Five Nights Part 13

We got through some part of our dinner and then took a hansom to the theatre. As we sat close, side by side, in one of the dark streets, I bent over her and whispered:

"If we had been married this morning, and you were coming back to the studio with me after the theatre I should be quite happy and I could finish the picture."

She said nothing, only seemed to quiver in silence, and looked away from me out of the window.

We took stalls and had very good seats, but what that play was like I never knew. I tried to keep my eyes on the stage, but it floated away from me in waves of light and colour. I was lost in wondering where I had better go to get fresh inspiration, to escape from the picture, from Viola, from myself. Away, I must get away. _Coelum, non animum, mutant qui trans mare current_ is not always true. Our mind is but a chameleon and takes its hues from many skies.

In the vestibule at the end I said:

"It's early yet. Come and have supper somewhere with me, you had a wretched dinner."

Anything to keep her with me for an hour longer! Any excuse to put off, to delay that frightful wrench that seems to tear out the inside of both body and soul which parting from her to-night would mean.

"Do you want me to come to the studio with you afterwards?" she asked.

I looked back at her with my heart beating violently. Her face was very pale, and the pupils in her eyes dilated.

We had moved through the throng and pa.s.sed outside.

The night was fine. We walked on, looking out for a disengaged hansom.

I could hardly breathe: my heart seemed stifling me. What was in her mind? What would the next few minutes mean for us both?

My brain swam. My thoughts went round in dizzying circles.

"We shan't have time for supper and to go to the studio as well," I answered quietly.

"I don't think I want any supper," she replied.

A sudden joy like a great flame leapt through me as I caught the words.

A crawling hansom came up. I hailed it and put her in and sprang in beside her, full of that delight that touches in its intensity upon agony. "Westbourne Street," I called to the man. "No. 2, The Studio."

CHAPTER V

THE CALL OF THE CUCKOO

I stood looking through the window of my studio thinking.

The worst had happened, or the best, whichever it was. Viola had become my mistress. She had resolutely refused to be my wife, and the alternative had followed of necessity. The picture had brought us together, it held us together. I could not separate from her without sacrificing the picture, and so destroying her happiness, as she said, and rendering useless all that she had done for me so far.

The picture forced us into an intimacy from which I could not escape and which, now that the devastating clutch of pa.s.sion had seized me, I could not endure unless she became my own. Viola had seen this and given me herself as unhesitatingly as she had at first given me her beauty for the picture.

In her relations with me she seemed to reach the highest point of unselfishness possible to the human character. For I felt that it was to me and for me she had surrendered herself, not to her own pa.s.sion nor for her own pleasure.

She would have come day after day and sat to me, shewed me herself and delighted in that self's-reproduction on the canvas, talked to me, delighted in our common wors.h.i.+p of beauty, accepted my caresses and--for herself--wanted nothing more.

I had worked well in the past fortnight since the night of the theatre, not so well perhaps as in that first clear period of inspiration, of purely artistic life when Viola was to me nothing but the beautiful Greek I was creating on my canvas, but still, well.

Some may think I naturally should from a sense of grat.i.tude, a sense of duty,--that I should be spurred to do my best, since avowedly Viola had sacrificed all that the work should be good.

But ah, how little has the Will to do with Art!

How well has the German said, "The Will in morals is everything; in Art, nothing. In Art, nothing avails but the being able."

The most intense desire, the most fervid wish, in Art, helps us nothing. On the contrary, a great desire to do well in Art, more often blinds the eye and clogs the brain and causes our hand to lose its cunning. Unbidden, unasked for, unsought, often in our lightest, most careless moments, the Divine Afflatus descends upon us.

We had arranged to have a week-end together out of town. Fate had favoured us, for Viola's aunt had gone to visit her sister for a few weeks, and the girl was left alone in the town house, mistress of all her time and free to do as she pleased. The short interviews at the studio, delightful as they were, seemed to fail to satisfy us any longer. We craved for that deeper intimacy of "living together."

This is supposed to be fatal to pa.s.sion in the end, but whether this is so or not, it is what pa.s.sion always demands and longs for in the beginning.

So we had planned for four days together in the country, four days of May, with a delicious sense of delight and secret joy and warm heart-beatings.

I had dined at her house last night when all the final details had been arranged in a palm-shaded corner by the piano, our conversation covered by the chatter of the other guests. No one knew of our plan, it was a dear secret between us, but it would not have mattered very much if others had known that we were going into the country. I was always supposed to be able to look after Viola, and everybody a.s.sumed that it was only a question of time when we should marry each other.

We had grown up together, we were obviously very much attached to each other, and we were cousins. And with that amazing inconsistency that is the chief feature of the British public, while it would be shocked at the idea of your marrying your sister, it always loves the idea of your marrying your cousin, the person who in all the world is most like your sister.

However, all we as hapless individuals of this idiotic community have to do is to secretly evade its ridiculous conventions when they don't suit us, and to make the most of them when they do.

And as I was more anxious to marry Viola than about anything else in the world, I welcomed the convention that a.s.signed her to me and made the most of it.

For all that, we kept the matter of our four days to ourselves and planned out its details with careful secrecy.

I was to meet her at Charing-Cross station, and we were going to take an afternoon train down into Kent where Viola declared she knew of a lovely village of the real romantic kind. I had thought we ought to write or wire for rooms at a hotel beforehand, but Viola had been sure she would find what she wanted when we arrived, and she wished to choose a place herself.

So there was nothing more to do. My suit-case was packed, and when the time came to a quarter past two I got into a hansom and drove to the station.

Almost as soon as I got there, Viola drove up, punctual to the minute.

She knew her own value to men too well to try and enhance it by always being late for an appointment as so many women do.

She looked fresh and lovely in palest grey, her rose-tinted face radiant with excitement.

"I haven't kept you waiting, have I?" was her first exclamation after our greeting.

"I had so much work to do for Aunt Mary all the morning, I thought I should not have time to really get off myself."

"No, you haven't kept me waiting," I answered; "and, if you had, it would not have mattered. You know I would wait all day for you."

She glanced up with a wonderful light-filled smile that set every cell in my body singing with delight, and we went down the platform to choose our carriage.

When the train started from Charing Cross the day was dull and heavy-looking; warm, without suns.h.i.+ne. But after an hour's run from town we got into an atmosphere of crystal and gold and the Kentish fruit trees stretched round us a sea of pink and white foam under a cloudless sky.

When we stepped out at our destination, a little sleepy country station, the air seemed like nectar to us. It was the breath of May, real merry, joyous English May at the height of her wayward, uncertain beauty.

We left our light luggage at the station, and walked out from it, choosing at random the first white, undulating road that opened before us.