“It may be part of the artistic temperament to feel things one can’t understand. Though I do understand why I feel it,” he added.
“And it’s part of the artistic temperament not to try”—Adrienne turned their theme to its more impersonal aspect. “Never to try to enjoy anything that you don’t enjoy naturally. I don’t believe I ever enjoy any of the artistic things quite naturally. I’ve always been trained to enjoy and I’ve always tried to enjoy; because I thought it was right to try. But since I’ve been here with you I’ve come to feel that what I’ve enjoyed has been my own effort and my mastery of the mere study, and I seem to feel that it might be as well to give up trying and training and fall back on the things that come naturally; scenery artists would think sentimental, and babies; and patriotic songs.” She smiled a little as she found her list. But she was grave, too, thinking it out and adding another to her discovered futilities.
“It may be as well to limit your attention to the sentimental scenery and the babies, since you’ve so many other things to do with it,” he acquiesced. “We come back to big people again, you see; they haven’t time to be artistic; don’t need to be.”
“Ah, but it’s not a question of time at all,” said Adrienne, and he remembered that long ago, from the very first, he had said that she wasn’t stupid. “It’s a question of how you’re born. That’s a thing I would never have admitted in my old days, you know. I would never have admitted that any human soul was really shut out from anything. Perhaps we’re not, any of us, if we are to have all eternity to grow in. But as far as this life is concerned I see quite clearly now that some people are shut out from all sorts of things, and that the sort of mistake I made in my old time was in thinking that anyone who had the will could force eternity into any given fragment of our temporal life. I did do a little philosophy, you see! That’s what I mean and you understand, I know. All the same I wish I weren’t one of the shut-out people. I wish I were artistic. I’d have liked to have that side of life to meet people with. I sometimes think that one doesn’t get far with people, really, if all that one has to give are the fundamental things like the care of their minds and bodies. One goes deep, of course; but one doesn’t go far. You can do something for them; but there’s nothing, afterwards, that they can do with you; and it makes it rather lonely in a way—when one has time to be lonely.”
He did not know, indeed, whether she saw the beauty of the scene spread before them as they walked, and he was remembering, with a sort of tranced tenderness, the flower-wreathed shepherdess and her crook; and Mrs. Toner with her lilies and seagulls. But why should she see beauty when she made it? It was all that he could see in her now.
“What you can do for them afterwards is to pour out their coffee for them in the most enhancing way,” he suggested, “and make sight-seeing a pleasure, and arrange flowers and place chairs and tables so that a hotel salon becomes loveable. If you find the person to whom you can give the fundamental things and do all sorts of homely things with afterwards, why be lonely? We are very happy together, aren’t we? We get a great deal out of each other. I can speak for myself, at all events; and you’ve just told me that I give something, too. So why should you go off to Central Europe next week? Why not go back with me to the South,” he finished, “and wander about together enjoying, quite naturally, the sentimental scenery?”
He held his breath after he had thus spoken, wondering with intensity, while he felt his heartbeats, what she would make of it. He knew what he could make of it, seizing his opportunity on the instant, if only she would recognize the meaning that underlay the easy words. And framed in the little hat on the background of transfigured Lyons, Adrienne’s face was turned towards him and, after he had made his suggestion, she studied him in silence for what seemed to him a long lapse of time. Then she said, overwhelmingly:
“That’s perfectly lovely of you, Mr. Oldmeadow.”
“Not at all; not perfectly lovely at all,” he stammered as he contradicted her and he heard that his voice sounded angry. “It’s what I want. I want it very much.”
“Yes. I know you do. And that’s what’s so lovely,” said Adrienne. “I know you want it. You are sorry for me all the time. And you want to cheer me up. Because you feel I’ve lost so much. But, you know; you remember; I told you the truth that time. I don’t need cheering. I’m not unhappy. One can be lonely without being unhappy.”