Audrey Craven Part 25

"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 att.i.tude 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 ma.n.u.script?"

"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 ma.n.u.script 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 cla.s.sics imbedded in the text. At times, after some coa.r.s.e 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 ill.u.s.trate 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 att.i.tudes 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 ill.u.s.trations 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 ma.n.u.script, 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 kins.h.i.+p 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?