It was the steady, business-like clatter of determined work. She had taken up the burden of Duty again.
CHAPTER X
THE MASTER
He half groped his way down the stairs. In this mist of tears all things were obscured, even the image of Eleanor Wyndwood.
No, one thing was clear—the figure of the sweet Puritan woman with her simple righteousness.
He emerged into the Rue de Rivoli with its pretentious architecture, its glittering shop windows, its bustle of life; across the road the gardens of the Tuileries stretched away in the sunshine; but the gentle figure stood between him and Paris. He tried to shake her off, to think of the transcendent raptures that awaited him on the morrow; he tried to see Eleanor’s face steadily, but it was all wavering lines like a reflection in storm-shaken water. He bethought himself of selecting the secluded restaurant and hiring the private room for the dinner, but the figure of Ruth resurged, blotting Eleanor’s out. He took out her photograph and kissed it again. “She’s a little angel,” he cried, aloud. And then, from that chaos of ancient memories, freshly stirred up, came like an echo Mad Peggy’s cry, “She’s a little angel....” A girl passing him laughed in his face, and he put away the portrait, flushing and chilled to the marrow.
He told himself he must soak himself in Paris and forget her. He walked towards the Grand Boulevards, trying vainly to absorb and assimilate the gayety of the streets. He returned to his hotel and dressed, and dined with dainty dishes and sparkling wines, such as Herbert himself would have recommended. But the quivering roots of his being had been laid bare; his soul vibrated with intangible memories, and the image of Ruth still possessed his imagination—the candid eyes, the pure skin. As ever his soul was touched through the concrete.
After dinner he wandered about the gay city, adding the red of his cigar-tip to the feverish dusk athrob with a myriad stars above and a myriad lights below; the soft spring air was charged with the pleasurable hum of ceaseless pedestrians; the theatres and music-halls and dancing places blazoned themselves upon the night; the great restaurants flared within and without, their pavement tables thronged with light-hearted men and pretty women, gossiping, laughing, clinking glasses. Women, everywhere women. They looked out even from the illustrated papers of the illumined kiosks. The shining city seemed to waft an incense of pleasure up to the stars; to breathe out an aroma of sinless voluptuousness that rose like a thank-offering for life. His heart expanded to all this happiness; he felt himself being caught up by the great joyous wave, and Eleanor Wyndwood’s face came back, radiant and seductive. But Ruth Hailey was still at his side, and ever and anon he saw her as in her later guise—stern, sorrowful, negativing; she stood out against the whole city.
He seated himself before one of the innumerable little marble guéridons. He was at the cross-roads of the great arteries dominated by the fulgent façade of the Opera House, where he could watch the perpetual currents of gladsome life. He observed the countless couples with emotion, striving to concentrate himself on the thought of his imminent happiness, when the love that sustained the world and made it sustainable should be his at last; when he should become as other men, living the natural life of the race and the sexes in sympathetic fusion. But the figure of Ruth Hailey stood firm amid the swirling crowds, and her pure eyes shamed his thought, and filled his breast with an aching tenderness for the poor human atoms he had deserted—for Rosina, for Billy, for “Aunt Clara”—for whom there was no happiness and no natural life. He fought against this obsession of Ruth’s spirit, he struggled to fix his vision on the glitter and the gayety, but he had to see her standing like a rock or a tower, four-square against smiling, treacherous seas.
But if he went back to Rosina in honorable acknowledged union, then farewell to Society! To take her about with him was out of the question; she would be more unhappy than he in those high glacial latitudes of humanity. Well, what was Society to him? He could shake it off as easily as the Micmac of his childhood shook off the clothes of Christendom. To be shut out from Society were no privation for him. He had the advantage of his fellow-artists, who sacrificed at its shrine and were sacrificed to it. He could couch on fir boughs, he had lived on bread and water. This constant concern with wines and cookery, with couches and carriages; this gorging and gormandizing and self-pampering—did it add dignity to life? Was it worth the hecatomb of hearts and souls offered up for it—this low luxury of the higher classes? Was not simplicity the note of greatness—in life as in Art? And howsoever simple the complex comfort of their lives might seem to those born to it, was it for artists to imitate this lowest side of the upper classes, especially if it frittered away their Art? Was it for Bohemia to ape Philistia, and for Art—the last of the rebels against the platitudinization of life—to bow the knee and swear allegiance to the vulgar ideals of fashion? They had drawn him even from boyhood, these showy ideals; from the days when he had peered wistfully into the cricket-ground at Halifax. But he was done with boyhood now.
Ah, but if he went back to Rosina—and the new thought struck a chill as of graveyard damps—it was all over with his Art. That, just beginning to revive under the inspiration of Eleanor Wyndwood, would be a sheer impossibility under the daily oppression of Rosina with her kitchen horizon. His imagination would be clogged with the vapors of cabbage. And of the old bad work he had had enough. He would retire from Art as from Society, and the Exhibitions should know him no more. He would go out of the business; that was all it was, he told himself with a bitter smile. His fame was a bauble, a bagatelle. For all it mattered to him it might have been his dead uncle, Matthew Strang, whose name was on the lips of strangers. There was still work in the world for an honest man to do; he remembered again that his hands could wield more than the brush; besides, he had a little capital now, Rosina had still her income. Perhaps they would go back to Nova Scotia and buy a farm. They would sow and reap, far from the glare of cities, and the sweet, simple sun and rain would bless the work of their hands. His life would be joyless, but perchance his soul would be at peace.