is the matter?"

"I have been utterly wretched about the picture. I know I ought not to
accept your offer, but the temptation is too great. If you feel the
same as you did about it, I am going to ask you to pose for me this
afternoon."

"I do feel just the same, Trevor," she answered earnestly. "You can't
think how happy and proud I am to be of use to you."

"You know what the picture is?" I asked her, holding her two hands
and looking down into the great eyes raised confidently to mine.

"I want you to dress in all those red draperies, and then, standing on
the dais, to drop them, let them fall from you."

"Yes, I think I know exactly. I will try, and, if I don't do it
rightly, you must tell me and we must begin again."

She took off her hat and cloak and gloves. Then she turned to me and
asked for the dress. I gave it to her and showed her how it fastened
and unfastened with a clasp on the shoulder.

She listened quietly to my directions, then, gathering up all the thin
drapery, walked to the screen and disappeared from my view.

I sat down waiting. A great nervous tension held me. I had ceased to
think of the right or wrong of my action. I was too absorbed now in
the thought of the picture to be conscious of anything else.

When she came from behind the screen clothed in the red Athenian
draperies her face was quite white, but composed and calm. She did not
look at me, but walked to the platform at once. I had withdrawn to a
chair as far from it as was practicable, divining that the nearer I
was the more my presence would weigh upon her. She faced me now on the
dais, and very slowly began to unfasten the buckle on her shoulder. I
sat watching her intently, hardly breathing, waiting for the moment.

She was to me nothing now but the Phryne, and I was nothing but a
pencil held in the hand of Art.

The first folds of crimson fell, disclosing her throat and shoulders,
the others followed, piling softly one on the other to her waist,
where they stayed held by her girdle. The shoulders and breasts were
revealed exquisite, gleaming white against the dull glow of the
crimson stuff. I waited. It was a lovely, entrancing vision but I
waited. She lowered her hand from her shoulder and brought it to her
waist, firmly and without hesitation she unclasped the belt, and then
taking the sides of it, one in each hand, with its enclosed drapery,
which parted easily in the centre, she made a half step forwards to
free herself from it, and stood revealed from head to foot. It was the
moment. Her head thrown up, with her eyes fixed far above me, her
throat and the perfect breast thrown outwards and forwards, the slight
bend at the slim waist accentuating the round curves of the hips, one
straight limb with the delicate foot advanced just before the other,
the arms round, beautifully moulded, held tense at her sides, as the
hands clutched tightly the falling folds behind her, these made up the
physical pose, and the pride, the tense nervousness, the defiance of
her own feelings gave its meaning expression. I raised my hand and
called to her to pause just so, to be still, if she could, without
stirring.

She quivered all through her frame at the sudden shock of hearing my
voice; then stood rigid. I had my paper ready, and began to sketch
rapidly.

How beautiful she was! In all my experience, in the whole of my
career, I had never had such a model. The skin was a marvellous
whiteness: there seemed no brown, red, or yellow shades upon it; nor
any of that mottled soap appearance that ruins so many models. She was
white, with the warm, true dazzling whiteness of the perfect blonde.

My head burned: I felt that great wave of inspiration roll through me
that lifts the artist to the feet of heaven. There is no happiness
like it. No, not even the divine transports and triumph of love can
equal it.

I sketched rapidly, every line fell on the paper as I wished it. The
time flew. I felt nothing, knew nothing, but that the glorious image
was growing, taking life under my hand. I was in a world of utter
silence, alone with the spirit of divine beauty directing me, creating
through me.

Suddenly, from a long distance it seemed, a little cry or exclamation
came to me.

"Trevor, I must move!"

I started, dropped the paper, and rose.

The light had grown dim, the fire had burned hollow. Viola had
dropped to her knees, and was for the moment a huddled blot of
whiteness amongst the crimson tones. I advanced, filled with
self-reproach for my selfish absorption. But she rose almost directly,
wrapped in some of the muslin, and walked from the dais to the screen.
I hesitated to follow her there, and went back to the fallen picture.
I picked it up and gazed on it with rapture--how perfect it was! The
best thing of a lifetime! Viola seemed so long behind the screen I
grew anxious and walked over to it. As I came round it, she was just
drawing on her bodice, her arms and neck were still bare. She motioned
me back imperatively, and I saw the colour stream across her face. I
retreated. It was absurd in a way, that blush as my eyes rested on her
then, I who just now ... and yet perfectly reasonable, understandable.
Then she was the Phryne, a vision to me, as she had said, in ancient
Athens. And now we were modern man and woman again. All that we do in
this life takes its colour from our attitude of mind towards it, and
but for her artist's mind, a girl like Viola could never have done
what she had at all.

In a moment more she came from behind the screen. She looked white and
cold, and came towards the fire shivering. I drew her into my arms,
strained her against my breast, and kissed her over and over again in
a passion of gratitude.

"How can I thank you! You have done for me what no one else could. I
can never tell you what I feel about it."

She put her arms round my neck, and kissed me in return.

"Any one would do all they could for you, I think," she said softly.
"You are so beautiful and so nice about things I am only too happy to
have been of use to you."

"What a brute I was to have forgotten you were standing so long. Was
it very bad? Were you cold?"

"At the end I was, but I shouldn't have moved for that. I got so
cramped. I couldn't keep my limbs still any longer. I was sorry to be
so stupid and have to disturb you."

"I can't think how you stood so well," I said remorsefully, "and so
long. It is so different for a practised model."

"Well, I did practise keeping quite still in one position every day
all this last week, but of course a week is not long."

I had pressed the bell, and tea was brought in. I busied myself with
making it for her. She looked white and ill. I felt burning with a
sense of elation, of delighted triumph. The picture was there. It
glimmered a white patch against the chair a little way off. The idea
was realised, the inspiration caught, all the rest was only a matter
of time.

We drank our tea in silence. Viola looked away from me into the fire.
She did not seem constrained or embarrassed. Having decided to do, as
she had, and conquer her own feelings, she did so simply, grandly, in
a way that suited the greatness of her nature. There was no mincing
modesty, no self-conscious affectation. The agony of confusion that
she had felt in that moment when she had stood before me with her hand
on the clasp of her girdle, had been evident to me, but her pride
forced her to crush it out of sight.

I went over to her low chair and sat down at her feet.

"Do you know you have shown me this afternoon something which I did
not believe existed--an absolutely perfect body without a fault or
flaw anywhere. I did not believe there could be anything so
exquisitely beautiful."

She coloured, but a warm happy look came into her eyes as she gazed
back at me.

"So I did really satisfy you? I realised your expectations?" she
murmured. I lifted one of her hands to my lips and kissed it.

"Satisfied is not the word," I returned, looking up into the dark blue
eyes above me with my own burning with admiration. "I was entranced.
May I shew it to you?"

"Yes, I should like to see it," she answered.

I rose and brought over to her the picture and set it so that we both
could see it together. She gazed at it some time in silence.

"Do you like it?" I asked suddenly with keen anxiety.

"You have idealised me, Trevor!"

"It is impossible to idealise what is in itself divine," I replied
quietly. She looked at me, her face full Of colour but her eyes alight
and smiling.

"I am so glad, so happy that you are pleased. You have drawn it
magnificently. What life you put into your things--they live and
breathe."

She turned and looked at my clock.

"I must go now, I have been here ages." She began to put on her hat
and cloak. When I had fastened the latter round her throat, I took
both her hands in mine.

"May I expect you to-morrow?"

"To-morrow? Let me see. Well, I was going to the Carrington's to
lunch. I promised to go, so I must; but I need not stay long. I can
leave at three and be here at half past; only that will be too late in
any case on account of the light, won't it?"

"Not if it is a bright day."

"You see, I need not accept any more invitations. I shan't, if I am
coming here, but I have one or two old engagements I must keep."

I dropped her hands and turned away.

"But I can't let you give up your amusements, your time for me in this
way!" I said.

Viola laughed.

"It's not much to give up--a few luncheons and teas! As long as I have
time for my music I will give you all the rest."

She stood drawing on her gloves, facing the fire; her large soft,
fearless eyes met mine across the red light.

I stepped forwards towards her impulsively.

"What _can_ I say? How can I thank you or express a hundredth part of
my gratitude?"

Viola shook her head with her softest smile and a warm caressing light
in her eyes.

"You look at it quite wrongly," she said lightly. "My reward is great
enough, surely! You are giving me immortality."

Then she went out, and I was alone.

       *       *       *       *       *

For a fortnight I was happy. Viola came regularly every day to the
studio, and the picture grew rapidly, I was absorbed in it, lived for
it, and had that strange peace and glowing content that Art bestows,
and which like that other peace "passeth all understanding."

Then gradually a sense of unrest mingled with the calm. The whole
afternoon while Viola was with me I worked happily, content to the
point of being absolutely oblivious of everything except ourselves and
the picture. Our tea together afterwards, when we discussed the
progress made and the colour effects, was a delight. But the moment
the door was closed after her, when she had left me, a blank seemed to
spread round me. The picture itself could not console me. I gazed and
gazed at it, but the gaze did not satisfy me nor soothe the feverish
unrest. I longed for her presence beside me again.

One day after the posing she seemed so tired and exhausted that I
begged her to lie down a little and drew up my great comfortable
couch, like a Turkish divan, to the fire. She did as she was bid, and
I heaped up a pile of blue cushions behind her fair head.

"I am so tired," she exclaimed and let her eyes close and her arms
fall beside her.

I stood looking down on her. Her face was shell-like in its clear
fairness and transparency, and the beautiful expressive eyebrows drawn
delicately on the white forehead appealed to me.

The intimacy established between us, her complete willing sacrifice to
me, her surrender, her trust in me, the knowledge of herself and her
beauty she had allowed me gave birth suddenly in my heart to a great
overwhelming tenderness and a necessity for its expression.

I bent over her, pressed my lips down on hers and held them there. She
did not open her eyes, but raised her arms and put them round my neck,
pressing me to her. In a joyous wave of emotion I threw myself beside
her and drew the slender, supple figure into my arms.

"Trevor," she murmured, as soon as I would let her, "I am afraid you
are falling in love with me."

"I have already," I answered. "I love you, I want for my own. You must
marry me, and come and live at the studio."

"I don't think I can marry you," she replied in very soft tones, but
she did not try to move from my clasp.

"Why not?"

"Artists should not marry: it prevents their development. How old are
you?"

"Twenty-eight," I answered, half-submerged in the delight of the
contact with her, of knowing her in my arms, hardly willing or able to
listen to what she said.

"And how many women have you loved?"

"Oh, I don't know," I answered. "I have been with lots, of course, but
I don't think I have ever loved at all till now."

"What about the little girl in the tea-shop at Sitka?"

"I don't think I loved her. I wanted her as an experience."

"Is it not just the same with me?"

"No, it isn't. It's quite different. Do not worry me with questions,
Viola. Kiss me and tell me you love me."

She raised herself suddenly on one elbow and leant over me, kissing
me on the eyes and lips, all over my face, with passionate intensity.

"I do love you. You are like my life to me, but I know I ought not to
marry you. I should absorb you. You would love me. You would not want
to be unfaithful to me. But fidelity to one person is madness an
impossibility to an artist if he is to reach his highest development.
It can't be. We must not think of it."

The blood went to my head in great waves. The supreme tenderness of a
moment back seemed gone, her words had roused another phase of
passion, the harsh fury of it.

"I don't care about the art, I don't care about anything. You shall
marry me. I will make you love me."

"You don't understand. If you were fifty-eight I would marry you
directly."

"You shall marry me before then," I answered, and kissed her again and
put my hands up to her soft-haired head to pull it down to my breast
and dragged loose some of its soft coils.

"Trevor, you are mad. Let me get up."

I rose myself, and left her free to get up. She sat up on the couch,
white and trembling.

"Now you are going to say you won't come to me any more, I suppose?" I
said angrily. The nervous excitement of the moment was so great; there
was such a wild booming in my ears I could hardly hear my own voice.

She looked up. The tears welled into her luminous blue eyes.

"How unkind you are! and how unjust! Of course I shall come, must come
every day if you want it till the Phryne is done. You don't know how I
love you."

I took her dear little hand and kissed it.

"I am sorry," I said. "Forgive me, but you must not say such stupid
things. Of course you will marry me; why, we are half married already.
Most people would say we ought to be."

I turned on the lights and drew the table up to the fire, which I
stirred, and began to make the tea.

Viola sat on the edge of the couch in silence, coiling up her hair.

She seemed very pale and tired, and I tried to soothe her with
increased tenderness. I made her a cup of tea and came and sat beside
her while she drank it. Then I put my arm round her waist and got her
to lean against me, and put her soft fair-haired head down on my
shoulder and rest there in silence.

I stroked one of her hands that lay cold and nerveless in her lap with
my warm one.

"You have done so much for me," I said softly; "wonderful things which
I can never forget, and now you must belong to me altogether. No two
people could love each other more than we do. It would be absurd of
us not to marry." I kissed her, and she accepted my caresses and did
not argue with me any more; so I felt happier, and when she rose to
leave our good-bye was very tender, our last kiss an ecstasy.

When she had gone I picked up one of the sketches I had first made of
her and gazed long at it.

How extravagantly I had come to love her now. I realised in those
moments how strong this passion was that had grown up, as it were,
under cover of the work, and that I had not fully recognised till now.

How intensely the sight of these wonderful lines moved me! I felt that
I could worship her, literally. That she had become to me as a
religion is to the enthusiast.

I must be the possessor, the sole owner of her. I felt she was mine
already. The agony and the loss, if she ever gave herself to another,
would be unendurable. If that happened I should let a revolver end
everything for me. I did not believe even the thought of my work would
save me.

Yet how curious this same passion is, I reflected, gazing at the
exquisite image on the paper before me. If one of these lines were
bent out of shape, twisted, or crooked, this same passion would cease
to be. The love and affection and esteem I had for her would remain,
but this intense desire and longing for her to be my own property,
which shook me now to the very depths of my system, would utterly
vanish.

Yet it would be wrong to say that these lines alone had captured me,
for had they enclosed a stupid or commonplace mind they would have
stirred me as little as if they themselves had been imperfect.

No it is when we meet a Spirit that calls to us from within a form of
outward beauty, and only then, that the greatest passion is born
within us.

And that I felt for Viola now, and I knew--looking back through a
vista of other and lighter loves--I had never known yet its equal. She
loved me, too, that great fact was like a chord of triumphant music
ringing through my heart. Then why this fancy that she would not marry
me? How could I possibly break it down? persuade her of its folly?

I walked up and down the studio all that evening, unable to go out to
dinner, unable to think of anything but her, and all through the night
I tossed about, restless and sleepless, longing for the hour on the
following day which should bring her to me again.

Yet how those hours tried me now! It would be impossible to continue.
She must and should marry me. It was only for me she held back from it
apparently, yet for me it would be everything.

One afternoon, after a long sitting, the power to work seemed to
desert me suddenly. My throat closed nervously, my mouth grew dry,
the whole room seemed swimming round me, and the faultless, dazzling
figure before me seemed receding into a darkening mist. I flung away
my brush and rose suddenly. I felt I must move, walk about, and I
started to pace the room then suddenly reeled, and saved myself by
clutching at the mantelpiece.

"What is it? What is the matter?" came Viola's voice, sharp with
anxiety, across the room. "Are you ill? Shall I come to you?"

"No, no," I answered, and put my head down on the mantelpiece. "Go and
dress. I can't work any more."

I heard her soft slight movements as she left the dais. I did not
turn, but sank into the armchair beside me, my face covered by my
hands.

Screens of colour passed before my eyes, my ears sang.

I had not moved when I felt her come over to me. I looked up, she was
pale with anxiety.

"You are ill, Trevor! I am so sorry."

"I have worked a little too much, that's all," I said constrainedly,
turning from her lovely anxious eyes.

"Have you time to stay with me this evening? We could go out and get
some dinner, if you have, and then go on to a theatre. Would they miss
you?"

"Not if I sent them a wire. I should like to stay with you. Are you
better?"

I looked up and caught one of her hands between my own burning and
trembling ones.

"I shall never be any better till I have you for my own, till we are
married. Why are you so cruel to me?"

"Cruel to you? Is that possible?" Her face had crimsoned violently,
then it paled again to stone colour.

"Well, don't let's discuss that. The picture's done. I can't work on
it any more. It can't be helped. Let's go out and get some dinner,
anyway."

Viola was silent, but I felt her glance of dismay at the only
half-finished figure on the easel.

She put on her hat and coat in silence, and we went out. After we had
ordered dinner and were seated before it at the restaurant table we
found we could not eat it. We sat staring at one another across it,
doing nothing.

"Did you really mean that ... that you wouldn't finish the picture?"
she said, after a long silence.

I looked back at her; the pale transparency of her skin, the blue of
the eyes, the bright curls of her hair in the glow of the electric
lamp, looked wonderfully delicate, entrancing, and held my gaze.

"I don't think I can. I have got to a point where I must get away from
it and from you."

"But it is dreadful to leave it unfinished."

"It's better than going mad. Let's have some champagne. Perhaps that
will give us an appetite."

Viola did not decline, and the wine had a good effect upon us.

We got through some part of our dinner and then took a hansom to the
theatre. As we sat close, side by side, in one of the dark streets, I
bent over her and whispered:

"If we had been married this morning, and you were coming back to the
studio with me after the theatre I should be quite happy and I could
finish the picture."

She said nothing, only seemed to quiver in silence, and looked away
from me out of the window.

We took stalls and had very good seats, but what that play was like I
never knew. I tried to keep my eyes on the stage, but it floated away
from me in waves of light and colour. I was lost in wondering where I
had better go to get fresh inspiration, to escape from the picture,
from Viola, from myself. Away, I must get away. _Coelum, non animum,
mutant qui trans mare current_ is not always true. Our mind is but a
chameleon and takes its hues from many skies.

In the vestibule at the end I said:

"It's early yet. Come and have supper somewhere with me, you had a
wretched dinner."

Anything to keep her with me for an hour longer! Any excuse to put
off, to delay that frightful wrench that seems to tear out the inside
of both body and soul which parting from her to-night would mean.

"Do you want me to come to the studio with you afterwards?" she asked.

I looked back at her with my heart beating violently. Her face was
very pale, and the pupils in her eyes dilated.

We had moved through the throng and passed outside.

The night was fine. We walked on, looking out for a disengaged hansom.
I could hardly breathe: my heart seemed stifling me. What was in her
mind? What would the next few minutes mean for us both?

My brain swam. My thoughts went round in dizzying circles.

"We shan't have time for supper and to go to the studio as well," I
answered quietly.

"I don't think I want any supper," she replied.

A sudden joy like a great flame leapt through me as I caught the
words.

A crawling hansom came up. I hailed it and put her in and sprang in
beside her, full of that delight that touches in its intensity upon
agony. "Westbourne Street," I called to the man. "No. 2, The Studio."




CHAPTER V

THE CALL OF THE CUCKOO


I stood looking through the window of my studio thinking.

The worst had happened, or the best, whichever it was. Viola had
become my mistress. She had resolutely refused to be my wife, and the
alternative had followed of necessity. The picture had brought us
together, it held us together. I could not separate from her without
sacrificing the picture, and so destroying her happiness, as she said,
and rendering useless all that she had done for me so far.

The picture forced us into an intimacy from which I could not escape
and which, now that the devastating clutch of passion had seized me, I
could not endure unless she became my own. Viola had seen this and
given me herself as unhesitatingly as she had at first given me her
beauty for the picture.

In her relations with me she seemed to reach the highest point of
unselfishness possible to the human character. For I felt that it was
to me and for me she had surrendered herself, not to her own passion
nor for her own pleasure.

She would have come day after day and sat to me, shewed me herself and
delighted in that self's-reproduction on the canvas, talked to me,
delighted in our common worship of beauty, accepted my caresses
and--for herself--wanted nothing more.

I had worked well in the past fortnight since the night of the
theatre, not so well perhaps as in that first clear period of
inspiration, of purely artistic life when Viola was to me nothing but
the beautiful Greek I was creating on my canvas, but still, well.

Some may think I naturally should from a sense of gratitude, a sense
of duty,--that I should be spurred to do my best, since avowedly Viola
had sacrificed all that the work should be good.

But ah, how little has the Will to do with Art!

How well has the German said, "The Will in morals is everything; in
Art, nothing. In Art, nothing avails but the being able."

The most intense desire, the most fervid wish, in Art, helps us
nothing. On the contrary, a great desire to do well in Art, more often
blinds the eye and clogs the brain and causes our hand to lose its
cunning. Unbidden, unasked for, unsought, often in our lightest, most
careless moments, the Divine Afflatus descends upon us.

We had arranged to have a week-end together out of town. Fate had
favoured us, for Viola's aunt had gone to visit her sister for a few
weeks, and the girl was left alone in the town house, mistress of all
her time and free to do as she pleased. The short interviews at the
studio, delightful as they were, seemed to fail to satisfy us any
longer. We craved for that deeper intimacy of "living together."

This is supposed to be fatal to passion in the end, but whether this
is so or not, it is what passion always demands and longs for in the
beginning.

So we had planned for four days together in the country, four days of
May, with a delicious sense of delight and secret joy and warm
heart-beatings.

I had dined at her house last night when all the final details had
been arranged in a palm-shaded corner by the piano, our conversation
covered by the chatter of the other guests. No one knew of our plan,
it was a dear secret between us, but it would not have mattered very
much if others had known that we were going into the country. I was
always supposed to be able to look after Viola, and everybody assumed
that it was only a question of time when we should marry each other.
We had grown up together, we were obviously very much attached to each
other, and we were cousins. And with that amazing inconsistency that
is the chief feature of the British public, while it would be shocked
at the idea of your marrying your sister, it always loves the idea of
your marrying your cousin, the person who in all the world is most
like your sister.

However, all we as hapless individuals of this idiotic community have
to do is to secretly evade its ridiculous conventions when they don't
suit us, and to make the most of them when they do.

And as I was more anxious to marry Viola than about anything else in
the world, I welcomed the convention that assigned her to me and made
the most of it.

For all that, we kept the matter of our four days to ourselves and
planned out its details with careful secrecy.

I was to meet her at Charing-Cross station, and we were going to take
an afternoon train down into Kent where Viola declared she knew of a
lovely village of the real romantic kind. I had thought we ought to
write or wire for rooms at a hotel beforehand, but Viola had been sure
she would find what she wanted when we arrived, and she wished to
choose a place herself.

So there was nothing more to do. My suit-case was packed, and when the
time came to a quarter past two I got into a hansom and drove to the
station.

Almost as soon as I got there, Viola drove up, punctual to the minute.

She knew her own value to men too well to try and enhance it by always
being late for an appointment as so many women do.

She looked fresh and lovely in palest grey, her rose-tinted face
radiant with excitement.

"I haven't kept you waiting, have I?" was her first exclamation after
our greeting.

"I had so much work to do for Aunt Mary all the morning, I thought I
should not have time to really get off myself."

"No, you haven't kept me waiting," I answered; "and, if you had, it
would not have mattered. You know I would wait all day for you."

She glanced up with a wonderful light-filled smile that set every cell
in my body singing with delight, and we went down the platform to
choose our carriage.

When the train started from Charing Cross the day was dull and
heavy-looking; warm, without sunshine. But after an hour's run from
town we got into an atmosphere of crystal and gold and the Kentish
fruit trees stretched round us a sea of pink and white foam under a
cloudless sky.

When we stepped out at our destination, a little sleepy country
station, the air seemed like nectar to us. It was the breath of May,
real merry, joyous English May at the height of her wayward, uncertain
beauty.

We left our light luggage at the station, and walked out from it,
choosing at random the first white, undulating road that opened before
us.

The little village clustered round the station, but Viola did not want
to lodge in the village.

"We can come back to it if we are obliged, but we shall be sure to
find a cottage or a wayside inn."

So we went on slowly in the transparent light of a perfect May
afternoon.

There are periods when England both in climate and landscape is
perfect, when her delicate, elusive loveliness can compare favourably
with the barbaric glory, the wild magnificence of other countries.

On this afternoon a sort of rapture fell upon us both as we went down
that winding road. The call of the cuckoo resounded from side to side,
clear and sonorous like a bell, it echoed and re-echoed across our
path under the luminous dome of the tranquil sky and over the hedges
of flowering thorn, snow-white and laden with fragrance.

Everywhere the fruit trees were in bloom: delicate masses of white and
pink rose against the smiling innocent blue of the sky.

"Now here is the very place," exclaimed Viola suddenly, and following
her eyes I saw behind the high, green hedge bordering the road on
which we were walking some red roofs rising, half hidden by the masses
of white cherry blossom which hung over them. A cottage was there
boasting a garden in front, a garden that was filled with lilac and
laburnum not yet in bloom; filled to overflowing, for the lilac bulged
all over the hedge in purple bunches and the laburnum poured its young
leaves down on it. A tiny lawn, rather long-grassed and not innocent
of daisies, took up the centre of the garden, and on to this two open
casements looked; above again, two open windows, half-lost in the
white clouds of cherry bloom.

"But how do you know they've any rooms?" I expostulated.

Viola looked at me with jesting scorn in her eyes.

"I don't know yet, but I'm going to find out."

She put her hand unhesitatingly on the latch of this apparently sacred
domain of a private house, opened the gate, and passed in; I followed
her inwardly fearful of what our reception might be.

"Men have no moral courage," she remarked superbly as we reached the
porch and rang the bell.

A clean-looking woman came to the door after some seconds.

"Apartments? Yes, miss, we have a sitting-room and two bedrooms
vacant," she answered to Viola's query. "Shall I show them to you?"

We passed through a narrow, little hall smelling of new oilcloth into
a fair-sized room which possessed one of the casements we had seen
from outside and through which came the white glow and scent of the
cherry bloom and the song of a thrush.

"This will do," remarked Viola with a glance round; "and what bedrooms
have you? We only want a sitting-room and one bedroom now."

"Well, ma'am, the room over this is the drawing-room. That's let from
next Monday. Then I have a nice double-room, however, I could let with
this."

"We will go and see it," said Viola. And we went upstairs.

It seemed a long way up, and when we reached it and the door was
thrown open we saw a large room, it was true but the ceiling sloped
downwards at all sorts of unexpected angles like that of an attic, and
the casements were small, opening almost into the branches of the
cherry-tree.

"What do you want for these two?" Viola enquired.

"Five guineas a week, ma'am," returned the woman, placidly folding her
hands together in front of her.

I saw a momentary look of surprise flash across Viola's face. Even
she, the young person of independent wealth, and who commanded far
more by her talents, was taken aback at the figure.

"Surely that's a good deal," she said after a second.

"Well, ma'am, I had an artist here last summer and he had these two
rooms, and he said as he was leaving: 'Mrs. Jevons, you can't ask too
much for these rooms. The view from that window and the cherry-tree
alone is worth all the money.'"

We glanced through the window as she spoke. It was certainly very
lovely. A veil of star-like jasmine hung at one side, and without,
through the white bloom of the cherry, one caught glimpses of the
turquoise-blue of the sky. Beneath, the garden with the wandering
thrushes and its masses of lilac; beyond, the soft outline of the
winding country road leading to indefinite distance of low blue hills.

"We'll take them for the sake of the cherry-tree," Viola said smiling.

"Will you send to the station for our light luggage and let us have
some tea presently?"

The woman promised to do both at once and ambled out of the room,
leaving us there and closing the door behind her.

I looked round, a sense of delight, of spontaneous joy, filling slowly
every vein, welling up irresistibly all through my being.

For the first time I stood in a room with Viola which we were going to
share. No other form of possession, of intimacy, is quite the same as
this, nor speaks to a lover in quite the same way.

I looked at her. She stood in the centre of the rather poorly
furnished and bare-looking room, in her travelling dress of a soft
grey cloth. Her figure that always woke all my senses to rapture,
shewed well in the clear, simple lines of the dress. Over the perfect
bosom passed little silver cords, drawing the coat to meet.

Beneath her grey straw summer hat, wide-brimmed, a pink rose nestled
against the light masses of her hair. Her eyes looked out at me with a
curious, tender smile.

She threw herself into a low cane chair by the window, I crossed the
room suddenly and knelt beside it.

"Darling, you are pleased to be here with me, are you not?"

"Pleased! I am absolutely happy. I have the sensation that whatever
happened I could not possibly be more happy than I am."

She put one arm round my neck and went on softly in a meditative
voice:

"I can't think how some girls go on living year after year all through
their youth never knowing this sort of pleasure and happiness, for
which they are made, can you?"

"They don't dare to do the things, I suppose," I answered.

"Perhaps they wouldn't give them any pleasure, ... but it seems
extraordinary." Her voice died away. Her blue eyes fixed themselves on
me in a soft, dreaming gaze.

I locked both my arms round her waist and kissed her lips into
silence. A knock at the door made me spring to my feet. Viola remained
where she was, unmoved, and said, "Come in."

A trim-looking maid came in with rather round eyes fixed open to see
all she could. She had a can of hot water in her hand.

"Please, mum, I thought you'd like some hot water."

"Very much," returned Viola calmly. "Thank you."

The maid very slowly crossed the room to the washing-stand and set the
can in the basin, covering it with a towel with elaborate care and
deliberateness, looking at Viola out of the corners of her eyes as she
did so.

"Please, m'm, when your luggage comes shall I bring it up?"

"Yes, do please, bring it up at once," replied Viola, and the girl
slowly withdrew, shutting the door in the same lengthy manner after
her.

Viola got up and crossed to the glass. She took off her hat and
smoothed back her hair with her hand. Each time she did so, the light
rippled exquisitely over its shining waves.

"I wonder if I ought to wash my face?" she remarked, looking in the
glass; "does it look dusty?"

"Not in the least," I said, studying the pink and white reflection in
the glass over her shoulder.

"Don't waste the time washing your face. Come and look out of the
window."

We went over to the little casement, and leant our arms side by side
on the sill.

The glorious afternoon sunlight was ripening and deepening into
orange, a burnished sheen lay over everything, the blue hills were
changing into violet, the trees along the road stood motionless, soft,
and feathery-looking in the sleepy heat. As we looked out we saw a
light cart coming leisurely along and recognised our luggage in it.

Some fifteen minutes later the round-eyed maid reappeared, with a man
following her carrying our luggage.

"If you please, m'm, Mrs. Jevons says would the gentleman go down and
give what orders he likes for dinner for to-day and to-morrow as the
tradesmen are here now and would like to know."

"Do you mind going down, Trevor?" Viola asked me. "I want just to get
a few of my things out?"

"Certainly not," I answered, "I'll go." And I followed the maid out
and downstairs.

When I returned to the room about half-an-hour later, it was empty,
and as I looked round it seemed transformed, now that her possessions
were scattered about. I walked across it, a curious sense of pleasure
seeming to clasp my heart and rock it in a cradle of joy.

I glanced at the toilet table. On the white cloth lay now two
gold-backed brushes, a gold-backed mirror and a gold button-hook, a
little clock in silver and a framed photograph of me; over the chair
by the dressing-table was thrown what seemed a mass of mauve silk and
piles of lace. I lifted it very gently, fearing it would almost fall
to pieces, it seemed so fragile, and discovered it was her
dressing-gown. How the touch of its folds stirred me since it was
_hers_!

I replaced it carefully, wondering at the keen sensation of pleasure
that invaded me as the soft laces touched my hands.

I turned to my own suit-case, unstrapped it, opened it, and then
pulled out the top drawer of the chest, intending to lay my things in,
but I stopped short as I drew it out.

A sheet of tissue paper lay on the top, and underneath this was her
dinner-dress--a delicate white cloud of shimmering stuff told me it
was that--and at the end of the drawer I saw two little white shoes
and white silk stockings.

I paused, looking down at the contents of the drawer, wondering at the
wave of emotion they sent through me. Why, when I possessed the girl
herself, should these things of hers have any power to move me?

It was perhaps partly because this form of possession, of intimacy,
was so new to me, and partly because I was young and still keenly
sensitive to all the delights of life and not yet even on the edge of
satiety. I lifted one little shoe out and sat down with it in my hand,
gazing at its delicate, perfect shape, my heart beating quickly and
the blood mounting joyously to my brain.

What a wonderful thing it is, this life in youth when even the sight
of a girl's shoe can bring one such keen, passionate pleasure!

Yet what pain, what agony it would be if by chance I had come across
this shoe and held it in my hand as now, and there was no violet night
to follow, no white arms going to be stretched out through its deep
mauve-tinted shadows!

I was still sitting with the shoe in my hand when Viola reappeared,
her arms full of lilac.

"I went down to the garden to get some of this," she said. "It looked
so lovely. What are you doing, Trevor, sitting there? The woman has
made the tea, and it will be much too strong if you don't come down."

She came up behind me and I saw her flush and smile in the glass as
she caught sight of her shoe. I looked up, and she coloured still more
at my glance.

"I am thinking about this and other things," I said smiling up at her.

She bent over and kissed me and took the shoe out of my hand.

"I am glad you like my little shoe," she said gently with a tender
edge to her tone, replacing the shoe in the drawer.

"Now do come down."

She put all the lilac in a great mass in the jug and basin, and we
went downstairs.

After tea we went out to explore our new and temporarily acquired
territory, and found there was another flower garden at the side of
the house. This, like the one in front, was hedged round with lilac
laden with glorious blossom of all shades, from deepest purple through
all the degrees of mauve to white. Every here and there the line was
broken by a May-tree just bursting into bloom that thrust its pink or
white buds through the lilac. A narrow path paved with large, uneven,
moss-covered stone flags led down the centre and on through a little
wicket gate into the kitchen garden beyond, so that altogether there
was quite an extensive walk through the three gardens, all
flower-lined and sweetly fragrant. We passed slowly along the path
down to the extreme end of the kitchen garden where there was a seat
under a broad-leaved fig-tree. By the side of the seat stood an old
pump, handle and spout shaded by a vine that half trained and half of
its own will trailed and gambolled up the old red brick garden wall. A
flycatcher perched on the pump handle and thrilled out its gay
irresponsible song.

"I have just come over the sea and I am so glad to be here, so glad,
so glad," it seemed to be saying, and two swallows skimmed backwards
and forwards low down to the earth, gathering mud from a little pool
by the pump.

We sat down on the bench and looked out from under the fig-tree at the
pure tranquil sky, full of gold light and just tinted with the first
rosy flush of evening.

There was complete silence save for the clear, gay, rippling song of
the bird, and the deep peace of the scene seemed to fall upon us like
an enchanted spell.

Viola dropped her head on my shoulder with a sigh of contentment.

"I am so happy, so content. I feel as glad as that little flycatcher.
It has escaped from the sea and the storms and winds, and I've got
away from London, its tiresome dinners and hot rooms and all the
stupid men who want to marry one."

I laughed and watched her face as it lay against me, and I saw her
eyes half-closed as she gazed dreaming into the sunshine.

Faint pink clouds sailed across the sky at intervals like downy
feathers blown before a breeze; the flycatcher continued its
chattering song to us, some bees hummed with a warm summer-like sound
over the wall.

An hour slipped by and seemed only like one golden moment. We heard a
bell jangle from the direction of the house, and when I looked at my
watch I saw it was time to dress for dinner.

When we retraced our steps the whole garden was bathed in rosy light
and the lilac stood out in it curiously and poured forth a wonderful,
heavy fragrance as we passed.

The voice of spring, that beautiful low whisper with its promise of
summer and cloudless days was in all the air. Had we been married
several years I do not think either Viola or I would have found Mrs.
Jevons's cooking good nor praised the dinner that night; the
attendance also might have been condemned. But as it was we were in
that magic mirage of first days together and everything seemed
perfect.

When it was over we sought the outside again and sat watching the now
paling rose of the sky being replaced by clear, tender green. A
passion and rapture of song, the last evening song of the birds, was
being poured out on the still dewy air all round us. One by one the
songsters grew tired and ceased as a pale star grew visible here and
there in the transparent sky, and complete silence fell on the garden.
Only a bat flitted across it silently now and then, and the white
night-moths came and played by us. I had my arm round her waist and I
drew her close to me and looked down upon her through the dusky
twilight.

"Let us go, too, dearest, it is quite late."

She looked up, the colour waving all over her face, and smiled back at
me, and we went in and upstairs.

When we reached our room, the window was wide open as we had left it
and the room seemed full of soft violet gloom, heavy with fragrance of
the lilac that shewed its pale mauve stars through the shadows.

It was so beautiful, the effect of the deep summer twilight, that I
told her not to light the candles.

"Shew yourself to me in this wonderful mysterious half-light, nothing
can be more beautiful."

I sat down on the foot of the bed watching her, my heart beating,
every pulse within me throbbing with delight.

Viola did not answer. She did not light the candles, but with the
rustle of falling silk and lace began her undressing.

That night I could not sleep. The window stood open, and the room was
filled with the soft mysterious twilight of the summer night with its
thousand wandering perfumes, its tiny sounds of bats and whirring
wings.

The cherry bloom thrust its long, white, scented arms into the room. I
lay looking towards the white square of the window wide-eyed and
thinking.

A strange elation possessed my brain. I felt happy with a clear
consciousness of feeling happy. One can be happy unconsciously or
consciously.

The first state is like the sensation one has when lying in hot water:
one is warm, but one hardly knows it, so accustomed to the embrace of
the water has the body become.

The other state of conscious happiness is like that of first entering
the bath, when the skin is violently keenly alive to the heat of the
water.

Viola lay beside me motionless, wrapped in a soundless sleep like the
sleep of exhaustion. Not the faintest sound of breathing came from her
closed lips.

The room was so light I could distinctly see the pale circle of her
face and all the undulating lines of her fair hair beside me on the
pillow.

I felt the strange delight of ownership borne in upon me as it had
never been yet.

We had not dared to pass a night together at the studio.

We had only had short afternoons and evenings, hours snatched here and
there, over-clouded by fears of hearing a knock at the door, a
footstep outside.

But this deep solitude, these hours of the night when she _slept_
beside me, all powers, all the armour of our intelligence that we wear
in our waking moments, laid aside, seemed to give her to me more
completely than she had ever given herself before.

And gazing upon her in serene unconsciousness, I felt the intense joy
of possession, a sort of madness of satisfaction vibrating through me,
stamping that hour on my memory for ever.

The next morning we came down late and enjoyed everything with that
keen poignant sense of pleasure that novelty alone can give. To us
coming from a stay of months in town the small sitting-room, the open
casement window, the simple breakfast-table, the loud noise of birds'
voices without, the green glow of the garden seemed delightful, almost
wonderful.

So curtains were really white! how strange it seemed. In town they are
always grey or brown, and the air was light and thin with a sweet
scent, and the sky was blue!!!

It was a fine day, the sun poured down riotously through the
snow-white bloom of the cherry-tree, two cuckoos were calling to each
other from opposite sides of the wood, and their note, so soft in the
distance, so powerful when near, resounded through the shining air
till it seemed full of the sound of a great clanging bell, musical and
beautiful.

Viola was delighted; her keen ear enjoyed the unusual sound.

"Oh, Trevor, that repeated note, how glorious it is! It reminds me of
a sustained note in Wagner's _Festpiel_. I do wish they'd go on."

She seated herself by the window listening with rapture in her eyes.
The woman of the house brought in our coffee, but I doubt if we should
have got any breakfast, only the cuckoos wanted theirs and fortunately
flew off to get it.

When the glorious musical bell rang out far on the other side of the
wood, dimmed by distance, Viola came reluctantly to the table.

"How delicious this is! this being in the country _just at first_.
Look at the table with its jonquils! isn't it pretty? Look at the
honey and cream!"

"I think you had better eat some of it," I answered; "or at least pour
out the coffee."

Viola laughed and did so, and we breakfasted joyously, full of the
curious gayety that belongs to novelty alone.

Then we went out, and the outside was equally entrancing. The scent of
the lilac seemed to hang like a canopy in the air under which we
walked. There was a fat thrush on the lawn, young and tailless. The
sight of him and the dappled marks on his white breast gave me a
strange pleasure.

We sat down on the turf finally where the cherry-tree cast a light
shade, a sort of white shadow in the sunlight, from its blossoms.
Viola thrust her hands down into the cool, green grass.

"How lovely this is," she said, looking up the tall tree above us.
"Look at its great tent of white blossoms against the blue sky; it's
like a picture of Japan!"

After a time, when we were tired of the garden, we went out and turned
down the white road to explore the country.

It was very hot, and the glare from the road excessive, but as it was
all new to us it all seemed delightful, even to the white dust that
coated our lips and got into our eyes whenever the breeze stirred.

After about a mile and a half of walking we came to an oak wood. The
road dipped suddenly between cool, green, mossy banks and lay in deep,
grateful shade from the arching oaks above. I climbed the bank on one
side and looked into the wood. It was very thick and wild, apparently
rarely penetrated. Through the close-growing stems of the undergrowth
I saw a bluebell carpet lying like inverted sky beneath the oaks.

"The wood looks very attractive," I said as I rejoined Viola; "but we
can't stay to go into it now. We haven't the time; it's half past
twelve already."

"I'm sorry," said Viola, looking wistfully at the green wood. "This is
the nicest part; but I suppose we can't disappoint that woman by not
getting back to luncheon."

So we walked back slowly through the noonday sun, admiring the double
pink May peeping out from the green hedges.

When we came in just before lunch, she took the easy chair facing the
window, and I sat down on one opposite and watched her. She was
wearing a white cambric dress that looked very simple and girlish; she
was smiling, and her face was delicately rose-coloured after the
walk.

A sense of responsibility came over me. She was my cousin, my own
blood relation. I must protect her, must think for her if she would
not think for herself.

"You know it's risky being down here like this. You had much better
come to some rustic church with me in another village and marry me
there."

"No. You know perfectly well I am not going to marry you," she said
softly, looking up at me with a smile in her eyes, great pools of blue
beneath their exquisitely arched lids.

"It is ridiculous to suppose that you, an artist of twenty-eight, will
want to keep faithful to one woman all the rest of your life--or her
life. It would be very bad for you, if you did. One can't go against
Nature, and Nature has not arranged things that way. Marriage is a
pleasure perhaps; but Nature never arranged, marriage, and a man
should not allow himself unnatural pleasures."

She was really laughing now, but I knew her resolve was perfectly
serious and I did not see how I could break it up.

"Well, but some men do keep to one woman all their life and are none
the worse for it; look at a country clergyman for instance."

Viola raised her eyebrows with a laugh.

"How can you be sure of the country clergyman? I expect he goes up to
town sometimes.... However, of course I admit he is fairly faithful,
but how about being none the worse for it? A country clergyman is
about the most undeveloped creature you could have, and a great artist
is the most developed, the nearest approach to a god of all human
beings."

I did not answer, but sat silent staring at her. She looked such a
sweet little Saxon schoolgirl in her white dress, but with such
tremendous character and power in those great shining eyes.

"But if we marry now," I said at last, "and anything should ... should
come between us, I don't see it would be any worse than...."

"Than if we were living together without marriage," she put in
quickly. "Yes, I think it would. Look here, if we marry now with a
great blaze and fuss, and invite all our friends to see the event,
which is great nonsense anyway, and then you see some other woman
later you covet, it seems to me there are only three ways open to us:
either you go without the woman and suffer very much in consequence
and always owe me a grudge for standing in your way; or you take her
and I have to profess to see nothing and look on quietly, which I
could never stand, it would send me mad; or we must have all the
trouble and worry and scandal of a divorce and call in the public to
witness our quarrel; and why _should_ we have the public to interfere
in our affairs?" she added, her eyes flashing. "What is it to them
whom I love or whom I live with, whom I leave or quarrel with? These
are all private matters."

"And if we live together and the same thing happens?" I pursued
quietly.

"Why, then we should separate, only without any trouble, any
publicity; we should fall apart naturally. If you preferred any one
else, you must go to her; I should slip away out of your life, and we
should each be free and untied."

"If it's so much better for the man to change," I said smiling, "it
must be the same for the woman."

"So it is," rejoined Viola quickly; "the more men a woman has the more
developed she is, the better for her morally, if there is no
conventional disgrace attaching to it. Amongst the Greeks, Aspasia and
all those women of her class were far more intellectual, more
developed than the wives who were kept at home to spin and rear
children."

"All these things ought to be optional. If a woman loves one man so
much she wants to stay with him for ever and ever, probably through
such a great passion she reaches her highest development; but until
she has found that man she ought to be allowed to go from one to
another without any disgrace attaching to it. And, of course, just the
same law holds good for the man."

"Outsiders like the world and the law ought never to be allowed to
interfere between a man and a woman. They never can know the right or
the wrong of their relations to each other well enough to enable them
to be judges. Nobody ever knows but the man and the woman themselves,
and they ought to be left alone; what they do, whether in quarrelling
or love, ought to be as private as the prayers one sends to Heaven."

She paused, and through the window came the gay, loud, triumphant call
of the cuckoo seeking its mate of an hour in the heart of the glad
green wood.

Viola listened with a look of delight.

"How happy they are!" she said. And the note came again, instinct with
love and joy.

"How well Nature arranged everything, and how Man has spoiled it all!
Fancy passion, the most subtle, evanescent, delicate, elusive
emotion--and yet one so strong--fancy that being bound down by crabbed
and crooked laws, being confined by wretched little conventions!"

"But, anyway, we shall have to say we are married here."

"Oh, say anything you like," rejoined Viola laughing; "saying doesn't
do any harm."

"Yes, but then we must fix some place where we've _been_ married and
all that, do you see; we'd better go somewhere further off I think and
stay away some time and come back married. I do feel very worried
about it, Viola. I think it would be much simpler to do it than to
lie about it."

Viola jumped up and came over to me.

"Dear Trevor, I am _so_ sorry you are worried, but really it will work
out all right. We will go abroad somewhere from here, we might go to
Rome, it's a lovely time of year, and then to Sicily, to Taormina, ...
and we'll stay away a year and you finish the picture and I'll write
an opera, and then we'll come back married to town in the season and
we'll have _been_ married before we leave England of course, and then
it will be a year ago, and I don't think anybody will bother about it
much."

I looked down upon her. She was so pretty and so dear to me: I must
keep her, and if those were the only terms upon which she would stay
with me I must accept them.

The landlady came into the room at this minute followed by the maid to
lay the luncheon; in the landlady's hand was a fat, black book which
she presented diffidently to Viola.

"It's the Visitors' book, ma'am," she said. "I thought you and the
gentleman would like to write your names in it in case of any
letters...."

"Yes, very much," returned Viola promptly, with a little side smile at
me, and sat down and wrote in it.

When she had done so, she closed the book, and as the maid was in and
out of the room during luncheon, it was not till it was finished and
cleared away and we were alone that I asked her what she had written.

"Mr. and Mrs. Lonsdale; that's right, isn't it? I did not put Trevor
for I always think 'make your lies short' is a good rule."

"I thought you were such a truthful person," I said a little sadly.

"So I am--to you, for instance, so I should be to any one who has the
right to hear truth; but the world has no right, and I don't care what
lies I tell it, it's such an inquisitive old bore!"

I laughed. Viola always made you laugh when you felt you ought to be
angry with her.

"Come out now," I said, "let's enjoy this lovely afternoon. I should
like to paint you under that tree," I added musingly, looking out on
the tree in its white glory.

"In your usual style?" she returned laughing. "I don't think you could
here. Mrs. Jevons would turn me out as not being respectable; not even
being Mrs. Lonsdale would save me."

"You would make a lovely picture, even dressed," I returned, musing;
"but then of course it would not sell for half the price."

"Nothing is really snapped at but the nude. That lovely landscape I
painted when I was young and foolish,--it took me two years to work
it off, and the veriest little daub of an unclothed girl goes directly
at a hundred guineas."

"A great compliment to our natural charms," laughed Viola. "I am
delighted personally at anything that is a note of protest against the
tyranny of the dressmaker and fashion."

"What shall we do?" I queried; "it's beautifully hot," I added
persuasively.

"I'll tell you: we will go into the oak wood; the oaks grow low and
the ground and the land rise all round, no one can possibly see us
without coming quite close; on that blue carpet you shall paint me
lying asleep, we will call the picture 'The Soul of the Wood,' and you
shall sell it for a thousand. Come along."

So it was decided, and with one of her thick cloaks, that she could
throw round her instantly if surprised, and my artist's pack we
started for the wood.

It was a hot golden day, the one day we should get of really fine
weather in the whole English year, and when we reached the wood the
light under the oak boughs was magnificent, a soft mellow glory
falling down on the blue hyacinths which grew so closely together that
it was as if a sea of vivid colour had invaded the dell or a great
patch of the blue sky had fallen there.

We had difficulty in getting into the wood as the undergrowth of
young oak scrub made it almost impenetrable; it stood up straight, and
the great, swaying, huge, spreading boughs of the old oaks above came
down and rested on and amongst the young oaks, like a roof upon
pillars, and the leaves of both intermingled till they were like green
silk curtains hung from ceiling to floor. When we had finally pushed
through almost on our hands and knees to the centre of the wood, the
scrub grew less close, the carpet of blue was perfect, a circle of
green shut us in, we were in a magic chamber, through the roof of
which came floods of green and golden light.

Viola cast aside the "tyranny of the dressmaker" and shook out her
light hair. Then she threw herself on the hyacinth bed, looking
upwards to the low arching roof. At that moment the call of the
cuckoo, wild, entrancing, came overhead, and she raised her arms with
a look of rapture as the slim grey bird dashed through the upper oak
branches in pursuit of its mate. It was a perfect pose for the "Soul
of the Wood," and I begged her to keep it while I rapidly caught the
idea and sketched it in roughly in charcoal.

Those happy sunlit hours in the wood, how fast they slipped away! I
was absorbed in the work and completely happy in it, and Viola I
believe was equally happy in the delight she knew she was giving me.

We came back very hungry to our tea, and very pleased with ourselves,
the sketch, and our successful afternoon.

It was six o'clock, the light was mellowing, and a thrush singing with
all its own wonderful passion and rapture on the lawn. The scent of
the lilac, intensely sweet, came in at the window and filled the room.

In the evening we went out and sat under the cherry-tree, watching the
stars come out and gleam through its white bloom.

"Sing me the Abendstern," murmured Viola, leaning her head against me.
"I was a dutiful model all the afternoon, it's your turn to amuse me
now."

So I sang the Abendstern to her under the cherry-tree, and its white
shadow enveloped us both, making her face look very beautiful under
it; and when I had finished singing we kissed each other and agreed
that the world was a very delightful place as long as there was
Wagner's music in it, and cherry-trees to sit under, and white bloom
and stars and lips to kiss.

Between nine and ten, after a very countrified supper we went up to
bed in the slanting-roofed room under the thatch, full still of the
tender light of a spring evening.

The next day was delicious, too, and the next, but on the fourth we
were quite ready to go. We had drained the cup of joy which that
particular place held for us and it had no more to offer. The
cherry-tree pleased us still, but it did not give us the ecstatic
thrill of the first view of it. The lilac scent streamed in, but it
did not go to the head and intoxicate us as when we came straight from
the air of Waterloo; the thrush gurgled as passionately on the deep
green lawn, but the gurgle did not stir the blood. All was the same,
only the strange spell of novelty was gone.

Viola seemed so pleased to be leaving it quite hurt me. When I went
upstairs I found her packing her little handbag with alacrity and
singing.

"Are you glad to be going?" I asked.

"Yes," she said surprised; "are not you?"

"But you have been happy here?" I said with a tone of remonstrance.

"Oh, yes!" she exclaimed; "wildly, intensely happy! It's been four
days' enchantment, but then it's gone now; we can't get any _more_ out
of this place. We have enjoyed it so much we have drained it,
exhausted it; like the bees, we must move on to a fresh flower."

It was true that was all we could do, yet I looked round the bare
attic-like room with regret. Could ever another give me more than that
had done? Could there ever be a keener joy, a deeper delight than I
had known in the shadows of that first violet night?




PART THREE

THE BLACK NIGHT




CHAPTER VI

IN MAYFAIR


The spring of the next year found us installed in a small house in
Mayfair, for the season.

For a year we had been abroad; the summer in Italy, the winter in
Egypt, and had come back with our eyes full of colour, armed against
the deadly greyness of England for three months at least.

We had travelled as Mr. and Mrs. Lonsdale, we came back as Mr. and
Mrs. Lonsdale. There had been no difficulty so far. Every one seemed
satisfied, and what was far more important, so were we.

The whole top floor of the Mayfair house was my studio, and made a
fairly large and convenient one. We kept on the old studio as a matter
of sentiment, but rarely went there now.

The "Phryne" and the "Soul of the Wood" had been finished and accepted
for exhibition. Both were sold, the "Phryne" for five thousand pounds,
the "Soul of the Wood" for four thousand, and I had brought from
abroad many unfinished sketches and partly finished pictures.

In all this time we had lived very close to each other: Viola had been
my only model against an ever-varied background. Not the faintest
shadow had flecked the sunshine of our passion for each other. Viola
had written her operetta, and it had been taken for a London theatre.
A Captain Lawton had written the libretto under the title of the "Lily
of Canton." The music was weird and charming, suited to the strange
Chinese story and scenery. It was to be produced in May, and Viola
always spoke of the first night with excited joy.

It had been a full, rich year. Like bees, as Viola had said, we had
gone from flower to flower, draining the honey from each new blossom
and passing on. New places, new skies, new scenes had all in turn
contributed to our pleasure and given us inspiration which took form
again in our art.

The vivid desert backgrounds, the light-filled skies of Upper Egypt
crept into my pictures, the cry of impassioned Eastern music in the
forbidden dancing-dens of Keneh stole into Viola's refrains.

On that sunny afternoon in April, as we took tea in our tiny and
gimcrack drawing-room together, Viola and I felt in the best of
spirits.

"Captain Lawton and Mr. and Mrs. Dixon are coming in to dinner
to-night," Viola remarked. "Lawton tells me he saw the manager
yesterday, and the piece seems getting on all right."

"I am very glad," I answered. "Do you know, Viola, a Roman girl called
here this morning, and wanted me to take her on as a model. She's
very good. I think I'd better secure her, if ... if...."

"If what...?" asked Viola smiling.

"Well, if you don't mind," I answered, colouring.

"Mind? I? No, dearest Trevor. Of course not. You must want a new model
by now. Do engage her by all means. Is she good altogether?"

"I don't know. I have only seen her face yet. That's very lovely.
Veronica she calls herself. I thought, anyway, she would do splendidly
for the head."

"What a piece of good luck she should come now. You were just wanting
a model for your Roman Forum picture," returned Viola. And then the
matter dropped, for some women came in to tea and broke off the
conversation.

At eleven o'clock the next morning I was in my studio, awaiting
Veronica. I was pleased, interested, elated. The girl was really
beautiful, and the sight of beauty exhilarates and animates like wine.

She was very punctual and came confidently into the room as the clock
struck. The cold morning light through a north window fell upon her
and instead of the light warming the face as so often happens, her
face seemed to warm the light. She was about sixteen, with a skin of
velvet, dark, quite dark, but clear as wine, and with a wonderful red
flush glowing through the cheek; the eyes were brilliant, brown to
blackness, but full of fire and lustre; her hair, dark as midnight,
clustered and fell about her face in soft curls. The nose was dainty,
refined, with perfect nostrils, the mouth deepest red and curved with
the most tender, seducing lines. I had never seen such a face. The
beauty of it was glorious, to an artist awe-inspiring.

I stood gazing at her, delighted, spellbound, and the young person
keenly observed my admiration. She smiled, revealing true Italian
teeth, exquisite, white, and perfect.

"I am Veronica Bernandini," she said. "I have two hours to spare in
the morning and three in the afternoon."

My first thought was not to let any other artist have her; not till I
had painted her at any rate and startled London with her face.

"Are you sitting to any one else?" I asked mechanically.

"No. I give the rest of my time to my family. We are very poor. My
mother and father are old. I am their sole support."

I waved my hand impatiently. All models tell you that. One gets so
tired of it.

"What do you want an hour? I will take all your time. You must not sit
to any one else."

Her eyes gleamed, and the lovely crimson mouth pouted.

"Five shillings an hour if you take the five hours a day," she
answered.

"I suppose you know that's double the ordinary price?" I said smiling.
"However, I don't mind. I'll pay you if I find you sit well. Take off
your hat now and sit down--anywhere. I want just to make a rough
sketch of your head."

She obeyed, and I drew out some large paper sheets and found a piece
of charcoal. Sitting down opposite her, I gazed at her meditatively.
Now that her hat had been removed I could see the extraordinary wealth
and beauty of her hair. It was black with lights of red and gold fire
in it, and fell in its own natural waves and curls and clusters all
about her small head and smooth white forehead.

What about a Bacchante? She was a perfect study for that. I always
imagined--perhaps from seeing antiques, where it is so represented,
that the head of a Bacchante should have hair like this; and it is
rare enough in English models. Suppose I made a large picture--The
Death of Pentheus--the king in Euripides' tragedy of the Bacchæ who in
his efforts to put down the Bacchanalia was slain by the enraged
Bacchantes. Suppose I put this one in the foreground.... But then it
seemed a pity to spoil such a lovely face with a look of rage....
Well, anyway, let me have a sketch first, and see what inspiration
came to me. I got up and looked amongst my odd possessions for a
vine-leaf wreath I had. When I found it and some ivy leaves, I came
back to her and fastened them round her head, in and out of those
wonderful vine-like tendrils of hair. She sat demurely enough and very
still while I did so, but when I wanted to unfasten the ugly modern
bodice and turn it down from her throat so as to get the head well
poised and free, she pressed her lips on my hand as it passed round
her neck.

I drew my hand away.

"Don't be silly, or I shan't employ you," I said with some annoyance.

She pushed out her crimson lips.

"You are too handsome to be an artist; they are mostly such guys."

"Hush, be quiet now, be still," I said, moving back from her to see if
I had the effect I wanted. I felt with a sudden rush of delight I had.
The face was just perfect now: the head a little inclined, the leaves
in the glossy hair, no more exact image of the idea the word Bacchante
always formed in my mind could be imagined.

I sketched her head in rapidly. I made two or three draughts of it in
charcoal, then I got my colours and did a rough study of it in colour.
Her neck, like that of almost all Italians, was a shade too short, but
round and lovely in shape and colour. The time passed unnoticed, and
it was only when the luncheon gong sounded I realised how long I had
been at work.

I sprang up and gathered the sheets of paper together.

"That's all now," I said. "I'll take you again three to six. Are you
tired?" I added, as she got up rather slowly and took up her hat.

"No," she answered, shaking her head. "All that was sitting down;
that's easy."

Her voice sounded flat, but I was too hurried to take much notice of
it. I wanted to get down to show Viola the work.

"Well, three o'clock then," I repeated, and ran downstairs.

Viola was waiting in the dining-room, but not at the table. I went
over to the window where she was standing, and showed her the
sketches.

"Oh, Trevor, how lovely; how perfectly beautiful!" she exclaimed,
gazing at the charcoal head.

"You have done that well, and what a glorious face!"

I flushed with pleasure.

"I'm so glad you like it. Come up this afternoon and see the model,
see me work. Say you're out, and let's have tea in the studio."

"Very well," she answered as the luncheon came in; "I'll say we want
tea up there. What a good idea to make her a Bacchante; it's the very
face for it."

"Suppose I took her as a Bacchante dancing, the whole figure I mean,
nude, under a canopy of vine leaves, make all the background,
everything, green vines with clusters of purple grapes, and then have
her dancing down the sort of avenue towards the foreground, with the
light pouring down through the leaves. How do you think that would
be?"

"I should think it would be lovely," Viola answered slowly, with a
little sigh.

I looked across at her quickly.

"You would like to be my only model for the body?" I said gently,
keeping my eyes on her face.

"No, Trevor, I really don't want to be selfish, and I do think you
should have another, only...."

"Yes, only...?"

"Well, when a woman is in love she does so long to be able to assume
all sorts of different forms, to be different women, so as to always
please and amuse and satisfy the man she loves. How delightful it
would be if one could change! One can be pretty, one can be amiable,
clever, charming, anything, but one cannot be different from oneself;
one must be the same, one can't get away from that."

I laughed.

"I don't want you to be different. I should be overwhelmed if you
suddenly changed into some one else! And whatever models I have, you
will always be the best. There could not be another such perfect
figure as yours."

Viola smiled, but an absent look came into her face.

After luncheon we both went up to the studio together, and Viola was
ensconced in my armchair when Veronica's knock came on the door.

I said, "Come in," and she entered with the confident air of the
morning. Directly she saw Viola, however, she seemed to stiffen with
resentment, and stood still by the door.

"Come in," I repeated, "and shut the door."

Viola looked at her kindly and laid down the charcoal sketch in her
lap.

"I have been looking at your head here and thinking it so beautiful,"
she said gently.

Veronica only stared at her a little ungraciously in return, and took
off her hat in silence.

I put her back into position, re-arranged the fillet on her head, and
set to work to complete the colour study.

We worked in unbroken silence till tea was brought up at four. Viola
rose to make it, and I told the girl to get up and move about if she
liked, and I set the canvas aside to dry. Viola offered the girl a cup
of tea, but she refused it and went and sat under the window on an old
couch, leaving us by the table.

The canvas was a success in a way so far, but the great sweetness of
the expression in the charcoal sketch of the morning was not there.

When tea was over I went up to Veronica and told her I must leave the
canvas of the head to dry, I could not work more on it then, and asked
her if she would pose for me as the Bacchante dancing. I wanted to see
if she would do for a larger picture.

I got no answer for a minute. Veronica looked down and began to pull
at the faded fringe of an old cushion.

At last I repeated my question.

"Not while _she's_ here," she muttered in a low, fierce tone.

I was surprised at the resentment in look and voice.

"Nonsense," I said with some annoyance. "You can pose before her as
well as before me."

Veronica did not answer, only pulled in sullen silence at the cushion.

"You are wasting my time," I said impatiently.

Veronica looked through the window.

"I shan't take off my clothes before her," she muttered defiantly.

I turned away from her in annoyance and approached Viola who had not
moved from her chair on the other side of the room. She sprang up and
came to meet me.

"She objects to my being here?" she said quickly. "Is it bothering
you? Because, if it is, I'll go; that'll settle it."

"It's awfully stupid. I'm so sorry, Viola; it's so idiotic of her."

Viola smiled brightly up at me.

"Never mind, I'll go. You'll be down soon, now."

I held the door open for her, and with a smiling nod at me she passed
through and went down the stairs. I waited till her bright head had
disappeared, and then closed the door and went back to Veronica.

"Now," I said, "Mrs. Lonsdale has left us. Will you get up and stand
as I want you to? Or do you want me to dismiss you?"

I felt extremely angry and annoyed. My heart beat violently. Viola had
come there by my invitation, she had deprived herself of any possible
society for the afternoon, and now had been practically turned out by
this impertinent little model.

Veronica got sulkily up from the couch and began to undress in
silence.

I walked away and flung myself into the armchair Viola had vacated,
and picked up the charcoal sketch.

How sweet the face was in that! And yet what an awful little devil the
girl on the couch had looked.

I was so accustomed to Viola's unfailing either good temper or
self-command, that I was beginning to forget women had bad tempers as
well as men.

After a minute or two Veronica came over to me; she had let her hair
down, and it fell prettily on her shoulders. I laid down the charcoal
sketches and looked at her critically as she approached.

Her figure had all the beauty of great plumpness and youthfulness.
Every contour was round and full, and yet firm. Her body was beautiful
in the sense that all healthy, sound, young, well-formed things are,
but there was, as it were, no soul in the beauty, nothing transcendent
in any of the lines or in the colour. It was something essentially of
earth, un-dreamlike, appealing to the senses, and to them alone.

I was struck with the great contrast it presented to the form of
Viola, which was so wonderfully ethereal, so divine in colour and
design. Every line in it was long and tapering, never coming to a
sudden stop, but merging with infinite grace into the next, and the
dazzling, immaculate whiteness of it all made it seem like something
of heaven. It suggested the vision, the ideal, all that man longs
after with his soul, that stirs the celestial fires within his brain,
not merely the flame of the senses.

In the form before me, the lines were short and often abrupt, the
curves quick and expressionless; it would do capitally for the
"Bacchante," it would not have served for a moment for the "Soul of
the Wood."

The girl was smiling now, and appeared quite amiable. Most people are
when they have got their own way. She asked me if I thought she would
do.

"Yes, I think you will. Stand back there, please, against that green
curtain. Now put one foot forward as if you were advancing. Yes,
that's right; lift both your arms up over your head."

I got up to give her a hoop of wire to hold as an arch over her, and
put a spray of artificial ivy over it.

"That'll do. Now stand still, and let's see how that works out."

The girl posed well. Evidently she was a model of considerable
practice, and I obtained an excellent sketch before a quarter to six,
when she said she must leave off and dress.

She did so in silence, while I studied my own work. When she had her
hat on I looked up and asked her if she wanted to be paid.

"No," she answered, "we'll leave it till the end of the week.
Good-bye."

"Good-bye," I said, and she went out. I laid the sketch on the table
beside me, and sat thinking. A sudden blankness fell upon me as I
stood mentally opposite this new idea that had never presented itself
to me in the same form before, that in my former easy, wandering
existence I had always welcomed a beautiful model, not only for the
gain to my art, but because of the incidental pleasure it might bring
me. But now I realised suddenly that this girl's beauty brought me no
elation. _It was not any use_, and in a flash I saw, too, that no
woman now, no beauty could be any use to me ever any more, for I was
not a single irresponsible existence any longer, but involved with
another which was sacred to me.

How often in the past, when entangled in some light _liaison_, I had
wished for deeper, stronger emotions, something to wake the mind and
stir the soul! Then in my love for Viola I had found all these and
welcomed them madly. She had stirred my whole sleeping being into
flame, and given me those keener and stronger desires of the brain,
and satisfied them; and till now it had seemed to me that this passion
for her was a free gift from the hands of Fate. Now, suddenly, I saw
that the gift had its price. That, after all, there was something to
be said for those light free loves of the past. That some joy had been
taken out of life, now those glittering trifles, toys of the senses,
were taken from me, made impossible.

For the first time I realised that a great passion has its yoke, and
that, in return for the great joy it gives, it demands and takes one's
freedom.

I sat motionless, feeling overwhelmed by the sudden blaze of light
that the simple incident of this model's advent had thrown on an
obscure psychological fact.

I saw now that my love for Viola was not wholly a gain, not something
extra added to my life's-cup that made it full to overflowing, but, as
always in this life, something had been taken away as well as added.

I felt as a child might feel who was presented with a magnificent gift
with which he was overjoyed, but who on taking it to the nursery to
add to his other treasures, saw his nurse locking these all away from
him for ever in a glass case above his reach.

As the child might, I hugged my new gift to me and delighted in it,
but I could not help feeling regret for those other small, glittering
toys with which I had formerly played so much, now shut away behind
the deadly glass pane of conscience.

It was not that Veronica appealed to me specially. I did not feel I
cared whether she came to the studio again or not except for the
picture, but the great principle involved, now that I was face to face
with it, appalled me.

Viola had sought to leave me free, by refusing marriage with me; but,
after all, what difference does the mere nominal tie make?

The essential attribute of a great passion--something that cannot be
eliminated from it--is the chain of fidelity it forges round its
prisoners.

I do not know how long I sat there, but at last I rose mechanically,
put the sheets of paper together, and went downstairs.

As I came to the drawing-room door I heard that Viola was playing.
The door stood ajar, and silently I entered and took my seat behind
her. She was improvising, just playing as the inspiration came to her,
and wholly absorbed and unconscious of my presence. There was a great
glass facing her, in which her whole image was reflected, and had she
glanced into it she must have seen me; but she did not. Her eyes gazed
out before her, wrapt, delighted; her face was quite white, her lips
parted in a little smile.

I saw she was under the influence of her music and absolutely happy,
full of joy, such as I could never give her. A great jealousy ran
through me, kindling all that passion I had for her. The thoughts and
reflections of an hour back seemed swept out of mind like dead leaves
before a storm. No other lighter loves could give me one-tenth of the
emotion that the pursuit and conquest of this strange soul could do.
For I had not conquered it. It was absorbed in, and lived in mysteries
of joy that its art alone could give it, and I was outside--almost a
stranger to it.

The thought burnt and stung me, and the fire of it wrapped round me as
I sat watching her. That body, so slim, so perfect, she had given me,
but I wanted more, I wanted that inner spirit to be mine, I wanted to
conquer that.

I watched her in a fierce, jealous anger, almost as I might have done
seeing her caressed by another lover, she was so wonderfully happy, so
independent of me, so unconscious of me; but man loves that which is
above him, difficult to obtain, hard to pursue. We cannot help it. We
are made to be hunters, and I felt I loved Viola then with fresh
passion.

Some time or other I would succeed in breaking through that charmed
circle in which she lived, in making her yield up to me the spiritual
maidenhood which, as it were, was hers.

I would be first and last and everything to her, and not even her art
should count beside me.

I closed my eyes and put my head back on the couch where I was sitting
and gave myself up to listening to the music.

How the instrument answered her! What a divine melody rose from it,
floating gently on the air like quivering wings.

Then suddenly came a storm of passion, and the room was filled with a
tempest of sound, while one strong thread of melody low down in the
bass ran through it all and seemed a fierce reproach of one in
anguish. At last one sheet of sound seemed to sweep the piano from end
to end, a cry of dismay, of pain, the woe and grief of one who sees
his world shattered suddenly before his eyes; then there was silence.
I sprang up and clasped her in my arms.

"Trevor," she exclaimed, like one awakening from a dream; "I had no
idea you were there."

"No," I said savagely; "you were so absorbed, you never noticed me
come in."

"Well, I heard the model go, and I waited and waited for you to come
down; but you were so long I turned to the piano to console me."

"Which it did quite well, apparently," I answered.

A sweet, tender look came over her face, and she stretched out her
arms to me.

"Nothing could wholly console me for your absence," she said; "and you
know that quite well; but the music always helps me to bear it."

I drew her to me and strained her close up to me in silence, longing
to conquer, to come into union with that mysterious inner something we
call the Soul.

Yet in this unconquerable quality, in this pursuit of that which
always escapes from our most passionate embraces, man finds an
inexhaustible delight.




CHAPTER VII

FREEDOM


The weeks slipped by, and I worked hard at the painting, while Viola
gave herself up to the music and all the work that the approaching
production of her opera gave her. Our evenings were always spent
together. We set aside two evenings in the week for our friends,
giving only small dinners of eight or ten. On the other evenings when
we were not dining out ourselves we went to the opera, and supper
after.

I often wondered whether there was anything or nothing in the fact
that we were not married to each other, which affected our feelings
and relations to each other. Does that conventional bond make some
subtle difference, just by its existence; and did that account for the
fact that we seemed to find a greater delight in each other's society,
a greater need of each other than the average husband and wife do; or
was it only because we happened to be two who had met and really loved
more than most people do, and had we been married, we should have felt
the same?

Certainly we were looked upon as peculiar because, being married, we
were so much together.

The true explanation is perhaps that, as a rule, the people who love
do not marry, and those who marry do not love.

Coming home from our supper after the opera, I felt the same
passionate delight in Viola as that first evening when I had driven
her to my studio. Waking in the dawn to find her sleeping on my arm, I
had the same joyous elation as I had known under the thatched roof,
during our first stay together. Unfortunately, however, a great
passion for one object does not necessarily exclude lesser passions,
or, rather, passing fancies of the senses for other objects. It is
generally supposed that it does, but my experience is rather to the
contrary.

With women possibly it may do so oftener than with men, but extreme
constancy, absolute exclusiveness is not the natural product of a
great passion. It is a question rather of sentiment and artificial
restraint.

Nature is not on the side of sentiment. She is always a prodigal, with
the one great aim before her of ensuring the continuance of the race.

Consequently, when a man is already loving one object with all his
force, it is not Nature's plan to make him turn from all others by
instinct. No, she is ever ready with others, ever rather prompting
him, leading him towards others, in order that, should accident or
death remove his first mate, others should not be wanting, and her
great scheme should not be spoiled nor interrupted.

Nature is always on a grand scale, always acting in and for the
plural, never for the singular.

Does she want one oak to survive, she throws on the ground a million
acorns for that purpose.

Man she has fitted to love not one, but hundreds, and our senses act
automatically and are always on the side of Nature. It is the mind
alone that man has taught to act against her, and that demands and
gives fidelity in love.

A woman's attitude towards a second lover, when she is deeply in love
with the first, is not so often "I don't want him," as "It would
grieve my first lover, therefore I will not take him."

A man, when offered a second mistress, usually thinks "I will take
her, but I mustn't let the first one know." In both it is the anxiety
of Nature that neither should be left mateless, part of her tremendous
scheme of insurance against mischance.

And all this great love and passion which I had for Viola, passion
which exhausted me almost to the point sometimes of being unable to
work, did not seal my senses against the beauty of Veronica--beauty I
painted daily in the studio.

I used to enjoy the afternoon spent there now with a different
pleasure from that of work merely. The sensuous attraction had become
very great, and I was beginning to feel it was not innocent and to
half-long for, half-dread an interruption, something to break through
it, end it.

Veronica professed to have fallen in love with me. It is rather a
trick of models to do this. They think it can do no harm, and possibly
extra benefits to themselves may accrue. Perhaps she was in love with
me, if a mere covetousness of the senses can be called love. This she
had, and from the first she had determined to subdue me. Her ruse of
the first day had succeeded. Viola had never again come to the studio
while she was there, and so hour after hour we were alone together
undisturbed. I kept hard at work the whole time, hardly exchanging a
word with her, and would go downstairs for tea with Viola; but she
employed her eyes continually to tell her story, and caught my hand
and kissed it whenever she was able.

Just at first I felt only amusement and annoyance. Then gradually I
used to expect the soft look to come into the beautiful eyes, the
touch of the warm lips on my hand began to stir and thrill me. I felt
a vague dislike and distrust of the girl mentally, I thought she was
vain, selfish, mercenary, revengeful, and bad-tempered, but with all
that Nature had nothing to do. Her servants, the senses, submitted to
the youth and beauty of the newcomer, and that was all Nature cared
about.

One afternoon she was posing as usual, and I was painting, deeply
absorbed, on the picture of the "Bacchante" when her voice suddenly
disturbed me.

"May I move just for a minute?"

"Certainly," I exclaimed, looking up and laying down my brush.

The girl laid down her spray of ivy-leaves, walked across the space
intervening between us, and, before I was aware of her intention,
threw her arms round my neck and kissed me.

The kiss seemed to burn my lips, but with the current of passion I
also felt a storm of anger against her. I sprang up and seized her
shoulders, pushing her away from me.

"Don't, Trevor, don't, you are hurting me; you are hurting my
shoulders," she exclaimed, the tears starting to her eyes.

I took my hands from her arms, and saw my grasp had left deep marks of
crimson on them.

"Go and get dressed then, and go," I said furiously; "I'm not going to
paint any more." I pushed my chair away and threw the palette and
brushes on to the table near.

Veronica shrank from me and turned pale. In that moment the intense
beauty of the face and figure was borne in upon me, she clung as if
for support to the easel with one soft hand, all the youthful body
seemed to shrink together in a beautiful dismay, great tears rolled
down the cheeks from the dark reproachful eyes. I saw it all for one
moment, feeling the anger sinking down under that strange influence
that beauty has upon us. But I would not look at her. I turned my back
on her and went over to the window, hardly conscious of what I did. I
stood there for a few moments; then, suddenly, there came a cry and
the sound of a fall behind me. I looked round and saw her lying, a
little crushed heap, by the couch where she usually dressed.

I sprang forward, full of self-reproach. How foolish I had been! So
unnecessarily harsh! I went to her. In obedience to my order, she had
put some of her clothes on, and now lay there senseless apparently and
quite white, her arms, still bare, stretched out on the floor beside
her. She looked so pretty, so small, round, and helpless,

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