CHAPTER II.

The next morning when I came down to breakfast it was late, and my father had already withdrawn to his own library. I had missed again speaking to him, as I could not seek and disturb him there.

He also was a writer, though quite of a different school from myself.

He wrote ardently upon politics, political economy, and statistics, things which I took no interest in.

The nation might arrange itself how it pleased for all I cared. What I wanted to arrange was my own life. I had no ambition to set my country's affairs straight, my own thoughts were too much engaged in tugging my own into some sort of order.

There were some letters for me, and I turned them over listlessly, balancing them tip in succession against the toast-rack in front of me, without opening any. The last I came to was quite different from any of the others, and being the last, it stood foremost before me, and I looked at it while I went on with my breakfast.

It is curious how representative a letter generally is of its writer.

The mere outside is like a psychological photograph. Of course it does not give details, but it presents you with a wonderfully accurate outline of the cut of a person's ident.i.ty. This envelope was square, and looked as hard, white and clean as if a stone-tablet had pa.s.sed through the post. It bore a delicate, weak, feminine superscription, hurried and careless; the writing unformed, but graceful and distinguished; and on the other side of the letter, stamped in grey, stood a crest, and the motto subscrolled.

Yes, the woman who had written it was very like the letter. Immaculate and perhaps somewhat hard, delicate, and in will a little weak, impulsive and undecided, well-bred, and strikingly typical of the cla.s.s to which she belonged.

I broke the letter open after a minute and read--

"DEAREST VICTOR,--Do come and see me as soon as you possibly can. A scheme for the next canvas occurred to me last night, but I want you to help me execute it. What about the ma.n.u.scripts? If you can't come, tell me. Bring Nous. LUCIA."

I smiled as I replaced the letter. The composition was rather defective, and left the meaning decidedly indistinct. If I could not come I was to tell her. Tell her what? About the MS., or that I couldn't come?

And under what circ.u.mstances was I to take Nous? Apparently if I could not do so.

I was not sneering at the little note, and it went into my breast pocket, but it amused me.

"That is the way I ought to write for the British, I suppose?" I muttered, with a yawn. "Muddle all one's language up until n.o.body has the faintest idea of what the author's sentiments are, and then they don't know whether he means anything heterodox or not."

I got up. I might as well obey the orders I had just received.

There was a tired confusion of thought in my brain--a floating ma.s.s of half-formed embryonic ideas, wishes, plans and suggestions filled it that were quite useless for prompting or guiding any definite resolution as to what I should do in the immediate future.

Everything seemed to depend on something else, and it was impossible to find any positive basis upon which I could found a resolve.

If I could succeed as an author, my way was clear, but if I could not, and if ... and if... And so on through a wearying, perplexing series of conditions.

Just then I felt unequal to regulating and giving order to this inward chaos, and I abandoned the attempt.

Meanwhile I would go over to the house in South Kensington, whence the letter had come.

It was about eleven when I arrived there, and I was told Miss Grant was "upstairs, as usual."

I nodded, and went up the necessary six flights of stairs to a familiar landing on the third floor.

A door in front of me stood ajar, and with a sign to Nous to remain on the stairs, I knocked at it.

There was no answer and no sound from within, and thinking the room was empty after all, I pushed the door wide and went in.

It was a huge room, used as a studio, facing the north light, and with three large windows.

Before the middle one there was an easel, and the girl was in the room, standing there in front of the canvas between me and the light. She was seemingly entirely abstracted and absorbed. She was completely motionless, and for the moment she communicated her stillness to me.

I paused, silent, looking at her.

She was standing directly in front of me, facing the canvas, that was perfectly blank at present.

One hand rested on her hip, the other was raised and pressed to her head, as when a person looks into distance, and the arm and elbow and wrist traced a delicate curve against the dull grey square of London window pane.

A twist of hair about as thick as my arm fell nearly to her waist. It was decidedly not gold; that is, it did not suggest dye and the Haymarket; but it was fair and curly, and seemed to hold light imprisoned amongst it.

The figure was tall, and erred, perhaps, on the side of slightness.

Certainly it would have been too slight for those men whose scale of admiration runs--so much in the pound. But the architecture of the form was perfect. Each line was worthy of study in itself as a thing of beauty, and the harmony of them all in the whole figure, whether it moved or was at rest, gave an indefinable pleasure to the eye.

What a lovely thing it was this form, seeming to hold in itself the light and pleasure and glow of life, as it stood, the only brilliant thing in that cold north room.

And it might be mine, might have belonged to me long since if ... well if ... that was just it.

I made a step forward and she turned.

"Oh, I'm so glad you've come," she said, laying her hand in mine. "I want you so much."

We shook hands.

Although we were cousins, and had been engaged for the last two years, this was our invariable method of greeting and leave-taking.

I had never kissed her, nor was I sure whether I ever really desired to.

There were times when the thought that precedes the impulse or the impulse that gives birth to the thought came to me, but always when I was away from her and not with her, and consequently the desire culminated in nothing.

When I was actually beside her all my own feelings seemed suddenly held in suspension, just as one stops with feet chained when one discovers one has come abruptly upon sacred ground.

There had been times when I had hurried to this girl with words eager to be spoken on my lips, and at the first sight of her they had died unuttered on my tongue, just as words die into silence in the presence of a somnambulist.

"Why am I specially necessary?" I said, smiling, as we stood in front of the easel. "Will you let me paint you as Hyacinthus?" I went into a fit of laughter. "My dear girl! anything to oblige you, but consider,"

I said, looking down into her eager eyes; "you ought not to have a model of six-and-twenty. Hyacinthus was probably sixteen."

"You don't know how old he was!" she said, mockingly, her azure, sunny eyes lighting up with laughter, too, as she leant on the bending maul-stick and looked up at me.

"No, I don't know," I answered; "but I can infer it. If we only went upon what we actually know we should not go very far."

"Well, he might have been as much as nineteen, and you don't look quite six-and-twenty; and the remaining difference I can soften down. Have you any other excuse to make to get out of the bother of sitting?"

"You are a horrid little wretch to put it like that," I answered, "and I won't say another word of advice. Paint your Greek youth as you please. Of course, you'll give him this mustache with waxed ends? It's very appropriate!"

"No; of course I shan't. Now, Victor, do be sensible. You can be so nice at times!"