Fraternity

Pausing a minute amongst the bushes, Hilary too had looked at the lighted window which broke the dark front of his house, and his little moonlight bulldog, peering round his legs, had gazed up also. Mr. Stone was still standing, pen in hand, presumably deep in thought. His silvered head and beard moved slightly to the efforts of his brain. He came over to the window, and, evidently not seeing his son-in-law, faced out into the night.

In that darkness were all the shapes and lights and shadows of a London night in spring: the trees in dark bloom; the wan yellow of the gas-lamps, pale emblems of the self-consciousness of towns; the clustered shades of the tiny leaves, spilled, purple, on the surface of the road, like bunches of black grapes squeezed down into the earth by the feet of the passers-by. There, too, were shapes of men and women hurrying home, and the great blocked shapes of the houses where they lived. A halo hovered above the City – a high haze of yellow light, dimming the stars. The black, slow figure of a policeman moved noiselessly along the railings opposite.

From then till eleven o’clock, when he would make himself some cocoa on a little spirit-lamp, the writer of the “Book of Universal Brotherhood” would alternate between his bent posture above his manuscript and his blank consideration of the night…

With a jerk, Hilary came back to his reflections beneath the bust of Socrates.

“Each of us has a shadow in those places – in those streets!”

There certainly was a virus in that notion. One must either take it as a jest, like Stephen; or, what must one do? How far was it one’s business to identify oneself with other people, especially the helpless – how far to preserve oneself intact – ‘integer vita’? Hilary was no young person, like his niece or Martin, to whom everything seemed simple; nor was he an old person like their grandfather, for whom life had lost its complications.

And, very conscious of his natural disabilities for a decision on a like, or indeed on any, subject except, perhaps, a point of literary technique, he got up from his writing-table, and, taking his little bulldog, went out. His intention was to visit Mrs. Hughs in Hound Street, and see with his own eyes the state of things. But he had another reason, too, for wishing to go there …

CHAPTER IV

THE LITTLE MODEL

When in the preceding autumn Bianca began her picture called “The Shadow,” nobody was more surprised than Hilary that she asked him to find her a model for the figure. Not knowing the nature of the picture, nor having been for many years – perhaps never – admitted into the workings of his wife’s spirit, he said:

“Why don’t you ask Thyme to sit for you?”

Blanca answered: “She’s not the type at all – too matter-of-fact. Besides, I don’t want a lady; the figure’s to be half draped.”

Hilary smiled.

Blanca knew quite well that he was smiling at this distinction between ladies and other women, and understood that he was smiling, not so much at her, but at himself, for secretly agreeing with the distinction she had made.

And suddenly she smiled too.

There was the whole history of their married life in those two smiles. They meant so much: so many thousand hours of suppressed irritation, so many baffled longings and earnest efforts to bring their natures together. They were the supreme, quiet evidence of the divergence of two lives – that slow divergence which had been far from being wilful, and was the more hopeless in that it had been so gradual and so gentle. They had never really had a quarrel, having enlightened views of marriage; but they had smiled. They had smiled so often through so many years that no two people in the world could very well be further from each other. Their smiles had banned the revelation even to themselves of the tragedy of their wedded state. It is certain that neither could help those smiles, which were not intended to wound, but came on their faces as naturally as moonlight falls on water, out of their inimically constituted souls.

Hilary spent two afternoons among his artist friends, trying, by means of the indications he had gathered, to find a model for “The Shadow.” He had found one at last. Her name, Barton, and address had been given him by a painter of still life, called French.

“She’s never sat to me,” he said; “my sister discovered her in the West Country somewhere. She’s got a story of some sort. I don’t know what. She came up about three months ago, I think.”

“She’s not sitting to your sister now?” Hilary asked.

“No,” said the painter of still life; “my sister’s married and gone out to India. I don’t know whether she’d sit for the half-draped, but I should think so. She’ll have to, sooner or later; she may as well begin, especially to a woman. There’s a something about her that’s attractive – you might try her!” And with these words he resumed the painting of still life which he had broken off to talk to Hilary.

Hilary had written to this girl to come and see him. She had come just before dinner the same day.

He found her standing in the middle of his study, not daring, as it seemed, to go near the furniture, and as there was very little light, he could hardly see her face. She was resting a foot, very patient, very still, in an old brown skirt, an ill-shaped blouse, and a blue-green tam-o’-shanter cap. Hilary turned up the light. He saw a round little face with broad cheekbones, flower-blue eyes, short lamp-black lashes, and slightly parted lips. It was difficult to judge of her figure in those old clothes, but she was neither short nor tall; her neck was white and well set on, her hair pale brown and abundant. Hilary noted that her chin, though not receding, was too soft and small; but what he noted chiefly was her look of patient expectancy, as though beyond the present she were seeing something, not necessarily pleasant, which had to come. If he had not known from the painter of still life that she was from the country, he would have thought her a town-bred girl, she looked so pale. Her appearance, at all events, was not “too matter-of-fact.” Her speech, however, with its slight West-Country burr, was matter-of-fact enough, concerned entirely with how long she would have to sit, and the pay she was to get for it. In the middle of their conversation she sank down on the floor, and Hilary was driven to restore her with biscuits and liqueur, which in his haste he took for brandy. It seemed she had not eaten since her breakfast the day before, which had consisted of a cup of tea. In answer to his remonstrance, she made this matter-of-fact remark:

“If you haven’t money, you can’t buy things… There’s no one I can ask up here; I’m a stranger.”

“Then you haven’t been getting work?”

“No,” the little model answered sullenly; “I don’t want to sit as most of them want me to till I’m obliged.” The blood rushed up in her face with startling vividness, then left it white again.

‘Ah!’ thought Hilary, ‘she has had experience already.’

Both he and his wife were accessible to cases of distress, but the nature of their charity was different. Hilary was constitutionally unable to refuse his aid to anything that held out a hand for it. Bianca (whose sociology was sounder), while affirming that charity was wrong, since in a properly constituted State no one should need help, referred her cases, like Stephen, to the “Society for the Prevention of Begging,” which took much time and many pains to ascertain the worst.

But in this case what was of importance was that the poor girl should have a meal, and after that to find out if she were living in a decent house; and since she appeared not to be, to recommend her somewhere better. And as in charity it is always well to kill two birds with one expenditure of force, it was found that Mrs. Hughs, the seamstress, had a single room to let unfurnished, and would be more than glad of four shillings, or even three and six, a week for it. Furniture was also found for her: a bed that creaked, a washstand, table, and chest of drawers; a carpet, two chairs, and certain things to cook with; some of those old photographs and prints that hide in cupboards, and a peculiar little clock, which frequently forgot the time of day. All these and some elementary articles of dress were sent round in a little van, with three ferns whose time had nearly come, and a piece of the plant called “honesty.” Soon after this she came to “sit.” She was a very quiet and passive little model, and was not required to pose half-draped, Bianca having decided that, after all, “The Shadow” was better represented fully clothed; for, though she discussed the nude, and looked on it with freedom, when it came to painting unclothed people, she felt a sort of physical aversion.

Hilary, who was curious, as a man naturally would be, about anyone who had fainted from hunger at his feet, came every now and then to see, and would sit watching this little half-starved girl with kindly and screwed-up eyes. About his personality there was all the evidence of that saying current among those who knew him: “Hilary would walk a mile sooner than tread on an ant.” The little model, from the moment when he poured liqueur between her teeth, seemed to feel he had a claim on her, for she reserved her small, matter-of-fact confessions for his ears. She made them in the garden, coming in or going out; or outside, and, now and then, inside his study, like a child who comes and shows you a sore finger. Thus, quite suddenly:

“I’ve four shillings left over this week, Mr. Dallison,” or, “Old Mr. Creed’s gone to the hospital to-day, Mr. Dallison.”

Her face soon became less bloodless than on that first evening, but it was still pale, inclined to colour in wrong places on cold days, with little blue veins about the temples and shadows under the eyes. The lips were still always a trifle parted, and she still seemed to be looking out for what was coming, like a little Madonna, or Venus, in a Botticelli picture. This look of hers, coupled with the matter-of-factness of her speech, gave its flavour to her personality…

On Christmas Day the picture was on view to Mr. Purcey, who had chanced to “give his car a run,” and to other connoisseurs. Bianca had invited her model to be present at this function, intending to get her work. But, slipping at once into a corner, the girl had stood as far as possible behind a canvas. People, seeing her standing there, and noting her likeness to the picture, looked at her with curiosity, and passed on, murmuring that she was an interesting type. They did not talk to her, either because they were afraid she could not talk of the things they could talk of, or that they could not talk of the things she could talk of, or because they were anxious not to seem to patronize her. She talked to one, therefore. This occasioned Hilary some distress. He kept coming up and smiling at her, or making tentative remarks or jests, to which she would reply, “Yes, Mr. Dallison,” or “No, Mr. Dallison,” as the case might be.

Seeing him return from one of these little visits, an Art Critic standing before the picture had smiled, and his round, clean-shaven, sensual face had assumed a greenish tint in eyes and cheeks, as of the fat in turtle soup.

The only two other people who had noticed her particularly were those old acquaintances, Mr. Purcey and Mr. Stone. Mr. Purcey had thought, ‘Rather a good-lookin’ girl,’ and his eyes strayed somewhat continually in her direction. There was something piquant and, as it were, unlawfully enticing to him in the fact that she was a real artist’s model.

Mr. Stone’s way of noticing her had been different. He had approached in his slightly inconvenient way, as though seeing but one thing in the whole world.

“You are living by yourself?” he had said. “I shall come and see you.”

Made by the Art Critic or by Mr. Purcey, that somewhat strange remark would have had one meaning; made by Mr. Stone it obviously had another. Having finished what he had to say, the author of the book of “Universal Brotherhood” had bowed and turned to go. Perceiving that he saw before him the door and nothing else, everybody made way for him at once. The remarks that usually arose behind his back began to be heard – “Extraordinary old man!” “You know, he bathes in the Serpentine all the year round?” “And he cooks his food himself, and does his own room, they say; and all the rest of his time he writes a book!” “A perfect crank!”

CHAPTER V

THE COMEDY BEGINS

The Art Critic who had smiled was – like all men – a subject for pity rather than for blame. An Irishman of real ability, he had started life with high ideals and a belief that he could live with them. He had hoped to serve Art, to keep his service pure; but, having one day let his acid temperament out of hand to revel in an orgy of personal retaliation, he had since never known when she would slip her chain and come home smothered in mire. Moreover, he no longer chastised her when she came. His ideals had left him, one by one; he now lived alone, immune from dignity and shame, soothing himself with whisky. A man of rancour, meet for pity, and, in his cups, contented. He had lunched freely before coming to Blanca’s Christmas function, but by four o’clock, the gases which had made him feel the world a pleasant place had nearly all evaporated, and he was suffering from a wish to drink again. Or it may have been that this girl, with her soft look, gave him the feeling that she ought to have belonged to him; and as she did not, he felt, perhaps, a natural irritation that she belonged, or might belong, to somebody else. Or, again, it was possibly his natural male distaste for the works of women painters which induced an awkward frame of mind.

Two days later in a daily paper over no signature, appeared this little paragraph: “We learn that ‘The Shadow,’ painted by Bianca Stone, who is not generally known to be the wife of the writer, Mr. Hilary Dallison, will soon be exhibited at the Bencox Gallery. This very ‘fin-de-siecle’ creation, with its unpleasant subject, representing a woman (presumably of the streets) standing beneath a gas-lamp, is a somewhat anaemic piece of painting. If Mr. Dallison, who finds the type an interesting one, embodies her in one of his very charming poems, we trust the result will be less bloodless.”

The little piece of green-white paper containing this information was handed to Hilary by his wife at breakfast. The blood mounted slowly in his cheeks. Bianca’s eyes fastened themselves on that flush. Whether or no – as philosophers say – little things are all big with the past, of whose chain they are the latest links, they frequently produce what apparently are great results.

The marital relations of Hilary and his wife, which till then had been those of, at all events, formal conjugality, changed from that moment. After ten o’clock at night their lives became as separate as though they lived in different houses. And this change came about without expostulations, reproach, or explanation, just by the turning of a key; and even this was the merest symbol, employed once only, to save the ungracefulness of words. Such a hint was quite enough for a man like Hilary, whose delicacy, sense of the ridiculous, and peculiar faculty of starting back and retiring into himself, put the need of anything further out of the question. Both must have felt, too, that there was nothing that could be explained. An anonymous double entendre was not precisely evidence on which to found a rupture of the marital tie. The trouble was so much deeper than that – the throbbing of a woman’s wounded self-esteem, of the feeling that she was no longer loved, which had long cried out for revenge.

One morning in the middle of the week after this incident the innocent author of it presented herself in Hilary’s study, and, standing in her peculiar patient attitude, made her little statements. As usual, they were very little ones; as usual, she seemed helpless, and suggested a child with a sore finger. She had no other work; she owed the week’s rent; she did not know what would happen to her; Mrs. Dallison did not want her any more; she could not tell what she had done! The picture was finished, she knew, but Mrs. Dallison had said she was going to paint her again in another picture…

Hilary did not reply.

“…That old gentleman, Mr. – Mr. Stone, had been to see her. He wanted her to come and copy out his book for two hours a day, from four to six, at a shilling an hour. Ought she to come, please? He said his book would take him years.”

Before answering her Hilary stood for a full minute staring at the fire. The little model stole a look at him. He suddenly turned and faced her. His glance was evidently disconcerting to the girl. It was, indeed, a critical and dubious look, such as he might have bent on a folio of doubtful origin.

“Don’t you think,” he said at last, “that it would be much better for you to go back into the country?”

The little model shook her head vehemently.

“Oh no!”

“Well, but why not? This is a most unsatisfactory sort of life.”

The girl stole another look at him, then said sullenly:

“I can’t go back there.”

“What is it? Aren’t your people nice to you?”

She grew red.

“No; and I don’t want to go”; then, evidently seeing from Hilary’s face that his delicacy forbade his questioning her further, she brightened up, and murmured: “The old gentleman said it would make me independent.”

“Well,” replied Hilary, with a shrug, “you’d better take his offer.”

She kept turning her face back as she went down the path, as though to show her gratitude. And presently, looking up from his manuscript, he saw her face still at the railings, peering through a lilac bush. Suddenly she skipped, like a child let out of school. Hilary got up, perturbed. The sight of that skipping was like the rays of a lantern turned on the dark street of another human being’s life. It revealed, as in a flash, the loneliness of this child, without money and without friends, in the midst of this great town.

The months of January, February, March passed, and the little model came daily to copy the “Book of Universal Brotherhood.”

Mr. Stone’s room, for which he insisted on paying rent, was never entered by a servant. It was on the ground-floor, and anyone passing the door between the hours of four and six could hear him dictating slowly, pausing now and then to spell a word. In these two hours it appeared to be his custom to read out, for fair copying, the labours of the other seven.

At five o’clock there was invariably a sound of plates and cups, and out of it the little model’s voice would rise, matter-of-fact, soft, monotoned, making little statements; and in turn Mr. Stone’s, also making statements which clearly lacked cohesion with those of his young friend. On one occasion, the door being open, Hilary heard distinctly the following conversation:

The LITTLE MODEL: “Mr. Creed says he was a butler. He’s got an ugly nose.” (A pause.)

Mr. STONE: “In those days men were absorbed in thinking of their individualities. Their occupations seemed to them important – ”

The LITTLE MODEL: “Mr. Creed says his savings were all swallowed up by illness.”

Mr. STONE: “ – it was not so.”

The LITTLE MODEL: “Mr. Creed says he was always brought up to go to church.”

Mr. STONE (suddenly): “There has been no church worth going to since A. D. 700.”

The LITTLE MODEL: “But he doesn’t go.”

And with a flying glance through the just open door Hilary saw her holding bread-and-butter with inky fingers, her lips a little parted, expecting the next bite, and her eyes fixed curiously on Mr. Stone, whose transparent hand held a teacup, and whose eyes were immovably fixed on distance.

It was one day in April that Mr. Stone, heralded by the scent of Harris tweed and baked potatoes which habitually encircled him, appeared at five o’clock in Hilary’s study doorway.

“She has not come,” he said.

Hilary laid down his pen. It was the first real Spring day.

“Will you come for a walk with me, sir, instead?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Mr. Stone.

They walked out into Kensington Gardens, Hilary with his head rather bent towards the ground, and Mr. Stone, with eyes fixed on his far thoughts, slightly poking forward his silver beard.

In their favourite firmaments the stars of crocuses and daffodils were shining. Almost every tree had its pigeon cooing, every bush its blackbird in full song. And on the paths were babies in perambulators. These were their happy hunting-grounds, and here they came each day to watch from a safe distance the little dirty girls sitting on the grass nursing little dirty boys, to listen to the ceaseless chatter of these common urchins, and learn to deal with the great problem of the lowest classes. And babies sat in their perambulators, thinking and sucking india-rubber tubes. Dogs went before them, and nursemaids followed after.

The spirit of colour was flying in the distant trees, swathing them with brownish-purple haze; the sky was saffroned by dying sunlight. It was such a day as brings a longing to the heart, like that which the moon brings to the hearts of children.

Mr. Stone and Hilary sat down in the Broad Walk.

“Elm-trees!” said Mr. Stone. “It is not known when they assumed their present shape. They have one universal soul. It is the same with man.” He ceased, and Hilary looked round uneasily. They were alone on the bench.

Mr. Stone’s voice rose again. “Their form and balance is their single soul; they have preserved it from century to century. This is all they live for. In those days” – his voice sank; he had plainly forgotten that he was not alone – “when men had no universal conceptions, they would have done well to look at the trees. Instead of fostering a number of little souls on the pabulum of varying theories of future life, they should have been concerned to improve their present shapes, and thus to dignify man’s single soul.”

“Elms were always considered dangerous trees, I believe,” said Hilary.

Mr. Stone turned, and, seeing his son-in-law beside him, asked:

“You spoke to me, I think?”

“Yes, sir.”

Mr. Stone said wistfully:

“Shall we walk?”

They rose from the bench and walked on…

The explanation of the little model’s absence was thus stated by herself to Hilary: “I had an appointment.”

“More work?”

“A friend of Mr. French.”

“Yes – who?”

“Mr. Lennard. He’s a sculptor; he’s got a studio in Chelsea. He wants me to pose to him.”

“Ah!”

She stole a glance at Hilary, and hung her head.

Hilary turned to the window. “You know what posing to a sculptor means, of course?”

The little model’s voice sounded behind him, matter-of-fact as ever: “He said I was just the figure he was looking for.”

Hilary continued to stare through the window. “I thought you didn’t mean to begin standing for the nude.”

“I don’t want to stay poor always.”

Hilary turned round at the strange tone of these unexpected words.

The girl was in a streak of sunlight; her pale cheeks flushed; her pale, half-opened lips red; her eyes, in their setting of short black lashes, wide and mutinous; her young round bosom heaving as if she had been running.

“I don’t want to go on copying books all my life.”

“Oh, very well.”

“Mr. Dallison! I didn’t mean that – I didn’t really! I want to do what you tell me to do – I do!”

Hilary stood contemplating her with the dubious, critical look, as though asking: “What is there behind you? Are you really a genuine edition, or what?” which had so disconcerted her before. At last he said: “You must do just as you like. I never advise anybody.”

“But you don’t want me to – I know you don’t. Of course, if you don’t want me to, then it’ll be a pleasure not to!”

Hilary smiled.

“Don’t you like copying for Mr. Stone?”

The little model made a face. “I like Mr. Stone – he’s such a funny old gentleman.”

“That is the general opinion,” answered Hilary. “But Mr. Stone, you know, thinks that we are funny.”

The little model smiled faintly, too; the streak of sunlight had slanted past her, and, standing there behind its glamour and million floating specks of gold-dust, she looked for the moment like the young Shade of Spring, watching with expectancy for what the year would bring her.

With the words “I am ready,” spoken from the doorway, Mr. Stone interrupted further colloquy…

But though the girl’s position in the household had, to all seeming, become established, now and then some little incident – straws blowing down the wind – showed feelings at work beneath the family’s apparent friendliness, beneath that tentative and almost apologetic manner towards the poor or helpless, which marks out those who own what Hilary had called the “social conscience.” Only three days, indeed, before he sat in his brown study, meditating beneath the bust of Socrates, Cecilia, coming to lunch, had let fall this remark: