two days after this incident, of which she naturally remained unaware, mrs. elles was well enough to walk across three fields to meet the artist on his way back from his work. she exulted in the fact that she had become so countrified as to disdain to put on a hat even, and her red-golden hair, less elaborately arranged than it used to be, shone beautifully in the slanting light of the setting sun.
she waved her hand to him as he came in sight, crying, in accents of frank camaraderie: “have you had a good day?”
“not at all!”
“he’s cross,” she thought, and as he answered her so curtly, and moreover stared at her in an oddly unconscious way, as if he were taking her in for the first time, she felt all her joyous welcome frozen on her lips and at once jumped to the conclusion that somebody had been abusing her to him.
“you look at me as if you didn’t know me or like me!” she said, undiplomatically, because she felt it so acutely.
“and as i happen to do both——” he spoke quite roughly between his teeth the justification she forced upon him. he re-adjusted the sketching bag{149} on his shoulders with a hasty impatient movement. the bag was heavy, and it had been a very hot day.
“did any tiresome tourists come and overlook you?” she asked presently. she knew how he hated being overlooked, and even here in these wilds, periodical intrusions of the outer barbarian were possible. an encounter with an ’arry of leeds or scarborough would account for any amount of ill-temper.
“the vicar came and spoke to me,” he answered her grudgingly.
“ah! like old times,” she said. “it was i who frightened him away. ever since the vicaress saw you carry me home, i think she has disapproved of us both. she never came to call on me, as you said she would. i don’t want her to, i am sure, i could not return a formal call in a sailor hat, and that is all i have got.... do you mind not walking quite so fast? it hurts my foot.”
“i beg your pardon!” he said. “i keep forgetting you are an invalid still. it is most unfortunate!”
again she noticed the accents of irritation and wondered at them. he had always been so nice about her accident till now.
“it will be all right if we go on gently like this,” she said with intent to soothe. “in a few days i shan’t mind what i do. we can go one of our nice long sunday walks again.” he made a movement. “they are the greatest pleasure i have in the world—even when it thunders and lightens.... by the way, i have some news for you—bad news. there is a{150} new arrival at the hotel. i heard the noise of installation.”
“the deuce there is!” he said, the current of his thoughts, whatever they were, entirely changed in a moment by news so stirring. “a man or a woman?”
“a man, i think. his boots made such a noise, stamping over my head.”
“one of those wretched touring bicyclists probably. he will perhaps only stop the night. any luggage?”
“i saw none. that rather helps the bicyclist theory. but then, i saw no bicycle. oh! i do hope, though, that it is all right. we don’t want anyone else here, do we?”
she came a little nearer to him, unconsciously, as she spoke. “we”—she enjoyed using the pronoun. together they walked down the espalier-bordered path of the inn garden; and, as they turned in under the porch, she raised her arm and broke off a rose and put it, somewhat obtrusively, and a little against his will perhaps, into the artist’s button-hole.
it was all done in the sight of jane anne, who came rushing downstairs from the upper rooms as they entered, looking, somehow, very busy and excited. it was jane anne, not dorothy, who for some reason or other brought in the lamp to them that evening, setting it down heavily, so heavily that mrs. elles, looking up, saw that the girl’s hands were trembling with nervousness.
but through some unaccountable swing of the mental pendulum ph?be elles was to-night so nearly{151} absolutely happy that she did not waste a thought on the causes of the young woman’s excitement, or that other problem, the possible duration of the mysterious visitor’s stay. tourists might—and would—come and go, she and rivers were there it might be for ever. for ever! yes, she felt to-night as if that might really be, and life remain for ever a fairy tale. the prince was here, in the enchanted castle, in willing bonds to the enchanted princess, and so far, no dragons—or other princesses contested him with her.
she sat in the low window seat and leaned back against the sill, her hands idly clasped behind her head, and closed her eyes now and then, and felt so happy that she smiled without knowing it. she had bidden truce to her eternal self-consciousness for once.
rivers looked up now and then, but there was no apprehension in his eyes. he did not see her—he was in another world—a world where neither ph?be elles, nor any other woman, could follow him. that could not be helped, but meantime his physical presence sufficed the woman who adored him. her tense nerve fibres were momentarily relaxed, she was soothed and lulled into a state of happy acquiescence in the present order of things. it had been very hot all this august day, but now the cool airs of evening were just beginning to qualify the dry heat that had been so intense as to blister the window shutters, and make the air seem to dance on the distant skyline of the moors. mrs. elles was very lightly dressed, her thin{152} muslin shirt showed the rosy skin of her shoulder that rested against the jamb of the window frame, half in, half out. she deliberately inhaled the sweet aromatic smell of the jessamine and the phloxes that grew under the window, and the mild breath of the cows that leaned over the fence. there were people in the garden, she could hear their whispering voices.
“lovers probably,” she thought—“the landlady’s sons courting their lasses. how sweet it all is!”
after half an hour’s steady work, the painter became restless. perhaps he remembered the advent of the presumed cyclist, and if he did, it worried him. he seemed to be listening once or twice to vague sounds heard in the passage outside, then he began to walk about. once he brought up sharply in his walk in front of the stack of umbrellas and travelling gear in the corner of the room, and stood there. she happened to be looking out into the garden just then, or she would have thought this terribly ominous, and all her peace of mind would have been destroyed. when he came back to the table, he looked at the drawing and shook his head. that gesture escaped her too. then he left the room and she saw him stroll deviously up the garden and look over the gate into the fields. when he came back, she had not moved or in any way modified the picture of restful contentment she presented. he looked at her—a puzzled look—then he said:
“i have seen the new lodger!” he said. “at least i think it was she!{153}”
“you have? a woman?”
“yes, a tall, handsome personage, dressed all in forbidding and ponderous black. she was sitting in the arbour out there, talking to jane anne in a very friendly way.”
“it was the girl’s own mother, probably. every girl of her class has got a bombazine mother that she produces on occasion.”
“jane anne is an orphan. besides this was more than bombazine—it was—it was something very handsome, if i know anything about it—which i don’t!”
“no, there’s no black in nature!” said mrs. elles, smiling fondly at him. “and i should not expect you to know much about women’s dress. my—er—father knows there are such things as ruches and pipings, and that is all.”
“i do happen to know that there is such a thing as jet, and that it is very expensive. a sort of glittering coat of mail, you know, that women wear.”
“egidia does!” cried mrs. elles, with a sudden little pang of jealousy. “she wore one in newcastle, i remember, when i went to see her. sequins!”
“yes, the ‘bombazine mother’ wore little shining things like hers,” he replied, with a disconcerting apprehension of the intricacies of feminine apparel in miss giles’s case which disclosed to the woman at his side the parlous state of her own heart, if indeed she had been under any doubt about it.
he went on, “as for this wretched woman, i do{154} hope we shall not come across her! her voice was enough for me. i wonder how a woman with a strident unsympathetic voice like that can find anyone to live with her. i could not be in her company an hour.”
“i daresay she is somebody’s mother-in-law,” remarked mrs. elles, with pathos.
“and eyes like gimlets! she had a good look at me!”
“and now she is most probably pumping them about you, and me, and who and what we are!”
“probably,” he replied rather grimly, and sat down in front of his drawing, and began to work at it with all the signs of intense concentration.
she stayed where she was, in the window seat, and watched him, with an ardent, timidly devouring gaze. this time, he was too much absorbed to look up, so it was quite safe.
she found herself wondering how a man could live in such an atmosphere of passionate regard, and not know it. it seemed to her that the cloud, as it were, of devotion and admiration with which she enwrapped him, was so intensely actual—a positive physical fact,—it seemed to her that she could see the halo with which she crowned him.
for literally half-an-hour she heard nothing but the intermittent plip-plop of the brush in the glass of water, fast growing muddy coloured. he seemed to her to dash the brush into it with more energy—nay virulence—than usual.{155}
she presently observed aloud, with the sweet impertinence permitted by intimacy: “how you are dashing it in! i call that the splash and carry one of art, but i suppose it will all come out right in the end.”
“or all wrong,” he said—and his voice was so changed that she looked up in surprise. “the chances are that i shall never finish it. i am thinking of leaving this place to-morrow!”
“what?” she screamed, rather than said; and her voice from excess of emotion was shrill and strident enough to apprise even one so absorbed as rivers that his intelligence was of no ordinary degree of importance to his listener.
she had known all along that this must come and she had made up her mind how she would behave when it came—but not so suddenly, good god! her resolution deserted her and her voice betrayed her.
the painter deliberately laid down his brush, and came to where she was sitting in the window-seat, and taking her two unresisting hands, led her a few paces into the room.
“there are people in the garden,” he said quietly. he screwed up his eyes, and looked at her exactly as if she were a “subject,”—and a difficult one, as she thought afterwards.
“now, please listen to me,” he went on, with a little gentle pressure of the hands pushing her into a seat. “i have been thinking——”
“oh, dear!” she murmured, like a spoilt child. she was so acutely conscious that any reflection on his{156} part was likely to mean a conclusion inimical to her peace. the moment he thought about it, he would be sure to see how wrong and impossible the whole situation was.
“i am a careless fellow,” rivers proceeded to say, “and my head is generally full of my own work, to the exclusion of everything else.... i can’t say i ever thought about it, but i have heard something to-day—mr. popham made an absurd suggestion to me—which shows me that i am very stupidly compromising you by my presence here.”
mrs. elles interrupted him with vehemence, stung by his generosity in putting it so.
“indeed no, it is i who am the interloper! it is i who ought to go—and i will!” she drew herself up proudly. “you to go! why, your picture isn’t anything like finished.”
“the picture is a minor matter, compared with—”
“it is quite the most important thing in the world,” she rejoined, with a little touch of irony, bitterly aware that to him it was so, indeed. then her spirit oozed away, and she said, weakly, “no, no, it is for me to go, of course—but, oh, we were so happy! why must you make me——”
“i don’t make you go—of course not!” he said irritably. “i intend to go myself. did i not say so?”
“nonsense,” she answered, quite rudely, in her extreme anguish. “that would be no good at all. besides, do you suppose i should care to be here at all—unless you were?{157}”
she uttered the crude fact recklessly, imperiously, contemptuously almost. surely he must see; she had nothing to conceal from him now! she hid her face in her hands a moment after, and tried to leave the room, but rivers caught her to him as she passed.
“then, for god’s sake, don’t go!” he said, tearing her hands down from her face. with one quick look at him as he sat across the chair holding her body, she flung her arms round his neck, and returned his embrace with all the passion and abandonment of one doomed. married to one man and beloved of another, she felt herself to be so. a look in rivers’ eyes had warned her that alastor’s asceticism was only skin deep; a mysterious, material rapport was established between them. she felt as if she had known him all her life.
“it is all right, then, if you care for me,” he said, in a matter-of-fact voice. “what do you suppose it was that mr. popham wanted to-day? he wanted to marry us, by way of looking after the morals of his parish!”
he laughed; he was gay. even she had never dreamed that he could be so charming! she removed herself a few paces away from him, and stood, sobbing convulsively.
“oh, forgive me, forgive me!” she repeated.
he became grave and stern in a moment, struck by the utter conviction in her tone.
“what for? because you don’t care for me? why should you? i have made a mistake, that’s all!{158}”
he turned away impatiently, possessed for the moment by the mere surface irritation of the man who has been refused.
“no, no, not that! oh, i adore you!”
she laid frantic hold on the lapel of his coat. he covered her hand with his.
“what then? how nervous you are! what can it be?”
he laughed.
“you are not going to tell me that you are married already, i suppose?”
“yes, yes, that’s just it. i am!”
there was a pause. then—
“i said it in joke. do you mean to say that you are not joking?”
“no, no, i wish i were. i have deceived you shamefully.”
he stared at her, then he sat down heavily on the chair by the table in front of his work. he looked a little bewildered and very angry.
“shall i tell you all?”
“oh, yes, if you care to—not that it concerns me now.”
he idly picked up his brush, charged with colour as it was, and let it fall full on the drawing in front of him.
she caught his hands.
“oh, don’t, don’t spoil your drawing because of me! and listen to me, for it does concern you, since i love you, and you say that you love me. i must{159} tell you, i must explain what i have done. oh, don’t look at me so! you were my lover a moment ago, and now you are my judge.”
“a woman has no right to let a man——”
“no, i know she hasn’t. i ought not to have let you tell me that you cared for me. but i am so glad you did! it will be something to remember afterwards. i must tell you my story—my true story! i told you once, you remember, the story of ph?be elles—the woman who left her husband, because he was so unkind to her——”
“oh, so that is your story, is it? and the one you told me about yourself—your pretended self——”
“that i invented. i had to tell you something——” he rose from his chair. she went on—“oh, forgive me, forgive me! i have not told you the truth——”
“so it seems!” he replied, coldly, opening the door, and going out. “good-night.”
. . . . . . . .
she was left alone, with the worst of all scourges that a woman may have to suffer, that of reading in the eyes of the man she loves the expression of the scorn, deserved or undeserved, that he bears her.
. . . . . . . .
for a long time she sat there, in this little narrow room that had framed all her brief happiness, half stunned by the judgment that had been passed on her, and also by the shock of self-revelation that went with it. she felt mean, as well as miserable.{160}
the noises about the house ceased gradually—there was no sound of footsteps overhead, yet she had heard rivers go to his room and close the door. he was probably sitting brooding by the window in that chair she had sat in. he had omitted to put his drawing away,—presently she rose and tenderly put a sheet of tissue paper over it, as she had seen him do sometimes, when called away even for a moment. then she sat down again. her eyes fell on a bradshaw on the mantelpiece; she thought of getting it and looking out a train to go home by to-morrow. she had no longer any thought of committing suicide, the idea of expiation of which she was now possessed did not admit of any selfish solution of that sort. but she had never yet been able to find out anything in bradshaw for herself; she would have to ask mr. rivers.
that she must not do; on the contrary, she must never see him again! she must arrange to breakfast in her own room to-morrow, wait till he went out to his work, and leave greta bridge without even attempting to bid him good-bye!
the lamp began to gurgle, and she realised that the oil in it was getting so low that it would be out in a few minutes. she would be left alone in the dark! she was afraid of the dark like a child. the window was still wide open to the night, she could tell by the cool wind blowing in on her and chilling her through her thin blouse. suppose, too, that the spirit of the greta, evolved in happier days by rivers’ imagination,{161} should suddenly appear, framed in the black square! she was indeed haunted by the vision of a face seen there during her recent interview with him; it had impressed itself somehow on her consciousness, though she was too much excited to take cognizance of it at the time, but now the impression returned to her with extraordinary vividness, as of a real person who had been there!
she started to her feet in terror, and made for the door.
she ran upstairs all in one breath, as it were, and then paused, by the door of his room, panting a little. she gently proceeded to run her fingers down its uncommunicable surface. behind those boards was the man she loved, and who despised her.
but he had said he loved her, before he had found out that she was a liar. nothing could take that away.
she crouched down by the door, forgetful of every consideration of prudence. she was a chidden child, that longed to sue childishly for pardon.
yes, she was a liar, a criminal!
she had almost tamely accepted his view in the first instance, because it was his view, it was his contempt that had made her feel contemptible. but now her eyes—the eyes of her spirit—were opened, and she even exaggerated the heinousness of her crime, the blackness of her own soul, till she felt herself absolutely shrink from her own carefully cherished and pampered personality. she saw herself morally naked and{162} unpicturesque. all her little ingeniously disposed veils of sophistry and plausibility she tore rudely away. she took a quite savage joy in shattering her own elaborate life-system of pose. the truth, she sadly, tragically perceived, was not in her—it never had been, and again she blamed her mother’s training,—and truth was everything.
no sound came from the room within. had she but known it, the artist had flung himself on the bed in his clothes as he was, and had fallen asleep, the heavy complete sleep of a man whose lungs have been breathing in the fresh outside air all day, under circumstances of intense creative excitement. even now, art came first.
the door of room number three, a few steps along the passage, opened and closed again. it was the room necessarily occupied by the unknown lodger. mrs. elles was too much absorbed either to hear or notice. her thought, like the thought of a hypnotic subject, was concentrated on the yellow brass handle of the door against which she crouched, which mesmerized her, in its shining immutability. in about half an hour, she made an effort to shake off the lethargy which had taken possession of her, and walking away, like a somnambulist, her hand to her head, and stumbling over her gown, regained her own room.
