tommy, calling for clementina the next morning; was confronted at the open door, not by eliza, but by a demure damsel in a black frock, black apron, and a black bow in her hair, who said “oui, monsieur,” when addressed. tommy, still bewildered, asked whether she was a new lady’s maid. “oui; monsieur,” said the damsel, and showed him into the sheraton drawing-room. he sat down meekly and waited for clementina. she came down soon, a resplendent vision, exquisitely gowned, perfectly hatted, delicately gloved, and in her hand she jingled a small goldsmith’s shop. she pirouetted round.
“like it?”
tommy groaned. “clementina, darling, tell me, in heaven’s name, what you’re playing at, or i’ll go raving mad.”
“i told you that one of these days i was going to become a lady. the day has come. don’t i look like a lady?”
“that’s the devil of it,” he laughed. “you look like an archduchess.”
they picked up etta and met quixtus at the carlton where they lunched in the middle of the great gay room. the young people’s curious awe of the transmogrified clementina soon melted away. the big, warm-hearted clementina they loved was unchanged; but to her was added a laughter-evoking, brilliant, joyous personage whose existence they had never suspected. quixtus went home stimulated and uplifted. he had never enjoyed two hours so much in his life.
and that was the beginning of the glory of clementina wing.
day by day the glory deepened. the pyrotechnic—a flash, a bedazzlement and then darkness—was not in clementina’s nature. she had deliberately immolated the ph?nix of dusky plumage and from its ashes had arisen this second and radiant ph?nix incarnation. she suffered, as she confessed to herself, infernally; for a new fire-born ph?nix must have its skin peculiarly tender; but she grinned and bore it for the greater glory—well, not of clementina alone—but of god and her sex and the happiness of those she loved and the things that stood for the right.
she was fighting the interloping woman with her own weapons. she, clementina, the despised and rejected of men, was pitting her sex’s fascinations against the professional seductress. she had won the first pitched battle. she had swept the enemy from the field. sheer fierceness of love, almost animal, for the child, sheer pity flaming white for the man grown dear to her, sheer sex, sheer womanhood—these were the forces at work. it would have been easy to denounce the woman to quixtus. but that might have thrown him back into darkness. easy, too, to have held her knowledge as a threat over the woman’s head and bade her begone. but where had been the triumph? where the glory? whereas to scorn the use of her knowledge and conquer otherwise, therein lay matter for thrilling exultation. it was an achievement worth the struggle.
and the glory of the riot through her veins of the tumultuous thing she had kept strangled to torpor within her! the thing that had been stirred by the springtide in a girl’s heart, that had leapt at the parrot tulips in the early may, that had almost escaped from grip on the moonlit night at vienne, that had remained awake and struggling ever since—the glory to let it go free and carry her whithersoever it would! art—to the devil with it! what was art in comparison with this new-found glory?
it made her ten years younger. it took years from the man for whose fascination she brought it into play. hers was a double conquest, the rout of the woman, the capture of the man. daily she battled. sheila, the lovers, a new portrait of him which she suddenly conceived the splendid notion of painting, all were pretexts for keeping the unconscious man within the sphere of her influence. any impression that the other had made on his heart or his mind should be deleted, and her impression stamped there in its place, so that when he met the other out of her presence, as meet her he undoubtedly must, he would wear it as a talisman against her arts and blandishments. twice also during the dying days of the season, late that year, she went out into the great world and gave her adversary battle in the open.
it was between these two engagements that she had a talk with huckaby.
huckaby, doing his best to act loyally towards both parties, led a precarious moral existence. the sight of clementina queening it in dazzling raiment about quixtus’s house and the despairing confidences of lena fontaine had enabled him to form a fairly accurate judgment of the state of affairs. his heart began to bleed for lena fontaine. she would come to his lodgings and claim sympathy. to not a soul in the world but him could she talk freely. she was desperate. that abominable woman insulted her, trampled on her, poisoned quixtus’s mind against her. he had changed suddenly, seemed to avoid her, and, when he found himself in her company, he was just polite and courteous in his gentle way, and smilingly eluded her. the dinard intimacy, on which she had reckoned, had faded into the land of dreams. he was being dragged off before her eyes to some fool place up the river to be watched and guarded like a lunatic. what was she to do? ruin would soon be staring her in the face. she had thought of upbraiding him for neglect, of reproaching him for having played fast and loose with her affections, of putting him through the ordeal of an emotional scene. of that, however, she was afraid; it might scare him away for good and all. she wept, an unhappy and ill-treated woman, and huckaby supplied sympathy and handkerchiefs and a mirror so that she could repair the ravages of tears.
one day huckaby and clementina met in the hall of the russell square house.
“well,” she said. “have you seen mrs. fontaine lately?”
he admitted that he had.
“taking it rather badly, i suppose,” she remarked with a reversion to her grim manner.
“she is miserable. as i told you, it means all the world to her—her very salvation.”
clementina caught the note of deep pleading in his voice and fixed him with her shrewd eyes.
“you seem to concern yourself very deeply about the lady.”
huckaby glanced at her for a moment hesitatingly; then shrugged his shoulders. clementina was a woman to whom straight dealing counted for righteousness. he gave her his secret.
“i’ve grown to care for her—to care for her very much. i know i’m a fool, but i can’t help it.”
“do you know anything of the lady’s private affairs—financial, i mean—how much she has honestly of her own?”
“four hundred pounds a year.”
“and you?”
“when i take up the appointment of the anthropological society i shall have five hundred.”
“nine hundred pounds. have you any idea of the minimum rate per annum at which she would accept salvation?”
“no,” said huckaby in a dazed way.
“well, work it out,” said clementina. “good-bye.”
her second sortie into the great world was on the occasion of a garden-party at the quinns. lady quinn had asked her verbally at quixtus’s dinner and had sent her a formal card. knowing that quixtus was going and more than suspecting that the enemy would be there too, she had kept her own invitation a secret. welcomed, flattered, surrounded by the gay crowd in the large, pleasant hampstead garden, it was some time before she saw mrs. fontaine. at last she caught sight of her sitting with quixtus, at the end of the garden, half screened by a tree-trunk from the mass of guests. as soon as clementina could work her way through, she advanced quickly and smiling towards them. quixtus sprang to his feet and seemed to take a deep breath as a man does when he flings bedroom windows wide open on his first morning in mountain air.
“clementina! i hadn’t the dimmest notion that you were coming! how delightful!” he surveyed her for a moment as she stood before him; parasol on shoulder. clementina with a parasol! “pray forgive my impertinence,” said he, “but you’re wearing the most beautiful dress i ever saw.”
it was hand-painted muslin—a fabulous thing. she laughed, turned to lena fontaine, demure in a simple fawn costume.
“he’s improving. have you ever known him to compliment a woman on her dress before?”
“many times,” said mrs. fontaine, mendaciously.
“it must be your excellent training,” said clementina. she turned to quixtus. “i’ve seen huckaby this morning, and everything’s quite arranged for the transportation of your necessary books and specimens down to moleham. he’ll do it beautifully even though it takes a pantechnicon van, and you won’t be worried about it at all. he’s a splendid fellow.”
“he is rendering me invaluable assistance.”
“dr. quixtus tells me he is quite an old friend of yours, mrs. fontaine,” said clementina. “what a pity you can’t be persuaded to come down to moleham.”
“are you going to have a chaperon to your rather mixed house-party?”
“i should if you would honour me by coming; my dear mrs. fontaine—a dowager dragon of propriety. but an admiral of the british navy is quite safeguard enough for me.”
the hostess, coming through the edge of the crowd, carried off quixtus. the two women were left alone. lena fontaine turned suddenly, white-lipped, shaking with anger.
“i’ve had enough of it. i’m not going to stand it. i’m not going to be persecuted like this any longer.”
“what will you do?”
lena fontaine clenched her small hands. what could she do?
“come, come,” said clementina. “let us have a straight talk like sensible women, and put the pussy-cat aside, if we can. sit down. do. there’s only one point of dissension between us. you know very well what it is—there’s no use fencing. give it up. give up all idea of it and i’ll let you alone. give it all up. you can see for yourself that i won’t let you do it.”
“it’s outrageous for you to speak to me like this,” said the other, half hysterically.
“i know it is,” said clementina coolly. “i’m an outrageous woman. been so all my life. to do an outrageous thing is only part of the day’s work. so i just say outrageously; give it up.”
lena fontaine fluttered a glance at the strong face and caught the magnetism of the black glittering eyes, and remained silent. she knew that she was no match for this vital creature. she was confronting overwhelming odds. the rough fishfag of paris who could walk straight into the mould of a great lady and carry everything contemptuously before her suddenly impressed her with a paralysing sense of something uncanny, relentless, irresistible. she was less a woman than an implacable force. for the first time in her life of hagardom, lena fontaine felt beaten. the nun’s face grew drawn and haggard. fright replaced the allurement of her eyes. she said nothing, but twisted one gloved hand nervously in the other. she was at the mercy of the victor. there was silence for some moments. then clementina’s heart smote her. all this elaborate wheel to break a butterfly—a very naughty, sordid, frayed and empty little butterfly—but still a butterfly!
“my dear,” she said, at last very gently. “i know how hard life is on a lone and defenceless woman. i know you have many reasons to hate me for preventing you from making that life softer and sweeter. but perhaps, one of these days, you mayn’t hate me so much. i’m every infernal thing you like to call me, and when i’m interfered with i’m a devil. but at heart i’m a woman and a good sort. i won’t outrage you by saying such an idiot thing as ‘let us be friends,’ when you’ve every rational desire to murder me; but i ask you to remember—and i’ve suffered enough not to be a silly fool going round saying serious things i don’t mean—i ask you to remember that if ever you want a woman to turn to, you can count on me. i’m a good bit older than you,” she added generously, “i’m thirty-six.”
“oh, god!” cried the other, bursting into tears, “i’m thirty-seven.”
“impossible,” said clementina, in genuine amazement. “you look nothing like it.” she rose and touched the weeping woman’s shoulder. “anyhow,” she said, “i’ve a certain amount of female horse-sense that might come in useful if you want it.”
whereupon clementina made her way straight through the throng to her hostess, and after a swift farewell left the garden-party.
the enemy was finally routed; the confession of age, a confession of defeat. the victory had been achieved much more easily than she had anticipated. when she went home she looked with a queer smile into one of the hanging wardrobes with which she had been obliged to furnish her bedroom so as to accommodate the prodigious quantity of new dresses. why all the lavish expenditure, the feverish preparation, the many hours wasted at great dressmakers, modistes, and other vendors of frippery—why the hairdressers, the face specialists—why the exquisite torture of tight lacing—why the responsibility of valuable jewels, her mother’s, up till then safely stored at the bank—why the renting of the caravanserai at moleham—why the revolution of her habits, her modes of expression, her very life—why, in short, such fantastic means to gain so simple an end? was it worth it? clementina slammed the wardrobe door and glanced at herself in the long mirror that was exposed. she saw a happy woman, and she laughed. it was worth it. she had gained infinitely more than a victory over a poor sister of no account. sheila came running into the room.
“oh, what a beautiful auntie!”
she caught the child to her and hugged her close.
the legal formalities with regard to will hammersley’s affairs were eventually concluded; but in spite of all inquiries the identity of sheila’s mother remained a curious mystery. no record of hammersley’s marriage could be found, either at somerset house or at shanghai. no reference to his wife appeared in the papers he had left behind him. at last, a day or two before her departure for moleham, clementina made a discovery.
a trunk of hammersley’s merely containing suits of clothes and other wearing apparel had remained undisposed of, and clementina was going through them with the object of packing them off to some charitable association, when from the folds of a jacket there dropped a bundle of letters tied round with a bit of tape. she glanced idly at the outer sheet. the handwriting was a woman’s. the few words that met her eyes showed that they were love-letters. clementina sat on an empty packing case—all hammersley’s personal belongings had been dumped in her box-room—and balanced the bundle in her hand. they were sacred things belonging to the hearts of the dead. ought she to read them? yet she became conscious of a feminine intuition that they might hold a secret that would bring comfort to the living. so she undid the tape and spread out the old crumpled pages, and as she read, a tragedy, a romance as old as the world was revealed to her. the letters dated from seven years back. they were from one, nora duglade, a woman wretchedly married, breaking her heart for will hammersley. clementina read on. suddenly she gave a sharp cry of astonishment and leaped to her feat. there was a reference to angela quixtus, who was in her confidence. clementina rapidly scanned page after page and found more and more of angela. the writer; like most women, could not bear to destroy the beloved letters; she dared not keep them at home; angela had lent her a drawer in her bureau. . . .
clementina telephoned to quixtus to come immediately on urgent business. in twenty minutes he arrived, somewhat scared. was anything wrong with sheila?
“i’ve found out who her mother was,” said clementina.
“who was she?” he asked quickly.
she bade him sit down. they were in the drawing room.
“some one called nora duglade. . . . i don’t remember her.”
quixtus passed his hand over his forehead as he threw back his thoughts.
“mrs. duglade . . .” he said in bewilderment, “mrs. duglade . . .”
“a friend of angela’s,” said clementina.
“yes. a school friend. they saw very little of each other. i met her only once or twice. i had no notion hammersley knew her. . . . her husband was a brute, i remember—used to beat her. . . . i think i heard she had left him——”
“for will hammersley.”
“he died years ago . . . of drink. . . . oh-h!” he shuddered and hid his face in his hands.
“read these few pages,” said clementina and she left the room very quietly.
about ten minutes afterwards she came in again. he sprang up from his chair and grasped both her hands. his eyes were wet and his lips worked tremulously.
“i found a letter from hammersley in angela’s drawer—it had got stuck at the back. . . . it was for the other woman, my dear——” his voice quavered into the treble. “it was for the other woman.”
she led him to the stiff sofa and sat beside him and held his hand. and she had the joy of seeing a black cloud melt away from a man’s soul.
from that hour when he had revealed to her the things deep and sacred, dark and despairing of his heart, and had gone forth from her sympathy aglow with a new-found faith in humanity, the bond between them was strengthened a thousandfold. quixtus found that he could obtain not only swift response to his thoughts from a keen intelligence, but wide, undreamed of understanding of all those subtle workings of the spirit, regrets, hopes, judgments, prejudices, shrinkings, wonderings, impulses, which are too elusive to be thoughts, too vague to be emotions. and yet, she herself was never subtle. she was direct and uncompromising. as a shivering man enters a cosy room and warms himself before a blazing fire, so did he unquestioningly warm his heart in clementina’s personality. and as the shivering man knows, without speculating, that the fire is intense and strong, so did he know that clementina was intense and strong.
all through the idyll of the remaining summer; he felt this more and more. she stood for something that he had missed in life, something that angela, pale, passionless, negative reflection of himself, had never given him. she stood for richness, bigness, meaning. a simple man, not given to introspection or analysis of motive, new sensations, new realisations came to him as they come to a child and caused development. and among other impressions that deepened on his mind—and his was the mind of a scholar and dreamer, sweet and clean—was that of clementina (now appearing to the world as god almighty intended her to appear) as a physically fine and splendid creature.
and, during all the summer idyll in the manor house at moleham-on-thames, clementina, in her uncompromising way, maintained the new ph?nix’s plumage preened and shiny. the old habit of clawing at her hair while she was painting she circumvented by tying her head in an angelica kauffmann handkerchief. tommy made her a present of one, in cardinal red, in which she flamed gipsy-like about the studio. involuntarily, inevitably, the manner of all the men in her house-party, quixtus, huckaby, admiral concannon, poynter (who spent a week-end), tommy and tommy’s cronies who came and went as they pleased, was tinged with a deference and a homage which made life a thing of meaning and delight.
sometimes a little scene like this would take place;
to clementina painting hard in the morning, enter the housekeeper.
“please, ma’am, we’ll soon be out of wine.”
she would frown at the canvas. “well, what of it?”
“the gentlemen, ma’am.”
“oh, let them drink ginger-beer.”
“very well, ma’am.”
then with a laugh she would fling down her brushes, and go and attend to her cellar. to make the men in her house comfortable, the commonplace care of a hostess, gave her unimagined pleasure. etta and her young friends could look after themselves, being females and therefore resourceful. but the men were helpless children, even the admiral; sometimes, she thought—especially the admiral. their nourishment became a matter of peculiar solicitude. she invented wants for them which she forthwith supplied. sometimes she summoned tommy to consultation. but when he gravely prescribed a large bath powder-puff for his uncle she upbraided him for making a jest of solemn things and dismissed him from her counsels. her painting suffered from these inroads on her time and thoughts; but clementina cared not. the happiness of the trustful men around her was of more consequence than the successful application of paint to canvas. sometimes, sitting at the head of her table she would feel herself a mother to them all, and her lips would twist themselves into a new smile.
her happiest hours were those which she spent alone with sheila and quixtus. since the cloud had been lifted from his soul he loved the child with a new tenderness, thus inarticulately expressing his gratitude to god for having put it into his heart to love her while the cloud hung heavy. and clementina knew this, and invested his relations with the child in a curious sanctity. she loved to share with him the child’s affection in actual physical presence. the late afternoon was sheila’s hour. clementina would sit with them beneath the great cedar tree on the lawn and listen to the stories he had learned to pour into sheila’s insatiable ears. they were mostly odds and ends of folk-lore. but now and then she suspected heterogeneous strains; and one day she called out;
“are you inventing all that, ephraim?”
he confessed with the air of a detected schoolboy.
“to hear you playing the deuce with folk-lore which you regard as a strict and sacred science amazes me. from you it sounds almost immoral.”
quixtus fingered the soft curls. “what,” said he, “is all the science in the world compared with this little head?”
clementina was silent for a moment. then she said abruptly. “you feel like that, too, do you?”
quixtus nodded and dreamed over the curls.
“but what happened to the princess and the ju-ju man?” demanded sheila, and quixtus had to pursue his immoral course.
august melted into september, and september drew to its close. admiral concannon and etta and all the boys and girls, save tommy, had gone, and huckaby was busy with the repacking of books and specimens. the weather had broken. the trees dripped with rain and the leaves began to fall. mists rose from the meadows by the river and a blue haze, sweet and sad, enveloped the low-lying hills. in the garden the sunflowers, a week before so glorious, hung their heads with a dying grace. the birds, even the thrushes, were mute. the hour under the cedar tree had become the hour of deepening twilight by the fireside. the idyll was over. london called. . . .
they had been sitting before the drawing-room fire for a long time without speaking. sheila, with a toy shop and an army of dolls for customers, played on the floor between them, absorbed in her game. no one of the three noticed that darkness had crept into the room, for the fire leaped and flamed, throwing on them fierce lights and shadows.
“the day after to-morrow,” said clementina, breaking the silence, and looking intently at the blaze.
“yes,” said quixtus. “the day after to-morrow.”
“i think you’ll find i’ve made all arrangements for sheila, atkins understands.” atkins was the nurse. “i’ve seen about the nursery fender which i had overlooked. . . . you mustn’t let atkins bully you, or she’ll get out of hand. . . . how these three months have flown!”
“if you didn’t insist,” said quixtus, “i wouldn’t take her from you. but you’ll miss her terribly.”
“so will you when my turn comes again,” replied clementina gruffly. “what’s the good of talking rubbish?”
there was another silence. he glanced at her, and a sudden flame from the fire lit up her face and he saw that her brows were bent and her mouth set grimly tight and that something glistened for a second on each cheek and then fell quickly. and each time he glanced at her he saw the same glistening drop fall.
“uncle ephim,” said sheila coming and insinuating herself between his legs, “mrs. brown wants to buy some matches and i haven’t got any.”
he gave her his silver match-box and sheila went away happy to her game.
clementina choked a sob.
“my dear,” said he, at last.
“yes?” said clementina.
“why shouldn’t we have her always with us?”
“you mean——?” said clementina, after a pause, and still looking into the fire.
“even with her, i can’t face that great lonely house. i can’t face my empty, lonely existence. my dear,” said he, bending forward in his chair; “it has come to this—that i can’t think a thought or feel an emotion without you becoming inextricably interwoven with it. you have grown into the texture of my life. i know i may be impertinent and presumptuous in putting such a proposal before you——”
“you haven’t put one yet,” said clementina.
“it is that you would do me the honour of marrying me,” replied quixtus.
again there was silence. for the first time in her life she was afraid to speak, lest she should betray the commotion in her being. she loved him. she did not hide the fact from herself. it was not the mad, gorgeous passion of romance; she knew it for something deeper, stronger, based on essentials. he lay deeply rooted in her heart, half child for her mothering, all man for her loving. when had she begun to care for him? she scarcely knew. perhaps at marseilles, when he had returned to her for companionship and they had walked out arm in arm. she knew that he spoke truly of his need of her. but the words that mattered, the foolish little words; he had not uttered.
“do you care for me enough to marry me?” she asked, at last.
he glanced at sheila weighing out matches in her toy scales. it is difficult to carry on a love-scene with conviction in the presence of a third party, even of that of a beloved child of five.
“very, very, deeply,” he said in a low voice.
the dressing-bell rang and clementina rose. “put up your shop, darling. it’s time to go to bed.” then she crossed to quixtus’s chair and stood behind him and laid one arm on his shoulder. he kissed her hand.
“well?” said he, looking up.
“i’ll tell you presently,” she said, and in withdrawing her hand, she lightly brushed his cheek.
quixtus dressed quickly and came down early to the drawing-room, and soon clementina appeared. she was wearing a red dress which she had bought during her wholesale purchasing of raiment, but had never yet worn, thinking it too flaring, and she had a red dahlia in her hair. quixtus took both her hands and raised them to his shoulders, and she stood away from him at the distance of her bare; shapely arms, and she smiled into his eyes.
“your answer?” said he.
“tell me,” she said. “what do you really want me for?”
“for yourself,” he cried, and he caught her in his arms with swift passion and kissed her.
“if you hadn’t said that,” she remarked a few moments afterwards, “i don’t know what my answer would have been. at any rate,” she added, touching her hair with uplifted hands, “it would not have been quite so spontaneous.”
he leaned his elbow on the mantelpiece and a great light came into his pale blue eyes as he looked at her.
“do you think, my dear,” said he, “that i’m such a dry stick of a man as not to want you for your great self—your great, splendid, and wonderful self? i want you with everything in me.”
she turned half aside and said gently;
“that’s all a woman wants, ephraim.”
“what?”
“to be wanted,” said clementina.
it was not till the next day that she told tommy the great news. she took him for a walk and broke it to him bluntly. but he was prepared for it. etta had foreseen and had prophesied to his sceptical ears. he murmured well-bred congratulations.
“but your painting,” said he, after a while.
“it can go hang,” said clementina. she laughed at his look of horror. “art for the polygamous man and the celibate woman. a man can throw his soul into his pictures and also attend to his wife and family. that’s out of a woman’s power. she must choose between her art on the one side, and husband and children on the other—i’m telling you this, mon petit, for your education. i’ve chosen husband and children as any woman with blood in her veins would choose. it’s the women without blood that choose art—don’t make any mistake about it. now and then one of ’em chooses the other—and, as she doesn’t get any children and doesn’t know what the deuce to do with a husband, falls back on her art again and gives the poor devil soup with camel-hair brushes floating about it and a painting-rag for a napkin, and then there are ructions, and she goes among her weary pals and says that their sex is misunderstood and down-trodden, and they must clamour for their rights. bosh!”
she sniffed in her old way. tommy insisted.
“but you’re a born painter, clementina. a great painter. it means such a tremendous sacrifice.”
“you young men of the present day make me tired!” she exclaimed. “you all seem to think that larks ought to fall ready roasted into your mouth. there’s not a blessed thing in this world worth having without sacrifice. the big people, the people that have the big things in life are those that have paid or are prepared to pay the big price for them.”
“i don’t see why you should round on me like that,” said tommy. “after all, a little while ago i made no bones about sacrificing the loaves and fishes for the sake of my art—i don’t want to brag—but fiat justitia at any rate.”
“i know what you did,” said clementina, mollified, “and if you hadn’t done it, i shouldn’t be talking like this to you. and you’re a painter and my very dear tommy, and you can understand—of course, i’ll go on painting—i’ve got it in my blood. i could no more do without a paint brush handy than a tooth brush. but it’s going to be secondary. i’ll be the gifted amateur. clementina wing, painter of portraits to the nobility, gentry, mayoralty, and pork-butchery of great britain and ireland is dead. you can paraphrase the epitaph. ‘here lies clementina wing, the married woman.’ and, tommy, my dear,” she added in a softer voice, “you can add to it; ‘sic itur ad astra.’?”
“i do hope you’ll be jolly happy,” said tommy.
on their way back it happened that the postman met them with the household budget. she took the letters into the hall and sorted them. tommy went off with his precious epistle from etta. huckaby appeared in quest of his chief’s correspondence, and, seeing her alone, congratulated her on her approaching marriage. she thanked him and held out a letter addressed to him from dinard.
“i’ve been dealing in quotations lately,” she said. “and i find i’ve got one for you. ‘go thou and do likewise.’?”
huckaby sighed and laughed.
“one of these days, perhaps,” said he.
so the idyll that seemed to be coming to an end had only just begun. they returned to london, and while clementina (in whose charge sheila now remained) painted frenziedly to finish the work she had in hand, quixtus, with her help, reorganised the great gaunt house in russell square. the worm-eaten scarecrow of a billiard table was removed from the billiard-room built by quixtus’s father over the garden at the back of the house, and the room, spacious and top-lighted, was converted into a studio for the bride to be. tommy, enthusiastically iconoclast, being given authority, under clementina’s directions, to refurnish, condemned rep curtains, mahogany mid-victorian furniture—a dining-room sideboard disfigured by carvings of plethoric fruit had sent shivers down his back since infancy—turkey carpets and all the gloom of a bygone age, and converted the grim abode into a bower of delight.
and towards the end of october the oddly mated pair were married, and clementina went to her husband’s home and the patter of the feet of the beloved child of their adoption was heard about the house and great joy fell upon them.
one day, in the early spring, quixtus burst into the studio, a letter in hand. the greatest of all honours that the civilised world has to give to the scholar had fallen on him—honorary membership of the institut de france. she must know of it at once.
she was sitting before the easel, a bit of charcoal in hand, absorbed in her drawing. what he saw on the drawing-paper put, for the moment, the institute of france out of his mind. two arms came from the vague, headless trunk of a draped woman; one arm clasped sheila, a living portrait, and the other something all chubby, kissable curves, such as murillo has rendered immortal. as soon as she was aware of his presence she tore the sheet from the board, and looked at him somewhat defiantly. he went up and put his arm round her, deeply moved.
“my dear,” said he, “i saw. you’re the only woman in the world that could have done it. let me look. i can share it with you, dear.”
she yielded. his delicate perception of the innermost sweetnesses of life was infinitely dear to her. she set the drawing upright on the ledge. he drew a chair close to her and sat down, and he forgot the crowning glory of his intellectual life.
“it’s not bad of sheila, is it?” she said.
“and the other?”
she kissed him. “the very image. it’s bound to be.”
presently she laughed and said:
“i’ve been thinking of the good st. paul lately. he has a lot to say about glory. do you remember? about the glory of celestial bodies and bodies terrestrial. ‘there is one glory of the sun and another glory of the moon and another glory of the stars.’ but there is one glory which that eminent bachelor never dreamed of.”
“and what is that, my dear?” asked quixtus.
“the glory of being a woman,” said clementina.
