Complete Novels of E Nesbit

by Edith Nesbit

  They were gay, with the rain peppering the skylight and the fire glowing in its brick comer.

  St. Hilary had much to tell of the school, of Columbine, of Madeleine.

  “How did I come to know her? Oh, I sent a note by Marie Thibault, asking for an assignation.”

  “In the chestnut?” Daphne asked.

  “Where else? And your friend came. We met many times to talk of our absent friends. An INEXHAUSTIBLE SUBJECT, IS IT NOT MONSIEUR VORONTZOFF? ALSO SHE TOLD ME SECRETS, SWEARING ME TO SECRECY. MY TONGUE ITCHES TO TELL THEM, MISS CARMICHAEL, BUT MY LIPS ARE SEALED.”

  “SECRETS?”

  “AH, THAT INTRIGUES YOU. SHE INSISTED THAT SHE HERSELF MUST TELL YOU. SHE WRITES OFTEN, DOESN’T SHE?”

  “SHE HASN’T WRITTEN AT ALL LATELY,” SAID DAPHNE, AND WAS SORRY THAT SHE HAD NOT BEFORE BEEN SORRY THAT HER FRIEND HAD NOT WRITTEN.

  THEN THERE WAS COFFEE, AND TALK, AND IN THE END THE RUSSIAN ASKED FOR, AND GOT, AN INVITATION TO TEA IN FITZROY STREET. IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE NOT TO STRETCH IT TO INCLUDE MR. ST. HILARY. AND THEN IT WAS TIME TO GO.

  YOU PERMIT ME TO CONDUCT YOU TO YOUR HOUSE?” THE RUSSIAN ASKED.

  “OR ME?” SAID ST. HILARY. “I AM GOING THAT WAY.”

  “I SHOULD LIKE YOU BOTH TO COME,” SAID DAPHNE, WARMLY, “BUT! WANT TO GO HOME IN A HANSOM, AND THREE PEOPLE CAN’T RIDE IN A HANSOM. IF MR. ST. HILARY DIDN’T MIND GETTING ONE — ! THINK IT’S STOPPED RAINING — ! SAW SOME IN A SIDE STREET NEAR A STATION — STEPNEY,! THINK IT WAS.”

  WHEN HE WAS GONE, SHE TURNED TO THE RUSSIAN.

  “I WAS SAD WHEN! CAME TO-DAY,” SHE SAID EARNESTLY. “I EXPECT! TALKED FOLLY. FORGET IT, WILL YOU?! AM QUITE HAPPY NOW”

  “IS IT ce beau ST. HILAIRE WHO RENDERS YOU HAPPY?” HE ASKED IN HIS PITIFUL, PITILESS, RUSSIAN WAY, “OR IS IT THAT YOU HAVE SEEN THIS DEAR HENRY?”

  “NEITHER,” SAID DAPHNE—”IT IS YOU WHO MAKE ME HAPPY. YOU ARE SO KIND AND YOU WERE GLAD TO SEE ME, AND—”

  “I should wish,” he said slowly, “to render you always happy. All the world I would render happy if I could, and you more than all the world.

  “I wonder,” she said, on an impulse, “whether everyone who has suffered is like you.”

  “Like me?”

  “So kind, so gentle — so brotherly.”

  “All those who have suffered aright, little sister,” he said.

  The long cab-drive back to Bloomsbury held space for the thoughts she had put aside, but she would not look at them yet. She would go through the rest of the day deaf and blind to the voice and the eyes that were waiting for her to listen and look. At night, when the others were asleep. Till then she would not.

  As the cab swung into Fitzroy Street a man stepped out of a doorway, with hat raised and hand that signalled. She rattled the trap above her head, that the cabman should stop. Because the man was Henry.

  “Ah!” he said, “Drive to Chelsea,” threw back the streaming apron of the cab — it was raining now harder than ever — and took the place beside her. When the glass was down, and the hansom again moving, he took her hand, let his shoulder rest against hers, not closely, yet as a shoulder that had a right to be where it was, and said:

  “Now tell me all about it.”

  “There’s nothing to tell,” she said, and could not cast away the comfort of that contact.

  “You said you wouldn’t sit. So I came after you to Vorontzoff’s.”

  “But how did you know?”

  “Your cabman was venal. I asked him where you were going. I’ve lost a day’s work — aren’t you sorry?” He had unfastened her glove, and torn it off. Now her hand, cold and bare, curled in his.

  “Yes — but — the cabman said there was a lady there with you.”

  “My model — yes. I’ve had to pay her for the whole day. But you wrote the letter before you knew that. Why?”

  “I don’t know. I thought you — I wished I — I didn’t want to see you again.”

  His hand caressed her hand.

  “Go on,” he told her.

  “And then at Mr. Vorontzoff’s — you were — horrid!”

  “I desired to impress your pink and white friend with the utter impossibility of my having meant my opening speech for you.”

  “You were horrid,” said Daphne, repeating the phrase for the sake of the sweet sense of daring familiarity that it gave her.

  “Only when I realized that you weren’t alone. When I came in I called you my lovely lily — what more do you want?”

  “I don’t want anything,” she said, and her hand pretended to come back to her — vainly, “only it’s so hateful not to know whether you’re friends with people or not — and—”

  “Do you know now?” he and his hand asked in unison.

  “Yes — but—”

  “Yes — but — ?” Ah, if he would always speak to her like this.

  “It’s all nonsense,” she said, and let her shoulder feel the touch of his.

  “Yes — but?” he insisted.

  “Last night — I wasn’t sure—”

  “You weren’t sure?”

  “I wasn’t sure — I didn’t know whether you really liked me, or whether you just wanted to make me do what you wanted.”

  “I meant you to do what I wanted. Are you going to hate me for it?”

  “I mean,” she said in haste, “I thought perhaps you just wanted me to sit for you — and you didn’t like not getting your own way and —— — —”

  “I don’t like not getting my own way — and — ?”

  “And they said you’d gone away from the theatre to get some trifle you wanted and—”

  You wouldn’t have had me tell them how much it was that I wanted? And—”

  “And I thought perhaps — I don’t want to say any more — it’s all right. I’ll sit for you.”

  And you thought perhaps?” he repeated, with the inexorableness of a machine.

  “I thought perhaps you didn’t like me.”

  “Ah,” he said, you thought that? Well — I do like you. I like you very much. Are you satisfied?”

  His hand asked the question too. The clock tower stood up in front of them, outlined to her in rainbow-colours. All this time he had looked straight before him. Now he turned and looked at her.

  “Don’t cry,” he said, very gently, and aloofly. “Don’t cry. Believe me I’m not worth it.”

  “Oh, yes, you are,” said Daphne, no longer mistress of herself. “Oh, I have been so miserable.”

  Her head leaned toward him behind the rain-streaked window of the hansom The plash of the horse’s feet in the wet road emphasized the silence.

  “Let’s have the glass up,” he said; “it’s stopped raining. I should like to point out to you the beauties of the landscape.”

  CHAPTER XVIII. DESIRED

  THAT was how it all began. Henry, in an incredible correctitude of dress and on Sunday afternoon, called on Miss Claringbold and won her to the admission that he was a most gentlemanly man. She quite understood that his desire to paint Daphne’s portrait was an honour — an understanding emphasized by a visit from Mr. Seddon, who was brought to call by Claud. He balanced a teacup and spoke of Henry as “The Master.” Claud had one of his enthusiasms. He brought everybody to call. To call on Miss Claringbold became a fashion with art students, like wearing green ties or dabbling in lithography. There was a piquancy in the freshness of this withered lady, planted by capricious destiny among the young, consciously exotic flowers of the student-world.

  “She is like a November rose among May tulips,” said Seddon.

  On that Monday at nine of the morning clock, Daphne Carmichael put on her chains. She went to Henry’s studio, and, for the first time, posed as his model. He greeted her coldly, posed her, and set to work. She was restless, anxious. She wanted him to talk — he would not talk. Everything he drew that morning went into the fireplace. He made her rest often, but even in the rests he walked about, and took no notice of her.

  “Yo
ur dress,” he said, at the end of the long silent hours, “it’s the dress you wore that night at Seddon’s, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” said Daphne. “Don’t you like it?”

  “It’s perfection,” he said, carelessly, “only it’s absolutely wrong. I want you in something wild and white — with your arms and your neck showing —— and your hair — no, your hair’s all right.”

  “I’m glad something’s right,” said Daphne, in her embroidered dress and her disappointment.

  “Everything’s more than right,” he said, more carelessly than before, “but you must get another dress. Can you do it in a day? Right — then don’t come till Wednesday.”

  “I don’t know what sort of dress you want.”

  “Don’t you? Then go to Miss Joyce — she’ll show you. I’ll explain to her.”

  “Why can’t you explain to me?”

  “I have. Come, cheer up. I’ll make some tea.” It was as she sat pouring the tea that he said: “I was quite wrong, come to-morrow, and wear a pinafore.

  They might have been strangers. Pride forbade her to try to show that they were anything else.

  She came the next day, in a blue pinafore with purple roses embroidered round the neck, borrowed from Green Eyes.

  “Is this right?” she asked.

  “You’re beautiful whatever you wear,” he said. “This is Tuesday. It’s three days since Saturday. But I don’t like that pinafore. Is it yours?”

  She told him whose it was.

  “I wish you’d take it off.”

  “I can’t,” she said. “I’ve not got any dress under it.”

  “What have you under it?”

  “A — a petticoat bodice,” she said, looking straight at him.

  “Well,” he said, “I daresay that’s all right. It’s white, I suppose?”

  “Yes — oh, yes — it’s white. Yes,” said Daphne, and did not move.

  He looked up from fixing paper on a board to say impatiently:

  “Why — you’re not ready yet. Do hurry up. There’s the screen.”

  Daphne, in the darkness behind the screen, took off the pinafore and was ashamed to be glad that the petticoat bodice was her prettiest one, with much lace, and a blue ribbon that held it round her shoulders. She had fallen in love with it in a shop window in the Tottenham Court Road, and had bought it, and she was glad of it.

  “That’s better — that’s right,” said Henry, looking at her through half-closed eyes, as on that first night; “it’s like an evening dress. It’s prettier than most evening dresses.”

  That set her more at her ease.

  “Now,” he said, and came to her, touching arms and throat, to pose her to his mind, with a touch that might have been his touch on a lay figure. This calmed while it exasperated.

  “Now,”’ he said again, and began to draw with strong, swift fingers. But in a very few moments he threw down the charcoal.

  “Hopeless,” he said, “you look like the Soul’s Awakening or the First Communion. By Jove, I could do a Soul’s Awakening that would wake people up — I’ve got some things somewhere—”

  He fumbled in a big chest, pulling out top-boots, coats, cloaks, draggled ballet skirts, and crumpled muslins.

  “Here we are,” he said. “You get into these, and we shall go ahead like a house on fire.”

  These, to Daphne’s dainty dismay, were the rough, dark garments and heavy bonnet of a Salvation Army lass — dusty, crumpled, and black to the point of coming off on one’s hands.

  “Must I?” she asked.

  “Not if you don’t wish to,” he answered.

  So she put on the horrid stiff, stuffy things, and her flesh crept at the thought of them.

  “Ah,” said Henry, when she re-appeared, “that’s something like. Now look at me as if — never mind, look at me as you like. Here’s the tambourine. Hold it high — that’s right. Now then!”

  She had sat before to the sketch-club, to Green Eyes, to himself yesterday, but always someone had called time, as at a prize-fight. Now there was no one to call time. Henry had forgotten time in his work. Had forgotten her. Had forgotten everything but the work in hand. In the long looks that he gave her his eyes did not see her but only the vision that would materialize as his picture. He had chosen a difficult pose for her. It grew more and more difficult. Intense weariness gave way to sharp pains in the arm he had raised. The neck he had turned grew stiff. The minutes fell slowly past, each minute longer than the last. She kept unbroken silence. And still his charcoal passed with swift, dry rustle over the paper. Pain grown intense merged in weariness that was almost oblivion.

  “Why don’t you talk?” he said, and, after a pause, “Do talk if you want to; it will keep your face from that dreadful set expression that it’s getting.”

  She did not answer.

  “Do talk,” he said again.

  “I can’t,” she said. “You — I Oh!” She dropped her arms, took two steps forward, swerved and sank into his armchair. Consciousness was going but it clung to her long enough for her to hear the intense irritation in his Lord, she’s fainted!”

  When consciousness fully returned he was fanning her with a sheet of drawing paper, and his eyes were on the far wall of his studio. But there had been a half-conscious moment when she had half believed that she was held in his arms and that his lips were on her face.

  “I am so sorry,” he said politely, and the paper swayed with mechanical regularity, “it was most thoughtless of me. You must always sing out when you’re tired. You see I get lost when I’m working, and I don’t notice things. Are you better now? If you are I’ll get lunch.”

  Daphne learned the limits of her endurance, and just before they were reached learned to “sing out.” But she thought bitterly that he might have seen when she was tired. St. Hilary would have seen —— Claud would have seen. And the hours were long — long — long. Daphne had time to think, and thought was not always pleasant. To maintain a tiring position, with brief rests, for eight hours a day, with no talk to distract one’s attention from muscles that ached and heart that hungered, when one might have been doing all sorts of pleasant things with people who liked one, or with Doris whom one loved. She could look at him, it was true, The pose demanded that. It was something to see him. To have him entirely to herself — that seemed good at first. But quite soon she began to realize that she had not at all got him. He had got her, that was certain, but she, in those long hours, had nothing of him but his preoccupied face — the eyes that were the eyes of a stranger — the lips that did not move to speak or to smile. In the rest intervals he would walk up and down, hands in pockets, now and then pausing to scowl at the canvas, to add a touch, or occupy himself with his palette.

  She reached home too tired to play with Doris, too tired for anything but to lie flat on her bed and listen to Cousin Jane’s prim, gentle chatter, Doris’s hushed rompings, as the child was undressed and made ready for bed. She would rouse herself for the evening meal, and, perhaps, for some little meeting of friends — but through it all she was tired to the soul. And her sleep was restless and broken. Again and again she told herself, in those gray hours when one tells oneself the truth and more than the truth, that the whole business was a mirage, that she was giving every thought, every dream, her strength, her youth, her beauty, and getting nothing in return.

  Ana then, before she had time to nerve herself to break the chain — he would offer her some sudden sweet caress, some abrupt, poignant love-word, and she would feel that to live for him was little enough — since was she not ready to die for him it he needed her?

  But the constant strain of desire constantly denied, the desire of a girl for romance, the desire of a woman for caresses — this wore upon her, hollowed her cheeks a little, and lessening her beauty heightened her charm. Not in his eyes, however, and she knew it.

  “You are much more difficult to paint than I expected. You change and change and change. I’ve got you all wrong. I shall scr
ape this thing and begin another,” he said at the end of a long day of silent work for him, silent endurance for her.

  “I won’t sit for another picture,” she said. She was trembling, and her hands were very cold, “it is too much. You take all my life out of me. I can’t bear it.”

  “I thought,” he said, mildly, “that you liked to help me.”

  I don’t help you,” she said vehemently; “it’s not me — it’s the shape of my face and the colour of my hair. Any other model would do just as well. You don’t want anything from me — not the real me that thinks and feels and — and is real. Oh, I won’t sit to you any more, anyhow, not even for this picture. I’m tired of it all. I’m tired of you. You don’t care about me. You never speak to me, you never look at me — I’m just your model.

  I Oh, I wish I’d never come. I wish I’d never seen you. I wish I were dead!”

  He came to her then, held her hands, looked in her eyes, brought a red rose from the table and laid it against her cold lips.

  “Don’t be heartless,” he said.

  “It’s not I,” said she.

  Then he sat down on the floor at her feet still holding her hand, and spoke.

  “Look here,” he said, have you ever done any work?”

  “Lots,” said Daphne.

  “Then you ought to understand.”

  “I believe I do.”

  “Not you!” he said, and his voice caressed. “But it’s like this. I’m painting your portrait — when it’s done it will be good, if you’ll only not change like a sunset and be different every day. When I am at work there is nothing in the world for me but the work I’m doing. There may be other ways of working. If there are I don’t know them. That’s my way. When I’m working I don’t care a straw for any one in the world — not even for you.”