Part 9

“Mother, you’d better come to bed. I——” there was the faintest suggestion of menace in her voice—“I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

The old woman shrank away.

“I won’t come. I know. You want me out of the way. You don’t want me to see her. What are you going to say about me? You’ll say things to her about me. I’ve heard you.”

Quite obviously Anita restrained herself.

“Now, Mother, you know you don’t mean that.”

“Hush!” Great-aunt pulled away her hand. “Quiet, child, quiet! Wasn’t that the cab? I’ve listened all the evening, all the long evening.” Her old voice thinned and sharpened to a chirp. “Soft, soft, the wheels go by. The wheels never stop. Wait till the wheels stop. It’s the fog that’s keeping her. There’s fog everywhere. Maybe she’s lost in the fog.” Then she chuckled to herself. “Naughty girl to be so late. But she’s always late. Why should I go to bed? I’ve got to finish my knitting, Nita. Only two rows, Nita. They’ll just last me till she comes.” And then, “Anita, she will come?”

Anita turned to the others.

“Don’t be alarmed. It’s nothing. I’m afraid she hasn’t realized——” She began again—“Now, Mother! It’s bed-time, Mother dear.”

“‘Dear’—‘dear’—why do you speak kindly? Madala’s not here to listen.” And then—“Nita, Nita child, let me stay till she comes.”

Anita was quite patient with her, and quite unyielding.

“Now listen, Mother! It’s no use waiting. Come upstairs with me. She won’t——” her voice altered, “she can’t come tonight.”

Beside me Kent Rehan spoke—

“I can’t stand it,” he said. “I can’t stand it. I can’t stand it.” He didn’t seem to know that he was speaking.

But Great-aunt heard his voice if she didn’t hear the words. She broke away from Anita and went shuffling over the floor towards him with blind movements. She would have fallen if he hadn’t been beside her in an instant, holding her.

“Kent, d’you hear her? You know my daughter. You know Madala too. You speak to her! You tell her! Madala always comes, doesn’t she? Always comes. You tell her that! I want to see Madala. Very good to me, Madala. Brought me a bunch of violets.”

Anita followed.

“Kent, for goodness’ sake, try to help me. She’ll make herself ill. I shall have her in bed for days. Now, Mother——Now come, Mother!”

Great-aunt clung to his arm.

“She’s not kind. My daughter’s very hard on me.”

For the first time Anita showed signs of agitation. She was almost appealing.

“Kent! You mustn’t believe her. It’s not fair. You see my position. One has to be firm. And you don’t know how trying——What am I to do? Shall I tell her? She’s as obstinate—I’ll never get her to bed. Ought I to tell her? She’ll have to be told sooner or later. She’ll have to realize——”

He said—

“I’ll talk to her if you like.”

Anita looked at him intently.

“It’s good of you. She has always listened to you. Since you and I were children together. Do you remember, Kent? Yes, you talk to her.”

“What’s she saying?” demanded Great-aunt. Her old eyes were bright with suspicion. “Talking you over, eh? Talk anyone over, my daughter will—my clever daughter. So clever. Madala thinks so too. ‘Dripping with brains.’ That’s what Madala said. Made me laugh. Quite true, though. Hasn’t Madala come yet?”

“Now, look here, Mrs. Serle——” he put his arm round her bent shoulders, “it’s very foggy, you know, and it’s very late. Nobody could travel—nobody could come tonight. You’ll believe us, won’t you?”

“Wait! What’s that?” She stood a moment, her finger raised, listening intently. Then she straightened her bowed body and looked up at him. One so seldom saw her face lifted, shone upon by any light, that that alone, I suppose, was enough to change her. For changed she was—her countenance so wise and beaming that I hardly knew her. “Now I know,” she said, “she will come. Wait for her, Kent. She will come. I—I hear her coming. She’s not so far from us. She’s not so far away.”

They stared at each other for a moment, the man and the old woman. Then her face dropped forward again, downward into its accustomed shadow, as he said to her—

“It’s too late, Mrs. Serle. She won’t come—now. Not now any more. And Anita thinks—truly you’re very tired, aren’t you? Now, aren’t you?”

“Very tired,” she quavered.

“I know you are. Won’t you let me help you upstairs?”

“And stay a bit?” she said, clutching at him. “Stay and talk to me?”

“Yes, yes,” he humoured her.

“About Madala?”

He was very white.

“About Madala. Anita, take her other arm. That’s the way.”

They helped her out of the room, and we heard their slow progress up the stairs.

It was the blonde lady who broke the silence with her tinkling laugh—

“Poor dear Nita!”

“Kent’s a good sort,” said Miss Howe.

“What’s Hecuba to him now?” Mr. Flood’s smile glinted from one to another.

“A very old friend,” said the blonde lady. “You heard what dear Nita said to him.”

“‘Children together!’ I didn’t know that.” He was still smiling.

“And they always kept in touch,” put in Miss Howe.

“Trust Nita for that,” said the blonde lady.

Miss Howe nodded.

“She told me once that from the first she realized that he would do big things.”

“So Nita kept in touch!” Mr. Flood laughed outright.

“But it’s only the last few years that she’s been able to produce him at will, like a conjuror’s rabbit.”

“Since Madala’s advent, you mean,” said the blonde lady.

“‘Will you walk into my parlour?’ said Anita to the fly. ‘It’s a literary parlour——’” murmured Mr. Flood. And then—“No. Kent’s not likely to have walked in without a honey-pot in the parlour. Madala must have been useful.”

“That’s what Miss Serle will never forgive her, _I_ think,” said the Baxter girl.

“What?”

“That she was useful. Do _you_ believe in the other man?”

“The unknown influence?” His eyes narrowed. “H’m!”

“And yet of course there’s been someone.” The Baxter girl never quite deserted Anita, even in her absence.

The blonde lady nodded.

“Of course. Nita’s always nearly right. The influence—the adventures—the _mariage de convenance_—she’s got it all so pat—and the man too. She knows well enough; yet she fights against it. She won’t have it. I wonder why. ‘Very old friends’ I suppose.” She laughed again. “But of course it was Kent. Can’t you see that’s why Nita hates her? What a _Life_ it will be! I just long for it to come out. Nita’s a comedy.”

“A tragedy.”

“Nita? My dear Lila! What do you mean?”

“I’m only quoting,” said Miss Howe. And then—“But when she isn’t actually annoying me I think I agree.”

“Who said it?” said the Baxter girl inquisitively.

“Madala. It’s the only thing I’ve ever heard her say of Anita. She never discussed Anita. Now of Kent she would talk by the hour. Which proves to me, you know, that the affair with him didn’t go very deep. Nita quoted that description of Kent just now, but only so far as it served her. She carefully forgot how it goes on. Here, where is it? Ah——

He brooded like a lover over his colour-box, and as she watched him her thoughts flew to her own small brothers at home. Geoff with his steam-engine, Jimmy sorting stamps—there, there was to be found the same ruthlessness of absorption, achieving dignity by its sheer intensity. She smiled over him and them.

“Keep your face still,” he ordered.

She obeyed instantly, flushing; and as she did so she thought to herself—‘I could be afraid of that man,’ but a moment afterwards—‘He _is_ like a small boy.’

“Now that may be Kent—oh, it is Kent, of course—but it’s not Madala’s attitude to Kent. She was not in the least afraid of him.”

“Ah, but that later passage, the country passage—that’s pure Madala.”

“Yes. Just where it ceases to be Kent—‘He stoops, I suppose. He’s worn out with work. He’s quite ordinary.’ That’s not Kent.”

“No, that’s true. One doesn’t know where to have her. She muddles her trail,” said Mr. Flood.

“I call it weakness of touch not to let you know whom she drew from,” said the Baxter girl.

“Ah, but she always insisted that she didn’t draw portraits.”

“Of course. They always do. If one believed _them_ one would never get behind the scenes, and if one can’t get behind the scenes one might as well be mere public and read for the story,” said the Baxter girl indignantly.

“Well, you know,” Miss Howe sat turning over the pages of _The Resting-place_ with careful, almost with caressing fingers, “I don’t believe she meant to draw portraits. She had queer, old-fashioned notions. I think she would have thought it—treacherous.”

“The portraits are there though, if you look close enough,” insisted the Baxter girl.

“Yes, but they happened in spite of her. Anyone she was fond of she took into her, in a sense: and when her gift descended upon her and demanded expression, then, all unconsciously, she expressed them too. But gilded! We find ourselves in her books, and we never knew before how lovable we are. You’re right, Blanche, _she liked whate’er she looked on_. And you’re right too, Jasper, _Grande amoureuse_, she was that. That capacity for loving made her what she was. The technical facility was her talent and her luck; but it was her own personality that turned it into genius.”

“Then after all you admit the genius,” said the Baxter girl triumphantly.

“No. No. No. My judgment says no. When I read her books in cold blood—no. But we’ve been talking about her. It’s as if she were with us, and when she’s with us my judgment goes! That’s the secret of Madala Grey. She does what she likes with us. But the next generation, the people who don’t know her, whether they’ll find in her books what we do, is doubtful. Who wants a dried rose?”

“Yes, but Miss Serle—in the _Life_? Won’t she—preserve her?”

“Preserve—exactly! But not revive. No, I’d sooner pin my faith to _The Spring Song_, although I haven’t seen it. It ought to be a revelation. She eluded Nita, impishly. I’ve seen her do it. But there’s no doubt that she gave Kent his chance.”

“Every chance. She’d deny it, I suppose.”

“Oh, she did.” Miss Howe laughed. “Have you ever seen her in a temper? I have. I was a fool. I told her one day (you know how things come up) just something of the gossip about Kent and her. I thought it only kind. But you should have heard her. She was as healthily furious as a schoolgirl. That was so comfortable about Madala. She hadn’t that terrible aloofness of really big people. She didn’t withdraw into dignity. She just stormed.” Miss Howe laughed again. “I can see her now, raging up and down the room—‘Do you mean to say that people——? I never heard of anything so monstrous! What has it got to do with them? Why can’t they leave me alone? I’ve never done them any harm. I wouldn’t have believed it, pretending they liked me, and letting me be friends with them, and then saying hateful things behind my back. I’ll never speak to them again—never! That they should go about twisting things—Why can’t they mind their own business? And dragging in Kent like that! Oh, it does make me so wild!’ ‘Oh, well, my dear,’ I said to her, ‘when two people see as much of each other as you and Kent do, there’s bound to be talk.’ At that she swung round on me. ‘But he’s my _friend_,’ she said. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘that’s just it.’ ‘But I’m not expected to marry everyone I’m fond of!’ ‘Are you fond of him, Madala?’ I asked her. ‘Yes,’ she said directly, ‘I am. I’m awfully fond of him. I’d do anything for him, bless his heart!’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘you needn’t be so upset. That’s all that people mean. If you’re fond of him and he—he’s obviously in love with you——’ But at that she caught me up in her quick way—‘In love? Oh, you don’t understand him. Nobody understands Kent. He doesn’t understand himself. Dear old Kent!’ Then she began walking up and down the room again, but more quietly, and talking, half to herself, as if she had forgotten I was there, justifying herself, justifying him. ‘Dear old Kent! Poor old Kent! I’m awfully fond of Kent. So is he of me. But not in the right way. He’s got, when he happens to think of it, a great romantic idea of the woman he wants, of the wife he wants; but the truth is, you know, that he doesn’t want a wife. He wants a mother, and a sister, and a—a lover. A true lover. A patienter woman than I am. A woman who’ll delight in him for his own sake, not for what he gives her. A woman who’ll put him first and be content to come second with him. He’ll always put his work first. He can’t help it. He’s an artist. Oh, not _content_. I didn’t mean that. She must be too big for that—big enough to know what she misses. But a wise woman, such a loving, hungry woman. ‘Half a loaf,’ she’ll say to herself. But she’ll never have to let him hear. He’s chivalrous. He’d be horrified at giving her half a loaf. He’d say—“All or nothing!” But he couldn’t give her all. He couldn’t spare it. So he’d give her nothing out of sheer respect for her. That’s Kent. He’s got his dear queer theories of life—oh, they’re all right as theories—but he fits people to them, instead of them to people. Procrustes. He’d torture a woman from the kindest of motives. It’s lack of imagination. Haven’t you noticed?’ ‘Considering he’s one of the great imaginative artists of the day, Madala,’ I said to her, ‘that’s rather sweeping.’ ‘But that’s why,’ she said. ‘It’s just because he’s a genius. He lives on himself, in himself. Kent’s an island.’ I said—‘No chance of a bridge, Madala?’ She shook her head. ‘Not my job.’ I said I was sorry. I was, too. It would have been so ideal, that pair. I wanted to argue it with her; but she wouldn’t listen. She said—‘If I weren’t an artist too, then maybe—maybe. I’m very fond of Kent. But no—I’d want too much. But, you know, there’s a woman somewhere, rather like me—I hope he’ll marry her. I’d love her. She’d never be jealous of me. She’d understand. She’s me without the writing, without the outlet. She’ll pour it all into loving him. I hope she’s alive somewhere. He’d be awfully happy. And if he had children—that’s what he needs. I can just see him with children. But not my children. If I married——’ And then she flushed up to the eyes in that way she had, as if she were fifteen. ‘I—I’d like to be married for myself, for my faults, for the bits I don’t tell anyone. Kent would hate my faults. I’d have to hide my realest self.’ She stood staring out of the window. Then she said, still in that rueful, childish voice—‘I would like to be liked.’ ‘But, my dear girl,’ said I, ‘what nonsense you talk! If ever a woman had friends——’ She flung round at me again—‘If I’d not written _Eden Walls_ would Anita have looked at me—or any of you?’ I said—‘That’s not a fair question. Your books _are_ you, the quintessence, the very best of you.’ ‘But the rest of me?’ she said, ‘but the _rest_ of me?’ I laughed at her. ‘Well, what about the rest of you?’ Then she said, in a small voice—‘It feels rather out of it sometimes, Lila.’”

“I say,” Mr. Flood twinkled at her, “are you going to present all this to Anita? She’d be grateful.”

“Not she,” said Miss Howe sharply. “Too much fact would spoil her theory. Let her spin her own web.”

“Agreed. There’s room for more than one biography, eh?” They laughed together a little consciously.

“You know,” the blonde lady recalled them, “she must have been quite a good actress. She always seemed perfectly contented.”

“Imagine Madala Grey discontented,” said the Baxter girl. “How could she be?”

“Oh, Kent was at the root of that,” said Miss Howe, “for all her talk.”

Mr. Flood nodded.

“Yes, the lady did protest too much, if your report’s correct.”

“It’s the only explanation and, as you said, Blanche, in her heart Anita knows it. After all, he’s a somebody. Madala wouldn’t be the only one who’s found him attractive, eh?” She cocked an eyebrow.

“Don’t be scandalous, Lila,” said the blonde lady virtuously, and Mr. Flood gave his little sniff of enjoyment.

“Oh, give me five minutes,” said Miss Howe cosily. “She’ll be down in five minutes. I’ve been good all the evening. But I’m inclined to agree with her, you know, that Madala was attracted, just because Madala denied it so vehemently. Only Anita goes too far for me. She’s right, of course, when she says of Kent—‘Not a marrying man!’ but not in the way she means it. There are dark and awful things in the history of every unmarried man, to Anita. She scents intrigue everywhere. I’m a spinster myself, but I’m not such a spidery spinster. She may be partly right. Some other man, some question-mark of a man, may have treated Madala badly. But Kent didn’t. Kent isn’t that sort. Intrigue would bore him. Still, he wasn’t a marrying man in those days, and I think Madala was perfectly honest when she said—‘Just friends.’ But I think also, if you ask me, that they were far too good friends. It’s not wise to be friends with a man. You must be a woman first and let him know it. I don’t believe in these platonic friendships. So I think that in time Madala found out where they were making the mistake. And he didn’t, or wouldn’t. Oh well!” she paused expressively, “he’s finding it out now. He has been all the year. Didn’t you see his face when he came in tonight? Madala shouldn’t have hurried. Poor Madala! Though I don’t think it broke her heart, you know.”

“No.” The blonde lady nodded. “She was too serene, too placid, for real passion. She could draw it well enough, but always from the outside.”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” said the Baxter girl. “Think of the end of _Ploughed Fields_.”

“Let’s give her some credit for imagination, even if we don’t say ‘genius’! I agree with Blanche. Oh, perhaps her heart did crack just a little——”

The blonde lady struck in—

“But then Carey’s a doctor. So convenient!”

“Yes,” said Mr. Flood. “I always said he caught her on the rebound.”

“And then, to mix metaphors, the fat was in the fire. Then, Kent woke up to her. Isn’t it obvious? He was fond of Madala Grey, but it was Mrs. Carey that he fell in love with. Just like a man!”

“Oh, I hate you,” said Mr. Flood. “You destroy my illusions. I’m like Anita. I demand the tragic Madala.”

“You can have her, I should think,” said the Baxter girl thoughtfully. “Oh, of course your theory does seem probable as far as it goes, Miss Howe, but——”

“But what?” said Miss Howe.

“Well, she hardly ever came to town afterwards, did she?”

“Ah, Madala was always wise,” said the blonde lady.

Mr. Flood rubbed his hands.

“Thank you, Beryl. We’re in sympathy. And it’s quite a satisfying, tragical picture, isn’t it? The two artists—he with his lay figure and she with her Hodge, and the long year between them. Can’t you see them, cheated, desirous, stretching out to each other their impotent hands? One could make something out of that.”

“You could, Mr. Flood,” said the Baxter girl fervently.

“Out of what?” Anita was always noiseless. I jumped to hear her voice so close behind me.

Miss Howe looked up at her quizzingly.

“Madala and——Where _is_ Kent?”

“With Mother still. He’s managed her extraordinarily. She’s getting sleepy, thank goodness! He’ll be down in a minute.” Then, with a change of tone—“Madala and Kent? I think not, Lila dear.”

“But you said yourself——” the Baxter girl interposed.

“Oh no! I flung it out—a suggestion—a possibility. I haven’t committed myself—yet. I wish I could be sure of Kent. He’s upset my conception of him tonight. I should have said—selfish. Especially over Madala. But all men are selfish. Yet, tonight——” she hesitated, playing with the papers that lay half in, half out of the open desk. “But who was it, if it wasn’t Kent? Because there _was_ someone, you know——” And then, as if Miss Howe’s smile annoyed her beyond prudence—“Do you think I’m inventing? Do you think I’ve talked for amusement’s sake? I tell you, she was on the verge of an elopement. _Without_ benefit of clergy!”

“Anita!” Miss Howe half rose from her chair.

“We’re getting it at last.” Mr. Flood addressed the room. “I knew she had something up her sleeve.”

“I don’t believe—I won’t believe it,” said Miss Howe.

Then Anita smiled.

“Didn’t I say she was careless about her drafts? I’ve a fragment here—no, I’ve left it in my writing-table——” and she rose as she spoke—“no name, but it’s proof enough. It’s an answer to some man’s letter.”

“But does she definitely consent——?” began the Baxter girl.

“Not in so many words. But it’s obvious there was some cause or impediment, and he, whoever he is, has evidently had qualms of conscience about letting her call the world well lost for his sweet sake.”

“That would rule out Kent, of course,” said Miss Howe thoughtfully. “There was no reason why Kent shouldn’t marry.”

“We know of none,” said Anita in her suggestive voice. “Isn’t that as much as one can say of any man?”

“Ah!” said the Baxter girl, illuminated. I don’t know why—her round eyes, I suppose, and her pursed mouth—but she reminded me of the woodcut of Minerva’s owl in _Larousse_.

“So you see my prime difficulty. I’ve passed under review every man of her acquaintance, till I narrowed down the possible——”

“Affinities,” said the blonde lady.

“—to Kent Rehan, John Carey, and this probable but unknown third. There I hang fire. Until I make up my mind on which of the three her love story hinges, I can’t do more than trifle with the _Life_. And how shall I make up my mind?”

“Three?” said Mr. Flood. “Two. You can eliminate the husband. He’s fifth act, not third.”

“Yes, of course. But I never jump a step. Which leaves me the unknown—or Kent.”

The blonde lady leant forward rather eagerly—

“Nita! Where’s that letter?”

“I’ll get it.” She went across the room to her writing-table.

The Baxter girl twisted her head.

“I say! He’s coming down the stairs.”

“If she read aloud that draft——” the blonde lady’s drawl had disappeared. She glittered like an excited schoolgirl—“he might recognize——”

“You mean——?” Mr. Flood raised his eyebrows but Anita, fumbling with her keys, did not hear.

“It would be nice to be sure,” said the blonde lady.

“It’s rather cruel, isn’t it?” said Miss Howe uneasily.

“Why? It’ll be printed in the _Life_. Besides, it may not have been written to him.”

“That’s why,” said Miss Howe.

“It would be nice to be _quite_ sure,” said the blonde lady again. And as she spoke Kent Rehan came into the room.

At once I got up, with some blind, blundering idea, I believe, of stopping him, of frustrating them, but Anita was nearer to him than I.

“Is she asleep? Very good of you, Kent. Sit here, Kent. Jenny, is the window open in the passage? Very cold. I never knew such a draught.”

I went out to see. I had to do as I was told. Besides, how could I have stopped them or him? Yet I was shaking with anger and disgust at them, and at myself for my hateful tongue-tied youth and insignificance. An older woman would have known what to do. Shaking with cold too—Anita was right—it was bitter cold in the passage. I could hardly see my way to the window for the fog. It was open an inch at the bottom, and at my touch it rattled down with a bang that echoed oddly. For an instant I thought it was a knock at the hall door. I stood a minute, quite startled, peering down into the black well of the hall. But there was no second knock, only the fog-laden draught of the passage came rushing up at me again, and again Anita called to me to come in and shut the door. I did so: and because it rattled, wedged it with the screw of paper that lay near it on the floor, the crumpled telegram that Kent Rehan had dropped when he first came in. Then, still shivering a little, I sat down where I was. I didn’t want to go nearer. I knew my face was tell-tale. I didn’t want to have the Baxter girl looking at me, and maybe saying something. I could hear them in the other room well enough. Anita’s voice seemed to cut through the thick air. There was a letter in her hand. She was twisting it about as if she couldn’t find the first page.

“—obviously a draft.” She held it away from her. Anita was long-sighted.

“Dear—dear——

Then it breaks off and begins again. You see?” She displayed it to them.

“Dearest——”