“Chris!” said Greta some days after this, “Miss Naylor danced last evening; I think she shall have a headache to-day. There is my French and my history this morning.”
“Well, I can take them.”
“That is nice; then we can talk. I am sorry about the headache. I shall give her some of my Eau de Cologne.”
Miss Naylor's headaches after dancing were things on which to calculate. The girls carried their books into the arbour; it was a showery day, and they had to run for shelter through the raindrops and sunlight.
“The French first, Chris!” Greta liked her French, in which she was not far inferior to Christian; the lesson therefore proceeded in an admirable fashion. After one hour exactly by her watch (Mr. Treffry's birthday present loved and admired at least once every hour) Greta rose.
“Chris, I have not fed my rabbits.”
“Be quick! there's not much time for history.”
Greta vanished. Christian watched the bright water dripping from the roof; her lips were parted in a smile. She was thinking of something Harz had said the night before. A discussion having been started as to whether average opinion did, or did not, safeguard Society, Harz, after sitting silent, had burst out: “I think one man in earnest is better than twenty half-hearted men who follow tamely; in the end he does Society most good.”
Dawney had answered: “If you had your way there would be no Society.”
“I hate Society because it lives upon the weak.”
“Bah!” Herr Paul chimed in; “the weak goes to the wall; that is as certain as that you and I are here.”
“Let them fall against the wall,” cried Harz; “don't push them there....”
Greta reappeared, walking pensively in the rain.
“Bino,” she said, sighing, “has eaten too much. I remember now, I did feed them before. Must we do the history, Chris?”
“Of course!”
Greta opened her book, and put a finger in the page. “Herr Harz is very kind to me,” she said. “Yesterday he brought a bird which had come into his studio with a hurt wing; he brought it very gently in his handkerchief—he is very kind, the bird was not even frightened of him. You did not know about that, Chris?”
Chris flushed a little, and said in a hurt voice
“I don't see what it has to—do with me.”
“No,” assented Greta.
Christian's colour deepened. “Go on with your history, Greta.”
“Only,” pursued Greta, “that he always tells you all about things, Chris.”
“He doesn't! How can you say that!”
“I think he does, and it is because you do not make him angry. It is very easy to make him angry; you have only to think differently, and he shall be angry at once.”
“You are a little cat!” said Christian; “it isn't true, at all. He hates shams, and can't bear meanness; and it is mean to cover up dislikes and pretend that you agree with people.”
“Papa says that he thinks too much about himself.”
“Father!” began Christian hotly; biting her lips she stopped, and turned her wrathful eyes on Greta.
“You do not always show your dislikes, Chris.”
“I? What has that to do with it? Because one is a coward that doesn't make it any better, does it?”
“I think that he has a great many dislikes,” murmured Greta.
“I wish you would attend to your own faults, and not pry into other people's,” and pushing the book aside, Christian gazed in front of her.
Some minutes passed, then Greta leaning over, rubbed a cheek against her shoulder.
“I am very sorry, Chris—I only wanted to be talking. Shall I read some history?”
“Yes,” said Christian coldly.
“Are you angry with me, Chris?”
There was no answer. The lingering raindrops pattered down on the roof. Greta pulled at her sister's sleeve.
“Look, Chris!” she said. “There is Herr Harz!”
Christian looked up, dropped her eyes again, and said: “Will you go on with the history, Greta?”
Greta sighed.
“Yes, I will—but, oh! Chris, there is the luncheon gong!” and she meekly closed the book.
During the following weeks there was a “sitting” nearly every afternoon. Miss Naylor usually attended them; the little lady was, to a certain extent, carried past objection. She had begun to take an interest in the picture, and to watch the process out of the corner of her eye; in the depths of her dear mind, however, she never quite got used to the vanity and waste of time; her lips would move and her knitting-needles click in suppressed remonstrances.
What Harz did fast he did best; if he had leisure he “saw too much,” loving his work so passionately that he could never tell exactly when to stop. He hated to lay things aside, always thinking: “I can get it better.” Greta was finished, but with Christian, try as he would, he was not satisfied; from day to day her face seemed to him to change, as if her soul were growing.
There were things too in her eyes that he could neither read nor reproduce.
Dawney would often stroll out to them after his daily visit, and lying on the grass, his arms crossed behind his head, and a big cigar between his lips, would gently banter everybody. Tea came at five o'clock, and then Mrs. Decie appeared armed with a magazine or novel, for she was proud of her literary knowledge. The sitting was suspended; Harz, with a cigarette, would move between the table and the picture, drinking his tea, putting a touch in here and there; he never sat down till it was all over for the day. During these “rests” there was talk, usually ending in discussion. Mrs. Decie was happiest in conversations of a literary order, making frequent use of such expressions as: “After all, it produces an illusion—does anything else matter?” “Rather a poseur, is he not?” “A question, that, of temperament,” or “A matter of the definition of words”; and other charming generalities, which sound well, and seem to go far, and are pleasingly irrefutable. Sometimes the discussion turned on Art—on points of colour or technique; whether realism was quite justified; and should we be pre-Raphaelites? When these discussions started, Christian's eyes would grow bigger and clearer, with a sort of shining reasonableness; as though they were trying to see into the depths. And Harz would stare at them. But the look in those eyes eluded him, as if they had no more meaning than Mrs. Decie's, which, with their pale, watchful smile, always seemed saying: “Come, let us take a little intellectual exercise.”
Greta, pulling Scruff's ears, would gaze up at the speakers; when the talk was over, she always shook herself. But if no one came to the “sittings,” there would sometimes be very earnest, quick talk, sometimes long silences.
One day Christian said: “What is your religion?”
Harz finished the touch he was putting on the canvas, before he answered: “Roman Catholic, I suppose; I was baptised in that Church.”
“I didn't mean that. Do you believe in a future life?”
“Christian,” murmured Greta, who was plaiting blades of grass, “shall always want to know what people think about a future life; that is so funny!”
“How can I tell?” said Harz; “I've never really thought of it—never had the time.”
“How can you help thinking?” Christian said: “I have to—it seems to me so awful that we might come to an end.”
She closed her book, and it slipped off her lap. She went on: “There must be a future life, we're so incomplete. What's the good of your work, for instance? What's the use of developing if you have to stop?”
“I don't know,” answered Harz. “I don't much care. All I know is, I've got to work.”
“But why?”
“For happiness—the real happiness is fighting—the rest is nothing. If you have finished a thing, does it ever satisfy you? You look forward to the next thing at once; to wait is wretched!”
Christian clasped her hands behind her neck; sunlight flickered through the leaves on to the bosom of her dress.
“Ah! Stay like that!” cried Harz.
She let her eyes rest on his face, swinging her foot a little.
“You work because you must; but that's not enough. Why do you feel you must? I want to know what's behind. When I was travelling with Aunt Constance the winter before last we often talked—I've heard her discuss it with her friends. She says we move in circles till we reach Nirvana. But last winter I found I couldn't talk to her; it seemed as if she never really meant anything. Then I started reading—Kant and Hegel—”
“Ah!” put in Harz, “if they would teach me to draw better, or to see a new colour in a flower, or an expression in a face, I would read them all.”
Christian leaned forward: “It must be right to get as near truth as possible; every step gained is something. You believe in truth; truth is the same as beauty—that was what you said—you try to paint the truth, you always see the beauty. But how can we know truth, unless we know what is at the root of it?”
“I—think,” murmured Greta, sotto voce, “you see one way—and he sees another—because—you are not one person.”
“Of course!” said Christian impatiently, “but why—”
A sound of humming interrupted her.
Nicholas Treffry was coming from the house, holding the Times in one hand, and a huge meerschaum pipe in the other.
“Aha!” he said to Harz: “how goes the picture?” and he lowered himself into a chair.
“Better to-day, Uncle?” said Christian softly.
Mr. Treffry growled. “Confounded humbugs, doctors!” he said. “Your father used to swear by them; why, his doctor killed him—made him drink such a lot of stuff!”
“Why then do you have a doctor, Uncle Nic?” asked Greta.
Mr. Treffry looked at her; his eyes twinkled. “I don't know, my dear. If they get half a chance, they won't let go of you!”
There had been a gentle breeze all day, but now it had died away; not a leaf quivered, not a blade of grass was stirring; from the house were heard faint sounds as of some one playing on a pipe. A blackbird came hopping down the path.
“When you were a boy, did you go after birds' nests, Uncle Nic?” Greta whispered.
“I believe you, Greta.” The blackbird hopped into the shrubbery.
“You frightened him, Uncle Nic! Papa says that at Schloss Konig, where he lived when he was young, he would always be after jackdaws' nests.”
“Gammon, Greta. Your father never took a jackdaw's nest, his legs are much too round!”
“Are you fond of birds, Uncle Nic?”
“Ask me another, Greta! Well, I s'pose so.”
“Then why did you go bird-nesting? I think it is cruel”
Mr. Treffry coughed behind his paper: “There you have me, Greta,” he remarked.
Harz began to gather his brushes: “Thank you,” he said, “that's all I can do to-day.”
“Can I look?” Mr. Treffry inquired.
“Certainly!”
Uncle Nic got up slowly, and stood in front of the picture. “When it's for sale,” he said at last, “I'll buy it.”
Harz bowed; but for some reason he felt annoyed, as if he had been asked to part with something personal.
“I thank you,” he said. A gong sounded.
“You'll stay and have a snack with us?” said Mr. Treffry; “the doctor's stopping.” Gathering up his paper, he moved off to the house with his hand on Greta's shoulder, the terrier running in front. Harz and Christian were left alone. He was scraping his palette, and she was sitting with her elbows resting on her knees; between them, a gleam of sunlight dyed the path golden. It was evening already; the bushes and the flowers, after the day's heat, were breathing out perfume; the birds had started their evensong.
“Are you tired of sitting for your portrait, Fraulein Christian?”
Christian shook her head.
“I shall get something into it that everybody does not see—something behind the surface, that will last.”
Christian said slowly: “That's like a challenge. You were right when you said fighting is happiness—for yourself, but not for me. I'm a coward. I hate to hurt people, I like them to like me. If you had to do anything that would make them hate you, you would do it all the same, if it helped your work; that's fine—it's what I can't do. It's—it's everything. Do you like Uncle Nic?”
The young painter looked towards the house, where under the veranda old Nicholas Treffry was still in sight; a smile came on his lips.
“If I were the finest painter in the world, he wouldn't think anything of me for it, I'm afraid; but if I could show him handfuls of big cheques for bad pictures I had painted, he would respect me.”
She smiled, and said: “I love him.”
“Then I shall like him,” Harz answered simply.
She put her hand out, and her fingers met his. “We shall be late,” she said, glowing, and catching up her book: “I'm always late!”
There was one other guest at dinner, a well-groomed person with pale, fattish face, dark eyes, and hair thin on the temples, whose clothes had a military cut. He looked like a man fond of ease, who had gone out of his groove, and collided with life. Herr Paul introduced him as Count Mario Sarelli.
Two hanging lamps with crimson shades threw a rosy light over the table, where, in the centre stood a silver basket, full of irises. Through the open windows the garden was all clusters of black foliage in the dying light. Moths fluttered round the lamps; Greta, following them with her eyes, gave quite audible sighs of pleasure when they escaped. Both girls wore white, and Harz, who sat opposite Christian, kept looking at her, and wondering why he had not painted her in that dress.
Mrs. Decie understood the art of dining—the dinner, ordered by Herr Paul, was admirable; the servants silent as their shadows; there was always a hum of conversation.
Sarelli, who sat on her right hand, seemed to partake of little except olives, which he dipped into a glass of sherry. He turned his black, solemn eyes silently from face to face, now and then asking the meaning of an English word. After a discussion on modern Rome, it was debated whether or no a criminal could be told by the expression of his face.
“Crime,” said Mrs. Decie, passing her hand across her brow—“crime is but the hallmark of strong individuality.”
Miss Naylor, gushing rather pink, stammered: “A great crime must show itself—a murder. Why, of course!”
“If that were so,” said Dawney, “we should only have to look about us—no more detectives.”
Miss Naylor rejoined with slight severity: “I cannot conceive that such a thing can pass the human face by, leaving no impression!”
Harz said abruptly: “There are worse things than murder.”
“Ah! par exemple!” said Sarelli.
There was a slight stir all round the table.
“Verry good,” cried out Herr Paul, “a vot' sante, cher.”
Miss Naylor shivered, as if some one had put a penny down her back; and Mrs. Decie, leaning towards Harz, smiled like one who has made a pet dog do a trick. Christian alone was motionless, looking thoughtfully at Harz.
“I saw a man tried for murder once,” he said, “a murder for revenge; I watched the judge, and I thought all the time: 'I'd rather be that murderer than you; I've never seen a meaner face; you crawl through life; you're not a criminal, simply because you haven't the courage.'”
In the dubious silence following the painter's speech, Mr. Treffry could distinctly be heard humming. Then Sarelli said: “What do you say to anarchists, who are not men, but savage beasts, whom I would tear to pieces!”
“As to that,” Harz answered defiantly, “it maybe wise to hang them, but then there are so many other men that it would be wise to hang.”
“How can we tell what they went through; what their lives were?” murmured Christian.
Miss Naylor, who had been rolling a pellet of bread, concealed it hastily. “They are—always given a chance to—repent—I believe,” she said.
“For what they are about to receive,” drawled Dawney.
Mrs. Decie signalled with her fan: “We are trying to express the inexpressible—shall we go into the garden?”
All rose; Harz stood by the window, and in passing, Christian looked at him.
He sat down again with a sudden sense of loss. There was no white figure opposite now. Raising his eyes he met Sarelli's. The Italian was regarding him with a curious stare.
Herr Paul began retailing apiece of scandal he had heard that afternoon.
“Shocking affair!” he said; “I could never have believed it of her! B—-is quite beside himself. Yesterday there was a row, it seems!”
“There has been one every day for months,” muttered Dawney.
“But to leave without a word, and go no one knows where! B—-is 'viveur' no doubt, mais, mon Dieu, que voulez vous? She was always a poor, pale thing. Why! when my—-” he flourished his cigar; “I was not always—-what I should have been—-one lives in a world of flesh and blood—-we are not all angels—-que diable! But this is a very vulgar business. She goes off; leaves everything—-without a word; and B—-is very fond of her. These things are not done!” the starched bosom of his shirt seemed swollen by indignation.
Mr. Treffry, with a heavy hand on the table, eyed him sideways. Dawney said slowly:
“B—-is a beast; I'm sorry for the poor woman; but what can she do alone?”
“There is, no doubt, a man,” put in Sarelli.
Herr Paul muttered: “Who knows?”
“What is B—-going to do?” said Dawney.
“Ah!” said Herr Paul. “He is fond of her. He is a chap of resolution, he will get her back. He told me: 'Well, you know, I shall follow her wherever she goes till she comes back.' He will do it, he is a determined chap; he will follow her wherever she goes.”
Mr. Treffry drank his wine off at a gulp, and sucked his moustache in sharply.
“She was a fool to marry him,” said Dawney; “they haven't a point in common; she hates him like poison, and she's the better of the two. But it doesn't pay a woman to run off like that. B—-had better hurry up, though. What do you think, sir?” he said to Mr. Treffry.
“Eh?” said Mr. Treffry; “how should I know? Ask Paul there, he's one of your moral men, or Count Sarelli.”
The latter said impassively: “If I cared for her I should very likely kill her—if not—” he shrugged his shoulders.
Harz, who was watching, was reminded of his other words at dinner, “wild beasts whom I would tear to pieces.” He looked with interest at this quiet man who said these extremely ferocious things, and thought: 'I should like to paint that fellow.'
Herr Paul twirled his wine-glass in his fingers. “There are family ties,” he said, “there is society, there is decency; a wife should be with her husband. B—-will do quite right. He must go after her; she will not perhaps come back at first; he will follow her; she will begin to think, 'I am helpless—I am ridiculous!' A woman is soon beaten. They will return. She is once more with her husband—Society will forgive, it will be all right.”
“By Jove, Paul,” growled Mr. Treffry, “wonderful power of argument!”
“A wife is a wife,” pursued Herr Paul; “a man has a right to her society.”
“What do you say to that, sir?” asked Dawney.
Mr. Treffry tugged at his beard: “Make a woman live with you, if she don't want to? I call it low.”
“But, my dear,” exclaimed Herr Paul, “how should you know? You have not been married.”
“No, thank the Lord!” Mr. Treffry replied.
“But looking at the question broadly, sir,” said Dawney; “if a husband always lets his wife do as she likes, how would the thing work out? What becomes of the marriage tie?”
“The marriage tie,” growled Mr. Treffry, “is the biggest thing there is! But, by Jove, Doctor, I'm a Dutchman if hunting women ever helped the marriage tie!”
“I am not thinking of myself,” Herr Paul cried out, “I think of the community. There are rights.”
“A decent community never yet asked a man to tread on his self-respect. If I get my fingers skinned over my marriage, which I undertake at my own risk, what's the community to do with it? D'you think I'm going to whine to it to put the plaster on? As to rights, it'd be a deuced sight better for us all if there wasn't such a fuss about 'em. Leave that to women! I don't give a tinker's damn for men who talk about their rights in such matters.”
Sarelli rose. “But your honour,” he said, “there is your honour!”
Mr. Treffry stared at him.
“Honour! If huntin' women's your idea of honour, well—it isn't mine.”
“Then you'd forgive her, sir, whatever happened,” Dawney said.
“Forgiveness is another thing. I leave that to your sanctimonious beggars. But, hunt a woman! Hang it, sir, I'm not a cad!” and bringing his hand down with a rattle, he added: “This is a subject that don't bear talking of.”
Sarelli fell back in his seat, twirling his moustaches fiercely. Harz, who had risen, looked at Christian's empty place.
'If I were married!' he thought suddenly.
Herr Paul, with a somewhat vinous glare, still muttered, “But your duty to the family!”
Harz slipped through the window. The moon was like a wonderful white lantern in the purple sky; there was but a smoulder of stars. Beneath the softness of the air was the iciness of the snow; it made him want to run and leap. A sleepy beetle dropped on its back; he turned it over and watched it scurry across the grass.
Someone was playing Schumann's Kinderscenen. Harz stood still to listen. The notes came twining, weaving round his thoughts; the whole night seemed full of girlish voices, of hopes and fancies, soaring away to mountain heights—invisible, yet present. Between the stems of the acacia-trees he could see the flicker of white dresses, where Christian and Greta were walking arm in arm. He went towards them; the blood flushed up in his face, he felt almost surfeited by some sweet emotion. Then, in sudden horror, he stood still. He was in love! With nothing done with everything before him! He was going to bow down to a face! The flicker of the dresses was no longer visible. He would not be fettered, he would stamp it out! He turned away; but with each step, something seemed to jab at his heart.
Round the corner of the house, in the shadow of the wall, Dominique, the Luganese, in embroidered slippers, was smoking a long cherry-wood pipe, leaning against a tree—Mephistopheles in evening clothes. Harz went up to him.
“Lend me a pencil, Dominique.”
“Bien, M'sieu.”
Resting a card against the tree Harz wrote to Mrs. Decie: “Forgive me, I am obliged to go away. In a few days I shall hope to return, and finish the picture of your nieces.”
He sent Dominique for his hat. During the man's absence he was on the point of tearing up the card and going back into the house.
When the Luganese returned he thrust the card into his hand, and walked out between the tall poplars, waiting, like ragged ghosts, silver with moonlight.
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