Love's Usuries Part 10

"'Did I play tennis?'--'Loved it.'

(Truthfully, it has no attractions for me. It was a recreation once, now it is a profession, and one cannot adopt two professions, but I didn't tell him that.)

"'Did I dance?'--'No.'

(I was forced into this admission. b.a.l.l.s I forswear--the shelf is bad enough, but to literally earn a husband by the "sweat of one's face" is humiliating.)

"'No, I never danced,' was my answer. 'I had no superfluous energy to work off.'

"Then we skimmed more trivialities.

"'Had he seen the new roller shaving apparatus?'

"'Did I approve Ladies' Tea a.s.sociations?'

"'Did he prefer German to French food, and was he a connoisseur of birds'-nest soup or frizzled frogs?'

"'Scarcely, but in his youth he had tackled periwinkles. That was valiant?'

"'Not at all. I was his match. I had eaten forty-two at a sitting!'

"'All self-picked with a pin?' he queried.

"'No,' I confessed, triumphantly, 'with a surer weapon still.'

"'I believe a pin is the orthodox weapon,' he advanced.

"'Take my advice next time and try a darning-needle.'

"Here Lady Sargent overheard us. You should have seen her face of disgust! Poor dear, how promptly her castle of Eros was blown to smithereens!"

III.

Two days later we were talking of the divine afflatus, and the relation of great work to character, when Lorraine demanded my opinion as to the a.n.a.logy between thought and conversation.

"Speech was given us to hide our thoughts," I said, quoting Tallyrand without in the least agreeing with him.

"I fancied you would say that," he replied, and opened his note-book to refer to some jottings which had evidently been recently made, and which supplied, strangely enough, another impromptu and bizarre patch to the unconventional whole so recklessly commenced by my sister Sarah.

I append the jottings shown me by their writer as a problem for unravelment. They began:--

"Charming because she is perplexing, or perplexing because she is charming? It is impossible to say. At anyrate, the external pencillings are pretty. Her manner at times betrays pre-disposition to enmity, for the flippant pose is merely a disguise. Is it enmity, or is it reserve?

One must take into account the larger reticence of larger natures in serious matters. A woman who can be good reading to the clown must fail to attract the scholar. Yet me she keeps on the bare threshold of comprehension. Is it because there is a barn at the back, or a palace?

Most people open up their drawing-rooms at once, and parade their bric-a-brac. Is she given to this want of hospitality in speech, this loitering in the open air, or am I alone treated as a burglar--an intruder, who longs to drag the arras from her sanctum door?"

The next page rambled on in this fas.h.i.+on:--

"There is an initial stage of some characters which is purely parabolic, though every phase of the stage has its a.n.a.logy in the actual. The difficulty is the tracing of corroborations. With so much promise one looks for some fulfilment, but she contrives to make out of the very postponement of promise a larger reiteration of it. She permits no shadow of negation that might disappoint, no growth of hope that might encourage. Her talk is so well conventionalised to suit the tonic and dominant of social exigence that one must avoid the vulgarian error of striving after a literal transcription of it."

A day later had been scrawled, with a dash of irritation in the caligraphy, a third note:--

"Of dispositions like hers that are worthy a.n.a.lysis, it is expedient to restrain the lesser deduction in order to gain the full breadth of the greater; one must look through the eyelashes at the substantial flesh and blood perfections to achieve the infinite spiritual possibilities deduced by the instinctive calculus.... Spiritual possibilities! Am I mad to seek for them in a woman-creature with the appet.i.te of a schoolboy and an avowed _penchant_ for periwinkles?"

"That last clause," Lorraine said as I came to it, "is merely an ebullition of annoyance. I mean to proceed with my a.n.a.lysis more cool-headedly. The subject is interesting."

"Yes, proceed with it; but I won't warrant the coolness."

"What do you bet?" smiled he thoughtfully.

"My dear fellow, I don't bet on certainties."

Just then the advent of visitors interrupted the discussion, and a whole fortnight pa.s.sed without my seeing either the poet or my sister.

I had begun to relegate the patchwork romance to the store-cupboard of memory, when into my room rushed Sarah with almost juvenile impetuosity.

"Look at this! Did you ever hear anything so crazed?" She threw a sc.r.a.p of paper on the table. It was addressed to Clair, and I read it aloud:--

DEAR LADY,--You loathe poets. I therefore desire to adopt another calling. Cab-driving might suit me, but I fear I am lacking in the necessary command of language to ensure success.

I could sweep a crossing with neatness and precision, and can pick periwinkles with unrivalled velocity. To this end I have been practising daily with a darning-needle and a stop-watch.

Have you any objection to entering the lists against me, the winner of course claiming whatever guerdon he or she may desire?

The note was in Lorraine's handwriting, and affixed to it was a copy of Clair's answer:--

DEAR MR LORRAINE,--Your poetic gifts will, I fear, militate against advance as a crossing sweeper. The occupation admits of no impressionism, and requires uniform scrupulosity. With regard to the tournament, I accept your challenge, provided, of course, there is a competent umpire.

"What do you think of that?" questioned my sister with concern.

"I think, my good Sarah, it is the oddest piece of work you ever set your hand to, and that you have let us both in for substantial damages in the form of wedding presents."

"The Soul of Me."

"'The wrong was mine!' he cried. 'I left my dove'

(He flung him down upon the clay), 'And now I find her flown--ah, well away!'"

After long sauntering in the Antipodes, I was naturally anxious to hear of him--of his inner life particularly--for his fame as a worldling had skirted the globe. The north wind had trumpeted of it; the south had whispered poetically, if insidiously; the east had contradicted the poetry and accentuated the venom, and western zephyrs had harmonised the whole with a dulcet cadence of admiration and pity. In his profession, however, public opinion was unanimous in proclaiming him pre-eminent.

The signature of Wallace Wray--"Woll" we called him--at the corner of a canvas lured the artist mind to praise and thanksgiving; it did more, it loosed some sluggish thousands from speculative coffers--coffers that, prompt enough to gape at safe investment, could stand in the face of the divine afflatus, hermetically sealed. He had reached the peak on Parna.s.sus where criticism drops crippled and diagnosis wrings its hands; his dexterity of brush had become a species of sleight-of-hand, backgrounded by the mysterious tissue of philosophy, science, and emotion, which, commonly called genius, defies ken or comparison.

He had been a singular youth, the solitary output of one of Nature's quaintest moulds, and from what I learnt, the singularity had become p.r.o.nounced rather than mellowed by the glaze of time. Yet, as I remembered him--it was five years since we had met--he was an excellent fellow, a ma.s.s of incongruity, courageous, sensitive--morbidly so--modest, with a humility deduced from keen self-knowledge, a generous companion and a witty, dispensing the fine flavour of his humour through a countenance as nearly cla.s.sical as individuality of expression would permit.

This countenance now showed its presentment on the Academy walls. It was this portrait, done by his own hand, which roused my admiration and awoke a greed for more of him. Around me, the wagging of gossip tongues fanned the air, and sc.r.a.ps, hints, fragments of scandal were wafted to my ears as I stood amazed to salute his art in the superb masterpiece of portraiture.

From the confused babble I was straining to sift a grain of truth. It seemed that Wallace Wray had been outraging the feelings of his admirers, had dealt them a slap in the face as cleanly, or rather as dirtily, as a realistic brush could deal it. In the nick of time, Spry, a brother of the craft and the very sieve I needed, jostled at my elbow.