Back Aa

Audrey Craven

<h2>CHAPTER VI</h2> One fine morning in latter spring, about four months after the day of the transformation scene in Audrey's drawing-room, Ted Haviland was lying on his back sunning himself on the leads. There are many lovelier places even in London than the leads of No. 12 Devon Street, Pimlico, but none more favourable to high and solitary thinking. Here the roar of traffic is subdued to a murmur hardly greater than the stir of country woods on a warm spring morning—a murmur less obtrusive, because more monotonous. It is the place of all others for one absorbed in metaphysical speculation, or cultivating the gift of detachment. The very chimney-pots have a remote abstracted air; the slopes of the slates rise up around you, shutting you in on three sides, and throwing you so far back on yourself; while before you lies the vast, misty network of roofs, stretching eastward towards the heart of the city, and above you is the open sky. It is even pleasant here on a day like this, a day with all the ardour of summer in it, and all the languor of spring, with the sun warming the slates at your back, and a soft breeze from the river fanning your face. You must go up on to the leads on such a[Pg 66] day to feel the beauty and infinity of blue sky, the only beautiful and boundless thing here, where there is no green earth to rival heaven. Ted had certainly no taste for detachment, but he was so far advanced towards metaphysical speculation that he was engaged in an analysis of sensation. Off and on, ever since that day of unreasonable mirth and subsequent madness, he had been a prey to remorse. He had kept away from Audrey for a fortnight, during which time his imagination had run riot through past, present, and future. Audrey had been sweet and confiding from the first; she had believed in him with childlike simplicity, and when she had trusted to his guidance in her innocent æstheticism, he, like the coarse-minded villain that he was, had made fun of all her dear little arrangements, those pathetic efforts to make her life beautiful. He had made her cry, and then taken a brutal advantage of her tears. To Ted's conscience, in the white-heat of his virgin passion, that premature kiss, the kiss that transformed a boyish fancy into full-grown love, was a crime. And yet she had forgiven him. All the time she had been thinking, not of herself, but of him. Her words, hardly heeded at the moment, came back to him like a dull sermon heard in some exalted mood, and henceforth transfigured in memory. She had done well to reproach him for his frivolity and want of purpose. She was so ready to say pleasant things, that blame from her mouth was sweeter[Pg 67] than its praise. It showed that she cared more. By this time he had forgotten the traits that had impressed him less pleasantly. Happily for him, his passion for Audrey was at first altogether bound up with his art. We are not all geniuses, but to some of us, once perhaps in a lifetime, genius comes in the form of love. To Ted love came in the form of genius, quickening his whole nature, and bringing his highest powers to a sudden birth. He had begun and almost finished the work which Audrey had urged him to undertake, and nobody could say that he had approached his subject in a frivolous spirit. It was a portrait of herself. Ted had been rather inclined to affect the romantic antique: Audrey had been a revelation of the artistic possibilities of modern womanhood, and he turned in disgust from his languid studies of decadent renaissance, or renaissant decadence, to this brilliant type. One corner of the studio was stacked with sketches and little full-length portraits of Audrey. Audrey from every point of view. Audrey in a black Gainsborough hat, Audrey with brown fur about her throat, Audrey half-smothered in billowy silk and chiffon, Audrey as she appeared at a dance in a simple frock and sash, and Audrey in a tailor-made gown, in the straight lines of which Ted professed to have discovered new principles of beauty. In fact, he dreamed of founding a New Art on portraits of Audrey alone. From which it would appear that[Pg 68] he was taking himself and his art very seriously indeed. Audrey had just left him after a protracted sitting, and up among the dreamy chimney-pots he was reviving in fancy the sensations of the morning. He was brought back from his ecstasy by Katherine's voice calling, "Ted, come down this minute—I've got something to show you"; and, rousing himself very much against the grain, he dropped languidly into the room below. Katherine had come in all glowing with excitement. She pushed back her broad-brimmed hat from her forehead, and thrust both hands into her coat-pockets, bringing out two loose heaps of gold. "There!" she said, letting sovereigns and half-sovereigns drip on to the table with an impressive chink, "aren't you thankful that I wasn't murdered, walking through the great sinful city with all that capital about me?" "What's up? Has our uncle climbed down, or have you been robbing a till?" "Neither. I've been to the bank, cashing real live cheques. Five pounds for my black-and-white for the Saint Abroad, I mean the "Woman at Home." Fifteen pounds for Miss Maskelyne's prize bull-dog (I idealised him). Twenty pounds for Lady Stodart's prize baby. Total, forty pounds." She arranged the sovereigns in neat little piles on the table. "That's enough to take you to Paris and set you going." Ted started, and his[Pg 69] face fell a little. "It's positively my only dream that ever came true. Picture it, think of it, just on the brink of it. You can start next week, to-morrow if you like!" Ted's face turned a deep crimson, and he was silent. "Then Audrey's promised me twenty for a copy of the Botticelli Madonna; I began it yesterday. That'll be enough to keep you on another month, if you want it, and bring you home again." Still Ted said nothing. He sat down and buried his face in his hands. Katherine knelt down and put her arm tight round his neck. "Ted, you duffer, do you really care so much? I am so glad. I didn't know you'd take it that way." He drew back and looked her mournfully in the face. "Kathy, you're an angel; it's awfully good of you; but I—I can't take it, you know." "Why not? Too proud?" "No—rubbish! It does seem an infernal shame not to, when you've scraped it together with your dear little paws; but—well—don't think me a brute—I don't know that I want to go to Paris now." "Not to go to Paris?" "No." "Idiot!" "Kathy, which Botticelli did she ask you to do for her?" "The one you got so excited about, with St. John[Pg 70] and the angel—right-hand side opposite you as you go in. Come, I can see through that trick, and I'm not going to stand any nonsense." "It isn't nonsense." "It is. Why, you were raving about Meissonier last year." "Yes, last year; but——" "Well?" Katherine rose and gazed at him with the austerity of an inquisitor. Ted gave an uneasy laugh. "I've been thinking that you and I between us could found a school of our own this year. I've got the eccentricity, and you've got the cheek. We should build ourselves an everlasting name." "Do be serious; I shall lose my temper in another minute. Is it the wretched money you're thinking of?" "No, it isn't the money altogether." He got up and walked to his easel. "Then, oh Ted, you know that Paris—Paris in May—must be simply divine!" "Why don't you go yourself?" "No, no; that's not the same thing at all. I don't want to go; besides, I can't. I haven't the time." "Well, to tell you the truth, Kathy, no more can I. I haven't the time either." He took up his palette and brushes and began carefully touching up the canvas before him. "Oh—h!" She stared at him for a minute in[Pg 71] silence. Ted looked up suddenly; their eyes met, and he set his face like a flint. "Kathy," he said, slowly, "I've behaved in the most ungrateful and abominable manner. I should like to go to Paris very much, and I—I think I'll start next week." "Thank you, dear boy; it's the very least you can do." And they dropped the subject. Ted was the first to speak again. "By-the-bye, what's on to-morrow morning, Kathy?" "National Gallery for me." She looked up from her work and saw Ted standing with his hands in his pockets, gazing with an agonised expression at his portrait of Audrey. "I suppose she is going to sit again?" "Well, yes; she may look in for another hour in the morning perhaps." Ted was not skillful in deceit, and something in his manner told Katherine that the sitting somehow depended on her absence. She began to see dimly why he had been so frightened at the idea of going to Paris. She looked over her shoulder. "You haven't made the corners of her mouth turn up enough. It's just as well, they turn up too much." "No, they don't; that's what makes her so pretty." Katherine went to her work next morning in any[Pg 72]thing but a cheerful spirit. She had set her heart on Ted's studying abroad; and now Audrey had come in between, frittering away his time, and making him restless and unlike himself. To be sure, his powers had expanded enormously of late; but she was not happy about him, and was half afraid to praise his work. To her mind there was something feverish and unhealthy in its vivid beauty. It suggested genius outgrowing its strength. If Audrey really had anything to do with it, if she was coming in any way between him and the end she dreamed for him, why, then, she could hate Audrey with a deadly hatred. That was what she said to herself just before she opened the front-door and found Audrey standing on the doorstep, looking reprehensibly pretty in a gown of white lawn over green silk. Her wide hat was trimmed with bunches of white tulle and pale green poppies, and she had a little basket full of lilies of the valley hanging from her wrist. "You wretch!" she cried, shaking a bunch of lilies at Katherine, as she stood in the narrow passage; "you're always going out when I'm coming in." "And you're always coming in when I'm going out. Isn't it funny?" Audrey said nothing to that, but she kissed Katherine on both cheeks, and pinned a bunch of lilies at her throat with a little gold pin that she took from her own dress. Then she tripped lightly upstairs,[Pg 73] with a swish, swish, of her silk skirts, wafting lilies of the valley as she went. Katherine watched her up the first flight, and the hate died out of her heart. After all, Audrey was so perfect from an artistic point of view that moral disapproval seemed somehow beside the point.' "May I come in?" asked Audrey, tapping at the open door of the studio. Ted rose with a reverent alacrity, very much as you rise to the musical parts of a solemn service in church. He arranged her chair carefully, with soft cushions for her back and feet. "If you don't mind," said he, "we must work hard, for I want to finish you this morning, or perhaps to-morrow, if you can give me another sitting," and he patted a cushion and held it up for her head. "You can have any number of sittings," said Audrey, ignoring these preparations for her comfort; "but first of all, I'm going to make your room pretty." Ted dropped his cushion helplessly and followed her as she moved about the room. First she took off her gloves in a leisurely manner and laid them down among Ted's wet brushes. Then she began to arrange the lilies of the valley in a little copper bowl she found on the chimneypiece. Then she caught sight of her gloves and exclaimed, "Oh, look at my beautiful new gloves, lying among your nasty paints! Why didn't you tell me, you horrid boy?" Then Ted and she tried to clean them with turpen[Pg 74]tine, and made them worse than ever, and between them they wasted half an hour of the precious morning. After that, Audrey took off her hat and settled herself comfortably among the cushions; she drew her white fingers through her hair till it stood up in a great red aureole round her head, and the sitting began. Ted's heart gave a bound as he set to work. He had learnt by this time to control the trembling of his hands, otherwise the portrait would never have reached its present perfection. He had painted from many women in the life school, and always with the same emotions, the same reverence for womanhood, and the same delight in his own power, tempered by compassion for the model. But these were so many studies in still life compared with the incarnate loveliness before him—Audrey: it made him feel giddy to paint the edge of the ruffles about her throat, or the tip of her shoe. Her beauty throbbed like pulses of light, it floated in air and went to his head like the scent of her lilies. He had reproduced this radiant, throbbing effect in his picture. It was a head, the delicate oval of the full face relieved against a background of atmospheric gold into which the golden surface tints of the hair faded imperceptibly. The eyebrows were arched a little over the earnest, unfathomable eyes; the lips were parted as if with impetuous breath; the whole head leaned slightly forward, giving prominence to the chin, which in reality retreated, a defect[Pg 75] chiefly noticeable in profile. Ted had painted what he saw. It might have been the head of a saint looking for the Beatific Vision; it was only that of an ordinary pretty woman. As a rule, they both chattered freely during the sittings. This is, of course, necessary, if the artist is to know his sitter's face with all its varying expressions; and Audrey had given Ted a great many to choose from. This morning, however, he worked steadily and in a silence which she was the first to break. "What do you mean by talking about one more sitting in that way? You said you'd want six yesterday." "I did, but——" He leaned back and began tilting his chair to and fro. "The fact is—I'm awfully sorry, but I'm afraid I'm going to leave England." The young rascal had chosen his words with a deliberate view to effect, and Audrey's first thoughts flew to America, though not to Hardy. She moved suddenly in her chair. "To emigrate? You, with your genius? Surely not!" "No, rather not; it's not as bad as all that. But—I'm afraid I have to go to Paris for six months or so." "Whatever for?" "Well—I must, you see." "Must you? And for six months, too; why?"[Pg 76] "Because I—that is—I want to study for a bit in the schools there." "Oh,"—she leaned back again among her cushions, and looked down at her hands clasped demurely,—"if you want to go, that's another thing." "It isn't another thing; and I don't want to go, as it happens." "Then I am sure you needn't go and study; what can they teach you that you don't know?" she leaned forward and looked into his face. "You're not going in for that horrid French style, surely?" "Well, I'd some thoughts——" he hesitated, and Audrey took courage. "It can't be—it mustn't be! Oh, do, do give up the idea—for my sake! It'll be your ruin as an artist." She had risen to her feet, and was gazing at him appealingly. "You dear little thing, what do you know about the French school or any other?" "Everything. I take in 'Modern Art,' and I read all the magazines and things, and—I know all about it." "You don't know anything about it. All the same——" he paused, biting his lip. "All the same, what?" "If I thought you cared a straw whether I went or stayed——" "Haven't I shown you that I care?" "No, you haven't." "Ted!" Audrey made that little word eloquent[Pg 77] of pleading, reproachful pathos; but he went on— "For heaven's sake, don't talk any more rot about art and my genius! Anybody can do it. Do you think that's what I want to hear from you?" He checked himself suddenly. "I beg your pardon. Now I think we'll go on, if you don't mind sitting a little longer." "But I do mind. Either you're very rude, or—I can't understand you. Why do you speak to me like this?" She had picked up her hat and begun playing with its long pins. As she spoke she stabbed it savagely in the crown. The nervous action of her hands contrasted oddly with the pensive Madonna-like pose of her head, but the corners of her mouth were turned up more than ever, and the tip of her little Roman nose was trembling. Then she drew the pins slowly out of her hat, and made as if she would put it on. Ted tried to reason, but he could only grasp two facts clearly—that in another second she would be gone, and that if he left things as they stood he would have to exchange London for Paris. He leaned against the wall for support, and looked steadily at Audrey as he spoke. "You think me a devil, and I can only prevent that by making you think me a fool. I don't care. I'm insane enough to love you—my curious behaviour must have made that quite obvious. If you'll say that you care for me a little bit, I won't go to[Pg 78] Paris. If you won't, I'll go to-morrow and stay there." Audrey had known for some time that something like this would happen. She had meant it to happen. From the day she first saw Ted Haviland, she had made up her mind to be his destiny; and yet, now that it had happened, though Ted's words made her heart beat uncomfortably fast, a little voice in her brain kept on saying, "Not yet—not yet—not yet." She sat down and tried to collect her thoughts. Ted would be sure to begin again in another second. He did. "Or if you don't care now, if you'll only say that you might care some day, if you'll say that it's not an utter impossibility, I won't go. I'll wait five years—ten years—on the off chance, and hold my tongue about it too, if you tell me to." Not yet—not yet—not yet. "Audrey!" She started as if a stranger had called her name suddenly, for the voice was not like Ted's at all. Yet it was Ted, Ted in the shabby clothes she had seen him in first, which never looked shabby somehow on him; but it was not the baby as she knew him. He was looking at her almost defiantly, a cloud had come over his eyes, and the muscles of his face were set. Audrey saw the look of unrelenting determination, which is only seen to perfection in the faces of the very young, but it seemed to her that Ted had taken a sudden leap into manhood.[Pg 79] "Audrey," he said again, and their eyes met. She tried to speak, but it was too late. The boy had crouched down on the floor beside her, and was clasping her knees like a suppliant before some marble divinity. "Don't—Ted, don't," she gasped under her breath. "I won't. I don't ask you to do it now, before I've made my name. It may take years, but—I shall make it. And then, perhaps——" She tried to loosen his fingers one by one, and they closed on her hand with a grip like a dying man's. Through the folds of her thin dress she could feel his heart thumping obtrusively, and the air throbbed with the beating of a thousand pulses. Her brain reeled, and the little voice inside it left off saying "Not yet." She stooped down and whispered hurriedly— "I will—I will." The suppliant raised his head, and his fingers relaxed their hold. "You will, Audrey? So you don't—at the present moment?" "I do. It wasn't my fault. I didn't know what love was like. I know now." Passion is absolutely sincere, but it is not bound to be either truthful or consistent. What has it to do with trains of reasoning, or with the sequence of events in time? Past and future history are nothing to it. For Audrey it was now—now—now.[Pg 80] All foreshadowings, all dateless possibilities, were swept out of her fancy; or rather, they were crowded into one burning point of time. Now was the moment for which all other moments had lived and died. Life had owed her some great thing, and now with every heart-beat it was paying back its long arrears. Henceforth there would be no more monotony, no more measuring of existence by the hands of the clock, no more weighing of emotion by the scruple. The revelation had come. Now and for ever it was all the same; for sensation that knows nothing about time is always sure of eternity.[Pg 81] <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

1 of 2

2 of 2

Update Required To play the media you will need to either update your browser to a recent version or update your Flash plugin.