C. D.
Kent turned the canvas round. It was the exhibition picture of Jack.
He took it in with him, and placed it on his dresser-table. It formed a strange contrast to the calm-faced Woolmer cavalier that was hanging above; a strange contrast, too, with its colour, its modernity, its realism, to the cold classicism of the pale, pure relics of the past that lined the walls. Troubled by the discord, he turned its face to the wall, but immediately, ashamed of the impulse and calling himself a fool, he turned it again. Then, after lighting his reading-lamp and turning out the gas, he sat down at the writing space on his dresser-table.
The room door was open. The house was perfectly still, save for the occasional creak of the stairs and banisters near the attics. From the street outside, far beneath, came the faint, ghostlike rumble of passing vehicles. Kent had never realised what absolute silence reigned at night in that quiet household. A cuckoo-clock in the bedroom below struck with a suddenness and clearness that startled him. It was only twelve o'clock. Clytie would be back soon if she had gone out to spend the evening with friends or at a theatre. He proceeded with some mechanical work, docketing papers, his ear expectant of the sudden drag of a hansom at the street door. Several times he was deceived and went out on the landing to listen for the sounds announcing Clytie's arrival. Then he resumed his occupation. Perhaps she was indoors and asleep all the time, he thought; but the open door surely betokened her absence. He persuaded himself into this belief, desiring intensely to see her. The immediate fulfilment of Wither's prognostications troubled him. Had it not been for his friend's bantering remarks he would have judged Clytie's frank confession by the touchstone of his own simplicity, and found it natural, prompted by no other motives than kindliness and common sense. But what if it proceeded from the “fundamental silliness” of woman, that he himself pitied and Wither professed to hold in contempt?
At last an unmistakable pause in the dimly heard rattle of a hansom made him rise again and go on to the landing. Someone entered the house. He heard the far distant creak of the stairs and the vague rustle of skirts. It was Clytie. In the deathlike stillness of the house he heard the sharp striking of a match. He waited for a moment or two and then went down.
Clytie, in her hat and cloak, was reading, by the light of her bedroom candle, a letter that had arrived by the last post.
“May I come in for one minute?”
“Of course—for two if you like. Do you know, I had an idle fancy that I should see you when I got home?”
“Did you? I am very glad; it assures me that you don't think me—what shall I say?—presumptuous in waiting for you to come in and then intruding.”
“Did you listen for me? You are good. I am scarcely worth it.”
“I felt I must thank you for your little note—and the picture.”
“Well? And are we going to make friends again, Mr. Kent?”
She looked him in the face proudly, yet laughingly, and held out her ungloved hand.
“There!” she added. “I behaved very badly to you this morning, and you must thank Winifred for bringing me to a sense of decency; but really when I saw the dear child's work done to death by my own fault I was not mistress of myself. I suppose it is best when one is in the wrong to own it—to one's friends.”
“It is sensible,” said Kent, “and I am very proud of your reckoning me among your friends.”
She looked at him, a strange little smile playing round the corner of her lips as she put up both hands to withdraw her hat-pin—a graceful attitude, instinct with femininity. The look and the attitude disconcerted Kent for a moment. However, her next words reassured him.
“I judged you by myself, you know. I had found our friendship a pleasant thing, and felt that you did so, too, and I was sorry lest anything should break it; otherwise I should not have taken the trouble to 'climb down,' as they say.”
“Let us say no more about it,” replied Kent magnanimously. “If we pride ourselves on being superior to certain conventionalities of habit, we ought to extend our conventionalities of sentiment. I have been very troubled all day, Miss Davenant, I must confess, and I can't tell you how touched I was by your message. It's not every woman by a long way that would have sent it.”
“And I would not have written it to every man,” returned Clytie; “of that you may be quite certain.”
And so they parted for the night.
Thus the breach between them was quite covered over and their relations strengthened by a newer impression of mutual dependence, a more active sense of comradeship. They laughed frankly at the Great Conventionalities, and went about together to theatres, concerts, picture-shows. Kent accompanied her to Mrs. Farquharson's Sunday evenings, where he found a ready welcome from the artistic and literary circle, to whom his father had been well known. Mrs. Farquharson called them “Orestia and Pylades,” by this time recognising their companionship as a social fact. They always went back together, generally for a great part of the way on foot when the weather grew warm and the nights were dry and clear. On the weekday evenings, when Clytie was at home, Kent would bring down his work and his reference-books to Clytie's room, and write there, while she drew or read or busied herself with odds and ends of needlework. It had all the outward seeming of friendship—nothing more. For hours they would sit together without exchanging a word—a real test. But Clytie grew interested in the progress of Kent's work, gradually obtained a clear idea of its scope and proportion, and could speak intimately to him concerning it, although its matter was as incomprehensible to her as to any other non-specialist. It gave the girl, too, a sense of rest and strength to see him sitting there, patiently, serenely working. She began to have doubts as to the completeness of her own scheme of life, its worthiness, satisfaction. Hitherto the sense of independence, freedom, accumulating knowledge of that whose foreshadowings had filled her girlish heart with unrest, had almost satisfied her. Now she began to look beyond. With her young being as yet untouched by passion, she did not realise the fulness that love must bring into life. She vaguely speculated upon it, faint, elusive gleams of perception passing rapidly through her into the darkness, but that was all. The secret of life, she thought, could only be wrested from the tangle of the labyrinth by single-minded endeavour, sacrifice, devotion. Was not Kent right when he accused her of making her art a stepping-stone instead of an end?
Kent, manlike, and honester, too, than most men, was unconscious of this self-abasement. Since the day of that fierce struggle with herself which had resulted in her sending him the missive of submission he had vaguely felt that she was dependent on him for many things; but he had helped her in his frank, unquestioning way, feeling pleased, warmed by the flame of a newly kindled spark of vanity. He preached to her his simple doctrine.
“Work while work pleases you. Love it for its own sake. Set a great end before you; but the attaining it is the delight, not the ultimate attainment. If you think of nothing but the end, the reaching it is all feverish unrest and toil.”
She listened, rebelled, submitted, without loss of her proud fearlessness. Yes; it was common sense, she agreed. No one can be humiliated by giving in to common sense and acting in accordance with it. Kent persuaded her to finish the picture of Jack.
“It is the best thing you have done. There is more work in it—real work. It will not take long to finish. Then send it for exhibition.”
He appealed to Winifred, who added her soft note of encouragement. The picture was painted. Kent stonily refused to keep it as his possession. There was a heated argument. He valued her gift and her friendship; he valued her fame and life-interest more. He would not refuse a replica. In the end she acquiesced. The picture was accepted by the hanging committee of the exhibition, made a stir, was sold for £120. Clytie was launched..