by George Moore
The peculiar person was Lewis, and as he walked down the pathway the sun turned the brown hair that fell on his neck to gold.
“He walks like a girl,” said Ethel Ormrod.
“I don’t know what you mean, Ethel,” her sister replied; “most people would think that he walked very gracefully.”
There was a momentary lull in the tennis, as he joined the groups assembled about the courts, and Mrs. Bentham introduced him at once to Lady Marion, for she knew that half the county took its opinion from that old lady — and she did well, for what with her sister’s whining stories and little worries, and Mr. Swannell’s political commonplaces, Lady Marion was in a humour that allowed her to see little else but good in Lewis.
“I hear you are decorating Mrs. Bentham’s ballroom,” she said.
“I have not yet finished my first panel, but all my sketches are done,” Lewis answered; and Lady Marion asked him if his sketches were original.
“Inasmuch,” he answered, “as I take Cupid from one engraving, and a nymph from another, and put them together.”
The footmen were handing round ices, and Lewis asked Lady Marion if she would come with him to the tent and choose an ice for herself; or, if she would tell him which ice she preferred, he would get it for her.
Lady Marion said that she would go and have a look round. “And, perhaps, strawberries and cream might tempt me, or some claret cup, or lemonade. I think I’ll go with you and have a look round,” she said.
As she rose from her chair Lady Helen came forward to speak to her aunt, and Lady Marion said:
“Mr. Seymour, let me introduce you to my niece, Lady Helen Trevor.”
“Dear me, what a fool Marion is,” Lady Granderville said to herself; “she introduces that man to Helen simply because he can gabble about pictures; and now Helen’s chances of being agreeable to Lord Senton are done for — that fellow won’t leave her the whole afternoon. Really, Marion is too thoughtless.”
Her annoyance at her sister’s thoughtlessness increased when she saw that Lady Marion had asked Helen if she would care to come with her to the tent; and when Helen, instead of walking by Lady Marion, walked on the other side of Lewis, this attracted everybody’s attention, including Lucy’s, who sat down by Lady Granderville and tried to speak to her of indifferent things; speaking, however, so disconnectedly that Lady Granderville guessed that she was thinking of Mr. Seymour, and began to wonder if it was possible that Lucy was in love with her painter.
“I hope she is,” she continued in her thoughts, “for she will keep him out of Helen’s way.”
“A sort of buffer-state,” she said aloud.
“Like Belgium,” Lucy answered.
“Belgium, did you say?” Lady Granderville interjected. “I hope we shan’t be sent there. But I hear Mr. Seymour is decorating your ballroom, and is doing it beautifully.”
At once Lucy began to speak of Lewis’s gift for decoration, “in other words,” she said, “for filling a space.” The words “filling a space” were not lost upon Lady Granderville.
“She is picking up his jargon,” she said; and both women waited for Lewis to reappear.
He came forward a few minutes afterwards with Lady Marion and Lady Helen on either side of him, and the three walked towards Lady Granderville, as if with the intention of rejoining her. But on their way thither, to Lady Granderville’s annoyance, Helen led Lewis towards a seat under the cedars.
“How determined she is,” Lucy said to herself; and she would have gone forward to carry Lewis off, if she could have escaped from her guests.
A match between Miss Ormrod and Miss Fanshaw was just going to begin; and to avoid the friends in whom she had no interest, and the rays of the sun which were stealing under her long-fringed parasol, Lady Helen rose and walked through the pleasure grounds with Lewis.
.. A mother watched her daughter, a mistress her lover, and the two women’s faces told with what uneasiness they saw what was happening. Even the tennis players forgot their games and looked after the great beauty that the young painter was now leading away to some secluded corner of the park. The girls, less discreet than the young men, exchanged glances and whispered among themselves; and Lord Senton, annoyed, foolishly asked Mrs. Bentham when she was going out riding with him again.
Lucy gave an abrupt answer, and moved away from him as if it had become her duty to speak to some other guests.
“I wonder what she can see in that painter, to go off with him like that?” Lord Senton said to Day, and both sat watching the retreating figures, neither of which had any suspicion of the attention which both were attracting.
A turn brought them to the river. “Always flowing,” Lady Helen said. “Let us sit here, and tell me about your painting. When shall I see your pictures?”
“As soon as I have anything to show I shall be delighted. I have only just started a panel,” he answered.
Lady Helen did not reply, but sat listlessly drawing on the ground with her parasol. At last she said: “I suppose that if a man has an art to which he is devoted, he can dispense with all other interests. In books lovers are all painters and poets, but I don’t think artists care much about women.”
“But you are a poetess, Lady Helen. Does that mean, therefore, that you have no interest in the men you meet?”
“Very little in the men I meet,” she answered.
“But you dream?” he said.
“We must all dream,” she answered; and her voice had in it that accent of regret so dear to youthful hearts.
Neither spoke; each struggled with an emotion that was almost pain.
“You are going to Russia, Lady Helen?”
“Perhaps; but one returns from Russia,” she replied. “Let us hope so,” she added, lifting her eyes.
And then the conversation fell into commonplace, and they talked of things that did not interest them, listening all the while to the river bubbling past them. At the end of a long silence Lady Helen said, “My mother will begin to wonder what has become of me.”
Lewis’s lack of knowledge of social conventions and customs prevented him from answering her, and they turned back meeting Mrs. Bentham and Mrs. Thorpe in the path coming towards them, and they returned up the pathway.
“Lady Granderville sent me,” Mrs. Thorpe said, “in search of you. She says she is thinking of leaving.”
“Mother no sooner arrives than she begins thinking of leaving,” Lewis heard Lady Helen say; “particularly when anybody else is being amused.”
Lewis would have wished Lady Helen to have spoken any other words but these, for already he had begun to fear he had been guilty of an indiscretion, of an imprudence that might result in his dismissal, and, foreseeing his departure next morning, in the luggage cart, perhaps, he tried to defend himself, telling his patroness that Lady Helen had proposed they should walk to the river. “I couldn’t tell her that I could not accompany her, could I? Be just.”
“I suppose,” she said, “that you admire her very much. Have you been making love to her?”
“We were only talking about painting and poetry; she writes poetry, and wanted to know my opinion,” he answered. “She asked me if I would give her some lessons in painting,” his vanity prompted him to add, but no sooner were the words spoken than he regretted them.
“Give her lessons?” she repeated; “very well, you will have plenty of time, for I don’t think I will take any more off you.”
These words made it plain to Lewis that if he could persuade Lucy to condone his conduct and forget it, he would one day be admitted to her bedroom.
“I could not do else than follow her,” he said, “without seeming rude.”
“Are you sure you don’t love her, Lewis?”
“Sure I do not love her, Lucy! A quarter of an hour ago I saw her for the first time, and in a few days she’ll be going to St. Petersburg.”
CHAP. XIII.
LUCY DID NOT answer him, and he began to ask himself if he should have r
efrained from using her Christian name, and vowed he would attribute the indiscretion, if she considered it one, to the emotion of the moment.
An hour later, as he stood on the steps watching the visitors drive away, he said to himself: “As soon as the last has departed I will ask her if she is angry with me, and beg of her to forgive me.” But among the last guests to depart were some friends whom Lucy succeeded in persuading to stay to dinner, and these stayed on anon; it was nearly eleven o’clock before their carriage drove away, and then Lucy bade Lewis a formal good-night and he went up to his room, asking himself if a walk in a wood and ten minutes spent by a river’s brink with a young girl would cause him to be thrown out of Claremont House. “Our lives do not depend upon such trifling circumstances as these,” he said, and began to think the matter out, discovering new arguments which he would advance when Lucy spoke to him again on the subject. He would tell her that Lady Helen had asked him to walk in the wood with her — which was true. “How could I refuse?” he would say. “You wouldn’t have me rude to one of your guests?” An admirable argument, this seemed to him to be, and he hoped she would come down to breakfast next morning: she sometimes appeared at breakfast and sometimes she didn’t. Alas! the first thing the butler told him next morning was that Mrs. Bentham would not appear before luncheon — a piece of news that set him conjecturing, asking himself if she wished to avoid him; and all the morning he expected a note from her telling him what the trains to London were. He knew she would not write such a letter, but he could not stay the thoughts that floated through his mind and prevented him from applying himself to a Cupid’s head. He stopped to listen, his face brightening at the sound of footsteps and darkening when they died away. He lit a cigarette and put his palette aside, saying: “I can do nothing till I have spoken with her.” At last the door opened — it was she. “I have been waiting for you,” he said.
“But I thought,” she answered, “we were agreed as to the composition?”
It was a great relief to Lewis to hear Lucy say these words, for he knew now that he was not going to be turned out of Claremont House, and sent back to the garret that would seem ten times more like a garret now than it had ever done. Having tasted the flesh-pots of Claremont House, he felt he must go on tasting. Another thing, if he were sent back to his garret there would be no Gwynnie Lloyd to relieve his solitude — he would have to endure it alone.
“But I thought we were agreed as to the composition?”
“Yes; you agreed with me,” he answered, “that a nymph in the panel over the fireplace should press a dove to her bosom, and that a Cupid should stretch forth his hand with an insistent gesture that the nymph must give the bird to him. That was the motive,” he said.
“Yes, and a very pretty motive, too,” she said. “I am looking forward to seeing it. You have a movement for the nymph, I suppose?”
“Yes,” he said, “I found a drawing that gives me very nearly the movement I want.”
“Let me see it”; and when Lewis found the drawing Lucy said: “Yes, you have got your nymph.”
“I’m glad you think so,” he answered.
“And a Cupid will be easily found.”
“Why do you say that?” he asked. “You are laughing at me. Why are you laughing at me?”
“But I’m not laughing and they walked over to the window and stood watching a flock of sheep that had collected in the shade of a great elm.
“If you are not laughing at me, you are angry with me.”
“Angry with you? Why should I be angry? Because you have not been working very hard this morning?” she asked.
“If I haven’t been working it is because — I told you yesterday that I did not love Lady Helen.”
“But why should that make me angry?”
“I said that I only loved you.”
“And you’ve found out since then that you told me an untruth?”
“You aren’t angry with me because I said I loved you?”
As Lucy was about to answer him, a step was heard, and Lewis handed Lucy an engraving and asked her if she thought well of it.
A moment after the butler entered; he handed Mrs. Bentham a telegram, and said that Lord Senton was in the drawing-room.
“His lordship is going to London by the two o’clock train and would like to know if he can do anything for you in London.”
Before answering, Mrs. Bentham opened the telegram. “My father is very ill, Mr. Seymour; I shall have to go to London.”
“What shall I tell Lord Senton?” the butler asked.
“Tell his lordship that I will be with him in a minute.”
“So you’re going up to London with Lord Senton,” Lewis said, and there was a little agony in his voice that made Lucy forget her father for a moment.
“My dear Lewis, Lord Senton is nothing to me and never will be, except a neighbour. But a neighbour he is, and as we are going up to London the same day there is no reason why we should not travel together. It would look rather marked if we didn’t.”
CHAP. XIV.
HE COULD SEE Lord Senton from one of the windows of the ballroom following Lucy into the brougham; and, his heart misgiving him, he sat like one overcome, till a knock at the door awoke him from his sad reverie. “Come in,” he cried, and was surprised to see Day.
“Are you sure I may come in?” he asked. “Artists, I know, don’t like to show unfinished pictures; but I won’t look at them. I just called to ask you if you would care to come for a drive.”
Lewis did not answer, and Day, interpreting his silence, said: “Ah, I see you are too busy. May I look? A very nice young woman you are sketching up there. She’d do: oh, yes, she’d do very nicely”; and Lewis looked down upon the small, spare, vulgar little man, who stood in the middle of the floor, his legs wide apart, his hands thrust in his pockets.
“Have you got any cigarettes?” he asked.
Lewis had to find cigarettes for him, and when these were given to him he sought a seat on the couch, removing the engravings, Lewis thought, somewhat unceremoniously.
“It will be some months before you have finished this job,” he said.
Lewis answered that he could not say when he would be finished. “Painting sometimes seems to go very quickly, and sometimes it seems as if one could not make any progress at all,” he answered boldly.
Day sat staring round the walls. “I suppose you will have a nymph here and a Cupid there; and what will you put over yonder?”
“Probably a garland of flowers,” Lewis answered.
“I wonder how you can think of all these things. And Mrs. Bentham — does she help you with your painting? I’ve heard she is pretty handy with her box of water-colours.”
“Mrs. Bentham comes into the ballroom in the morning, and we talk the decorations over together; but she doesn’t do any of the painting.”
“No; I don’t mean that,” Day replied carelessly. “I suppose she saw one of your pictures on exhibition, and that is how you made her acquaintance?”
“Well, no,” Lewis answered quite simply. “She saw some of my work in a picture dealer’s shop, and the picture dealer recommended me. It was Mr. Vicome who wished to have this ballroom done; but he seems to have fallen seriously ill, and he may not live to see it finished.”
“If he dies,” Day said, “Mrs. Bentham will inherit another five thousand a year. She will be the richest woman in Sussex. I wonder if she will marry again? Her property and Lord Senton’s overlap; if they were to make a match of it, their land would stretch as far as the eye could see.”
“Do you think she will marry Lord Senton?” Lewis asked.
“I wouldn’t be surprised; they have gone up to London together”; and the mongrel watched Lewis, reading his face like a book. “Ah, now I’ve got what I wanted,” he said to himself. “You, too, are an aspirant; and it wouldn’t surprise me if you succeeded in cutting out Senton. I’d like to get one of her farms, and may be able to get it through you”; and on this thought
Day’s manner changed, and though he did not become less vulgar, he became more kindly, and his admiration of Lewis’s designs deceived the painter, and the two men parted on friendly terms, Lewis regretting that he hadn’t the time to go for a drive that afternoon: he must go back to his painting. “We are dependent upon the light,” he said; and Day waved his hand, and Lewis was soon upon the scaffolding again, regretting the interruption that had prevented him from finishing a piece of drapery. “It’s a long job,” he said, “six large panels, twelve feet by six, and a number of smaller ones; and although the decorations are slight, they take time”; and he rang the bell for the carpenter and the page-boy, for having made his compositions according to scale, he could enlarge them by means of a square; the carpenter applied the rule and the page-boy held the strings. “That’ll do,” he said; “thank you. I’ll ring when I want you again.”
He worked all day, going to his work immediately after breakfast and returning to it after luncheon, leaving the house very seldom — never, unless sent out by Mrs. Thorpe, who feared he was undermining his constitution. At five o’clock he rang for a cup of tea, but ten minutes’ rest was the most he allowed for tea; and laying aside his cup, he picked up his palette and continued to cover large surfaces with paint till the butler came to tell him that it had struck half-past seven, and that dinner was at eight.
He and Mrs. Thorpe dined together, and after dinner he played backgammon with her, and when she was tired of the game, he told her anecdotes about his father’s chemical experiments, and how all their fortune vanished up the chimney of his laboratory, and how he, Lewis, had lived with his mother for many years till she died.
“After her death I went to London to seek my fortune; and for a long time my fortune consisted of doing little water-colour paintings and carrying them about from dealer to dealer, trying to find one who would give me a few shillings for them. Very often I sold my sketches for five shillings, and very often had no stockings on my feet, and had to ink them to disguise the truth from the dealer.”
