'Then you have it to come—when the world is sane again. But some things you will have missed for ever. For instance, you will never see Rheims—as it was. I have spent months at Rheims in old days, drawing and photographing. I must show you my things. They have a tragic value now.'
And taking out a portfolio from a rack near him, he opened it and put it on a stand before her.
Nelly, who had in her the real instincts of the artist, turned over some very masterly drawings, in mingled delight and despair.
'If I could only do something like that!' she said, pointing to a study of some of the famous windows at Rheims, with vague forms of saint and king emerging from a conflagration of colour, kindled by the afternoon sun, and dyeing the pavement below.
'Ah, that took me some time. It was difficult. But here are some fragments you'll like—just bits from the façade and the monuments.'
The strength of the handling excited her. She looked at them in silence; remembering with disgust all the pretty sentimental work she had been used to copy. She began to envisage what this commonly practised art may be; what a master can do with it. Standards leaped up. Alp on Alp appeared. When George was gone she would work, yes, she would work hard—to surprise him when he came back.
Sir William meanwhile was increasingly taken with his guest. She was shy, very diffident, very young; but in the few things she said, he discerned—or fancied—the stirrings of a real taste—real intelligence. And she was prettier and more fetching than ever—with her small dark head, and her lovely mouth. He would like to draw the free sensuous line of it, the beautiful moulding of the chin. What a prize for the young man! Was he aware of his own good fortune? Was he adequate?
'I say, how jolly!' said Sarratt, coming up to look. 'My wife, Sir
William—I think she told you—has got a turn for this kind of thing.
These will give her ideas.'
And while he looked at the drawings, he slipped a hand into his wife's arm, smiling down upon her, and commenting on the sketches. There was nothing in what he said. He only 'knew what he liked,' and an unfriendly bystander would have been amused by his constant assumption that Nelly's sketches were as good as anybody's. Entirely modest for himself, he was inclined to be conceited for her, she checking him, with rather flushed cheeks. But Farrell liked him all the better, both for the ignorance and the pride. The two young people standing there together, so evidently absorbed in each other, yet on the brink of no ordinary parting, touched the romantic note in him. He was very sorry for them—especially for the bride—and eagerly, impulsively wished to befriend them.
In the background, the stout lady whom the Sarratts had met on Loughrigg Terrace, Miss Hester Martin, was talking to Miss Farrell, while Bridget Cookson was carrying on conversation with a tall officer who carried his arm in a sling, and was apparently yet another convalescent officer from the Carton hospital, whom Cicely Farrell had brought over in her motor to tea at her brother's cottage. His name seemed to be Captain Marsworth, and he was doing his best with Bridget; but there were great gaps in their conversation, and Bridget resentfully thought him dull. Also she perceived—for she had extremely quick eyes in such matters—that Captain Marsworth, while talking to her, seemed to be really watching Miss Farrell, and she at once jumped to the conclusion that there was something 'up' between him and Miss Farrell.