“If I know anything of heads,” he said, “there’s everything in that face but love. I shall have to put that in myself; and that chin and mouth won’t be won for nothing. But she’s right. She knows what she wants, and she’s going to get it. What insolence! Me! Of all the people in the wide world, to use me! But then she’s Maisie. There’s no getting over that fact; and it’s good to see her again. This business must have been simmering at the back of my head for years.... She’ll use me as I used Binat at Port Said.
She’s quite right. It will hurt a little. I shall have to see her every Sunday,—like a young man courting a housemaid. She’s sure to come around; and yet—that mouth isn’t a yielding mouth. I shall be wanting to kiss her all the time, and I shall have to look at her pictures,—I don’t even know what sort of work she does yet,—and I shall have to talk about Art,—Woman’s Art! Therefore, particularly and perpetually, damn all varieties of Art. It did me a good turn once, and now it’s in my way. I’ll go home and do some Art.”
Half-way to the studio, Dick was smitten with a terrible thought. The figure of a solitary woman in the fog suggested it.
“She’s all alone in London, with a red-haired impressionist girl, who probably has the digestion of an ostrich. Most red-haired people have.
Maisie’s a bilious little body. They’ll eat like lone women,—meals at all hours, and tea with all meals. I remember how the students in Paris used to pig along. She may fall ill at any minute, and I shan’t be able to help.
Whew! this is ten times worse than owning a wife.”
Torpenhow entered the studio at dusk, and looked at Dick with eyes full of the austere love that springs up between men who have tugged at the same oar together and are yoked by custom and use and the intimacies of toil. This is a good love, and, since it allows, and even encourages, strife, recrimination, and brutal sincerity, does not die, but grows, and is proof against any absence and evil conduct.
Dick was silent after he handed Torpenhow the filled pipe of council. He thought of Maisie and her possible needs. It was a new thing to think of anybody but Torpenhow, who could think for himself. Here at last was an outlet for that cash balance. He could adorn Maisie barbarically with jewelry,—a thick gold necklace round that little neck, bracelets upon the rounded arms, and rings of price upon her hands,—the cool, temperate, ringless hands that he had taken between his own. It was an absurd thought, for Maisie would not even allow him to put one ring on one finger, and she would laugh at golden trappings. It would be better to sit with her quietly in the dusk, his arm around her neck and her face on his shoulder, as befitted husband and wife. Torpenhow’s boots creaked that night, and his strong voice jarred. Dick’s brows contracted and he murmured an evil word because he had taken all his success as a right and part payment for past discomfort, and now he was checked in his stride by a woman who admitted all the success and did not instantly care for him.
“I say, old man,” said Torpenhow, who had made one or two vain attempts at conversation, “I haven’t put your back up by anything I’ve said lately, have I?”
“You! No. How could you?”