I
The teacher of the sketching class at the evening school was a man who had no great capacity for enduring affection, but his handsome appearance often inspired in women those emotions which if not enduring are deep and disturbing. His own passions may have been deep but they were undeniably fickle.
The townspeople were proud of their new school for in addition to the daily curriculum evening instruction of an advanced modern kind was given. Of course all schools since the beginning of time have been modern at some period of their existence but this one was modern, so the vicar declared, because it was so blessedly hygienic. It was built upon a high tree-arboured slope overlooking the snug small town and on its western side stared ambiguously at a free upland country that was neither small nor snug. The seventeen young women and the nine young men were definitely, indeed articulately, inartistic, they were as unæsthetic as pork pies, all except Julia Tern, a golden-haired fine-complexioned fawn of a girl whose talent was already beyond the reach of any instruction the teacher could give. He could not understand why she continued to attend his classes.
One evening she brought for his criticism a portrait sketch of himself.
“This is extraordinarily beautiful,” he murmured.
“Yes?” said Julia.
“I mean the execution, the presentation and so on.”
Julia did not reply. He stared at her picture of him, a delicately modelled face with a suggestion of nobility, an air that was kind as it was grave. The gravity and nobility which so pleased him were perhaps the effect of a high brow from which the long brown hair flowed thinly back to curve in a tidy cluster at his neck. Kindness beamed in the eyes and played around the thin mouth, sharp nose, and positive chin. What could have inspired her to make this idealization of himself, for it was idealization in spite of its fidelity and likeness? He knew he had little enough nobility of character—too little to show so finely—and as for that calm gravity of aspect, why gravity simply was not in him. But there it was on paper, deliberate and authentic, inscribed with his name—David Masterman 1910.
“When, how did you come to do it?”
“I just wanted it, you were a nice piece, I watched you a good deal, and there you are!” She said it jauntily but there was a pink flush in her cheeks.
“It’s delicious,” he mused, “I envy you. I can’t touch a decent head—not even yours. But why have you idealized me so?” He twitted her lightly about the gravity and nobility.
“But you are like that, you are. That’s how I see you, at this moment.”
She did not give him the drawing as he hoped she would. He did not care to ask her for it—there was delicious flattery in the thought that she treasured it so much. Masterman was a rather solitary man of about thirty, with a modest income which he supplemented with the fees from these classes. He lived alone in a wooden bungalow away out of the town and painted numbers of landscapes, rather lifeless imitations, as he knew, of other men’s masterpieces. They were frequently sold.
Sometimes on summer afternoons he would go into woods or fields with a few of his pupils to sketch or paint farmhouses, trees, clouds, stacks, and other rural furniture. He was always hoping to sit alone with Julia Tern but there were other loyal pupils who never missed these occasions, among them the two Forrest girls, Ianthe the younger, and Katharine, daughters of a thriving contractor. Julia remained inscrutable, she gave him no opportunities at all; he could never divine her feelings or gather any response to his own, but there could be no doubt of the feelings of the Forrest girls—they quite certainly liked him enormously. Except for that, they too, could have no reason for continuing in his classes for both were as devoid of artistic grace as an inkstand. They brought fruit or chocolate to the classes and shared them with him. Their attentions, their mutual attentions, were manifested in many ways, small but significant and kind. On these occasions Julia’s eyes seemed to rest upon him with an ironical gaze. It was absurd. He liked them well enough and sometimes from his shy wooing of the adorable but enigmatic Julia he would turn for solace to Ianthe. Yet strangely enough it was Kate, the least alluring to him of the three girls, who took him to her melancholy heart.
Ianthe was a little bud of womanhood, dark-haired but light-headed, dressed in cream coloured clothes. She was small and right and tight, without angularities or rhythms, just one dumpy solid roundness. But she had an astonishing vulgarity of speech, if not of mind, that exacerbated him and in the dim corridors of his imagination she did not linger, she scurried as it were into doorways or upon twisting staircases or stood briefly where a loop of light fell upon her hair, her dusky face, her creamy clothes, and her delightful rotundities. She had eyes of indiscretion and a mind like a hive of bees, it had such a tiny opening and was so full of a cloying content.
One day he suddenly found himself alone with Ianthe in a glade of larch trees which they had all been sketching. They had loitered. He had been naming wild flowers which Ianthe had picked for the purpose and then thrown wantonly away. She spied a single plant of hellebore growing in the dimness under the closely planted saplings.
“Don’t! don’t!” he cried. He kept her from plucking it and they knelt down together to admire the white virginal flower.
His arm fell round Ianthe’s waist in a light casual way. He scarcely realized its presumption. He had not intended to do it; as far as that went he did not particularly want to do it, but there his arm was. Ianthe took no notice of the embrace and he felt foolish, he could not retreat until they rose to walk on; then Ianthe pressed close to his side until his arm once more stole round her and they kissed.
“Heavens above!” she said, “you do get away with it quick.”
“Life’s short, there’s no time to lose, I do as I’d be done by.”
“And there are so many of us! But glory,” said the jolly girl, taking him to her bosom, “in for a penny, in for a pound.”
She did not pick any more flowers and soon they were out of the wood decorously joining the others. He imagined that Julia’s gaze was full of irony, and the timid wonder in Kate’s eyes moved him uncomfortably. There was something idiotic in the whole affair.
Until the end of the summer he met Ianthe often enough in the little town or the city three miles off. Her uncouthness still repelled him; sometimes he disliked her completely, but she was always happy to be with him, charmingly fond and gay with all the endearing alertness of a pert bird.
Her sister Kate was not just the mere female that Ianthe was; at once sterner and softer her passions were more strong but their defences stood solid as a rock. In spite of her reserve she was always on the brink of her emotions and they, unhappily for her, were often not transient, but enduring. She was nearly thirty, still unwed. Her dark beauty, for she, too, was fine, seemed to brood in melancholy over his attentions to the other two women. She was quiet, she had little to say, she seemed to stand and wait.
One autumn night at the school after the pupils had gone home he walked into the dim lobby for his hat and coat. Kate Forrest was there. She stood with her back to him adjusting her hat. She did not say a word nor did he address her. They were almost touching each other, there was a pleasant scent about her. In the classroom behind the caretaker was walking about the hollow-sounding floor, humming loudly as he clapped down windows and mounted the six chairs to turn out the six gas lamps. When the last light through the glazed door was gone and the lobby was completely dark Kate all at once turned to him, folded him in her arms and held him to her breast for one startling moment, then let him go, murmuring O ... O.... It made him strangely happy. He pulled her back in the gloom, whispering tender words. They walked out of the hall into the dark road and stopped to confront each other. The road was empty and dark except for a line of gas lamps that gleamed piercingly bright in the sharp air and on the polished surface of the road that led back from the hill down past her father’s villa. There were no lamps in the opposite direction and the road groped its way out into the dark country where he lived, a mile beyond the town. It was windy and some unseen trees behind a wall near them swung and tossed with many pleasant sounds.
“I will come a little way with you,” Kate said.
“Yes, come a little way,” he whispered, pressing her arm, “I’ll come back with you.”
She took his arm and they turned towards the country. He could think of nothing to say, he was utterly subdued by his surprise; Kate was sad, even moody; but at last she said slowly: “I am unlucky, I always fall in love with men who can’t love me.”
“O but I can and do, dear Kate,” he cried lightly. “Love me, Kate, go on loving me, I’m not, well, I’m not very wicked.”
“No, no, you do not.” She shook her head mournfully: after a few moments she added: “It’s Julia Tern.”
He was astounded. How could she have known this, how could any one have known—even Julia herself? It was queer that she did not refer to his friendship with Ianthe; he thought that was much more obvious than his love for Julia. In a mood that he only half understood he began to deny her reproachful charge.
“Why, you must think me very fickle indeed. I really love you, dear Kate, really you.” His arm was around her neck, he smoothed her cheek fondly against his own. She returned his caresses but he could glimpse the melancholy doubt in her averted eyes.
“We often talk of you, we often talk of you at night, in bed, often.”
“What do you say about me—in bed? Who?”
“Ianthe and me. She likes you.”
“She likes me! What do you say about me—in bed?”
He hoped Ianthe had not been indiscreet but Kate only said: “She doesn’t like you as I do—not like this.”
Soon they began to walk back toward the town. He smiled once when, as their footsteps clattered unregularly upon the hard clean road, she skipped to adjust the fall of her steps to his.
“Do not come any further,” she begged as they neared the street lamps. “It doesn’t matter, not at all, what I’ve said to you. It will be all right. I shall see you again.”
Once more she put her arms around his neck murmuring: “Goodnight, goodnight, goodnight.”
He watched her tripping away. When he turned homewards his mind was full of thoughts that were only dubiously pleasant. It was all very sweet, surprisingly sweet, but it left him uneasy. He managed to light a cigarette, but the wind blew smoke into his eyes, tore the charred end into fiery rags and tossed the sparkles across his shoulder. If it had only been Julia Tern!—or even Ianthe!—he would have been wholly happy, but this was disturbing. Kate was good-looking but these quietly passionate advances amazed him. Why had he been so responsive to her? He excused himself, it was quite simple; you could not let a woman down, a loving woman like that, not at once, a man should be kind. But what did she mean when she spoke of always falling in love with men who did not like her? He tossed the cigarette away and turned up the collar of his coat for the faintest fall of warm rain blew against his face like a soft beautiful net. He thrust his hands into his pockets and walked sharply and forgettingly home.