CHAPTER XVIII
THE PERFECT DOG
Hilary sat long in the sun, watching the pale bright waters and many well-bred ducks circling about the shrubs, searching with their round, bright eyes for worms. Between the bench where he was sitting and the spiked iron railings people passed continually – men, women, children of all kinds. Every now and then a duck would stop and cast her knowing glance at these creatures, as though comparing the condition of their forms and plumage with her own. ‘If I had had the breeding of you,’ she seemed to say, ‘I could have made a better fist of it than that. A worse-looking lot of ducks, take you all round. I never wish to see!’ And with a quick but heavy movement of her shoulders, she would turn away and join her fellows.
Hilary, however, got small distraction from the ducks. The situation gradually developing was something of a dilemma to a man better acquainted with ideas than facts, with the trimming of words than with the shaping of events. He turned a queer, perplexed, almost quizzical eye on it. Stephen had irritated him profoundly. He had such a way of pettifying things! Yet, in truth, the affair would seem ridiculous enough to an ordinary observer. What would a man of sound common sense, like Mr. Purcey, think of it? Why not, as Stephen had suggested, drop it? Here, however, Hilary approached the marshy ground of feeling.
To give up befriending a helpless girl the moment he found himself personally menaced was exceedingly distasteful. But would she be friendless? Were there not, in Stephen’s words, a hundred things he did not know about her? Had she not other resources? Had she not a story? But here, too, he was hampered by his delicacy: one did not pry into the private lives of others!
The matter, too, was hopelessly complicated by the domestic troubles of the Hughs family. No conscientious man – and whatever Hilary lacked, no one ever accused him of a lack of conscience – could put aside that aspect of the case.
Wandering among these reflections were his thoughts about Bianca. She was his wife. However he might feel towards her now, whatever their relations, he must not put her in a false position. Far from wishing to hurt her, he desired to preserve her, and everyone, from trouble and annoyance. He had told Stephen that his interest in the girl was purely protective. But since the night when, leaning out into the moonlight, he heard the waggons coming in to Covent Garden Market, a strange feeling had possessed him – the sensation of a man who lies, with a touch of fever on him, listening to the thrum of distant music – sensuous, not unpleasurable.
Those who saw him sitting there so quietly, with his face resting on his hand, imagined, no doubt, that he was wrestling with some deep, abstract proposition, some great thought to be given to mankind; for there was that about Hilary which forced everyone to connect him instantly with the humaner arts.
The sun began to leave the long pale waters.
A nursemaid and two children came and sat down beside him. Then it was that, underneath his seat, Miranda found what she had been looking for all her life. It had no smell, made no movement, was pale-grey in colour, like herself. It had no hair that she could find; its tail was like her own; it took no liberties, was silent, had no passions, committed her to nothing. Standing a few inches from its head, closer than she had ever been of her free will to any dog, she smelt its smellessness with a long, delicious snuffling, wrinkling up the skin on her forehead, and through her upturned eyes her little moonlight soul looked forth. ‘How unlike you are,’ she seemed to say, ‘to all the other dogs I know! I would love to live with you. Shall I ever find a dog like you again? “The latest-sterilised cloth – see white label underneath: 4s. 3d.!”’ Suddenly she slithered out her slender grey-pink tongue and licked its nose. The creature moved a little way and stopped. Miranda saw that it had wheels. She lay down close to it, for she knew it was the perfect dog.
Hilary watched the little moonlight lady lying vigilant, affectionate, beside this perfect dog, who could not hurt her. She panted slightly, and her tongue showed between her lips. Presently behind his seat he saw another idyll. A thin white spaniel had come running up. She lay down in the grass quite close, and three other dogs who followed, sat and looked at her. A poor, dirty little thing she was, who seemed as if she had not seen a home for days. Her tongue lolled out, she panted piteously, and had no collar. Every now and then she turned her eyes, but though they were so tired and desperate, there was a gleam in them. ‘For all its thirst and hunger and exhaustion, this is life!’ they seemed to say. The three dogs, panting too, and watching till it should be her pleasure to begin to run again, seemed with their moist, loving eyes to echo: ‘This is life!’
Because of this idyll, people near were moving on.
And suddenly the thin white spaniel rose, and, like a little harried ghost, slipped on amongst the trees, and the three dogs followed her.
CHAPTER XIX
BIANCA
In her studio that afternoon Blanca stood before her picture of the little model – the figure with parted pale-red lips and haunting, pale-blue eyes, gazing out of shadow into lamplight.
She was frowning, as though resentful of a piece of work which had the power to kill her other pictures. What force had moved her to paint like that? What had she felt while the girl was standing before her, still as some pale flower placed in a cup of water? Not love – there was no love in the presentment of that twilight figure; not hate – there was no hate in the painting of her dim appeal. Yet in the picture of this shadow girl, between the gloom and glimmer, was visible a spirit, driving the artist on to create that which had the power to haunt the mind.
Blanca turned away and went up to a portrait of her husband, painted ten years before. She looked from one picture to the other, with eyes as hard and stabbing as the points of daggers.
In the more poignant relationships of human life there is a point beyond which men and women do not quite truthfully analyse their feelings – they feel too much. It was Blanca’s fortune, too, to be endowed to excess with that quality which, of all others, most obscures the real significance of human issues. Her pride had kept her back from Hilary, till she had felt herself a failure. Her pride had so revolted at that failure that she had led the way to utter estrangement. Her pride had forced her to the attitude of one who says “Live your own life; I should be ashamed to let you see that I care what happens between us.” Her pride had concealed from her the fact that beneath her veil of mocking liberality there was an essential woman tenacious of her dues, avid of affection and esteem. Her pride prevented the world from guessing that there was anything amiss. Her pride even prevented Hilary from really knowing what had spoiled his married life – this ungovernable itch to be appreciated, governed by ungovernable pride. Hundreds of times he had been baffled by the hedge round that disharmonic nature. With each failure something had shrivelled in him, till the very roots of his affection had dried up. She had worn out a man who, to judge from his actions and appearance, was naturally long-suffering to a fault. Beneath all manner of kindness and consideration for each other – for their good taste, at all events, had never given way – this tragedy of a woman, who wanted to be loved, slowly killing the power of loving her in the man, had gone on year after year. It had ceased to be tragedy, as far as Hilary was concerned; the nerve of his love for her was quite dead, slowly frozen out of him. It was still active tragedy with Bianca, the nerve of whose jealous desire for his appreciation was not dead. Her instinct, too, ironically informed her that, had he been a man with some brutality, a man who had set himself to ride and master her, instead of one too delicate, he might have trampled down the hedge. This gave her a secret grudge against him, a feeling that it was not she who was to blame.
Pride was Bianca’s fate, her flavour, and her charm. Like a shadowy hill-side behind glamorous bars of waning sunlight, she was enveloped in smiling pride – mysterious; one thinks, even to herself. This pride of hers took part even in her many generous impulses, kind actions which she did rather secretly and scoffed at herself for doing. She scoffed at herself continually, even for putting on dresses of colours which Hilary was fond of. She would not admit her longing to attract him.
Standing between those two pictures, pressing her mahl-stick against her bosom, she suggested somewhat the image of an Italian saint forcing the dagger of martyrdom into her heart.
That other person, who had once brought the thought of Italy into Cecilia’s mind – the man Hughs – had been for the last eight hours or so walking the streets, placing in a cart the refuses of Life; nor had he at all suggested the aspect of one tortured by the passions of love and hate: For the first two hours he had led the horse without expression of any sort on his dark face, his neat soldier’s figure garbed in the costume which had made “Westminister” describe him as a “dreadful foreign-lookin’ man.” Now and then he had spoken to the horse; save for those speeches, of no great importance, he had been silent. For the next two hours, following the cart, he had used a shovel, and still his square, short face, with little black moustache and still blacker eyes, had given no sign of conflict in his breast. So he had passed the day. Apart from the fact, indeed, that men of any kind are not too given to expose private passions to public gaze, the circumstances of a life devoted from the age of twenty onwards to the service of his country, first as a soldier, now in the more defensive part of Vestry scavenger, had given him a kind of gravity. Life had cloaked him with passivity – the normal look of men whose bread and cheese depends on their not caring much for anything. Had Hughs allowed his inclinations play, or sought to express himself, he could hardly have been a private soldier; still less, on his retirement from that office with an honourable wound, would he have been selected out of many others as a Vestry scavenger. For such an occupation as the lifting from the streets of the refuses of Life – a calling greatly sought after, and, indeed, one of the few open to a man who had served his country – charm of manner, individuality, or the engaging quality of self-expression, were perhaps out of place.
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.