The Complete Project Gutenberg Works of Galsworthy

J >> John Galsworthy >> The Complete Project Gutenberg Works of Galsworthy


He had never been trained in the voicing of his thoughts, and, ever since
he had been wounded, felt at times a kind of desperate looseness in his
head. It was not, therefore, remarkable that he should be liable to
misconstruction, more especially by those who had nothing in common with
him, except that somewhat negligible factor, common humanity. The
Dallisons had misconstrued him as much as, but no more than, he had
misconstrued them when, as "Westminister" had informed Hilary, he "went
on against the gentry." He was, in fact, a ragged screen, a broken
vessel, that let light through its holes. A glass or two of beer, the
fumes of which his wounded head no longer dominated, and he at once
became "dreadful foreign." Unfortunately, it was his custom, on
finishing his work, to call at the "Green Glory." On this particular
afternoon the glass had become three, and in sallying forth he had felt a
confused sense of duty urging him to visit the house where this girl for
whom he had conceived his strange infatuation "carried on her games."
The "no-tale-bearing" tradition of a soldier fought hard with this sense
of duty; his feelings were mixed when he rang the bell and asked for Mrs.
Dallison. Habit, however, masked his face, and he stood before her at
"attention," his black eyes lowered, clutching his peaked cap.

Blanca noted curiously the scar on the left side of his cropped black
head.

Whatever Hughs had to say was not said easily.

"I've come," he began at last in a dogged voice, "to let you know. I
never wanted to come into this house. I never wanted to see no one."

Blanca could see his lips and eyelids quivering in a way strangely out of
keeping with his general stolidity.

"My wife has told you tales of me, I suppose. She's told you I knock her
about, I daresay. I don't care what she tells you or any o' the people
that she works for. But this I'll say: I never touched her but she
touched me first. Look here! that's marks of hers!" and, drawing up his
sleeve he showed a scratch on his sinewy tattooed forearm. "I've not
come here about her; that's no business of anyone's."

Bianca turned towards her pictures. "Well?" she said, "but what have
you come about, please? You see I'm busy."

Hughs' face changed. Its stolidity vanished, the eyes became as quick,
passionate, and leaping as a dark torrent. He was more violently alive
than she had ever seen a man. Had it been a woman she would have
felt--as Cecilia had felt with Mrs. Hughs--the indecency, the impudence
of this exhibition; but from that male violence the feminine in her
derived a certain satisfaction. So in Spring, when all seems lowering
and grey, the hedges and trees suddenly flare out against the purple
clouds, their twigs all in flame. The next moment that white glare is
gone, the clouds are no longer purple, fiery light no longer quivers and
leaps along the hedgerows. The passion in Hughs' face was gone as soon.
Bianca felt a sense of disappointment, as though she could have wished
her life held a little more of that. He stole a glance at her out of his
dark eyes, which, when narrowed, had a velvety look, like the body of a
wild bee, then jerked his thumb at the picture of the little model.

"It's about her I come to speak."

Blanca faced him frigidly.

"I have not the slightest wish to hear."

Hughs looked round, as though to find something that would help him to
proceed; his eyes lighted on Hilary's portrait.

"Ah! I'd put the two together if I was you," he said.

Blanca walked past him to the door.

"Either you or I must leave the room."

The man's face was neither sullen now nor passionate, but simply
miserable.

"Look here, lady," he said, "don't take it hard o' me coming here. I'm
not out to do you a harm. I've got a wife of my own, and Gawd knows I've
enough to put up with from her about this girl. I'll be going in the
water one of these days. It's him giving her them clothes that set me
coming here."

Blanca opened the door. "Please go," she said.

"I'll go quiet enough," he muttered, and, hanging his head, walked out.

Having seen him through the side door out into the street, Blanca went
back to where she had been standing before he came. She found some
difficulty in swallowing; for once there was no armour on her face. She
stood there a long time without moving, then put the pictures back into
their places and went down the little passage to the house. Listening
outside her father's door, she turned the handle quietly and went in.

Mr. Stone, holding some sheets of paper out before him, was dictating to
the little model, who was writing laboriously with her face close above
her arm. She stopped at Blanca's entrance. Mr. Stone did not stop, but,
holding up his other hand, said:

"I will take you through the last three pages again. Follow!"

Blanca sat down at the window.

Her father's voice, so thin and slow, with each syllable disjointed from
the other, rose like monotony itself.

"'There were tra-cea-able indeed, in those days, certain rudi-men-tary
at-tempts to f-u-s-e the classes....'"

It went on unwavering, neither rising high nor falling low, as though the
reader knew he had yet far to go, like a runner that brings great news
across mountains, plains, and rivers.

To Blanca that thin voice might have been the customary sighing of the
wind, her attention was so fast fixed on the girl, who sat following the
words down the pages with her pen's point.

Mr. Stone paused.

"Have you got the word 'insane'?" he asked.

The little model raised her face. "Yes, Mr. Stone."

"Strike it out."

With his eyes fixed on the trees he stood breathing audibly. The little
model moved her fingers, freeing them from cramp. Blanca's curious,
smiling scrutiny never left her, as though trying to fix an indelible
image on her mind. There was something terrifying in that stare, cruel
to herself, cruel to the girl.

"The precise word," said Mr. Stone, "eludes me. Leave a blank.
Follow!... 'Neither that sweet fraternal interest of man in man, nor a
curiosity in phenomena merely as phenomena....'" His voice pursued its
tenuous path through spaces, frozen by the calm eternal presence of his
beloved idea, which, like a golden moon, far and cold, presided
glamorously above the thin track of words. And still the girl's
pen-point traced his utterance across the pages: Mr. Stone paused again,
and looking at his daughter as though surprised to see her sitting there,
asked:

"Do you wish to speak to me, my dear?"

Blanca shook her head.

"Follow!" said Mr. Stone.

But the little model's glance had stolen round to meet the scrutiny fixed
on her.

A look passed across her face which seemed to say: 'What have I done to
you, that you should stare at me like this?'

Furtive and fascinated, her eyes remained fixed on Bianca, while her hand
moved, mechanically ticking the paragraphs. That silent duel of eyes
went on--the woman's fixed, cruel, smiling; the girl's uncertain,
resentful. Neither of them heard a word that Mr. Stone was reading.
They treated it as, from the beginning, Life has treated Philosophy--and
to the end will treat it.

Mr. Stone paused again, seeming to weigh his last sentences.

"That, I think," he murmured to himself, "is true." And suddenly he
addressed his daughter. "Do you agree with me, my dear?"

He was evidently waiting with anxiety for her answer, and the little
silver hairs that straggled on his lean throat beneath his beard were
clearly visible.

"Yes, Father, I agree."

"Ah!" said Mr. Stone, "I am glad that you confirm me. I was anxious.
Follow!"

Bianca rose. Burning spots of colour had settled in her cheeks. She
went towards the door, and the little model pursued her figure with a
long look, cringing, mutinous, and wistful.




CHAPTER XX

THE HUSBAND AND THE WIFE

It was past six o'clock when Hilary at length reached home, preceded a
little by Miranda, who almost felt within her the desire to eat. The
lilac bushes, not yet in flower, were giving forth spicy fragrance. The
sun still netted their top boughs, as with golden silk, and a blackbird,
seated on a low branch of the acacia-tree, was summoning the evening.
Mr. Stone, accompanied by the little model, dressed in her new clothes,
was coming down the path. They were evidently going for a walk, for Mr.
Stone wore his hat, old and soft and black, with a strong green tinge,
and carried a paper parcel, which leaked crumbs of bread at every step.

The girl grew very red. She held her head down, as though afraid of
Hilary's inspection of her new clothes. At the gate she suddenly looked
up. His face said: 'Yes, you look very nice!' And into her eyes a look
leaped such as one may see in dogs' eyes lifted in adoration to their
masters' faces. Manifestly disconcerted, Hilary turned to Mr. Stone.
The old man was standing very still; a thought had evidently struck him.
"I have not, I think," he said, "given enough consideration to the
question whether force is absolutely, or only relatively, evil. If I saw
a man ill-treat a cat, should I be justified in striking him?"

Accustomed to such divagations, Hilary answered: "I don't know whether
you would be justifed, but I believe that you would strike him."

"I am not sure," said Mr. Stone. "We are going to feed the birds."

The little model took the paper bag. "It's all dropping out," she said.
From across the road she turned her head....'Won't you come, too?' she
seemed to say.

But Hilary passed rather hastily into the garden and shut the gate behind
him. He sat in his study, with Miranda near him, for fully an hour,
without doing anything whatever, sunk in a strange, half-pleasurable
torpor. At this hour he should have been working at his book; and the
fact that his idleness did not trouble him might well have given him
uneasiness. Many thoughts passed through his mind, imaginings of things
he had thought left behind forever--sensations and longings which to the
normal eye of middle age are but dried forms hung in the museum of
memory. They started up at the whip of the still-living youth, the lost
wildness at the heart of every man. Like the reviving flame of half-spent
fires, longing for discovery leaped and flickered in Hilary--to find out
once again what things were like before he went down the hill of age.

No trivial ghost was beckoning him; it was the ghost, with unseen face
and rosy finger, which comes to men when youth has gone.

Miranda, hearing him so silent, rose. At this hour it was her master's
habit to scratch paper. She, who seldom scratched anything, because it
was not delicate, felt dimly that this was what he should be doing. She
held up a slim foot and touched his knee. Receiving no discouragement,
she delicately sprang into his lap, and, forgetting for once her modesty,
placed her arms on his chest, and licked his face all over.

It was while receiving this embrace that Hilary saw Mr. Stone and the
little model returning across the garden. The old man was walking very
rapidly, holding out the fragment of a broken stick. He was extremely
pink.

Hilary went to meet them.

"What's the matter, sir?" he said.

"I cut him over the legs," said Mr. Stone. "I do not regret it"; and he
walked on to his room.

Hilary turned to the little model.

"It was a little dog. The man kicked it, and Mr. Stone hit him. He
broke his stick. There were several men; they threatened us." She
looked up at Hilary. "I-I was frightened. Oh! Mr. Dallison, isn't he
funny?"

"All heroes are funny," murmured Hilary.

"He wanted to hit them again, after his stick was broken. Then a
policeman came, and they all ran away."

"That was quite as it should be," said Hilary. "And what did you do?"

Perceiving that she had not as yet made much effect, the little model
cast down her eyes.

"I shouldn't have been frightened if you had been there!"

"Heavens!" muttered Hilary. "Mr. Stone is far more valiant than I."

"I don't think he is," she replied stubbornly, and again looked up at
him.

"Well, good-night!" said Hilary hastily. "You must run off...."

That same evening, driving with his wife back from a long, dull dinner,
Hilary began:

"I've something to say to you."

An ironic "Yes?" came from the other corner of the cab.

"There is some trouble with the little model."

"Really!"

"This man Hughs has become infatuated with her. He has even said, I
believe, that he was coming to see you."

"What about?"

"Me."

"And what is he going to say about you?"

"I don't know; some vulgar gossip--nothing true."

There was a silence, and in the darkness Hilary moistened his dry lips.

Bianca spoke: "May I ask how you knew of this?"

"Cecilia told me."

A curious noise, like a little strangled laugh, fell on Hilary's ears.

"I am very sorry," he muttered.

Presently Bianca said:

"It was good of you to tell me, considering that we go our own ways. What
made you?"

"I thought it right."

"And--of course, the man might have come to me!"

"That you need not have said."

"One does not always say what one ought."

"I have made the child a present of some clothes which she badly needed.
So far as I know, that's all I've done!"

"Of course!"

This wonderful "of course" acted on Hilary like a tonic. He said dryly:

"What do you wish me to do?"

"I?" No gust of the east wind, making the young leaves curl and shiver,
the gas jets flare and die down in their lamps, could so have nipped the
flower of amity. Through Hilary's mind flashed Stephen's almost
imploring words: "Oh, I wouldn't go to her! Women are so funny!"

He looked round. A blue gauze scarf was wrapped over his wife's dark
head. There, in her corner, as far away from him as she could get, she
was smiling. For a moment Hilary had the sensation of being stiffed by
fold on fold of that blue gauze scarf, as if he were doomed to drive for
ever, suffocated, by the side of this woman who had killed his love for
her.

"You will do what you like, of course," she said suddenly.

A desire to laugh seized Hilary. "What do you wish me to do?" "You will
do what you like, of course!" Could civilised restraint and tolerance go
further?

"B." he said, with an effort, "the wife is jealous. We put the girl into
that house--we ought to get her out."

Blanca's reply came slowly.

"From the first," she said, "the girl has been your property; do what you
like with her. I shall not meddle."

"I am not in the habit of regarding people as my property."

"No need to tell me that--I have known you twenty years."

Doors sometimes slam in the minds of the mildest and most restrained of
men.

"Oh, very well! I have told you; you can see Hughs when he comes--or
not, as you like."

"I have seen him."

Hilary smiled.

"Well, was his story very terrible?"

"He told me no story."

"How was that?"

Blanca suddenly sat forward, and threw back the blue scarf, as though
she, too, were stifling. In her flushed face her eyes were bright as
stars; her lips quivered.

"Is it likely," she said, "that I should listen? That's enough, please,
of these people."

Hilary bowed. The cab, bearing them fast home, turned into the last
short cut. This narrow street was full of men and women circling round
barrows and lighted booths. The sound of coarse talk and laughter
floated out into air thick with the reek of paraffin and the scent of
frying fish. In every couple of those men and women Hilary seemed to see
the Hughs, that other married couple, going home to wedded happiness
above the little model's head. The cab turned out of the gay alley.

"Enough, please, of these people!"

That same night, past one o'clock, he was roused from sleep by hearing
bolts drawn back. He got up, hastened to the window, and looked out. At
first he could distinguish nothing. The moonless night; like a dark
bird, had nested in the garden; the sighing of the lilac bushes was the
only sound. Then, dimly, just below him, on the steps of the front door,
he saw a figure standing.

"Who is that?" he called.

The figure did not move.

"Who are you?" said Hilary again.

The figure raised its face, and by the gleam of his white beard Hilary
knew that it was Mr. Stone.

"What is it, sir?" he said. "Can I do anything?"

"No," answered Mr. Stone. "I am listening to the wind. It has visited
everyone to-night." And lifting his hand, he pointed out into the
darkness.




CHAPTER XXI

A DAY OF REST

Cecilia's house in the Old Square was steeped from roof to basement in
the peculiar atmosphere brought by Sunday to houses whose inmates have no
need of religion or of rest.

Neither she nor Stephen had been to church since Thyme was christened;
they did not expect to go again till she was married, and they felt that
even to go on these occasions was against their principles; but for the
sake of other people's feelings they had made the sacrifice, and they
meant to make it once more, when the time came. Each Sunday, therefore,
everything tried to happen exactly as it happened on every other day,
with indifferent success. This was because, for all Cecilia's
resolutions, a joint of beef and Yorkshire pudding would appear on the
luncheon-table, notwithstanding the fact that Mr. Stone--who came when he
remembered that it was Sunday--did not devour the higher mammals. Every
week, when it appeared, Cecilia, who for some reason carved on Sundays,
regarded it with a frown. Next week she would really discontinue it; but
when next week came, there it was, with its complexion that reminded her
so uncomfortably of cabmen. And she would partake of it with unexpected
heartiness. Something very old and deep, some horrible whole-hearted
appetite, derived, no doubt, from Mr. Justice Carfax, rose at that hour
precisely every week to master her. Having given Thyme the second
helping which she invariably took, Cecilia, who detested carving, would
look over the fearful joint at a piece of glass procured by her in
Venice, and at the daffodils standing upright in it, apparently without
support. Had it not been for this joint of beef, which had made itself
smelt all the morning, and would make itself felt all the afternoon, it
need never have come into her mind at all that it was Sunday--and she
would cut herself another slice.

To have told Cecilia that there was still a strain of the Puritan in her
would have been to occasion her some uneasiness, and provoked a strenuous
denial; yet her way of observing Sunday furnished indubitable evidence of
this singular fact. She did more that day than any other. For, in the
morning she invariably "cleared off" her correspondence; at lunch she
carved the beef; after lunch she cleared off the novel or book on social
questions she was reading; went to a concert, clearing off a call on the
way back; and on first Sundays--a great bore--stayed at home to clear off
the friends who came to visit her. In the evening she went to some play
or other, produced by Societies for the benefit of persons compelled,
like her, to keep a Sunday with which they felt no sympathy.

On this particular "first Sunday," having made the circuit of her
drawing-room, which extended the whole breadth of her house, and through
long, low windows cut into leaded panes, looked out both back and front,
she took up Mr. Balladyce's latest book. She sat, with her paper-knife
pressed against the tiny hollow in her flushed cheek, and pretty little
bits of lace and real old jewellery nestling close to her. And while she
turned the pages of Mr. Balladyce's book Thyme sat opposite in a bright
blue frock, and turned the pages of Darwin's work on earthworms.

Regarding her "little daughter," who was so much more solid than herself,
Cecilia's face wore a very sweet, faintly surprised expression.

'My kitten is a bonny thing,' it seemed to say. 'It is queer that I
should have a thing so large.'

Outside in the Square Gardens a shower, the sunlight, and blossoms, were
entangled. It was the time of year when all the world had kittens; young
things were everywhere--soft, sweet, uncouth. Cecilia felt this in her
heart. It brought depth into her bright, quick eyes. What a secret
satisfaction it was that she had once so far committed herself as to have
borne a child! What a queer vague feeling she sometimes experienced in
the Spring--almost amounting to a desire to bear another! So one may
mark the warm eye of a staid mare, following with her gaze the first
strayings of her foal. 'I must get used to it,' she seems to say. 'I
certainly do miss the little creature, though I used to threaten her with
my hoofs, to show I couldn't be bullied by anything of that age. And
there she goes! Ah, well!'

Remembering suddenly, however, that she was sitting there to clear off
Mr. Balladyce, because it was so necessary to keep up with what he wrote,
Cecilia dropped her gaze to the page before her; and instantly, by
uncomfortable chance, not the choice pastures of Mr. Balladyce appeared,
where women might browse at leisure, but a vision of the little model.
She had not thought of her for quite an hour; she had tired herself out
with thinking-not, indeed, of her, but of all that hinged on her, ever
since Stephen had spoken of his talk with Hilary. Things Hilary had said
seemed to Cecilia's delicate and rather timid soul so ominous, so unlike
himself. Was there really going to be complete disruption between him
and Bianca--worse, an ugly scandal? She, who knew her sister better,
perhaps, than anyone, remembered from schoolroom days Bianca's moody
violence when anything had occurred to wound her--remembered, too, the
long fits of brooding that followed. This affair, which she had tried to
persuade herself was exaggerated, loomed up larger than ever. It was not
an isolated squib; it was a lighted match held to a train of gunpowder.
This girl of the people, coming from who knew where, destined for who
knew what--this young, not very beautiful, not even clever child, with
nothing but a sort of queer haunting naivete' to give her charm--might
even be a finger used by Fate! Cecilia sat very still before that sudden
vision of the girl. There was no staid mare to guard that foal with the
dark devotion of her eye. There was no wise whinnying to answer back
those tiny whinnies; no long look round to watch the little creature
nodding to sleep on its thin trembling legs in the hot sunlight; no ears
to prick up and hoofs to stamp at the approach of other living things.
These thoughts passed through Cecilia's mind and were gone, being too far
and pale to stay. Turning the page which she had not been reading, she
heaved a sigh. Thyme sighed also.

"These worms are fearfully interesting," she said. "Is anybody coming in
this afternoon?"

"Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace was going to bring a young man in, a Signor
Pozzi-Egregio Pozzi, or some such name. She says he is the coming
pianist." Cecilia's face was spiced with faint amusement. Some strain
of her breeding (the Carfax strain, no doubt) still heard such names and
greeted such proclivities with an inclination to derision.

Thyme snatched up her book. "Well," she said, "I shall be in the attic.
If anyone interesting comes you might send up to me."

She stood, luxuriously stretching, and turning slowly round in a streak
of sunlight so as to bathe her body in it. Then, with a long soft yawn,
she flung up her chin till the sun streamed on her face. Her eyelashes
rested on cheeks already faintly browned; her lips were parted; little
shivers of delight ran down her; her chestnut hair glowed, burnished by
the kisses of the sun.

'Ah!' Cecilia thought, 'if that other girl were like this, now, I could
understand well enough!'

"Oh, Lord!" said Thyme, "there they are!" She flew towards the door.

"My dear," murmured Cecilia, "if you must go, do please tell Father."

A minute later Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace came in, followed by a young man
with an interesting, pale face and a crop of dusky hair.

Let us consider for a minute the not infrequent case of a youth cursed
with an Italian mother and a father of the name of Potts, who had
baptised him William. Had he emanated from the lower classes, he might
with impunity have ground an organ under the name of Bill; but springing
from the bourgeoisie, and playing Chopin at the age of four, his friends
had been confronted with a problem of no mean difficulty. Heaven, on the
threshold of his career, had intervened to solve it. Hovering, as it
were, with one leg raised before the gladiatorial arena of musical
London, where all were waiting to turn their thumbs down on the figure of
the native Potts, he had received a letter from his mother's birthplace.
It was inscribed: "Egregio Signor Pozzi." He was saved. By the simple
inversion of the first two words, the substitution of z's for t's,
without so fortunately making any difference in the sound, and the
retention of that i, all London knew him now to be the rising pianist.

He was a quiet, well-mannered youth, invaluable just then to Mrs.
Tallents Smallpeace, a woman never happy unless slightly leading a genius
in strings.