Woman and Artist
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Lorimer saw that he had gone a little too fast at the start. He resolved to be more cautious. A better opening might occur presently, perhaps.
"No," he said, "it is of you we will talk! You are not looking well. Work, solitude, all that sort of thing is not good for you in your present state. Come, Dora, I am an old friend of your childhood, let us talk freely, you and I. You must leave London for the country, you want fresh air. It is the opinion of Dr. Templeton, and it is mine too."
"I am very happy here, I have all that I want; don't be afraid … I have plenty of occupation… I work… I try to forget."
"Ah, yes; you try to forget by surrounding yourself with everything that can help you to remember. It is a strange manner of setting about it. I have come here to fetch you, to beg you to come to my sister's in the country. I will take you there. Come and breathe the pure air in the fields, come and see the apple trees in blossom – it will put new joy into your heart."
"Oh, it would be quite impossible now … later on, perhaps… I do not say no."
The conversation did not take the turn that Lorimer wished.
"Listen," said he, in the tone of a man who has taken a sudden resolution, "I want to speak to you upon a rather delicate subject, but you must not stop me. You have just forbidden me to mention the name of your husband before you. Very well, I will not mention his name, but I am going to make you acquainted with certain facts which you ought no longer to be ignorant of. I do not come here to plead in his favour, and yet, as even the blackest criminal is not executed without a chance of defending himself, I really do not see what there would be outrageous, even in that. Will you listen a few moments?"
"Very well! Go on," said Dora indifferently.
"I saw him yesterday – for that matter, I have seen him almost every day since he came back to London."
"Where has he been?" asked Dora, with but a mild display of interest.
"To Paris."
"He often goes over – I mean he often used to go."
"The last time he went there, an incident happened which it seems to me ought to interest you. He went to seek out General Sabaroff. He found him, tore up before his eyes the paper that he had signed in your house, and threw the pieces in his face."
"Heavens!" said Dora, startled, "and what happened then?"
"The next morning they fought with pistols – in the Bois de Vincennes – your husband lodged a bullet in the General's right shoulder."
Dora did not attempt to hide the feeling of joy and pride that involuntarily rose within her.
"Philip was always a good shot – he himself was not hurt?"
"No – you will allow me now to pronounce your husband's name, since you have used it yourself."
Dora frowned and bit her lips.
"At all events, the contract is torn up!" she cried. "God be praised! I paid dearly enough for that vile piece of paper – I have a right to rejoice that it no longer exists. Philip did well, he did well. And after that?"
"Why, that is all – ah, no, I was forgetting. Philip begged me to hand you this letter – and this packet."
Dora went pale; she put the packet aside, and was going to tear up the letter when Lorimer interrupted —
"What are you going to do?" said he. "Tear up this letter? You will do nothing of the kind: that letter is from Philip, from your husband."
"My dear Gerald, my husband no longer exists for me."
"Dora," rejoined Lorimer, "you are cruel. Your husband loves you, and is overwhelmed with sorrow."
"My husband never loved me. I thought he loved his art and his wife, he only loved his invention and his money."
"Philip has never ceased to love you. He may have lost his head for a little while, when fortune visited him almost without knocking at the door. The other day the faults were on his side, now they are more on yours. You are unjust, cruel to him, cruel to yourself. Your obstinacy, my dear Dora, bids fair to put an end to the pair of you. Yes, that is the point things have come to; now, do you hear what I say? His despair and repentance ought to touch you; what he did in Paris the other day ought to satisfy you. He lives only in the hope of your forgiveness, in the hope of your return."
"Philip did not hesitate to thrust me into the arms of a libertine. If I had yielded to that man's hateful desires, Philip would probably never have destroyed the contract."
"Hold your tongue, Dora!" cried Lorimer; "you are uttering blasphemies. You have allowed a silly idea, an absurd suspicion to gain an entrance into your head, and, like a grain of sand in the eye, it has carried on its irritating work till it has blotted out your vision, and you can see nothing except this molecule that seems to have turned into a mountain. Take care, Dora, or your mountain will crush you as well as blind you. Do you know that by obstinately refusing to listen to reason, a woman cuts herself off from friendly sympathy? People cease to take an interest in her woes. If you wish to alienate the sympathy of your most devoted friends, you are going the right way to work."
"I do not need anyone's sympathy," replied Dora proudly; "and I do not ask for it."
"Once more, Dora, listen to me. Philip may have neglected you, in order to throw himself body and soul into that invention which absorbed him night and day. But, remember, such a piece of work as that is a very exacting, inexorable mistress. You felt his indifference keenly, and it wounded you – the rest exists in your imagination alone. Now the mistress is discarded, cast out completely. Let the artist return again to his easel at your side."
"Never, oh, never!" cried Dora. "Ah, my dear Gerald, if you only knew how I loved that man!"
"And how you still love him," ventured Lorimer.
Dora rose suddenly, the thrust had not miscarried.
"I am sorry if it hurts you, but it is the truth," added Lorimer, with a significant smile.
"What do you mean?" demanded Dora, who thought Lorimer's remark somewhat out of place, and a little over-familiar.
"Come now, sit down here in front of me, your friend. You know I am a bit of a student of human nature, it is my stock-in-trade. My dear Dora, do not attempt to throw dust in your own eyes – you love Philip still; everything in this room testifies aloud to the feeling that you cannot stifle. Oh, do not start, do not deny it. If I am not right, what is the meaning of all this that I see around us?"
"In these surroundings I can evoke the Philip of the past, and that helps me to forget the Philip of the present."
"He is one and the same. He was changed for a few months; but to-day he is what he used to be, and what he will be always – the artist who loves you and longs for you. Dora, what have you to say in reply?"
"My head burns so, dear friend, spare me now. We will talk again … but by and by."
A knock was heard at the door. "Oh, would you mind seeing who that is? – I am not expecting anyone," said Dora.
Dora threw an anxious look towards the door.
Lorimer went and opened it.
The visitor was no other than our old friend, Sir Benjamin Pond, City alderman and patron of arts in his spare moments.
He evidently expected to find himself in a hall or anteroom, instead of straightway standing in a studio in the presence of Dora and Lorimer. He was seized with a little fit of timidity, which he had difficulty in mastering, and which made him awkward in the extreme.
He removed his hat and stood turning it in his hands. Regaining his equilibrium, after a moment, he advanced respectfully towards Dora, without venturing, however, to hold out his hand.
"My dear Mrs. Grantham – Mr. Lorimer, how do you do?"
Dora and Lorimer bowed distantly without speaking, and seemed to wait for him to explain the object of his visit. The worthy man wished himself under the floor.
"I came," he said, stammering, "I came – that is to say, it's just this – I only heard yesterday of your removal here, quite by accident, and I also heard that you had with you the picture that I so much wanted to purchase last year. Ah, there it is, I see. You observe I have not lost all hope of possessing it, that picture which" …
Dora and Lorimer looked at Sir Benjamin without uttering a word, and the poor man grew more and more embarrassed.
"Well," he went on, "I have come to beg you to sell it to me. That is why I came early – to be sure to find you in. I do not, my dear madam, wish to profit by the regrettable circumstances in which you find yourself placed, to offer you a low price, or to bargain for the picture, believe me. No, no, I have too much respect for you, too much admiration for the painter. I wish to behave honourably over the matter, and deal generously, as a gentleman should."
He would have given hundreds of pounds to be leagues away from this studio that he had pushed his way into.
"I will willingly give you," added he, "five hundred pounds for the picture. What do you say to the offer?"
Dora and Lorimer did not open their lips. Their eyes never quitted those of the alderman. Lorimer moved back a little to a more retired post of observation: the scene began to interest him keenly. To Dora five hundred pounds was a small fortune. Would she sell the canvas? By withdrawing a little, he placed her more at her ease, left her free to decide according to the dictates of her heart, while, as I said before, he himself obtained a better view of the little comedy that was being enacted before him.
"Yes," said Sir Benjamin again, "five hundred pounds down. I am ready to draw you a cheque this minute."
"This picture is not for sale, Sir Benjamin," said Dora frigidly, "neither for five hundred nor for five thousand, nor for any other sum that it may please you to offer."
Lorimer would have loved to cry Bravo! "She does love him, then, still – we shall save her," he said to himself.
"You see, my dear Sir Benjamin," said he, "the offer is useless. I suppose you still have the spare thirty-six by fifty to fill up, eh?"
"Ah, ah," laughed the alderman; "yes, that is to say, no; it is a new vacancy on my walls. Everyone has his fads here on earth, has he not? The Queen gives shawls to her friends when they marry, I give pictures to mine. It gives me occasion to purchase new pictures. Well, madam," he added, turning to Dora, "I admire you – I will beg you to excuse me. I thought that, perhaps, you might have been very glad to … I wanted very much," he went on, retiring, nervous and awkward, towards the door, "to have that picture, but I wished also to do you a good turn – to render you a friendly service which could not hurt your susceptibilities… After all, artists try to sell their pictures, don't they?.. And I should have thought that such an offer at such a time" …
The unfortunate man floundered more and more.
"Well, excuse me," said he; "I will wish you good-morning."
His back was now against the door. The next second he was in the street again. The poor fellow mopped the perspiration from his brow.
"The woman is mad – she is a prig!" he said to himself, as he hailed a passing hansom and set out for the City, where he was more in his element.
Dora was choking with anger. Lorimer rubbed his hands with joy.
"Not even a front door of my own to protect me against the importunities of such a fool as that! Oh, the sympathy of such a man! The drop that overbrims the vase! The kick of the jackass! And you can stand there and laugh."
"Ah, my dear Dora, what good you have done me!" exclaimed Lorimer, who could not contain his delight. "You were quite right – not for five hundred, nor for five thousand, nor for a million. That picture is a treasure no gold could pay for – never let it go – Philip will finish it. Oh, how happy you have made me! You love him still! you know you do," he cried.
"You know nothing about it," said Dora, and, taking the little packet that Lorimer had brought her from her husband, she went towards her bedroom.
"I am tiring you," said Lorimer. "I ought not to have stayed so long, but it seemed to me I had so many things to say to you – and I have not got through half of them. Look here, I have a little business in the neighbourhood, my time is my own; may I come at four o'clock to ask you for a cup of tea?"
"Why, of course," said Dora. "How nice of you! Oh, it is good to see a friend who is always the same."
Lorimer took her outstretched hand and respectfully lifted her fingers to his lips. Then he went out. He could have danced for very joy.
The scene he had just witnessed confirmed him in his belief that there was yet hope for Philip.
He had a plan evolved out of his dramatic author's brain, a little coup de théâtre, which he thought had every chance of turning out a success. He had already talked of it to Philip and Dr. Templeton, and both of them had pronounced it an excellent idea. Hobbs also was in the secret. Lorimer judged the time ripe for the execution of this plan. On leaving Dora he jumped into a cab, and went to warn the other conspirators to hold themselves in readiness. The doctor was to make his appearance at Dora's about five o'clock, to see how she was doing. Philip was to wait in the street in readiness for a signal, which should bid him to the scene of action in due time. When everything was decided, and the details well arranged, Lorimer took Philip to his club, where they passed an hour or two in talk before returning to St. John's Wood to proceed to action.
XVIII
LORIMER'S PLOT
When Dora was alone, she took Philip's letter and put it by without opening; then she softly began to untie the small packet. She could not repress her emotion at the sight of these little flowers, that brought back the memory of the happiest days of her life. It was like a breath of Elm Avenue, stealing into her attic.
"Our little family," she said. "Poor little flowers, you were happy when Philip plucked you, happy even as I in those days was happy! And to-day you are faded, limp, and lifeless, even as my poor heart. Oh, cursed be life, I cannot weep even at sight of you… You at least have no memory to torture you. What would I not give to obliterate my own!"
When Hobbs came in to set the table, she found Dora lying drowsily back in her armchair, holding in her hands the flowers whose history the good woman knew well. She did not like to disturb her mistress, and retired discreetly into the bedroom to wait patiently until Dora should wake. But Dora did not stir, and the beefsteak would certainly be spoilt. Hobbs returned, and softly and deftly set about her preparations.
Dora opened her eyes, and was annoyed to see Hobbs smiling at sight of the flowers she still held in her hands. It seemed as if the servant had surprised a dear secret, and was reading in her mistress's heart something that she herself could scarcely decipher yet.
"The pansies come back!.. Then it must be master who has sent them," said Hobbs.
"Yes," replied Dora, "yes, it is he; they no longer mean anything to him, so he sent them to me. He gets rid of them."
"And shall I tell you what I think? I think that these flowers mean a great deal to him still, and, if he has sent them here, it is that they may say to you, 'In the name of the happy past that these flowers will remind you of, come back to me. I love you and I wait for you.' That's what I think."
Dora did not encourage Hobbs to continue. She rose and went to the table; but she had no appetite, and scarcely touched the succulent food that Hobbs had prepared for her.
"I expect Mr. Lorimer at four o'clock," said Dora; "he is coming to have tea with me. Meanwhile, I am going to read. I want to be alone here, for a while, Hobbs."
When the lunch had been taken away, Dora remained in the studio and installed herself in an armchair with a book in her hand, but she did not read. The thoughts chased one another through her brain. Doubt and incertitude pursued her and disturbed her inmost soul, but although she could not exactly explain to herself what was passing within her, she felt that this doubt and incertitude were no longer of Philip's innocence, but of his culpability. The fact is, she was waiting eagerly for Lorimer's return, not only because his breezy company acted as a tonic to her nerves, and seemed to bring forth fresh strength, but because she was dying to learn more details about Philip's doings.
She did not say it to herself in so many words but something within her cried out: "You are unjust, your obstinacy blinds you; lend an ear to all that can throw light on this matter; do not refuse any longer to learn the facts."
Lorimer was punctual to the minute. As the clock struck four, he walked into the studio. He found Dora in the same dress which she had worn in the morning, but he noticed that her hair was differently arranged, and that her very simple mourning robes yet possessed an air of elegance. In her whole appearance there was something which revealed a woman who had retained a consciousness of her beauty.
Lorimer seemed in gayer mood than ever. Dora noticed it at once, and the good spirits of her old friend insensibly roused a response in her.
Hobbs brought in the tea, and Dora poured out two cups.
Lorimer took a piece of cake, drank his cup of tea, and asked for a second. He helped himself to another slice of cake, and drank his second cup of tea with evident relish.
"Another cup?" said Dora.
"With pleasure; your tea is delicious, and tea to me is a life-saving liquid, a sovereign remedy for numberless ills. No washerwoman sips her bohea with greater gusto. It is tea that revives me after fatigue, tea that stimulates me when I am at work, tea that cheers me in desponding moments. Long live tea!"
"You must not overdo your devotion," said Dora.
"Oh, my dear friend," rejoined Lorimer, "you must not overdo anything, if it comes to that – you allow a cigarette?"
"I allow two; have you a light?"
"Yes, thank you."
Lorimer lit a cigarette, inhaled the fragrant smoke, and sent it soaring in blue spirals to the ceiling.
"We were speaking of abusing things just now … well, as a matter of fact, it is our most salient national trait. I pass most of my time in preaching upon this text. The word moderation scarcely exists for us. The apostles of temperance, for instance, exhort to total abstinence, instead of moderation. The word temperance cannot by any stretch of its meaning imply total abstinence, the essence of its significance is moderation. When one speaks of a country as enjoying a temperate climate, that does not mean that the country has no climate at all, it means that it has a moderate climate, and is not very hot or very cold."
Dora began to wonder whether Lorimer was going to philosophise long, or whether the conversation would soon turn upon Philip again.
"It is in the Anglo-Saxon blood," continued Lorimer. "We fling ourselves heart and soul into our enterprises, even to the danger of our well-being and our happiness; we do not know how to steer the middle course. For instance, now, take Philip's case. It is just that. There you have a striking example of my theory. A Frenchman who had invented his shell, would probably have gone on painting pictures. The Frenchman who has made a fortune, eases off steam, and takes things easily. The Anglo-Saxon who has made a fortune, wants to straightway make another. Philip is English, he can't help it… I call that the complete absorption of the individual; and, after all, this very defect in our national character has been a source of glory, for it has helped us to do great deeds and conquer half the earth."
"Granted," said Dora; "but it is not your theory upon what you are pleased to call the complete absorption of a man, which will explain how that man can forget all his obligations to his wife."
Lorimer smiled as he realised that Dora continued to think of Philip.
"Oh, but it does, at least up to a certain point. First of all, what do you mean by all his obligations towards his wife? If to neglect her is to fail in all his duty towards her, my theory explains the phenomenon perfectly."
"Come, come, my dear friend, do you maintain, for instance, that a husband who loves his wife, or even only respects her, forces her to receive the visits of a man whom he knows to have been in love with her before her marriage, and who has earned for himself a well-merited reputation as a libertine? Is that kind of thing a natural consequence of the complete absorption?"
"We are getting on now," thought Lorimer.
"Does he invite that man to his house to dine, and then miss a train, so that they may be thrown together en tête-à-tête for a whole evening? Is that your absorption, too? Ah, don't talk to me, my dear Gerald; there are circumstances which awake the most absorbed man on earth."
Lorimer remained dumb, and looked at Dora in the strangest manner, as if seeking to know whether he had heard aright. He threw his cigarette on the tray and drew nearer to her. He hardly knew whether to pity her or to reproach her bitterly.
"What!" said he, "you do not know what happened to Philip at the moment that he was about to leave the Paris hotel to return to London in time to dine with Sabaroff? He never explained all that to you? Why, he told me that he had written you a long explanation of it all."
"It is quite true that he has written to me several times since that dreadful day, but I have torn up unread every letter he has sent me since I left that hated house."
"Well," said Lorimer, with an air of mixed pity and amazement, "upon my word, you can do clever things, when you set about it! If you had read his letters, you would have learnt the whole truth."
"Tell me yourself, tell me everything," said Dora breathlessly.
"Listen, then, while I show you how unfounded was your crowning suspicion of him. Philip's business in Paris being finished, he had breakfasted early, and was descending the staircase on his way to his cab, when, as he reached the first floor landing, a door opened, and a gentleman came out. Judge of his feelings at finding himself face to face with his father! One glance served to show Philip that a great change had come over him. From a hale, haughty, self-reliant man of sixty, he had turned into a pitiable invalid, and looked prematurely old and feeble. A broken cry, 'My son!' arrested Philip's steps. Struck with pity at the sight of the change in his father, he allowed himself to be led through the still-open door, and there ensued a moving scene in which the elder man humbled himself before the younger and implored his forgiveness. The minutes fled by meanwhile, and when Philip, unnerved and shaken, reached the station, it was only to find that the train had left two minutes before. The rest you know."
"Oh, my poor brain is on fire," murmured Dora.
"Dora, you have misjudged Philip. He made you rich, thinking to add to your happiness – that is the only harm he ever did you. Ah, say that you forgive him, and will go back to him – he is waiting for you."
"No, no, never in that house."
"No," said Lorimer softly; "not in that house, but the old studio in Elm Avenue."
"Where? what did you say?" exclaimed Dora.
"Philip has left the house you hate so, because of its cruel souvenirs. He has gone back to St. John's Wood, where you spent the first six years of your married life, and, in order never to be turned out of that house, he has bought it."
"But the house is inhabited," said Dora.
"I know it."
"Why, then – it must be Philip" …
"Who occupies it," said Lorimer; "he is only waiting for your presence, dear Dora, before beginning to work again. He will devote the rest of his life to painting in the old studio. It is his irrevocable resolution."
A ray of ineffable joy spread over Dora's face; but the shock had been too violent and too sudden. She was not strong enough to bear such emotion as the news had caused her. Repeating over Lorimer's phrase, "It is he who occupies the house! Oh, my dear old studio!" she fell fainting into his arms, and he called Hobbs to come quickly to her mistress's aid. After a few moments her eyes opened, she smiled at Lorimer, and he took her hands and kissed them.
It was five o'clock. Dr. Templeton arrived, and had Dora led to her bedroom, with a recommendation to rest quietly on the bed a while.
"It is only a little weakness," said he; "her pulse is almost normal. This sort of thing is often caused by sudden emotion. It will soon be over, but I will stay near her for the present."