egidia used her novelist’s privilege of supposed social emancipation sometimes, and braved conventionalities. she went once—or twice—to see her cousin in his studio. it was obviously impossible for her to receive him in her own house, while mrs. elles was an inmate of it.
mrs. elles had now been her guest for some months. she had written at the outset, in obedience to egidia’s instructions, a letter to her husband, long and reasonable, announcing her present whereabouts, and laying the circumstances and facts of her stay in yorkshire fully before him. his only reply to her had been a curt communication through his lawyers, informing her that he was determined to proceed with the case, and would even consent to defray the cost of her defence by a suitable firm of london solicitors, whose name and address he mentioned.
“he pays to get rid of me!” mrs. elles had commented bitterly. she had up to the last moment believed in the existence in mortimer’s heart of a latent love for her. she was a woman before whom every man must necessarily bow the knee, even her husband. she was now a little disillusioned.
“such a man should be glad to have such a wife as{234} me, on any terms!” she observed to egidia. “it is worse than quarrelling with one’s bread and butter; it is quarrelling with one’s culture, as well!”
but it was painfully obvious that mortimer elles did not now set so high a value on the muse who had for ten years honoured his fireside.
these were the things that amused egidia, and indemnified her for the trial of housing the delinquent, and being the recipient of her oft repeated confidences. she always thought, and spoke to rivers, of ph?be elles as of a wayward foolish child, whose material interests they both had at heart, and of the impending divorce case as of a mere legal and technical difficulty into which the indiscretion and imprudence of this particular child had plunged herself, and her friends.
“pooh!” she said to rivers, in an off-hand manner that was half assumed. “you don’t know what love is, either of you! she talks of it, and you don’t, but you are both alike!”
rivers still used his old habit, the one mrs. elles had noticed, and suffered from, that of refusing to take up other persons’ speeches unless positively called upon to do so. he was working now against time, standing intent, mahl-stick and palette in hand, under the pale white globe of electric light, which dimly lit the whole vast studio, and concentrated itself upon his head, that was not so dark as it used to be.
“the little fiend! she has managed to turn his{235} hair grey!” egidia said to herself as she stood near him, but not near enough to interfere with the free play of his brush-arm, and talked softly, and in a way calculated to make no direct demand on his attention. mrs. elles had learned that art, too, in the glades of brignal. rivers never looked round at egidia, but continued to lay on touch after touch with unerring precision and mastery. he now and then stepped back a few paces, and glanced at her, just enough to avoid jostling her in his backward walk, but that was all.
“do you like dr. andré?” she asked suddenly.
“yes, well enough why?”
“because i think he admires ph?be!”
“does he?” was the indifferent reply.
“she is probably with him now—or at her lawyer’s.”
egidia spoke tentatively, as if she were consulting him as to her own line in countenancing the intimacy between the two. perhaps a desire to ascertain rivers’ own personal feelings on the subject of the little flirtation unconsciously influenced her.
“there is no harm in andré,” said rivers decidedly. “and, poor little thing, it does her good to be taken out of herself!”
“nothing ever really does that!” egidia rejoined. inwardly she said, “oh, no, he can’t care for her.” and her face, unconsciously to herself, took on a joyous expression. she went on, with a manner of detached criticism:{236}
“i never, in all my literary life, met any one who lived in herself so completely. keats speaks of a woman who would have liked to have been engaged to a poem and married to a novel, but ph?be goes one better, she is her own poem, her own novel. no spectacle, no literature in the world interests her as much. she is always pulling herself up by the roots, as it were, to account for her moral—or immoral—growth, and telling one all about it.”
“and does it bore you?” asked he.
“on the contrary, it interests me deeply. and to do her justice, she is a charming companion, so gay, so lively. no one would imagine what she is suffering. the merry martyr, i call her.” there was the very slightest touch of mockery in her tone.
he made no remark, and she continued:
“i gave her that drawing you gave me—the one that had a sketch of her in it. she did want it so badly, poor girl, and after all, she sat for it, and had a better right to it than i!”
“i will give you another!” said rivers.
“will you really, edmund? that is nice of you.” she flushed with pleasure. “now i must go back to my young woman of the sea!” she laughed.
“be kind to her!” said rivers, “but you are, i know. you are a good woman!”
“am i? but i get very angry with the lady sometimes, when she talks as if this divorce of hers was a sort of smart tea-party she was going to in the immediate future.{237}”
“but that is the right way to look at it,” said he, “and a tea party that won’t come off either!”
egidia stared at him; she wondered if this was the flippancy of bitterness or indifference?
“they won’t be able to prove what is not true,” the artist went on, with some fire, but at the same time carefully laying and mixing burnt umber and madder brown on his palette. “there isn’t really the ghost of a case, as i told the old woman, her aunt, when she came and made me a scene. it will be all right. elles will abandon the charge, or we will get it squared out of court. it isn’t worth thinking about.”
he applied the mixture he had made with a firm square touch.
“oh, i see,” said egidia, “that is why you are able to paint away so composedly! i was wondering—i had thought that in the face of such a possible horror you would have not been able to do anything. that is why i have distressed myself so much about it all. are you sure you are not pretending—that you are not more disturbed than you care to own?”
“i don’t let it trouble me,” he said, adding with a certain intentional deliberation, “i am an artist before all!”
egidia said she must go home. rivers unyoked his palette from his thumb, and laid it down carefully. he led her out of the studio, downstairs, past walls covered with framed diplomas, and medals, and all kinds of memoranda of a life spent in the service and{238} honor of art. his house in bedford square was pre-eminently a bachelor’s house; an indurated, deeply ingrained celibacy was suggested by the presence of many articles of furniture, and the absence of others. rivers was of the orderly description of bachelor, of all kinds the most inveterate. egidia, in her mind’s eye, could not see the little elles throning it here, her trivial prettiness overwhelmed by the grandiose style of decoration appropriate to the mansions of bloomsbury, her eyes resting on high wall spaces hung with old masters, her footsteps treading staircases whose angles were filled with yellow casts of heroic statues. there was never a bit of drapery, or a tanagra figurine to reduce the scale a little. it was all the difference between the atmosphere of the british museum, and a louis seize boudoir. egidia felt happier at the definition of this anomaly between the tastes of rivers and ph?be, and went away having absorbed some of the contagion of rivers’ confidence in a renewed term of celibacy for himself.
mrs. elles had not yet returned when she got home, but came fluttering in presently, and touched her shoulder as she sat over the fire shivering with the chill depression of thoughts that would rise, in spite of the consoling visit she had just made.
“cheer up!” said mrs. elles. “i have brought you a little present, nothing particular, only to show that i love you. a little gold lucky bean. will you wear it to please me?”
she sank down on the hearthrug, and laid her{239} hand, and for the moment her head, on egidia’s knee. this was one of her “caressing little ways,” to which egidia was ashamed of objecting.
“where have you been?” she said coldly. “with the doctor or the lawyer?”
“lawyer. right away down to holborn. of course, i got there too soon. i generally do. i am so eager to hear what fresh news they have. a divorce case is so exciting. but then i have to wait, in the lobby, among all that barren brownness of cheap varnish, and trodden oilcloth and japanned tin deed boxes stacked up to the very horizon. there i am on one of an awful row of bulging leather chairs, where the crowd of witnesses sit—i mean the grimy people that keep coming in, wiping their cuffs across their mouths, and sit down apologetically. they are to be examined in this or that disgusting case, as jane anne will be in mine. i watch the commissionaire adding up figures inside his queer hutch of a desk, and read up all about salmon-fishery laws on the walls and see the little bow-legged clerks hop off their stools, and run about with sheaves of papers. why can’t they make lawyers’ offices prettier?”
“divorce,” said egidia, “would really become too attractive if it were run in connection with a restaurant or a manicure establishment.”
“and then,” mrs. elles went on, “when i do see mr. lawler, i cannot help thinking that he is laughing at me. he treats me like a child——”
“instead of an erring woman!” said egidia.{240} “well, you should not wear your hats so terribly on one side. the dignity of crime——”
“yes, i must really get something plainer!” mrs. elles returned, taking her literally. “i nearly cried to-day, and it did not go with my hat at all.”
“why did you cry?”
“because—i can stand a good deal—but when he repeated all the awful things that woman was prepared to swear against me, i nearly gave way. the whole case, they say, stands on her evidence, and it is false, outrageously false. she always hated me, she cared for mr. rivers herself. it was notorious that she did.”
egidia sneered a little, almost in spite of herself. “who next?” she said.
“she was very nearly a lady,” mrs. elles said apologetically, “and he was kind to her, but he never flirted with her—of that i am convinced. but if the jury believe her, mortimer will get his case, to a certainty!”
“did they tell you the details—of what she was going to say?” asked egidia, shyly and awkwardly.
mrs. elles told her, at some length, but without much hesitation.
“oh, she can’t realize!” thought egidia, brooding. “she can have no imagination!”
her own conjured up so vividly the horrors of the scene in court—the scene that must come now, in spite of rivers’ pathetically confident assertions.
“she can’t love him, or know or care one little bit{241} what he suffers—or is it that she thinks that she will get him herself in the end? and so she will, for he is a man of honour. ah, but she shall not, if i can prevent it. it will be the best plot i ever invented, if i can pull it through, and then i suppose i must take the veil, to show the purity of my intentions!... god forgive me, if he loves her! but he does not!... he is an artist before all. he said so himself, this very day. and no man loves disgrace, and such disgrace would kill love, if ever it existed!”
“what are you thinking of?” asked the other presently. “you look like the tragic muse, or althea, before she put the burning brand back into the fire again. you have a very strong face, do you know? it is a pity mr. rivers isn’t a figure painter, then he could paint you.”
“i wish—somehow—you would not talk of mr. rivers.”
“why not? i am always thinking of him.”
“that you are not.”
“you think me very frivolous?” mrs. elles sighed out. “but i only laugh that i may not weep—i go about trying to kill thought. if i did not, i should go mad with what is hanging over me! and the worst i have to bear almost is the thought that though i am thinking so constantly of him, he is not thinking of me—except as a disagreeable incident—a burr that has somehow got stuck to him, and that he cannot shake off!” she got up and walked about a{242} little, evidently a prey to real mental perturbation. then she turned suddenly.
“egidia, i want you and him if possible to know this, that i shall not marry him, even if i am divorced for him. i could not, after what you said.”
she spoke pettishly, like a child or a schoolgirl, but all the strength and sadness of renunciation was in her eyes. she evidently meant what she said. egidia realised this, but the complication of her feelings about this little helen kept her silent awhile. she took her hand, however, and held it, in sign of amity.
“i want, ph?be,” she said presently, “to go out of town for two or three days. do you think, if i did, that you could amuse yourself—and keep out of mischief?”
“you speak to me as if i was ten!” mrs. elles said. “i am not sure if i mind? what is mischief?”
“oh, you know—things that might prejudice you—in your new position. i need not mention them—you know the kind of thing?”
“can i go to see the rembrandts with dr. andré?”
“the poor man’s in love with you—but there would be no harm in your going to the rembrandts with him, i think,” egidia answered easily.
by ten o’clock of the next day she was gone.
. . . . . . . .
mrs. elles felt a really irresistible impulse, to do what she did. “it was as if something called me!” she said afterwards. “i felt that i had to see him.{243}”
so two days after the day on which her friend had left london, the dreary gas lamps of bedford square fluttered, and the black mud shone prismatically under the feet of a little woman, wandering without judgment or system, round and round the square, enquiring of nodding applewomen, of burly policemen, of scurrying street arabs, and honouring them all with the gracious smile of drawing rooms, the way to no. 99 in that region.
“why, there, missie, under yer nose,” said the last of the policemen, pointing to the number, written black and jagged over the fanlight of the house near whose very doorstep she was standing. he thought the young lady a little touched in the head; there was indeed a wild look in her eyes, born of the consciousness of her own audacity, and the wild joy of seeing rivers again.
she rang the bell, and a grim, demure-looking scotch servant—rivers’ staid old housekeeper, of whom she had often heard—answered it.
“can i see mr. rivers?” she asked.
“mr. rivers doesn’t paint figures, miss,” said the woman kindly, and with the manner of one delivering an oft repeated statement. “but mr. brandard, over the other side of the square, is always glad for us to send models over to him.”
“i am not a model,” said mrs. elles, vexed and ashamed. “here is my card. will you take it to mr. rivers, and ask if he will see me?”
the perfectly civil scotchwoman took it, with a{244} blank neutral face. she showed the visitor into a half vestibule, half room, on one side of the passage. it was perfectly ordered and arranged, there were no landscapes on its walls—it was, she knew, a fad of the painter’s not to hang his own pictures. there were other people’s pictures, etchings, engravings, with flattering inscriptions, “a mon ami—à mon confrère—hommages”—signed with some of the greatest names in the land. a sense of the worldly importance of this man whom she was going to drag through seas of disreputability grew in her mind, and affected her more deeply than egidia’s hints and lectures had done. she was literally a burr hanging on this great name, and she ought to kill herself sooner than let herself be associated with it in men’s minds. it was then that the idea of suicide first came to her.
the servant came back.
“mr. rivers is very sorry indeed, ma’am, but he is not able to see any one to-day.”
“he——” her lips trembled; her whole body shock at the blow. she turned, lest the woman saw her face.
“is there any message i can give, madam?”
“no, thank you, no message,” she answered, with her face still averted, and drifting out into the street.
she leant against the palings of the square, and sobbed. was it love, or vanity—or shock?
“how brutal—how brutal!” she repeated to herself.{245}
the policeman on his beat turned his bull’s eye on to her.
“are you going to tell me to move on?” she asked him, plaintively.
“no, madam,” he replied, and she was a little assuaged. at least he saw that she was a lady. she dried her eyes, and crossed back to the pavement, and down a side street. as she passed a little postern-like door in the wall—rivers’ happened to be a corner house—it opened, and the artist came out. he still had her card in his hand.
they stood and faced each other.
“oh, my god, how ill you look!” she exclaimed, “and it is all my fault. won’t you even give me your hand?”
“are you mad?” he said, contemporaneously with her speech. “good god! was there ever a more idiotic thing for a woman in your position to do?”
he seized her arm, almost roughly, and led her away from the door.
“what are you going to do with me?”
“put you in a cab, of course! you must not be seen here with me, on any account. i could hardly believe my eyes when your card was put into my hands.”
so saying, he tore it across with a rancour that pierced her heart.
“you are most unkind!” she complained, following him in his great angry strides down the street, “and unnecessary. it is quite dark, no one could see{246} me, or recognise me, and i do so want to talk to you. if you must take a hansom, choose one without a lamp. egidia is away, for two days. i don’t know where she has gone. i felt i must see you, do you hear? it is a month since i have been in london—a month of agony.... did you hail it?” she asked nervously, as a cab drew up along the kerbstone.
she put her hand appealingly on his arm.
“i won’t get in, unless you promise to come with me, so far. i must—i must talk to you.”
“you are behaving like a child.”
“i know i am,” she said, “only because you are behaving like a——”
what was she going to say? she did not know herself, only that a crushing sense of estrangement, of inevitableness, had come over her; the prop of an unacknowledged hope that had stayed her for so many weeks had been rudely withdrawn. the man she loved was a stranger; she had surely never lived at his side, day in, day out, through the summer that was past? a wave of despair overwhelmed her, black as the mud she looked down on, as she stood, her foot on the step, prepared to abandon her point, and go back alone.
but she had gained it.
“anything sooner than a scene in the street!” she heard rivers say wearily to himself, as he got in beside her.
“how cruel you are—how inconsiderate! surely{247} i have the right to a few words with you! i will never perhaps speak to you again in this world!”
he sat, stiff in his closely-buttoned overcoat, like a statue beside her, and spoke no word.
she took his hand, as it lay on his knee.
“forgive me—do forgive me! i am so sorry—so dreadfully sorry!”
“what for?” he said, gently.
“for bringing this on you—this—this disgrace. and you cannot forgive me, that is just it. i realised it when you refused to see me just now, and sent me a message by a servant.”
“i had to. think, yourself! you must really not be so unreasonable!”
“i am reasonable—quite, quite reasonable; and saying good-bye to you, if you only would let me! yes, you never cared for me much, and now the little ghost of love is laid forever. this threatened disgrace and exposure has killed it. but it was there—don’t take that from me—a little love, and the rest of it pity. egidia says so, and i believe her.... stop, stop, i am not asking you to say anything—i had rather you did not protest.... oh, look at that great red bovril sign flaring out! it looks as if the whole street was on fire. it must frighten the horses....”
her voice broke into a sob of hysterical terror.
“dear——” began rivers, clasping her hand more tightly.
“how nice of you! it hardly sounds at all per{248}functory! and yet i know it is. don’t try any more. let me tell you that i don’t mind this for myself, but only for you, and i mean to defend myself tooth and nail, only for your sake. i know what it means for you. if mortimer and his paid accomplices can succeed in lying me away from him, then the world will expect you to marry me.”
“yes,” he said, “and i will!”
“ah, but it takes two!” she replied, in tragic accents. “you can’t marry me against my will. supposing i am not there?”
he allowed the usual empty threat of suicide to pass unheeded.
“i shall ask you to, at any rate,” he said, doggedly.
“oh, yes, you will ask me!” she was playing so well that she almost enjoyed it. “oh, yes, you will ask me, because you are a man of honour—and i shall refuse, because i am a woman of honour. i will not be behind egidia, whom you respect, in that. you are right. she is strong and good. and she loves you.”
“please don’t.”
“surely you and i have no need to mince words? she loves you, and if you marry any one, it ought to be egidia. she is devoted, she is an angel, and she would rather see you dead at her feet, than married to me!”
she never looked round, or she would perhaps have realised the exquisite annoyance she was inflicting on her helpless victim, penned up as he was beside her,{249} powerless to prevent or avoid the stream of tactless heroics she was pouring on him. his forehead was contracted, his hands were clenched together over the doors of the cab.
“we are coming to the more crowded streets now,” he said suddenly, “and it is really very dangerous for you to be seen with me. had you not better let me get out, and leave you to go the rest of the way alone?”
she replied, with desperate and intentional incisiveness, “i permit you to leave me, since you wish it.”
he put up his arm, and raised the trap door. mrs. elles raised her hand to intercept his, but let it fall hopelessly down again, on a glance at his set face. the cab stopped and he got out, and standing half on the pavement, and half on the foot-board of the cab, held out his hand.
“good-bye!” he said, “for the present!”
the reservation was kind in intention, but she would not accept it.
“good-bye—forever!” was her answer, as her hand, gloveless, out of her muff, went forth to meet his.
“how cold you are!” he said, as he took it. “i am sorry. but it is better i should leave you now, isn’t it? forgive me for being such a bear, but i have to think for both. i will write if i may?”
“you needn’t,” she whispered, retreating to the corner of the cab, like a wounded animal. “tell him to go on!{250}”
“is there anywhere you can tell him to go—some shop—and then discharge him and take a new one? it would be safer!”
“tell him to go to the new gallery!” she said, defiantly, and rivers accordingly did so, and left her.
