December Love

by Robert Hichens

  CHAPTER III

  Miss Van Tuyn and the members of the "old guard" went home to bed thatnight realizing that Lady Sellingworth had had "things" done to herselfbefore she came out to the theatre party.

  "She's beginning again after--how many years is it?" said Lady Wrackleyto Mrs. Ackroyde in the motor as they drove away from Shaftesbury.

  "Ten," said Mrs. Ackroyde, who was blessed with a sometimes painfullyretentive memory.

  "I suppose it's Zotos," observed Lady Wrackley.

  "Who's Zotos?" inquired young Leving of the turned-up nose and the larkyexpression.

  "A Greek who's a genius and who lives in South Moulton Street."

  "What's he do?"

  "Things that men shouldn't be allowed to know anything about. Talk toBobbie for a minute, will you?"

  She turned again to Mrs. Ackroyde.

  "It must be Zotos. But even he will be in a difficulty with her if shewants to have very much done. She made the mistake of her life when shebecame an old woman. I remember saying at the time that some day shewould repent in dust and ashes and want to get back, and that then itwould be too late. How foolish she was!"

  "She will be much more foolish now if she really begins again," saidMrs. Ackroyde in her cool, common-sense way.

  The young men were talking, and after a moment she continued:

  "When a thing's once been thoroughly seen by everyone and recognized forwhat it is, it is worse than useless to hide it or try to hide it.Adela should know that. But I must say she looked remarkably wellto-night--for her. He's a good-looking boy."

  "He must be at least twenty-eight years younger than she is."

  "More, probably. But she prefers them like that. Don't you rememberRochecouart? He was a mere child. When we gave our hop at Prince's shewas mad about him. And afterwards she wanted to marry Rupert Louth. Itnearly killed her when she found out he had married that awful girl whocalled herself an actress. And there was someone else after Rupert."

  "I know. I often wonder who it was. Someone _we_ don't know."

  "Someone quite out of our world. Anyhow, he must have broken her heartfor the time. And it's taken ten years to mend. Do you think that shesold her jewels secretly to pay that man's debts, or gave them to him,and that then he threw her over? I have often wondered."

  "So have we all. But we shall never know. Adela is very clever."

  "And now it's another boy! And only twenty-eight or so. He can't be morethan twenty-seven or twenty-eight. Poor old Adela!"

  "Perhaps he likes white hair. There are boys who do."

  "But not for long. Beryl was furious."

  "It is hardly a compliment to her. I expect her cult for Adela willdiminish rapidly."

  "Oh, she'll very soon get him away. Even Zotos won't be able to do verymuch for Adela now. She burnt all her boats ten years ago. Her case isreally hopeless, and she'll very soon find that out."

  "Do you remember when she tried to live up to Rupert Louth as anAmazon?"

  "Yes. She nearly killed herself over it; but I must say she stuck to itsplendidly. She has plenty of courage."

  "Is Alick Craven athletic? I scarcely know him."

  "Well, he's never been a rough rider like Rupert Louth; but I believehe's a sportsman, does all the usual things."

  "Then I dare say we shall soon see Adela on the links and at Kings'."

  "Probably. I'll get them both down to Coombe and see if she'll playtennis on my hard court. I shouldn't wonder. She has pluck enough foranything."

  "Ask me that Sunday. I wonder how long it will last."

  "Not long. It can't."

  "And then she'll go crash again. It must be awful to have a temperamentlike hers."

  "Her great mistake is that apparently she puts some heart into it everytime. I can't think how she manages it, but she does. Do you remembertwelve years ago, when she was crazy about Harry Blake? Well--"

  But at this moment the motor drew up at the Carlton, and a huge man inuniform opened the door.

  Mrs. Ackroyde was right in her comment on Miss Van Tuyn. In spite ofCraven's acting that night Miss Van Tuyn had thoroughly understoodhow things really were. She had persuaded Braybrooke to invite LadySellingworth to make a fourth in order that she might find out whetherany link had been forged between Craven and Lady Sellingworth, whetherthere was really any secret understanding between them, or whether thattete-a-tete dinner in Soho had been merely a passing pleasure, managedby Lady Sellingworth, meaning little, and likely to lead to nothing.And she had found out that there certainly was a secret understandingbetween Lady Sellingworth and Craven from which she was excluded. Cravenhad preferred Adela Sellingworth to herself, and Adela Sellingworth wasfully aware of it.

  It was characteristic of Miss Van Tuyn that though her vanity was sogreat and was now severely wounded she did not debate the matter withinherself, did not for a moment attempt to deceive herself about it.And yet really she had very little ground to go upon. Craven had beencharming to her, had replied to her glances, had almost made love to herat dinner, had sat very close to her during the last act of the play.Yes; but it had all been acting on his part. Quite coolly she toldherself that. And Lady Sellingworth had certainly wished him to act, hadeven prompted him to it.

  Miss Van Tuyn felt very angry with Lady Sellingworth. She was less angrywith Craven. Indeed, she was not sure that she was angry with him atall. He was several years older than herself, but she began to think ofhim as really very young, as much younger in mind and temperament thanshe was. He was only a clever boy, susceptible to flattery, easilyinfluenced by a determined will, and probably absurdly chivalrous. Sheknew the sort of chivalry which was a symptom really of babyhood inthe masculine mind. It was characteristic of sensitive natures, shebelieved, and it often led to strange aberrations. Craven was only ababy, although a baby of the world, and Adela Sellingworth with hervast experience had, of course, seen that at a glance and was now busilyplaying upon baby's young chivalry. Miss Van Tuyn could almost hear thetalk about being so lonely in the big house in Berkeley Square, aboutthe freedom of men and the difficulty of having any real freedom whenone is a solitary woman with no man to look after you, about the tragedyof being considered old when your heart and your nature are really stillyoung, almost as young as ever they were. Adela Sellingworth would knowhow to touch every string, would be an adept at calling out the musicshe wanted. How easily experienced women played upon men! It was reallypathetic! And as Craven had thought of protecting Lady Sellingworthagainst Miss Van Tuyn, so now Miss van Tuyn felt inclined to protectAlick Craven against Lady Sellingworth. She did not want to see a niceand interesting boy make a fool of himself. Yet Craven was on the vergeof doing that, if he had not already done it. Lady Wrackley and Mrs.Ackroyde had seen how things were, had taken in the whole situation ina moment. Miss Van Tuyn knew that, and in her knowledge there wasbitterness. These two women had seen Lady Sellingworth preferred beforeher by a mere boy, had seen her beauty and youth go for nothing beside awoman of sixty's fascination.

  There must be something quite extraordinary in Craven. He must beutterly unlike other young men. She began to wonder about him intensely.

  On the following morning, as usual, she went to Glebe Place to take whatshe had called her "lesson" from Dick Garstin. She arrived rather early,a few minutes before eleven, and found Garstin alone, looking tired andirritable.

  "You look as if you had been up all night," she said as he let her in.

  "So I have!"

  She did not ask him what he had been doing. He would probably refuse totell her. Instead she remarked:

  "Will you be able to paint?"

  "Probably not. But perhaps the fellow won't come."

  "Why not. He always--" She stopped; then said quickly, "So he was up allnight too?"

  "Yes."

  "I didn't know you knew him out of the studio."

  "Of course I know him wherever I meet him. What do you mean?"

  "I didn't know you did meet him."

 
; Garstin said nothing. She turned and went up the staircase to the bigstudio. On an easel nearly in the middle of the room, and not very farfrom the portrait of the judge, there was a sketch of Nicolas Arabian'shead, neck and shoulders. No collar or clothes were shown. Garstin hadtold Arabian flatly that he wasn't going to paint a magnificent torsolike his concealed by infernal linen and serge, and Arabian had beenquite willing that his neck and shoulders should be painted in the nude.

  In the strong light of the studio Garstin's unusual appearance offatigue was more noticeable, and Miss Van Tuyn could not help saying:

  "What on earth have you been doing, Dick? You always seem made of iron.But to-day you look like an ordinary man who has been dissipating."

  "I played poker all night," said Garstin.

  "With Arabian?"

  "And two other fellows--picked them up at the Cafe Royal."

  "Well, I hope you won."

  "No, I didn't. Both Arabian and I lost a lot. We played here."

  "Here!"

  "Yes. And I haven't had a wink since they left. I don't suppose he'llturn up. And if he does I shan't be able to do anything at it."

  He went to stand in front of the sketch, which was in oils, and staredat it with lack-lustre eyes.

  "What d'you think of it?" he said at last.

  Miss Van Tuyn was rather surprised by the question. Garstin was not inthe habit of asking other people's opinions about his work.

  "It's rather difficult to say," she said, with some hesitation.

  "That means you think it's rotten."

  "No. But it isn't finished and--I don't know."

  "Well, I hate it."

  He turned away, sat down on a divan, and let his big knuckly hands dropdown between his knees.

  "Fact is, I haven't got at the fellow's secret," he said meditatively."I got a first impression--"

  He paused.

  "I know!" said Miss Van Tuyn, deeply interested. "You told me what itwas."

  "The successful blackmailer. Yes. But now I don't know. I can't make himout. He's the hardest nut to crack I ever came across."

  He moved his long lips from side to side three or four times, thenpursed them up, lifted his small eyes, which had been staring betweenhis feet at a Persian rug on the parquet in front of the divan, lookedat Miss Van Tuyn, who was standing before him, and said:

  "That's why I sat up all night playing poker with him."

  "Ah!" she said, beginning to understand

  She sat down beside him, turned towards him, and said eagerly:

  "You wanted to get really to know him?"

  "Yes; but I didn't. The fellow's an enigma. He's bad. And that'spractically all I know about him."

  He glanced with distaste at the sketch he had made.

  "And it isn't enough. It isn't enough by a damned long way."

  "Is he a good loser?" she asked.

  "The best I ever saw. Never turned a hair, and went away looking asfresh as a well-watered gardenia, damn him!"

  "Who were the others?"

  "Two Americans I've seen now and then at the Cafe Royal. I believe theylive mostly in Paris."

  "Friends of his?"

  "I don't think so. He said they came and sat down at his table in thecafe and started talking. I suggested the poker. They didn't. So itwasn't a plant."

  "Perhaps he isn't bad," she said; "and perhaps that's why you can'tpaint him."

  "What d'you mean?"

  "I mean because you have made up your mind that he is. I think you havea fixed idea about that."

  "What?"

  "You have painted so many brutes, that you seek for the brute ineveryone who sits to you. If you were to paint me you'd--"

  "Now, now! There you are at it again! I'll paint you if I ever feel likeit--not a minute before."

  "I was only going to say that if you ever painted me you'd try to findsomething horrible in me that you could drag to the surface."

  "Well, d'you mean that you have the _toupet_ to tell me there is nothinghorrible in you?"

  "Now we are getting away from Arabian," she said, with coolself-possession.

  "Owing to your infernal egoism, my girl!"

  "Override it, then, with your equally infernal altruism, my boy!"

  Garstin smiled, and for a moment looked a little less fatigued, but ina moment his almost morose preoccupation returned. He glanced againtowards the sketch.

  "I should like to slit it up with a palette knife!" he said. "The devilof it is that I felt I could do a really great thing with that fellow. Istruck out a fine phrase that night. D'you remember?"

  "Yes. You called him a king in the underworld."

  Abruptly he got up and began to walk about the studio, stopping nowhere, now there, before his portraits. He paused for quite a long timebefore the portraits of Cora and the judge. Then he came back to thesketch of Arabian.

  "You must help me!" he said at last.

  "I!" she exclaimed, with almost sharp surprise. "How can I help you?"

  He turned, and she saw the pin-points of light.

  "What do you think of the fellow?" he said. "After all, you asked me topaint him. What do you think of him?"

  "I think he's magnificently handsome."

  "Blast his envelope!" Garstin almost roared out. "What do you thinkof his nature? What do you think of his soul? I'm not a painter ofsurfaces."

  Miss Van Tuyn sat for a moment looking steadily at him. She wasunusually natural and unself-conscious, like one thinking too stronglyto bother about herself. At last she said:

  "Arabian is a very difficult man to understand, and I don't understandhim."

  "Do you like him?"

  "I couldn't exactly say that."

  "Do you hate him?"

  "No."

  Garstin suddenly looked almost maliciously sly.

  "I can tell you something that you feel about him."

  "What?"

  "You are afraid of him."

  Miss Van Tuyn's silky fair skin reddened.

  "I'm not afraid of anyone," she retorted. "If I have one virtue, I thinkit's courage."

  "You're certainly not a Miss Nancy as a rule. In fact, your cheek ispretty well known in Paris. But you're afraid of Arabian."

  "Am I really?" said the girl, recovering from her surprise and facinghim hardily. "And how have you found that out?"

  "You took a fancy to the fellow the first time you saw him."

  "I did not take a fancy. I am not an under-housemaid."

  "There's not really a particle of difference between an under-housemaidand a super-lady when it comes to a good-looking man."

  "Dick, you're a great painter, but you're also a great vulgarian!"

  "Well, my father was a national schoolmaster and my mother was abutcher's daughter. I can't help my vernacular. You took a fancy to thisfellow in the Cafe Royal, and you begged me to paint him so that youmight get to know him. I obeyed you--"

  "The heavens will certainly fall before you become obedient."

  "--and asked him here. Then I asked you. You came. He came. I startedpainting. How many sittings have I had?"

  "Three."

  "Then you've met him here four times?"

  "Yes."

  "And why have you always let him go away alone from the studio?"

  "Why should I go with him? I much prefer to stay on here and have a talkwith you. You are far more interesting than Arabian is. He says verylittle. Probably he knows very little. I can learn from you."

  "That's all very well. I will say you're damned keen on acquiringknowledge. But Arabian interests you in a way I certainly don't; in asex way."

  "That'll do, Dick!"

  "And directly a woman gets to that all the lumber of knowledge can go tothe devil for her! When Nature drives the coach brain interests occupythe back seat. That is a rule with women to which I've never yetfound an exception. Every day you're longing to go away from here withArabian; every day he does his level best to get you to go. Yet youdon't go. Why's that? You're held
back by fear. You're afraid of thefellow, my girl, and it's not a bit of use your denying it. When I see athing I see it--it's there. I don't deal in hallucinations."

  All this time his small eyes were fixed upon her, and the fierce littlelights in them seemed to touch her like the points of two pins.

  "You talk about fear! Does it never occur to you that Arabian's a manyou picked up at the Cafe Royal, that we neither of us know anythingabout him, that he may be--"

  "Anyhow, he's far more presentable than I am."

  "Of course he's presentable, as you call it. He's very well dressed andvery good-looking, but still--"

  At that moment she thought of Craven, and in her mind quickly comparedthe two men.

  "But still you're afraid of him. Where is your frankness? Why don't youacknowledge what I already know?"

  Miss Van Tuyn looked down and sat for a moment quite still withoutspeaking. Then she began to take off her gloves. Finally, she liftedher hands to her head, took off her hat, and laid it on the divan besideher.

  "It isn't that I am afraid of Arabian," she then said, at last lookingup. "But the fact is I am like you. I don't understand him. I can'tplace him. I don't even know what his nationality is. He knows nobody Ido. I feel certain of that. Yet he must belong somewhere, have some setof friends, some circle of acquaintances, I suppose. He isn't at allvulgar. One couldn't call him genteel, which is worse, I think. It's allvery odd. I'm not conventional. In Paris I'm considered even terriblyunconventional. I've met all sorts of men, but I've never met a man likeArabian. But the other day--don't you remember?--you summed him up. Yousaid he had no education, no knowledge, no love of art or literature,that he was clever, sensual, idle, acquisitive, made of iron, withnerves of steel. Don't you remember?"

  "To be sure I do."

  "Isn't that enough to go upon?"

  "For the painting? No, it isn't. Besides, you said you weren't sure Iwas right in my diagnosis of the chap's character and physical part."

  "I wasn't sure, and I'm not sure now."

  "Tell me God's own truth, Beryl. Come on!"

  He came up to her, put one hand on her left shoulder, and looked downinto her eyes.

  "Aren't you a bit afraid of the fellow?"

  She met his eyes steadily.

  "There's something--" She paused.

  "Go ahead, I tell you!"

  "I couldn't describe it. It's more like an atmosphere than anythingelse. It seems to hang about him. I've never felt anything quite like itwhen I've been with anyone else."

  "An atmosphere! Now we're getting at it."

  He took his heavy hand away from her shoulder.

  "A woman feels that sort of thing more sensitively than a man does. Sex!Go on! What about it?"

  "But I scarcely know what I mean--really, Dick. No! But it's--it's anunsafe atmosphere."

  "Ah!"

  "One doesn't know where one is in it. At least, I don't. Once in LondonI was lost for a little while in Regents Park in a fog. It's--it'ssomething like that. I couldn't see the way, and I heard steps andvoices that sounded strange and--I don't know."

  "Find out!"

  "That's all very well. You are terribly selfish, Dick. You don't carewhat happens so long as you can paint as you wish to paint. You'dsacrifice me, anyone--"

  The girl seemed strangely uneasy. Her usual coolness had left her. Thehot blood had come back to her cheeks and glowed there in uneven patchesof red. Garstin gazed at her with profound and cruel interest.

  "Sacrifice!" he said. "Who talked of sacrificing you? Who wishes tosacrifice you? I only want--"

  "One doesn't know--with a man like that one doesn't know where it wouldlead to."

  "Then you think he's a thundering blackguard? And yet you defended himjust now, said perhaps I couldn't paint him just because I'd made up mymind he was a brute. You're a mass of contradictions."

  "I don't say he's bad. He may not be bad."

  "Fact is, as I said, you're in a mortal funk of him."

  "I am not!" she said, with sudden anger. "No one shall say I'm afraidof any man. You can ask anyone who knows me really well, and you willalways hear the same story. I'm afraid of no one and nothing, and I'veproved it again and again."

  "Well then, what's to prevent you proving it to me, my girl?"

  "I will!"

  She lifted her chin and looked suddenly impudent.

  "What do you wish me to do to prove it?" she asked him defiantly.

  "If Arabian does come to-day go away with him when he goes. Get to knowhim really. You could, I believe. But ever since he's come here to sithe has shut up the box which contains the truth of what he is, lockedit, and lost the key. His face is a mask, and I don't paint masks."

  "Very well. I will."

  "Good!" said Garstin sonorously, and looking suddenly much less tiredand morose.

  "But why do you think _I_ could get to know him?"

  "Because he's--but you know why better than I do."

  "I don't."

  "Arabian's in love with you, my girl. By Jove! There he is!"

  The bell had sounded below.

  With a swift movement Garstin got hold of a palette knife, sprang at thesketch of Arabian, and ripped up the canvas from top to bottom. Miss VanTuyn uttered a cry.

  "Dick!"

  "That's all right!"

  He threw the knife down.

  "We'll do better than that by a long way."

  He got hold of her hand.

  "Stick to your word, my girl, and I'll paint you yet--and not an Academyportrait. But you've got to _live_. Just now, with your cheeks all inpatches you looked stunning."

  The bell went again.

  "Now for him!"

  He hurried downstairs.