CHAPTER XXIII
LIFE AND LETTERS
Saturday afternoons and Sundays gave the pause in Eve’s week of scribbling and reading, and drawing at desk and table. She was infinitely glad of the leisure when it came, only to discover that it often brought a retrospective sadness that could not be conjured away.
Sometimes she went to a matinée or a concert on Saturday afternoon, alternating these breaks with afternoons of hard work. For the Fernhill days, with their subsequent pain and restlessness had left her with a definite ambition. She regarded her present life as a means to an end. She did not intend to be always a scribbler of extracts and a copier of old woodcuts, but had visions of her own art spreading its wings and lifting her out of the crowd. She tried to paint on Sundays, struggling with the atmosphere of Bosnia Road, and attempting to make use of the north light in her back bedroom, while she enlarged and elaborated some of the rough sketches in her sketch book. Her surroundings were trite and dreary enough, but youth and ardour are marvellous torch-bearers, and many a fine thing has been conceived and carried through in a London lodging-house. She had plans for hiring a little studio somewhere, or even of persuading Mrs. Buss, her landlady, to let her have a makeshift shed put up in the useless patch of back garden.
When she looked back on the Fernhill days, they seemed to her very strange and wonderful, covered with a bloom of mystery, touched with miraculous sunlight. She hoped that they would help her to do big work. The memories were in her blood, she was the richer for them, even though she had suffered and still suffered. Now that she was in London the summer seemed more beautiful than it had been, nor did she remind herself that it had happened to be one of those rare fine summers that appear occasionally just to make the average summer seem more paltry. When she had received a cheque for some eighty pounds, representing the sum her furniture had brought her after the payment of all expenses, she had written to Canterton and returned him the hundred pounds he had paid her, pleading that it irked her memories of their comradeship. She had given Kate Duveen’s address, after asking her friend’s consent, and in her letter she had written cheerfully and bravely, desiring Canterton to remember their days together, but not to attempt to see her.
“You will be kind, and not come into this new life of mine. I am not ashamed to say that I have suffered, but that I have nothing to regret. Since I am alone, it is best that I should be alone. You will understand. When the pain has died down, one does not want old wounds reopened.
“I think daily of Lynette. Kiss her for me. Some day it may be possible for me to see her again.”
Three weeks passed before Kate Duveen handed Eve a letter as they crossed Russell Square in the direction of Tottenham Court Road. It was a raw, misty morning, and the plane trees, with their black boles and boughs, looked sombre and melancholy.
“This came for you.”