When she cut her hair short, she found, to her horror, that it was taken by many men as a sign that she was open to their advances, and all sorts and conditions of men had found to their astonishment that, although she was an artist and lived an independent life, she was immovable, and when it came to argument she was more than a match for them.
Again, she had had the confidence of more than one of the models, and she knew how they courted their own disasters. If there was to be any question of blame, the women must share it with the men.
She had no thought of blaming Mendel, but she hated to have that underworld in contact with the world which it was her whole desire to keep beautiful. It was no good pretending that the underworld was not there, but if she could have her way she would keep a tight control over it, and suppress it as she suppressed her jealousy, that other source of ugliness. If she could only, somehow, find an entrance to Mendel’s life, not only to his rare moments, but to the life that went on from day to day, she would suppress it, she would cut it out and throw it away. She thought of it almost as a surgical operation, or as cutting a bruise out of an apple, for all her thoughts of life were as simple as herself, and life too was simple in her eyes. Anything that threatened to complicate it she expunged.
After a time she discovered that it was no good hoping to understand so long as she regarded the dark aspect of Mendel from outside his life. She must find her way inside it and see how it looked there. That was hard.
Clowes could not help her at all. To Clowes it was simply unintelligible that men could do these things. They bewildered her, and her only way out of it was to suppose that men were like that, and the less said about it the better. She was really very annoyed with Morrison for worrying over it, and she was disappointed. She had hoped that the unfortunate adventure would be over and that Morrison would wait tranquilly for her affections to be engaged by someone who was—presentable. . . . Still, there was no accounting for this strange, impulsive creature, though it was a pity she should throw away her growing popularity with people who were, after all, important, both in themselves and by their position; for Morrison’s frank charm carried her to places where Clowes would have given her eyes to be seen. Clowes was baffled by her friend, but she would not abandon her. She was often bored with her, often exasperated, and more than once she said:—
“Well, if you like these wild people so much, why don’t you take the plunge and join them? You are wild enough yourself.”
“I’m not wild in that way,” replied Morrison. “And I know that if I did do it it would be wrong.”
And she returned to her task of labouring to understand Mendel. She carried the idea of him wherever she went, and was sometimes able to call up a clear image of him, and she was fearful for him because he seemed to her so helpless, so much a stranger in a strange land, so easily caught up in any strong current of feeling or enthusiasm. . . . She, too, often felt outside things, but she so much enjoyed being a looker-on. She loved to watch the race among the young artists, and she longed for Mendel to win. It was right that he should win, because he was so much the best of them all. He had taken the lead. It had looked as though he must infallibly win, and then Logan had appeared and he had stumbled in his stride.
Yet this had never been satisfying. She had no right to turn Mendel into a figure on a frieze, to see him in the flat, as it were, and it was in revolt against this conception that she had agreed to go with him to Logan’s party, which had been so disastrous. . . . Had she not been cowardly to run away? But what could she do, what else could she do, when confronted so suddenly with the appalling fact?
A week before the party Mendel had insisted on lending her “Jean Christophe” volume by volume. She had read the first without great interest. The friendship between the two boys struck her as silly and sentimental and not worth writing about, and she had read no further. However, when she found that Mendel was becoming a fixed idea, to escape from it she took up the second volume, and was enthralled by the tale of Christophe’s love for Ada, thrilled by the sudden scene of his assault on the peasant girl in the field, and with a growing sense of illumination followed his life as it passed from woman to woman, finding consolation with one, relief with another, comfort with another, comradeship with yet another, and the physical relationship slipped into its place and was never dominant. And Christophe, too, had had women of passage because his vitality was so abundant that it could not be contained in his being. It must be always flowing out into art or into life, taking from life more and more power to give to art. . . . With Gratia she was out of patience. Gratia was altogether too complacent an Egeria. Morrison thought she could have given Christophe more than that.