Mrs. Rogers had her own theory on the subject, which she imparted to Katherine.

"Miss, it's them baths as has done it. Anythin' in reason and I'll not sy no, but cold water to that igstent, m'm, it's against nature. It's my belief Mr. 'Aviland would 'ave slept and 'ad 'is dinner in 'is bath, if I 'adn't put my foot down. 'E's chilled 'is blood, depend upon it, m'm." And indeed that seemed very likely.

Katherine said nothing about Hardy at the time; but the next night, when she and Ted were sitting over the fire, she began.

"Ted, that was Vincent we saw on the Embankment last night."

"Yes, I saw him.

"Do you know, I believe he's killing himself with drinking."

"I know he is."

"Do you think we could do anything to help him before it's too late?"

He shook his head.

"Oh, Ted, we might! He never used to be like this. He's got no one to speak to; we've left him by himself all this time in those horrid rooms. The wall-paper alone is enough to send anybody to the bad. We might have thought of him."

"I've done nothing else but think of him for the last two months. We can't do anything. He's bound to go on like that; I don't see how he can help it. As for drinking, nothing can stop that; I've seen fellows like him before; and Vincent never did anything by halves."

"It's terrible. But we ought to try—it's the least we can do."

"The least I can do is to keep out of his way. He hates the sight of me."

"Why?"

"Don't you know? Didn't it ever strike you that Audrey was engaged to Vincent all the time?"

"No. I thought he liked her, but—what makes you think that?"

"I can't tell you. But any sort of affectionate advances would come rather badly from me. How's Vincent to know that I never knew?"

"You may be sure he knows. He knows Audrey."

Ted sighed, but he said nothing; there was nothing to be said.

"Would you very much mind asking him to supper to-morrow night?"

"No. He won't come. But you'd better write to him yourself, or else he'll think you don't want him."

She wrote a note, and Ted took it downstairs, to be ready for Vincent at such time as he should come in. The boy turned into his own room without going up again to say good-night.

He had left Katherine thinking. She had been struck with his words; they had thrown a new light on his character. His tone was bitter when he told her he had been thinking of nothing but Vincent; but it was not the bitterness of selfish resentment. A shuddering hope went through her. Either there always had been things in Ted's nature which she had never suspected, or he had just begun his education by suffering—by having felt. The latter was the more probable explanation; she knew him to be capable of such absorption in pleasant sensations, that, if all had gone well with him, he might from sheer light-heartedness have remained indifferent to other people's woes. And all along he had been such an irresponsible person, but now he was actually growing a conscience, and a peculiarly delicate one too. Without any fault of his own, he had behaved dishonourably to Vincent; and apart from the blow to his own honour, it was evident that what stung him now was remorse for his infinitesimal share in the causes that had led to Vincent's ruin.

In all that he had said there was no trace of any lingering love for Audrey. Was it possible that the tragic spectacle of Vincent's fate had moved him too with pity and terror, for the purging of his passion?

* * * * *

Hardy did not find Katherine's note till late next morning. He read it twice over with an incredulous air, and put it into the fire. He wrote a short but grateful refusal, saying truly that he was very seedy, and not pleasant company for any one at present.

Not long after, he was alone, as usual, in his dingy ground-floor sitting-room. It was about five o'clock; but he had not lit his lamp yet, and he had let his fire go out, though it was cold and rainy. A gas-lamp from the street shone through the dripping window-panes, bringing a dreary twilight into the room, making it one with the melancholy of the rain-swept streets.

He sat by the table, with his head in his hands, a prey to the appalling depression which was his mood when sober.

For the last three months he had had a curious double consciousness: of himself as an actor in a phantom world, lost in some night of dreams, where the same thoughts—always, the same thoughts—thoughts that were sins—came to him in sickening recurrence; the horror of it being that the act followed instantaneously on the thought: of himself as a spectator, separate from that other self, yet bound to it; looking on at all it did, ashamed and loathing, yet powerless to interfere. And, as happens in nightmares, his very dread suggested the thing he dreaded, and changed his dream to something more hideous than before—horror upon horror, still foreseen, and still foredoomed in the senseless sequence of the dream. Now these two states of mind were divided by a little clear space. The passive self was free for a while and could think. It could think—that was all.

He was waked from his thoughts by a knock and a voice at the door. He answered gruffly, and as he looked up he saw Katherine standing in the open doorway, letting in a stream of light from the lamp she carried in her hand.

He stared at her stupidly, blinking at the light, and hid his face in his hands again.

"I beg your pardon, Vincent. I knocked, and I thought you said 'Come in.' I came to see how you were; I was afraid you were worse."

"I am worse. What's more, I shall never be better."

She put her lamp on the chimneypiece and stood beside him.

"Don't say that; of course you'll be better. Can we do anything for you?"

"No; nothing—thanks."

She moved back a little, and shaded the lamp with her hands. She was afraid to disturb him, but she did not like to leave him in his misery. How ill and wretched he looked in that abominable room! The lamplight showed her all its repulsive details. She had done her best for it; but in the last two months it had sunk back into something worse than its former ugliness, degraded in its owner's degradation. There was no trace now of the clever alterations and contrivances which she had devised for his comfort. The muslin curtains she had lent him were dark with smoke; the rug had slipped from the horsehair sofa; there were stains on the shabby tablecloth and carpet; and on the sideboard there was a sordid litter of bottles and glasses, pipes, tobacco-ash, and Hardy's hats. The floor was strewn with the crumpled papers and shoes that he had flung away from him in his fits of irritation. In the midst of it all she noticed that Mrs. Rogers had brought back all her terrible household goods, the pink vases, the paper screens, and the antimacassars—"To cheer him up, I suppose, poor fellow!"

Hardy looked round as if he had read her thoughts.

"You'd better leave me. This isn't a nice place for you."

"It isn't a very nice place for anybody. You've let your fire go out. Come upstairs and get warm; we haven't seen you for ages."

He shook his head sadly.

"I can't, Sis, I'm much too seedy."

"Nonsense! You will be, if you sit down here catching cold." She took up her lamp, and laid a hand on his shoulder.

"Come; don't keep me waiting, or I shall catch cold too."

His will was in abeyance, and to her intense relief he got up and followed her.

She was shocked at the change in his appearance when she saw him in the full lamplight of the studio. He was pitifully thin; his fingers, as he held out his hands to the blaze, were pale, even with the red glow of the fire through them. His eyes had lost their dog-like pathos, and had the hard look of the human animal. She got ready some strong coffee, and made him drink it. That, with the warmth and the unaccustomed kindness, revived him. Then she sat down in a low chair opposite him, with some sewing in her lap, so that he might talk to her or not, as he pleased. At first he evidently preferred to think; and when he did speak, it was as if he were thinking aloud.

"I was cut by two men I know to-day. I wonder how many women there are in London who would do what you've done for me to-night?"

"What have I done? I walked into your room without an invitation—I don't suppose many women in London would have done that. But is there any woman in London who has known you as long as I have?"

He winced perceptibly, and she remembered that there was one.

"Ah, if you really knew me, Kathy, you'd cut me dead!"

"My dear Vincent, don't talk rubbish. I do know—a good deal—and I'm very sorry; that's all. I should be sorrier if I thought it was going to last for ever; but I don't."

"You are too good to me; but—if you only knew!"

He sat silent, watching as she sewed. Something in his attitude reminded her of that other evening, three months ago, when he had lain back in that chair boasting gloriously, full of hope and the pride of life. He appealed to her more now in his illness and degradation than he had ever done in his splendid sanity. For he had seemed so strong; there was no outward sign of weakness then about that long-limbed athlete.

"Vincent," she said presently, "what's become of the Pioneer-book? You promised to read me some of it—don't you remember?"

"Yes. I shall never do anything with it now."

"Oh, Vincent, what a pity! But if it's not to be printed, do you mind my seeing the manuscript?"

"No; I'll let you have it some day, Sis, and you shall do what you like with it." He sank into silence again.

"Where's Ted?" he asked suddenly.

"He'll be in soon; he wants to see you."

"Does he? How do you know that?" There was a look of suspicion in Hardy's eyes as they glanced up. It was a symptom of his miserable condition that he was apt to imagine slights.

"I've only his word for it, of course."

"Kathy——" he hesitated.

"Well?"

"There's something I wanted to tell him; but the fact is, I don't think I've the pluck to do it."

"Never mind, then. Tell me if you can; though I think I know, and it's all right."

"No, it isn't all right. I suppose you know he was pretty well off his head about—that cousin of mine? I rather think he owed me one for being before him, as he thought. At any rate, he cut me ever since—before I took to the flowing bowl, too. You might tell him, if you think it would be any satisfaction to him to know it, that she cared rather less for me than she did for him; in fact, I believe there was some unhappy devil that she preferred to either of us. At least a third man came into it somewhere. There may be a fourth now, for anything I know."

There was a brutality about his calmness which surprised Katherine; she could not realise the effect of the means he used for blunting his sensibilities.

"You're quite mistaken. Ted hasn't any feeling of the sort. He simply kept out of your way because he was afraid you'd think he had behaved dishonourably; and of course he couldn't explain because of—Audrey. But it wasn't his fault. He knew nothing."

"I never thought he did know. Do you suppose I blamed him, poor beggar?"

All the same, Hardy slunk away soon after Ted came in. When Mrs. Rogers came up with supper, she informed them that it was fine now—if you could but trust it. And "Mr. 'Ardy 'ad gorn orf like a mad thing. Temptin' Providence, I call it, without an umbrella."

Ted remarked, as they sat down to supper, that he thought "Providence would have sufficient strength of mind to resist temptation; but he was not so sure about Hardy."

And indeed Katherine had to own that her first experiment with Vincent was a failure. But she struggled on, experience having taught her that it is easier to do good original work of your own than to patch up what other people have spoiled. One week, drawn by some yearning for human sympathy, Hardy would come nearly every evening to the studio; then they would see no more of him for ten days or so. At times she felt that the strain of it was greater than she could bear. She had learnt to manage Vincent in his various moods, varying from humorous irascibility to hysterical penitence; but when he was out of her sight her influence was powerless. Now indeed she asked herself—

"Why am I wasting my precious time and making myself miserable in this way? I've no sense of religion, and I don't love Vincent—he's simply a nuisance. It must be sheer obstinacy."

It was with a feeling little short of despair that she sat down to the pages of the Pioneer-book. She had determined at any cost to read the manuscript through; but she soon became fascinated in spite of herself. "Be tender to it, Sis, it's a part of myself," he had said when he handed it over to her. She thought she had detected a gleam of interest in his face, and felt that she was on the right tack. But Vincent's book was more than a part of himself, it was a fair transcript of the whole. His weakness and his strength were in it. She saw his vanity, his exaggeration; but also his sincerity, his manliness, his simple delight in simple things. Scenery on a large scale stirred a strain of rude poetry in him this was akin to the first rhythmic utterances of man. To be sure, the thing had its faults; for poor Vincent had been anxious that his book should be recognised as the work of a scholar and a gentleman. At times a spirit of unbridled quotation would seize him, and you came upon familiar gems from the classics imbedded in the text. At times, after some coarse but graphic touch, his style became suddenly refined, almost to sickliness. When he was not pointing his moral with a hatchet, he was adorning his tale with verbiage gathered from the worst authors. But if Hardy the literary artist made her laugh till she cried again, Hardy the unconscious child of Nature won her heart. If only she could make him finish what he had begun!

She determined to illustrate the book: that might inflame Vincent's ambition, and would certainly require his co-operation. So now, every evening, in the spare time after supper, she set to work on the drawings, aided by some photographs and rough sketches made by Hardy. After a little stratagem she got him to come up and help her with suggestions, or to sit for her while she sketched him in all the attitudes of the sportsman.

He was enthusiastic over the first few drawings. Perhaps his simple remarks, "H'm, that's clever!" or, "By Jove, that's not half bad!" gave her a purer pleasure than she could have derived from the most discriminating criticism. When his interest showed signs of flagging, she hit on a new means of rousing it. She began to find out that so long as she drew correctly, he looked on with a melancholy indifference, but that when she made any mistake he was always delighted to put her right. So she went on making mistakes, and then Vincent got impatient.

"Look here, Sis, that's all wrong. You don't carry a rifle with the muzzle pointing towards your left ear. Here, give the thing to me!"

Katherine gravely handed him another sketch—

"How's that?"

"That's worse. Why, you little duffer, you don't suppose I'm going to send a bullet into that bear taking aim at that angle? I should blow my boots off. I thought you could draw?"

She smiled in secret. "So I can, if you'll show me which way up the things go."

Then they put their heads together over it, and between them they turned out some work worthy of the Pioneer-book. Ted joined in too, and began a black-and-white series of his own, parodying the acts of the distinguished sportsman: Vincent attacked by a skunk; Vincent swarming up a pine tree with a bear hanging on to his trousers' legs; Vincent shooting the rapids in his canoe—canoe uppermost; and so on. Ted was so much entertained with his own performances that he was actually heard to laugh. And when the boy laughed, the man laughed too. As for Katherine, she could have cried, knowing that a returning sense of humour is often the surest sign of hope in these cases.

Laughter, flattery, and feminine wiles may not be the methods most commended by moralists and divines for the conversion of poor sinners; but Katherine seldom consulted authorities—she had the courage of her convictions.

One fine morning in February she appeared in her hat and jacket at the door of the ground-floor sitting-room.

"Vincent, will you come with me to the Zoo? I'm going to do some grizzlies and wapiti—from the life—for the Pioneer-book, and I want you to help me."

He agreed, and they started almost gaily, with Mrs. Rogers peering up at them from the front area-window, putting that and that together with the ingenuity of her kind. It was the first of many walks they had together. Ted generally went with them, but now and again he was left behind. At these times Katherine was touched by Vincent's pride in being allowed to take her about alone. He was grateful for it; he knew it was her way of showing that she trusted him.

At last the series of illustrations came to an end. The two artists had raced each other: Katherine, having had the start, came in first at the finish with a magnificent design for the cover. She brought the drawings to Vincent, together with his manuscript, and showed them to him triumphantly. He remarked—

"Well, they ought to print the thing, if only as a footnote to your drawings, Sis."

"Will you sit down and finish it, if I undertake to find a publisher?"

He promised, and he kept his word. In the mornings now he might be found working slowly and painfully at his last chapter, she helping him.

So the winter wore on into spring; and Katherine, burdened with arrears of work, said to herself, "I perceive that this is going to be an expensive undertaking." But she looked back gladly on the time lost. At last, after many failures, they had succeeded in wakening Vincent to a sense of distant kinship with the life of boys and maidens. Down at the bottom of his nature there had always been an intense craving for affection, and his heart went out to Ted and Katherine. Not that he considered himself fit for their blameless society. Together with the vices he had acquired there had sprung up humility, that strange virtue, which has its deepest roots in the soil of shame. But all his old yearning after goodness revived in their presence. When he was with them he felt that the cloud of foul experience was lifted for a moment from his mind; they gave him sweet thoughts instead of bitter for a day perhaps, or a night.

And what of the days and the nights when he was not with them? Then, as a rule, he fell, nine times, it may be, out of every ten—who knows? And who knows whether Perfect Justice, measuring our forces with the force of our temptations, may not count as victory what the world calls defeat?



CHAPTER XIX

In her appeal to Wyndham Audrey had played a bold stroke, and it seemed that she had won it. She had amply revenged herself on Hardy, and more than assured herself of Wyndham's friendship. All the same, ever since she had left him at the doors of the Hotel Metropole, a certain constraint had crept into their intercourse. Wyndham was not easily deceived, and he rightly interpreted her abrupt dismissal of him as a final effort to assert herself before the onset of the inevitable. Even if he at times suspected her of playing a part, she had chosen the right part to play, and he respected her for it. He himself was leading a curious double life. He was working hard at his novel, which promised to surpass everything that he had yet done. He was so much absorbed in observing, studying, shaping, and touching up, that it never occurred to him to ask himself if he were indeed creating. The thing had been growing under his hands through the autumn; in the winter it seemed to advance by bounds; but in the spring his work came to a sudden standstill. He did not know what Laura, his heroine, was going to do next. He had drawn her as the creature of impulse, but dragging the dead weight of all the conventions at her back—a woman variously dramatic when stirred by influences from without, but incapable of decisive action from within. How would such a woman behave under stress of conflicting circumstances?—if it came, say, to a fight for possession between the force of traditional inertia and the feeling of the moment? On the one hand the problem was as old as the hills, on the other it was new with every man and woman born into the world. What he called his literary conscience told him that it had to be solved; another conscience in him shrank from the solution. At this point Wyndham did what, as a conscientious artist, he had never done before; he put his work away for a season, and tried not to think about it, devoting himself to Audrey Craven instead. Even he was not always able to preserve the critical attitude with regard to her. As he had told her, criticism comes first, sympathy last of all. And with him—last of all—it had come. He could not go on from day to day, seeing, hearing, and understanding more and more, without acquiring a curious sympathy with the thing he studied. And when the artist tired of her art, the man felt all the influence of her natural magic. He was prepared for that, and had no illusions on the subject.

He tested his present feelings by comparing them with those he had had for Alison Fraser. He had not the least intention of setting up Audrey Craven anywhere near his idol's ancient place,—he would have shuddered at the bare idea of it. This, though he expressed it differently, was what he meant when he resolved once for all that he would never marry, never put himself in any woman's power again. And in the plenitude of his self-knowledge he knew exactly how far he could let himself go without either of these evil results following.

Unfortunately, in these cases the woman is seldom so well equipped for self-defence as the man. Owing to her invincible ignorance of her own nature, she must be more or less at a disadvantage. And if this is true of women in general, it was doubly true of any one so specially prone to illusion as Audrey Craven, who would have had difficulty in recognising any part of her true self under its numerous disguises. She was therefore unaware of the action and reaction which had been going on within her during the last year. Whatever its precise quality may have been, her love for Ted Haviland was of a different quality from her feeling for Langley Wyndham. Under that earlier influence, whatever intelligence she possessed had been roused from its torpor by the tumult of her senses; her mind had been opened and made ready for the attack of a finer intellectual passion, which again in its turn brought her under the tyranny of the senses. For though her worst enemies could not call Audrey clever, it was Wyndham's intellectual eminence which had fascinated her from the first. Herein lay her danger and her excuse. She was aware—hence her late access of reserve—that she was being carried away by her feelings; but how, when, and whither, she neither knew nor apparently cared to know. In the meanwhile, in Wyndham's friendship she not only triumphed over Vincent's scorn, but she felt secure against his infatuation. For she imagined the scorn and the infatuation as still existing together. She knew that he was still in London, presumably unable to tear himself away from her neighbourhood; and the sense of his presence, of his power over her, had been so long a habit of her mind that she could not lose it now. Otherwise she hardly gave him a thought; and having cut herself off from all communication with Devon Street, she did not certainly know what had become of him.

She had yet to learn.

Towards the end of February she received a letter from Vincent's mother which left no doubt on the subject. The news of his downfall had reached his home at last. Mrs. Hardy knew of her son's attachment to his cousin, and had always had fixed ideas on that point. On being told that he had "gone" irretrievably "to the bad," she jumped to a conclusion: it was the right one, as it happened, though she had managed to cover a great deal of ground in that jump. She at once wrote off a long and violent letter to her niece, taxing her with cruelty, fickleness, and ingratitude, laying Vincent's misdeeds on her shoulders, and ending thus: "They tell me you are engaged. I pray God you may not have to go through what you have made my darling boy suffer."

Now, either the poor hysterical lady was an unconscious instrument in the hands of Destiny, or her prayer may have been meant as a modified and lady-like curse; at any rate, if it had not entered into her head to write that letter, it would have saved the writing of one chapter in her niece's history. But, in the first place, the communication had the effect of making Audrey cry a great deal, for her; in the second, it came by an afternoon post, so that Langley Wyndham, calling at his usual hour, found her crying.

He was a little taken aback by the sight, as indeed any man would have been, for most women of his acquaintance arranged things so as not to do their crying in calling hours.

However, he judged it the truest kindness to sit down and talk as if nothing had happened. But it requires considerable self-possession and command of language to sit still and talk about the weather with a woman's tears falling before you like rain; and even Langley Wyndham, that studious cultivator of phrases, found it hard. Audrey herself relieved him from his embarrassment by frankly drying her eyes and saying—

"I beg your pardon. I didn't mean that to happen; but——"

He glanced at the letter open in her lap.

"Not bad news, I hope?"

"N-no," she answered, with a sob verging on the hysterical.

Wyndham looked frightened at that, and she checked herself in time.

"No, it's nothing. At least I can't speak about it. And yet—if I did, I believe I should feel better. I am so miserable."

"I am truly sorry. I wish I could be of some use. If you thought you could speak about it to me, you know you can trust me."

"I know I can. Oh, if I could only tell you! But I can't."

"Why not? Would it be so very hard? I might be able to help you."

"You might. I do want somebody's advice—so much."

"You are always welcome to mine. You needn't take it, you know."

She smiled through her tears, for she had acquired a faint sense of humour under Ted's influence, and had not yet lost it.

"Well, it's about Vinc—my cousin Mr. Hardy. You remember meeting him here once?"

"I do indeed."

"You may remember something I told you about him then. Perhaps I ought not to have told you."

"Never mind that. Yes, I remember perfectly. Has he been persecuting you again?"

"Ye-yes. Well, no. I haven't seen him for ages, but I live in dread of seeing him every day. I know, sooner or later, he will come."

She paused. "I wonder if I really could tell you everything."

"Please do, or tell me as much as you care to. I'd like to help you if you would let me."

She went on in a low voice, rather suggestive, Wyndham thought, of the confessional: "I was engaged to him once—long ago—he forced me into it. It began when we were children. He always made me do everything he wanted. Then—he went away immediately after—for a year. When he came back—I don't know how it was—I suppose it was because he had been away so long—but I was stronger. He seemed to have lost his hold over me, and I—I broke it off."

She looked away from Wyndham as she spoke.

He wondered, "Is she acting all the time? If so, how admirably she does it! She must be a cleverer woman than I thought. But she isn't a clever woman. Therefore——" But Audrey went on before he could draw a conclusion.

"But I know some day he will come back and make it begin all over again, and I shall have no power. And the thought of it is horrible!"

There was no mistaking the passion in her voice this time. He said to himself, "This is nature," and he felt the same cold shiver of sympathy that sometimes ran through him at the performance of some splendid actress. But before he could presume to sympathise he must judge.

"Do you mind telling me one thing? Had you any graver reasons for breaking it off than what you have told me?"

"Yes. He drinks."

"Brute! That's enough. But—supposing he didn't drink?"

"It would make no difference. I never cared for him. He thought I did. I couldn't help that, could I? And then afterwards so many things happened—I was not the same person. If he had not begun to—do that, still it would have been impossible. But he won't believe it, or else he doesn't care. He'll persecute me again, and perhaps make me marry him."

"My dear Miss Craven, he won't do that. People don't do those things in the nineteenth century. You've only got to state clearly that you won't have anything to say to him, and he can't do anything. If he tries to, there are measures that can be taken."

She shook her head dismally.

"Now comes the advice. Shall I tell you the truth? You've been worrying your brain over that wretched animal till your nerves are all upset. You're ill practically, or you couldn't take this morbid view of it. You ought to leave town and go away for a change."

"Where could I go to?"

"The south coast for choice. It's bracing."

"If I only could! No, I can't leave London."

"Why not? There's an excellent service of trains——"

"Because—because I love London."

"So do I for many reasons. There's no place like it, to my mind. But if I'd overworked myself in it, I should tear myself away. You can have too much of a good thing."

"No, not of the only place on earth you care to be in."

"Well, I've given my valuable advice. You're not going to take it—I never thought you would. Personally I hate the people who give me advice. What I should like to give you would be help. But the question is, Am I able to give it? Have I even the right to offer it?"

She looked up at him. Some lyric voice, whether of hope or joy, or both, had called the soul for an instant to her face—a poor little fluttering soul, that gazed out through her grey eyes at Wyndham—for an instant only, and was seen no more. When he spoke, he spoke not to it, but to the woman he had known.

"You don't answer." (She had answered, and he knew it.) "It all comes back to what I said long ago. The most elementary knowledge of life would have saved you all this: if you'd had it, you could not have let these fatuities worry you to this extent. Do you remember my telling you that you ought to love life for its own sake?"

The moment he had said the words, he would have given anything to recall them, but it was too late; she remembered only too well. However she had disguised the truth, Wyndham's passionate defence of realism was not altogether an appeal to her intellect. He ought not to have reminded her of that now.

"Yes," she answered; "how could I forget?"

"I said at the time that you must know life in order to love it, and I say so now. But, Audrey"—she started and flushed—"if I were another man I should not say that."

"What would you say?"

"That you must love in order to know."

"Is there any need to tell me that now?"

"Perhaps not. It's what I would have told you then—if I had been another man."

Her lip quivered slightly, and she held one hand with the other to give herself the feeling of a human touch. He went on without the least idea whether he were talking sense or nonsense, interrupted sometimes by his own conscience, sometimes by Audrey's changes of expression.

"Bear with my egoism a moment—several moments, for I'm going to be tediously autobiographical. Once, when I was a young man, I was offered some journalistic work. It was at the very start; I had barely tasted print. Remember, I was ambitious, and it meant the beginning of a career; I was poor, and it meant a good salary. But it meant the production of a column of 'copy' a-day, whether I was in the vein for it or no. I wanted it badly, and—I refused it. I could not be tied down. Since then I have never bound myself to any publisher or editor. This anecdote is not in the least interesting, but it is characteristic of my whole nature, which is my reason for inflicting it on you. That nature may be an unfortunate one, but I didn't invent it myself. Anyhow, knowing it as thoroughly as I do, I've made up my mind never to do certain things—never, for instance, to ask any woman to be my wife. Marriage is the one impossible thing. It involves duty, or, worse still, duties. Now, as it happens, I consider duty to be the very lowest of moral motives. In fact—don't be shocked—it isn't moral at all. It is to conduct what authority is to belief—that is, it has nothing whatever to do with it. No. Goodness no more depends on duty than truth depends on authority. Forgive me; I know you are a metaphysician and a moral philosopher, and you'll appreciate this. You're going to make a quotation; please don't. It's perfectly useless to tell me that Wordsworth calls duty 'stern daughter of the voice of God.' It may be; I don't know. I only know that if I believed it was my duty to live, I'd commit suicide to-morrow. I don't like stern daughters. But granted that Wordsworth had the facts at his finger-ends, God's voice is freedom, whatever its daughters may be. That's not a doctrine I'd preach to every one; but for me, and those like me, freedom, absolute freedom, is the condition of all sane thinking and feeling. Fancy loving any one because it was your duty! Take a case. Supposing I married: the more I loved my wife, the less a free agent I should be; and when I once realised that I wasn't free, there would be an end of my love. I deplore this state of things, but I can't alter it. So you see, when I most want to give you love and protection, I can only offer you friendship, which you don't want perhaps, and—er—good advice, which you won't take."

But she was looking beyond him, far away.

"As I can't possibly ask you to—accept my conditions, perhaps the cleverest thing I could do would be to go away and never see you again. There's no other alternative."

Her lips parted as if she would have spoken, but no words came. They searched each other's faces, the woman thirsting for life, for love; the man thirsting too—for knowledge. And he knew.

It was his turn to look away from her; and as he fixed his eyes absently on the corner where the Psyche stood motionless on her pedestal, he noticed, as people will notice at these moments, the ironical suggestion of the torso, with the nasty Malay creese hanging over its head. Psyche and—the sword of Damocles.

"I don't want you to go away," she said at last.

"I am going, all the same. For a little while—a fortnight perhaps. I want you to have time to think." He was not by any means sure what he meant by that. He had solved his problem, though not quite as he had intended to, and that was enough for him. And yet his conscience (not the literary one, but the other) would not altogether acquit him of treachery to Audrey. Instead of going away, as he ought to have done, he sat on talking, in the hope of silencing the reproachful voice inside him, of setting things on their ordinary footing again. But this was impossible at the moment. They were talking now across some thin barrier woven of trivialities, as it were some half-transparent Japanese screen, with all sorts of frivolous figures painted on it in an absurd perspective. And behind this flimsy partition their human life went on, each soul playing its part more or less earnestly in a little tragedy of temptation. Each knew all the time what the other was doing; though Wyndham had still the advantage of Audrey in this respect. Which of them would first have the courage to pull down the screen and face the solid, impenetrable truth?

Neither of them attempted it,—they dared not. After half an hour's commonplaces Wyndham left her to think. He too had some matter for reflection. He was not inhuman, and if at times he seemed so, he had ways of reconciling his inhumanity to his conscience. He told himself that his strictly impartial attitude as the student of human nature enabled him to do these things. He was as a higher intelligence, looking down on the crowd of struggling, suffering men and women beneath him, forgiving, tolerating all, because he understood all. He who saw life so whole, who knew the hidden motives and far-off causes of human action, could make allowances for everything. There was something divine in his literary charity. What matter, then, if he now and then looked into some girl's expressive face, and found out the secret she thought she was hiding so cleverly from everybody,—if he knew the sources of So-and-so's mysterious illness, which had puzzled the doctors so long? And what if he had obtained something more than a passing glimpse into the nature of the woman who had trusted him? It would have been base, impossible, in any other man, of course: the impersonal point of view, you see, made all the difference.



CHAPTER XX

From that afternoon Wyndham kept away from Chelsea Gardens; in fact, he had left town. To do him justice, he honestly thought he was doing "the cleverest thing" for Audrey in leaving her—to think. It would have been the cleverest thing if he could have kept away altogether; but as long as she had the certainty of his return, it was about the stupidest. If he had stayed, they would have resumed their ordinary relations; all might have blown over like a mood, and whatever he knew about her, Audrey herself would never have known it. As it was, he had emphasised the situation by going. And what was more, he had thrown Audrey back on her uninteresting self—the very worst company she could have had at present. She had been used to seeing him almost daily through a whole winter; he had made her dependent on his society for all her interests and pleasures; and when she was suddenly deprived of it, instead of being able to think, she spent her time in miserable longing. She could not think and feel at the same time. Feeling such as hers was incompatible with any form of thinking; it was feeling in a vacuum—the most dangerous kind of all. The emptiness of her life, now that Wyndham was gone, made her say to herself that she could bear anything—anything but that. It made her realise what the years, the long unspeakable years, would be like when she had given him up. She looked behind and around her, and there were the grey levels of ordinary existence; she looked below her, and there was the deep; she was going into the darkness of it, swiftly, helplessly, blown on by the wind of vanity. She saw no darkness for the light before her—a nebulous light; but it dazzled her like the sun shining through a fog.

Once, at the fiercest point of her temptation, she felt an impulse to confession—that mysterious instinct which lies somewhere at the heart of all humanity; she had wild thoughts of going to Katherine and telling her all, asking her what she ought to do. Katherine was large-minded, she would not blame her—much; perhaps she would tell her she ought not to give Wyndham up, that she ought to think of him, to be ready to sacrifice the world for his sake. Yes, Katherine was so "clever," she would be a good judge; and Audrey would abide by her judgment. Unhappily, when it came to the point, she was afraid of her judgment—she had always been a little afraid of Katherine. Once she even thought of going to Mr. Flaxman Reed, that "holy anachronism," as she had once heard Wyndham call him. But his judgment was a foregone conclusion; Mr. Flaxman Reed was not large-minded.

Once, too, a gleam of reason came to her. She loved dearly the admiration and good opinion of her world; and she reflected that the step she contemplated meant no congratulations, no wedding-dress, no presents, and no callers. Wedding indeed! As she had read of a similar case in "London Legends," it would be a "social funeral, with no flowers by request." But these considerations had no weight after an evening spent with cousin Bella. And though she played on her piano till the lace butterflies on Miss Craven's cap fluttered again (why would cousin Bella wear caps in defiance of the fashion?), it was no good. If she had had a fine voice, she would have sung at the top of it; failing that medium of expression, she longed to put her fingers in her own ears and scream into cousin Bella's. And as they yawned in each other's faces, and she realised that something like this might be the programme for an indefinite time, she remembered how Langley had called her a metaphysician and a moral philosopher. It was on statements like these, apparently borne out by the fact of his friendship, that she based the flattering fiction of her own intellectuality. Without that fiction Audrey could not have supported life in the rare atmosphere she had accustomed herself to breathe. The conclusion of it all was that, come what might come, she could not give Langley up.

One afternoon she crossed the river for a walk in Battersea Park. It was a warm spring, and down the long avenue the trees were tipped with the flame of bursting buds, like so many green lights turned low. The beds and borders were gay with crocuses and hyacinths, and the open spaces were beginning to look green again. Audrey cared little for these things, but to-day she was somehow aware of them; she felt in her the new life of the spring, as she had felt it a year ago. She walked rapidly from sheer excitement, till she had tired herself out; then she sat down on one of the benches, overlooking the waste ground where the children played. Except for a bright fringe under the iron railings, it was still untouched by spring, and the sallow grass had long been trodden into the dust. Some ragged little cricketers were shouting not far off, and near her, by the railings, was a family group—a young father and mother, with their children, from two years old and upwards, crawling around them. They were enjoying a picnic tea in the sunshine, with the voluptuous carelessness of outward show that marks the children of the people. Audrey looked at it all with a faint disgust, but she was too tired to move on to a more cheerful spot. She turned her back on the picnic party, and began to think about Wyndham. He had been away ten days; he said he was going for a fortnight; in another week at the longest she would see him. She was roused by a tug at her petticoats. The two-year-old, attracted like some wild animal by her stillness, had scrambled through the railings, and was trying to pull its fat little body up by one hand on to the bench beside her. Its other hand grasped firmly a sheaf of fresh grass. It was clean and pretty, and something in its baby face sent a pang to Audrey's heart. She loosened its chubby fingers, hoping it would toddle away; but it gave a wilful chuckle, and stood still, staring at her, reproaching, accusing, in the unconscious cruelty of its innocence. And yet surely the Divine Charity had chosen the tenderest and most delicate means of stirring into life her unborn conscience. Moved by who knows what better impulse, she stooped suddenly down and touched its face with the tips of her gloved fingers. Startled at the strange caress, like some animal stroked too lightly, the little thing made its face swell, and asserted its humanity by a howl. Then it fled from her with a passionate waddle, scattering blades of grass behind it as it went.

Even so do we chase away from us the ministers of grace.

She leaned back, overcome by a sort of moral exhaustion. Her self-love was hurt, as it would have been if a dog had shrunk from her advances; for Audrey was not accustomed to have her favours rejected. She was further irritated by the ostentatious affection of the child's mother as she helped it through the railings with shrill cries of "There then, blessums! Did she then, the naughty lydy!" And when baby echoed "Naughty lydy!" it was as if the two-year-old had judged her.

She sat a little while longer, and then went away. As she rose she looked sadly back at the family group. The man was lying on his back and letting the children walk about on the top of him. Baby had found peace in sucking an orange and stamping on her father's waist. The woman was strewing paper bags and orange-peel around her in a fine disorder, while she thriftily packed the remains of their meal in a basket. Audrey shuddered; their arrangements were all so ugly and unpleasant. And yet—they were married, they were respectable, they were happy, these terrible people; while she—she was miserable. She had no sense of justice; and she rebelled against the policy of Nature, who leaves her coarser children free, and levies her taxes on the aristocracy of feeling.

The sordid domesticity of the scene had glorified by contrast her own dramatic mood. Poor Audrey! She hated vulgarity, and yet she was trying to lay hold on "the great things of life" through the vulgarest of all life's tragedies.

* * * * *

Langley would be in town again in a week. He would ask if she had made up her mind; and she knew now too well the answer she would give him.

But Langley was not in town again in a week, nor yet in a fortnight. And when, at the end of six weeks, he did come back, he came back married—to Miss Alison Fraser.

Nobody ever knew how that came about. Miss Gladys Armstrong, who may be considered an authority, maintained that as Wyndham had the pride which is supposed to be the peculiar property of the Evil One, he could never have proposed to the same woman twice. Consequently Miss Fraser must have proposed to him. Perhaps she had; there are ways of doing these things, and whatever Alison Fraser did she did gracefully. As for her private conscience, in refusing him with conscious magnanimity she had done no good to anybody, not even herself; in marrying him finally she had saved the situation, without knowing that there was a situation to be saved.

The news threw Audrey into what she imagined to be the beginning of a brain fever, but which proved to be a state of nervous collapse, lasting, with some intermissions, for a fortnight. At the end of that time—whether it was that she was so fickle a creature that even Fate could make no abiding impression on her, or that she was no longer burdened with the decision of a momentous question—to all appearances she recovered. So much so that, when some one sent her an invitation to the private view at the New Gallery, she put on her best clothes (not without a pang) and went.

Alas! the place was full of associations, melancholy with the sheeted ghosts of the past. This time last year she had been to the private view with Ted. They had amused themselves with laughing at the pictures, and wondering how long it would be before one of his would be hanging there. And as she listlessly turned the pages of her catalogue, the first names that caught her attention were, "Haviland, Katherine, 232"; "Haviland, Edward, 296." She turned back the pages hastily to No. 232 and read, "The Witch of Atlas." That picture she knew. No. 296 gave her "Sappho: A Study of a Head."

Of a head? Whose head?

She found the picture (not exactly in the place of honour, but agreeably well hung and with a small crowd before it), and recognised Katherine's striking profile raised in the attitude of a suppliant who implores, the cloud of her dark hair flaming into bronze against a sunset sky. Ted was rather too fond of that trick; but the study was not a mere vulgar success—he had achieved expression in it. It was marked "Sold." There were some lines of verse on the square panel at the base of the frame. Ted could not have afforded such a setting for his picture, but the frame was contributed by Mr. Percival Knowles, the purchaser of the canvas. The same gentleman was also the author of the verse, specially written for the portrait. Knowles, by-the-bye, was an occasional poet—that is to say, he could burst into poetry occasionally; and Audrey read:—

"Oh Aphrodite, queen of dread desire! By all the dreams that throng Love's golden ways, By all the honied vows thy votary pays, By sacrificial wine, and holy fire! Thou who hast made my heart thy living lyre, Hast thou no gift for me, nor any grace? Why hast thou turned the light of Love's sweet face From me, the sweetest singer of Love's choir?"

"For songs that charm the long ambrosial years The gods bring many gifts, and mine shall be— Immortal life in mortal agony— Vain longing, fanned by winged hopes and fears To inextinguishable flame—and tears Bitter as death, salt as the Lesbian Sea."

Her breast rose and fell with the lines; by this time she was educated up to their feeling.

"Who was Sappho, and what did she do?—I know, but I've forgotten," asked a voice in the crowd.

"Oh, the woman who threw herself at the other fellow's head, you know, who naturally didn't appreciate the compliment."

Audrey was not intelligent enough to refrain from the inward comment, "How singularly inappropriate! I should have said Katherine was about the last person in the world to——" She turned round and found herself face to face with the poet. Knowles had been wandering through the crowd with evasive eyes, successfully dodging the ladies of his acquaintance, while his air of abstraction took all quality of offence from the unerring precision of his movements. But when he saw Miss Craven he stopped. He had an inkling of the truth, and respected her feelings too much to slight her while Wyndham's marriage was still a topic of the hour.

"Not bad for the boy, that!" said he, smiling gently at Sappho. "He's coming out, isn't he?"

"So are you, I think—in a new line too!"

"Ah—er—not quite a new one. I've been taken that way before."

She was about to make some pretty speech when they were joined by Ted, who had not noticed Audrey. His forehead puckered slightly when he saw her, but that was no doubt from sympathy with her probable embarrassment. For the first time in their acquaintance he was indifferent to the touch of the small hand that had tried to mould his destiny. If the truth must be told, in the flush of his success Ted had found out that his passion for Audrey was only the flickering of the flame on the altar dedicated to eternal Art. He listened to her compliments without that sense of apotheosis which (however low he rated it) her criticism had been wont to produce.

"Don't let's be seen looking at it any longer," he said at last; "let's go and pretend to get excited about some other fellow's work."

So they left Audrey to herself. She turned back and went down the room to see "The Witch of Atlas," the lady robed in her "subtle veil" of starbeams and mist. Her view of this picture was somewhat obstructed by a stout gentleman who, together with a thin lady, was taking up the whole of the available space before it. His companion, a badly-dressed young woman with a double eye-glass, was trying to decipher the lines quoted in her catalogue. As Audrey paused she looked up and stared, as only a woman with a double eye-glass can stare, at the same time attracting the stout gentleman's attention by a movement of her elbow.

"Look, uncle, quick! That's her! That's the person!"

"What's that, Nettie?" (The stout gentleman swung round as if on a pivot, as Audrey moved gracefully by.) "You don't mean to say so? Where's Ted?"

She walked on through the rooms, depressed by the meeting with Knowles—it suggested Wyndham. She would be meeting him next. And indeed she met him in the first gallery, where her aimless wanderings had brought her again.

His wife was with him. Audrey knew that she must meet her some time, and she had expected to see in Alison Fraser an enlarged edition of herself; she had even feared an edition de luxe, which would have been intolerable. She was prepared for distinction; but she saw with a finer agony the slight figure, the sweet proud face with its setting of pale gold hair, and worse than all, the indefinable air of remoteness and reserve which made Mrs. Langley Wyndham more than a "distinguished" woman. Wyndham lifted his hat and would have passed on; but Audrey, to show her perfect self-possession, stopped and held out her hand. He felt it trembling as he took it in a preoccupied manner; and Mrs. Langley Wyndham became instantly absorbed in picture No. 1.

"Have you seen young Haviland's performance?" asked Wyndham. (He had to say something.)

"Yes; it's a very fine study."

"So Knowles tells me. But everything's a fine study in this collection. There ought to be 'a fine' for the abuse of that expression."

"But it really is; go and see for yourself."

"It's his sister, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"Ah, that accounts for it. He could give his mind to it in that case." Wyndham was surprised at his own fatuity; his remarks sounded like the weird inanities that pass for witticisms in dreams.

"Perhaps. But never mind Mr. Haviland; I want you to introduce me to your wife."

Wyndham looked round; his wife had turned an unconscious back.

"Oh—er—thank you, you're very kind, but—er—we're just going."

He had not meant them so, but his words were like a whip laid across Audrey's shoulders. He moved on, and his wife joined him.

Audrey came across them half an hour later, stooping over some designs in black and white. She saw Mrs. Langley Wyndham look up in her husband's face with a smile, raising her golden eyebrows. The look was one of those intimate trifles that have no meaning beyond the two persons concerned in it. For Audrey, smarting from Wyndham's insult, it was the flick of the lash in her face.



CHAPTER XXI

In the autumn of that year Audrey woke and found herself the classic of the hour, a literary queen without a rival. Wyndham's great work was finished, and it stood alone. Not another heroine of fiction could lift her head beside Laura, the leading character of "An Idyll of Piccadilly." He himself owned, almost with emotion, that it was the best thing he had ever done. He had not touched the surface this time; he had gone deep down to the springs of human nature. He had not merely analysed the woman till her character lay in ruins around him, but he had built her up again out of the psychic atoms, and Laura was alive. She showed the hand of the master by her own nullity. In her splendid vanity she was like some piece of elaborate golden fretwork, from which the substance had been refined by excess of workmanship.

The voice of criticism was one voice; there arose a unanimous hymn of praise from every literary "organ" in the country. It was Mr. Langley Wyndham's masterpiece, a work that left the excellence of "London Legends" far behind it on a lower plane. Though there was no falling off in point of style, the author had found something better to do this time than to cultivate the flowers of perfect speech. "Laura" was a triumph of intimate characterisation. And the brutal touches that disfigured his former work were absent from this; he had shown us that the boldest, most inflexible realism is compatible with a delicacy worthy of the daintiest of esoteric ideals.

The book, dedicated "To my Wife," appeared early in October. By November the question of the sources was opened out, and it began to be whispered (a whisper that could be traced to the private utterances of Miss Gladys Armstrong) that the prototype of Laura was a Miss Audrey Craven. In the person of her ubiquitous double, Miss Audrey Craven became a leading figure in London society. Then bit by bit the news got into the papers, and Wyndham's succes d'estime was followed by succes de scandale which promised to treble his editions.

Thus Audrey, unable to achieve greatness, had greatness thrust upon her; and the weight of it bowed her to the earth. The earth? As she read on, the earth seemed to crumble away from under her feet, leaving her baseless and alone before that terrifying apocalypse. Wyndham had trained her intelligence till it could appreciate the force of every chapter in his book of revelations. At last she saw herself as she was. And yet—could that be she? That mixture of vanity, stupidity, and passion? To be sure, he had been careful to give her brown hair instead of tell-tale red, and skillfully to alter the plot of her life with all details of time and place; but—what had he said? "Light as air, fluent as water, a being mingled of fire and a little earth; fickle as the wind that blew her in a wavering line across the surface of things." "Modern, and of stuff so fine that it chafed under the very breath of disapproval; and yet with a little malleable heart in it compounded of the most primeval of affections." She turned over the pages; everywhere she came upon the same thing. Now the phrases were spun out fine, they were subtle, they seemed to cling round her and stifle her; now they were short and keen, and they cut like knives. "Women may be divided into three classes—the virtuous, the flirtuous, and the non-virtuous. The middle class is by far the largest. It shades off finely into the two extremes. Laura belonged to it." "The moon was up, and Diana, divine sportswoman, was abroad, hunting big game." "Laura had made a virtue of necessity. She said that proved the necessity of virtue."

Oh, the cruelty of it! Would Ted, would Vincent, have done this if they had had it in their power? True, they had reproached her; but it was to her face, alone in her own drawing-room, where she had a chance of defending herself. They would not have held her up to public scorn. And they had some right to blame her,—she saw that now. But what had she done to deserve this from Langley? How had he found it in his heart to speak against her? She had loved him. Yes, she had known many a passing pain, but she had never really suffered until now. That was a part of her education that had been neglected hitherto. Only an accomplished student of human nature could have coached her through the highest branches of it.

Having set the scandal successfully afloat, the society papers began to utter a feeble protest against it—thus increasing their own reputation for a refined morality. But they had no power to turn the tide, and the scandal floated on. In society itself judgment was divided. Whether "Laura" was or was not a work of the highest art, was a question you might have heard discussed at every other dinner-table. Perhaps the criticism that was most to the point was that of Miss Gladys Armstrong, who proclaimed publicly that Langley Wyndham laboured under the disadvantage of not being a woman, and having no imagination to make up for it. Meanwhile the tone of the larger reviews remained unchanged. The reviewers, to a man, had committed themselves to the position that the book was Wyndham's masterpiece; and nobody could be found to go back on that opinion.

But in all that concert of adulation one voice was silent—the only voice that Wyndham cared to hear, that of Percival Knowles. The others might howl in chorus, and it would not be worth his while even to listen; he was looking forward to Knowles's long impressive solo. But that solo never came, neither could the note of Knowles be detected in the intricate chorus. It was strange. Knowles had been the high priest of the new Wyndham worship, and to him the eminent novelist had looked for sympathy and appreciation. But Knowles had made no sign. They had avoided the subject whenever they met; Wyndham was not so hardened by authorship as to have lost the instinctive delicacy felt by the creator at the birth of his book. Knowles seemed only too much inclined to respect that delicacy. Finally, Wyndham resolved to go and see his friend alone, and tentatively sound him on the subject of "Laura." He proposed to himself a pleasant evening's chat, in which that lady would be discussed in all her bearings, and he would enjoy a foretaste of the praise ere long to be dealt out to him before an admiring public. On his way to Knowles's rooms he heard in fancy the congratulation, the temperate flattery, the fine discriminating phrase.

He found Knowles amusing himself with a blue pencil and Miss Armstrong's last novel. "Laura: An Idyll of Piccadilly" lay on the table beside him, its pages cut, but with none of those slips of paper between them which marked the other books put aside for review. Knowles greeted his friend with an embarrassed laugh, and they fell to discussing every question of the hour except the burning one for Wyndham. By the rapidity of his conversational manoeuvres, it was evident that the critic wanted to steer clear of that topic. Wyndham, however, after ambling round and round it for some time with no effect, suddenly brought up straight in front of it with—

"By-the-bye, have you condescended to read my last fairy-tale?"

"What, the Mayfairy tale?" said Knowles, with deft pleasantry. "Yes, of course I've read it."

"What do you think of it?"

Knowles suddenly looked grave. "Well, at the moment, I had much rather not tell you."

"Really? Well, I suppose I shall know some day."

Knowles looked as if he were struggling with an unpleasant duty, and it were getting the better of him.

"Not from me, I'm afraid. It will be the first work of yours I have left unnoticed. As I can't review it favourably, I prefer not to notice it at all."

"You surely don't suppose that I came here to fish for a review?"

"I do not."

"Thanks. I don't deny that I should have appreciated the public expression of your opinion, favourable or unfavourable. But I respect your scruples as far as I understand them. The only thing is——"

He paused; it was his turn to feel uncomfortable.

"Is what?"

"Well, after the way you've delivered yourself on my other books, which are feebleness itself compared with this one, I must say your present attitude astonishes me."

"I've given you my reasons for it."

"No; that's what you've not done. Surely we've known each other too long for this foolishness. Of course, it's considerate of you not to damn me for the entertainment of the British public; but you know you're the only man in England whose judgment I care about, and I confess I'd like to have your private opinion—the usual honest and candid thing, you know. I'm not talking of gods, men, and columns."

Knowles sat silent, frowning.

"Oh, well, of course, if you'd rather not, there's nothing more to be said."

"Not much."

But Wyndham's palpitating egoism was martyred by this silence beyond endurance, and he burst out in spite of himself—

"But it's inconceivable to me, after the way you've treated my first crude work. You must have set up some new canons of art since then. Otherwise I should say you were inconsistent."

But Knowles was not to be drawn out, if he could possibly help it.

"Do you mind telling me one thing—have you anything to say against its form?"

"Not a word. I admit that in form it's about as perfect as it well could be. I—er—" (he was beginning to feel that he could not help it) "object to your use of your matter."

"What on earth do you mean?"

"I mean what I say."

"Please explain."

"Very well. Since you so earnestly desire my honest and candid opinion, you shall have it. You remind me that I praised your earlier work, and suggest my inconsistency in not approving of your latest. My praise was sincere. I thought, and I have never changed my opinion, that the originality of your first books amounted to genius. Your last, however great its other qualities, has not that merit. It is, I think, conspicuously destitute of imagination."

"Do you deny its vitality—its faithfulness to nature?"

"Certainly not. I object to it as a barefaced plagiarism from nature."

"Then at least you'll admit that my heroine lives?"

"She does, unfortunately. Wouldn't it have been better taste to wait till she was decently dead?"

"Oh—I see. You mean that."

"Yes; I mean that. If you had no respect for your own reputation, you might have thought of Miss Craven's."

"Excuse me, this is simply irrelevant nonsense, and most unworthy of you. Miss Craven, as you perfectly well know, is one manifestation of the eternal flirt. I seized on the type she belongs to, and individualised it."

"You did nothing of the sort. You seized on the individual and put her into type—a very different thing. Do you imagine that life will ever be the same to that poor woman again? I never liked Miss Craven, but she was harmless, even nice, before you got hold of her and spoilt her, by making her think herself clever. Isn't that what happens to Laura?"

"That—among other things."

"Other things, also slavishly copied from Miss Craven. I recognise the faithfulness of your portraiture in all its details; so does she and everybody else."

"Knowles, you talk like the lay fool. Surely you know how all fiction, worthy of the name, is made? I took what lay nearest at hand, as hundreds of novelists have done before me; though as for that, there's not an incident in the book that is not the purest fiction. You don't give me credit—I won't say for originality, but—for ordinary reconstructive ability."

"I give you credit for having made the most of quite exceptional advantages. You best know how you obtained them."

Wyndham reflected a moment, then looked Knowles in the face.

"I assure you solemnly there was never any question of Miss Craven's honour."

Knowles raised his eyebrows. "I didn't suppose for a moment there was. How about your own, though? Your notions of honour strike me as being quaintly original—rather more original than your Piccadyllic heroine."

Knowles was not bad-tempered, but he was a frequent cause of bad temper in other people. It was with the utmost difficulty that Wyndham controlled himself for a final effort to evade the personal, and set the question at large on general grounds.

"Then I suppose you would deny the right of any artist to make use of living material?"

Knowles yawned. "I don't attempt to deny anything. I'm debating another question."

"What is that?" Wyndham smiled an uneasy muscular smile.

"Whether it isn't my duty to kick you, or rather to try to kick you, out of this room."

"Really; and what for? For the crime of writing a successful story?"

"For the perpetration of the most consummate piece of literary scoundrelism on record."

As that statement was accompanied by a nervous twitching of the lips which Wyndham was at liberty to take for a smile, he held out his hand to Knowles before saying good-night.

"My dear Knowles, if your notions of literary honour held good, there would be an end of realism."

"The end of realism, my dear Wyndham, is the thing of all others I most desire to see."

They had shaken hands; but Wyndham understood his friend, and he knew as certainly as if Knowles had told him so that Audrey Craven, the woman whom neither of them loved, had avenged herself. She had struck, through Laura, at the friendship of his life. He was also informed of one or two facts about himself which had not as yet come within the range of his observation. He consoled himself with the reflection that the temptations of genius are not those of other men. And perhaps he was right.

Knowles sat down to his review of Miss Armstrong's book with unruffled urbanity. He wrote: "This authoress belongs to a select but rapidly increasing band of thinkers. There may be schisms in the new school with regard to details, but on the whole it is a united one. The members are unanimous in their fearless optimism. One and all they preach the same hopeful doctrine, that the attainment of a high standard of immodesty by woman will in time make morality possible for man."

He went to bed vowing that of all professions that chosen by the man of letters is the most detestable.



CHAPTER XXII

That winter was a hard one for the Havilands; they were at the very lowest ebb of their resources, short of being actually in debt. The reclaiming of Hardy had been an expensive undertaking for Katherine in more ways than one. And naturally the more successful her efforts were the more time they consumed. She had been so busy all summer finishing off old work that she had not been able to take up anything fresh. She had even been obliged to send away sitters, and they had betaken themselves elsewhere. The "Witch" had not sold, though she had won a big paragraph all to herself in "Modern Art." In her first enthusiasm over Ted's success Katherine had encouraged him to give up his pot-boilers. She had taken over some of his black-and-white work herself. And in the midst of it all she was engaged on a portrait of Vincent. They were so dependent on what they earned that these serious interruptions to work threatened an inroad on their small capital. Now, they might any day have applied to Mr. Pigott for a loan, and rejoiced that worthy gentleman's heart; but such a step was the last indignity, not even to be contemplated by Ted and Katherine. And even if their pride had not stood in their way, that source of revenue seemed closed to them now. Ted and his uncle had had an unfortunate encounter in the New Gallery. The fact that he was indebted to Katherine for an invitation to the private view had not prevented Mr. Pigott from speaking his mind freely to her brother on the subject of the Witch. He said he could have forgiven Ted for painting such a picture. He could have forgiven Katherine too, if it had not been for her ability—that made her doubly responsible. Ted tried to soothe him; he led him gently away from the spot; he promised to do all he could to induce Katherine to cultivate the grace of stupidity; but it was useless. The old gentleman stood to his ground, and Ted left him there. He received a letter from him the next morning:—

"DEAR EDWARD,—I parted from you yesterday more in sorrow than in anger. I need not tell you how deeply shocked and grieved I was to learn from a literary young friend that the subject of your sister's picture is taken from the works of the atheist Shelley—a man whose unprincipled life, I am told, is an all-sufficient commentary on his opinions.

"Your cousin Nettie is earning a modest competence by poker-work, and the painting of flowers, birds, and other innocent and beautiful objects. Why cannot Katherine do the same?

"When she is willing to give up her present pursuits for some becoming occupation, let her be assured of my ready encouragement and help. Till then, no more.—From your affectionate uncle,

"JAMES PIGOTT."

Mr. Pigott had written his last sentence advisedly. "Some day," he said to himself, "those young people will have to put their pride in their pocket." He might have known that the Haviland pride was not of the kind that goes conveniently into any pocket, even an empty one.

But Katherine worked her hardest, and gave little heed to these things. She saw her own chances of success dwindling farther into the distance, and was surprised to see how little she cared, for a curious callousness had come over her of late. Selfish ambition—selfish, because it often persists in living when all other things are dead—seemed to have died in her at last. Had she overcome it? Or was it that she had really ceased to care? She had too much to think of to be able to settle that question just now.

After all, she had another source of pride. Vincent had begun by looking to her as a protection against his worst self; and when his mother died suddenly that winter, his last link with home being broken, he became more and more dependent on Katherine. And now, though the tie of comradeship between them was closer than ever, he had no longer any need of her. He could go alone. His will was free, his intellect was awake. He read hard now. All his old ardours and enthusiasms returned to him; he worked on the Pioneer-book, recasting his favourite parts, beating the whole into shape, and hunting down the superfluous adjective with a manly delight in the new sport. Katherine had shown the revised manuscript to Knowles, and he had found her a publisher and worked him into the right frame of mind. Katherine had suppressed part of that publisher's verdict: it was to the effect that, though the text was up to the average merit of its kind, the illustrations would form the most valuable portion of the work.

Hardy had submitted the final revision of his proofs to Katherine. But on one point he was resolute: "I want the dedication to stand as it is, Sis." And Katherine nodded her head and was silent.

He often talked about Audrey now. He was no longer bitter and vindictive, as he had been in the days of his degradation. His old feeling for her had returned to him, unchanged, except for the refining process he himself had undergone. His love was ennobled now by an infinite pity. Not that he had lost sight of what she had done for him; but now that his eyes were clearer, he saw her as she was, and felt to the full the pathos of her vanity.

Wyndham's book was severely criticised in Devon Street. One day, about four months after its appearance, Hardy had returned to the subject nearest his heart, and was discussing it with Katherine as he sat to her for his portrait, now nearly finished. He had just pleasantly told her that he wished he had managed to fall in love with her instead of with Audrey; she would have made something very different of him—a remark to which Katherine made no answer, treating it, as Hardy thought, with the contempt it deserved. Then he broke out, as he had done many a time before.

"I don't know how it is. When I was away from her, I used to think of her as a sort of amateur angel leading me on." (Katherine smiled; it was very evident that Audrey had "led him on.") "When I was with her she seemed to be a little devil, encouraging everything that was bad in me. I don't know how she did it; but she did. And yet, Kathy, whatever they may say, I don't believe she's bad. I don't swear, of course, that she's a paragon of goodness——"

"Isn't there a medium?"

"But she was a sweet little thing before she met that scoundrel Wyndham. Wasn't she?"

But Katherine was giving the whole of her attention to Vincent's nose.

"Putting Audrey out of the question, I don't think much of Mr. Langley Wyndham. I don't like his books; I can't breathe in his stuffy drawing-rooms. Why can't the fellow open his windows sometimes and let in a little of God's fresh air? As you know, I believe he's even a shadier character than I am."

"He hasn't got a character; it's all run to literature."

"H'm—I'm not so sure about that."

Katherine had laid down her brushes, and was examining her work with her head on one side. "Well, he can't draw a character, anyhow; Laura's simply impossible."

"I don't know. Laura is Audrey, and Audrey's a funny person."

"I used to think that Audrey wasn't a person—that she was made up of little bits of people stuck together."

"That's not bad, Sis. She is made up of bits of people stuck together."

"Yes; but the thing is, what makes them stick? Mr. Wyndham doesn't go into that, and that's Audrey. His work is clever—too clever by half—but it's terribly superficial."

Hardy meditated on that saying; then he began again.

"You've done a great deal for me, Kathy. I sometimes think that if you'd given your mind to it, you could have made something of Audrey. You know, poor little thing, she used to think she was very strong-minded; but she was more easily twisted about than any woman I know. That's what made her so fickle. If there's any truth in that stupid story of Wyndham's, she must have been like a piece of putty in her hands. I believe, if you could have got hold of her, you could have done her some good."

"I don't believe in doing people good."

"I do. I'm a case in point."

"No, you're not."

"I am. You did me good."

"I'm very glad to hear it. If I did, it's because I never thought about it. Now, if I tried my hand on Audrey, I should set to work with the fixed intention of doing her good; therefore I should fail miserably. It's a different thing altogether."

"I see no difference myself."

Katherine was silent. Her charity had covered the multitude of Vincent's sins. Why had she not been able to spare a corner of it for Audrey's?

"Come," said Hardy, "it's not as if she was really very bad."

"No, it's not; there'd be some chance then. There is a medium, and the medium is hopeless. The wonder is you never found that out."

"I did. I knew it all the time; yet I loved her. It made no difference—nothing ever will. I've tried to kill my feeling for her, but it's no use—I can't. I should have to kill myself first; and even then I believe I should find it waiting for me in Hades when I got there."

"After all, why should you try to kill it, Vincent?"

"It's the shame of it, Sis."

Katherine might have thought that on the contrary he seemed rather proud of the permanence of his affections, but she was too much preoccupied to be aware of his moral absurdity.

"Well, I don't know much about these things; but it seems to me that even if she doesn't love you, even if she isn't everything you thought she was, there's no reason to be ashamed of loving her."

"Ah, Kathy, you never loved any one like that."

Her colour changed. "No. It isn't every one who can love like that."

"What would you do if you were in my case—if you'd given yourself away like me? Supposing you went and lost your little heart to some man-fiend who was, we'll say, about as bad a lot as I am, and who had the execrable taste not to care a rap for you,—wouldn't you feel ashamed of him and yourself too?"

Katherine's white face flushed; she looked away from him, and answered steadily—

"No, I wouldn't."

He thought he had hurt her feelings, and was about to change the subject when she turned a beaming face to him.

"But then, you see, I don't love anything much."

"Good as you are, you'd be a better woman if you did."

"Of course there are exceptions. I've some sort of affection for the Witch and Ted."

"Ted is a very fine boy, and the Witch is a very fine picture, but—well, some day you'll have an affection for something else; it won't be a boy, and it won't be a picture. Then, Sis, you'll know what it is to feel, and your art will go pop."

"Oh, I hope not. But it's not true; look at Ted."

"Ted's a man, and you are a woman. Ten to one, a really great passion improves a man's art: it plays the deuce with a woman's."

"I don't believe it!" said Katherine, with rather more warmth than the occasion demanded.

"Shall I tell you what you've been doing, Sis? First of all, you've tried to live two lives and get the best out of each. That was tempting Providence, as Mrs. Rogers would say. You found that wouldn't work, so you said to yourself, 'I give it up. Here goes; I'll be a woman at all costs. I'll know what it is to love.'"

Katherine took up her brushes again, and in spite of herself moved one foot impatiently. Hardy went on, well pleased with his own lucidity.

"And you gave up the only thing you really cared about, and played at being the slave of duty, the devoted sister."

She sighed (was it a sigh of relief?).

"You're wrong. I'm anything but a devoted sister."

"Yes, you're anything but a devoted sister. I'm going to claim one of the privileges of friendship—that of speaking unpleasant truths in the unpleasantest way possible."

"Go on. This is getting interesting."

"I repeat, then, you're not a truly devoted sister. A truly devoted sister would give her brother a chance of developing some moral fibre on his own account. Ever since you two lived together you've been making noble sacrifices. Now two can't play at that game, and the boy hasn't had a chance. The consequence is, he won't work; he prefers taking it easy."

"That was Audrey's fault, not mine."

"Yes, but you encouraged him; and now he does what he likes, young monkey, and you do all the pot-boilers. And you're making yourself ill over them. So much for Ted. I've given him a hint, and he took it very well. Now for the Witch. I believe in your heart of hearts you love her better than everybody else put together. And now you're off on the other tack; you're trying to sit on the artist in you that you may develop the woman. I mean the other way about; you're sitting on the woman that you may develop the artist."

"Aren't you getting a little mixed?"

"That plan works worse than all. Let me implore you not to go on with it. If you only knew it, there's nothing that you will ever do that's lovelier than your own womanhood. Whatever you do, don't kill that. Don't go on hardening your heart to everything human till there's no sweetness left in your nature, Kathy. I want my little sister to make the best of her life. Some day some good man will ask you to be his wife. If, when that day comes, you don't know how to love, little woman, all the success in the world won't make up to you for the happiness you have missed."

"Oh, Vincent, if you only knew how funny you are!" She laughed the laugh that Vincent loved to hear, and when she looked at him her eyelashes were all wet with it.

"All right, Sis. Some day you'll own that your elder brother wasn't such a fool as you think him."

"I—I don't think you a fool. I only wish you knew how frightfully funny you are! No, I don't, though," she added below her breath.

But Vincent was quite unable to see wherein lay the humour of his excellent remarks. He considered that his experience gave him a right to speak with authority on questions of feeling. But it had not made him understand everything.

* * * * *

The next morning Katherine was sitting before her easel, waiting for Vincent to come up for the last sitting. It was a raw, cold day, and her fingers felt numbed as they took up the brushes. Ted had made a promise to Hardy to do his fair share of the more remunerative work. Before keeping it, he was giving a few final touches to one of the figures in his Dante study of Paolo and Francesca, swept like leaves on the wind of hell. He was in high good humour, and as he worked he talked incessantly, quoting from an imaginary review. "In the genius of Mr. Edward Haviland we have a new Avatar of the spirit of Art. Mr. Haviland is the disciple of no school. He owes no debt either to the past or to the present. He works in a noble freedom from prejudice and preconception, uncorrupted by custom as he is untrammelled by tradition. If we may classify what is above and beyond classification, we should say that in matter Mr. Haviland is an idealist, while in form he is an ultra-realist. We dare to prophesy that he will become the founder of a new romantico-classical school in the near future——"

"Oh, Ted, do be quiet, and let me think for a minute."

"What's the matter, Kathy?"

"I don't know. I think I'm tired, or else it's the cold."

Ted looked at her earnestly (for him) and then came over to her and stroked her hair. "There's something wrong. Won't you confide in your brother?"

"I'm all right—only lazy."

"Can't—can't I do anything?"

"Well, perhaps. I don't want you to give up much of your time to it; but if you'd finish some of those black-and-white things—I don't feel equal to tackling them all single-handed."

"Oh," said the boy, turning very red, "why didn't you say so before?" He sat down and began at once on the pile of manuscripts waiting to be illustrated. But he continued to talk. "I saw Vincent the other day, and he told me his opinion of you pretty plainly."

"What did he say?"

"Why, that you've sacrificed your poor brother to your desire to cut a moral figure; that you've been cultivating all sorts of extravagant virtues at my expense. I might have been playing the most heroic parts, and getting any amount of applause, if you hadn't selfishly bagged all the best ones for yourself. You've taken up the whole of the stage, so that I haven't had room even to exercise the minor virtues. Just reach me that sheaf of crayons, there's a good girl. Thanks." Ted put on a judical air, and chose a crayon. "Look there! you've taken the most uncomfortable chair and the worst light in the studio, when I might have been posing in them all the time. I haven't had half a chance. Vincent said so. No wonder he's disgusted with you. Ah! that's not so bad for a mere tyro. No, Kathy, he's quite right. You're an angel, and I've been a lazy scoundrel. But you'll admit that during my painful mental affliction I wasn't quite responsible. And afterwards—well, how was I to know? I thought we were getting on very nicely."

"So we were, Ted—up till now."

Her last words were so charged with feeling that Ted looked up surprised. But he said nothing, being a person of tact.

The sitting that morning was not a long one. Hardy seemed tired and depressed. After posing patiently for half an hour, he gave it up.

"It's no good this morning. I must go out and get a little warmth into me. You people had better come too."

"It's such a horrid day," pleaded Katherine. "You'll get exceedingly wet, and come back no warmer. It's going to rain or snow, or something." As she spoke, the first drops of a cold sleet rattled on the skylight.

But Vincent was obstinate and restless.

"I must go, if it's only for a turn on the Embankment. What with my book and your picture, I haven't stretched my legs all week. Come along, Ted. You'll die, Kathy, if you persist in wallowing in oil-paint like that, and taking no exercise."

They set out before a cutting north-easter and a sharp shower of rain that froze as it fell. Katherine watched them as they crossed the street and turned on to the Embankment. The wind came round the corner, as a north-easter will, and through the window-sash, chilling her as she stood. "There's nobody more surprised than myself," she said. "And yet I might have known that if I went in for this sort of thing, I should make a mess of it." She went back to the fire, and settled herself in the attitude of thought. There was no end to her thinking now. Perhaps that was the reason why she was always tired. Hitherto she had triumphed over fatigue and privation by a power which seemed inexhaustible, and was certainly mysterious. Much of it was due to sheer youth and health, and to the exercise which gave her a steady hand and a cool head—much, doubtless, to her unflinching will; but Katherine was hardly aware how far her strength had lain in the absence of temptation to any feminine weakness. Hitherto she had seen her object always in a clear untroubled air, and her work had gained something of her life's austere and passionless serenity. Now it was all different, and she was thinking of what had made that difference.

Ted came back glowing from his walk; but Vincent was colder than ever. He sat shivering over the Havilands' fire all afternoon, and went to bed early.

"We'll finish that sitting to-morrow, Sis," he said, wearily. Ted went out again to dine with Knowles, and Katherine was left alone.

It might have been her own mood, or the shadow of Vincent's, but she was depressed with vague presentiments of trouble. They gathered like the formless winter clouds, without falling in any rain. Then she realised that she was very tired. She wrapped herself in a rug and lay down on the couch to rest. And rest came as it comes after a sleepless night, not in sleep deep and restorative, but in a gentle numbing of the brain. She woke out of her stupor refreshed. The cloud had rolled away, and she could work again. She sat down to the last pile of Vincent's proofs.