The Yellow Book Volume II Part 12

Lady Beamish made no answer. Janet could not tell why she had felt an impulse to speak the truth, perhaps just because she was afraid of her, and gave up the task of feeling easy as hopeless. They talked of Gertrude again. Dinner was quickly finished. Instead of going back into the drawing-room, Lady Beamish took her upstairs into her own room.

"I'm sorry you have troubles which are making you thin and pale. At your age life ought to be bright and full of romance: you ought to have no troubles at all. I heard that you weren't going to travel with your father, but begin work on your own account: it seems to me you're quite right, and I admire your courage."

Janet was surprised that Lady Beamish should show so much interest.

"My courage somehow doesn't make me feel cheerful," Janet answered, laughing, "and I can't see anything hopeful in the future to look forward to----" "Why am I saying all this to her?" she wondered.

"No? And the consciousness of doing right as an upholding power--that is generally a fallacy. I think you are certainly right there."

Janet looked at Lady Beamish, astonished and comforted to hear these words from the lips of an old experienced woman.

"I _am_ grateful to you for saying that!"

"It must be a hard wrench to begin a new kind of life."

"It's not the work or even the change which I mind; if only there were some a.s.surance in life, something certain and hopeful: I feel so miserably alone, acting on my own responsibility in the only way possible, and yet for no reason----"

"My poor girl----" and she stretched out her arms. Janet rose from her chair and took both her hands and sat down on the footstool at her feet. She looked up at her handsome face; it seemed divine to her lighted by that smile, and the wrinkles infinitely touching and beautiful. There was an intimate air about the room.

"You've decided to go away to Bristol?"

"I thought I'd be thorough: I might stay in London and get work; a friend of mine is editor of a lady's paper, and I suppose she could give me something to do; and there are other things I could do; but that doesn't seem to me thorough enough----"

The superiority of the older experienced women made the girl feel weak. She would have a joy in confessing herself.

"I suppose it was chiefly Gerty's marriage which set me thinking I'd better change. Until then I'd lived contentedly enough. I'm easily occupied, and I felt no necessity to work. But when I was left alone with father, I began gradually to feel as if I couldn't go on living so, as if I hadn't the right; nothing I ever did pleased him. And then I wondered what I was waiting for----"

She looked up at Lady Beamish and saw her fine features set attentively to her story; she could tell everything to such a face--all these things of which she had never spoken to anyone. She looked away again.

"Was I waiting to get married? That idea tortured me. Why should ideas come and trouble us when they're untrue and bear no likeness to our character?"

She turned her head once more to glance at the face above her.

"I looked into myself. Was it true of me that my only outlook in life was a man, that _that_ was the only aim of my life? It wasn't necessary to answer the question, for it flashed into my mind with bitter truth that if I'd been playing that game, I'd been singularly unsuccessful, so I needn't trouble about the question----"

Astonished at herself, she moved her hand up, and Lady Beamish stretched out hers, and held the girl's hand upon her lap. Then, half ashamed of her frankness, she went on quickly and in a more ordinary tone:

"Oh, that and everything else--I was afraid of growing bitter, When my father threw up his work and decided to go to Algiers with his old friends, that seemed a good opportunity; I would do something for myself, you're justified if you work. It seemed hopeful then; but now the prospect is as hopeless and desolate as before."

Janet saw the tears collecting in Lady Beamish's eyes, and her underlip beginning to quiver. Lady Beamish dared not kiss the girl for fear of breaking into tears: she stood up and went towards the fire, and trying to conquer her tears said: "Seeing you in trouble makes all my old wounds break out afresh."

Janet gazed in wonder at her, feeling greatly comforted. Lady Beamish put her hand on the girl's head as she sat before her and said smiling: "It's strange how one sorrow brings up another, and if you cry you can't tell for what exactly you're crying. As I hear you talk of loneliness, I'm reminded of my own loneliness, so different from yours. As long as my own great friend was living, there was no possibility of loneliness; I was proud, I could have faced the whole world. But since he died, every year has made me feel the want of a sister or brother, some one of my own generation. I don't suppose you can understand what I mean. You say: 'You have sons, and many friends who love and respect you'; that's true, and, indeed, without my sons I should not live; but they've all got past me, even Harry, the youngest. I can do nothing more for them, and as years go by I grow less able to do anything for anybody; my energy leaves me, and I sit still and see the world in front of me, see men and women whom I admire, whose conduct I commend inwardly, but that is all. My heart aches sometimes for a companion of my own age who would sit still with me, who understands my ideas, who has no new object in view, who has done life and has been left behind too----"

"Extremes meet," she broke off. "I wish to comfort you, who are looking hopelessly forward, and all I can do is to show you an old woman's sorrow."

"But wait," she went on, sitting down, "let us be practical; you needn't go back to-night, I'll tell some one to fetch your things. And will you let me try and help you? I don't know whether I can; but may I try? Won't you stay a bit here with me? You would then have time to think over your plans; it would do no harm, at any rate. Or, if you would prefer living alone, would you let me help you? Sometimes it's easier to be indebted to strangers. Don't answer now, you know my offer is sincere, coming at this time; you can think it over."

She left her place and met the servant at the door, to give her the order for the fetching of Janet's things. She came back and stood with her hands behind her, facing Janet, who looked up to her from her stool, adoring her as if she were a G.o.ddess.

"There's only one thing to do in life, to try and help those whom we can help; but it's very difficult to help you young people," she said, drying her eyes; "you generally want something we cannot give you."

"You comforted me more than I can say. I never dreamed of the possibility of such comfort as you're giving me."

Still standing facing Janet, she suddenly began: "I knew a girl a long time ago; she was the most exquisite creature I've ever seen. She was lovely as only a Jewess can be lovely: by her side English beauties looked ridiculous, as if their features had been thrown together by mistake a few days ago; this girl's beauty was eternal, I don't know how else to describe her superiority. There was a harmony about her figure--not as we have pretty figures--but every movement seemed to be the expression of a magnificent nature. She had that strange look in her face which some Jews have, a something half humorous half pitiful about the eyebrows; it was so remarkable in a young girl, as if an endless experience of the world had been born in her--not that she was tired or _blase_; she wasn't at all one of those young people who have seen the vanity of everything, she was full of enthusiasm, fascinatingly fresh; she was so capable and sensitive that nothing could be foreign or incomprehensible to her. I never saw anyone so unerring; I would have wagered the world that she could never be wrong in feeling. I never saw her misunderstand any one, except on purpose."

Janet was rapt in attention, loving to hear this beauty's praises in the mouth of Lady Beamish. She kept her gaze fixed on the face, which now was turned towards her, now towards the fire.

"At the time I remember some man was writing in the paper about the inferiority of women, and as a proof he said quite truly that there were no women artists except actresses. He happened to mention one or two well-known living artists whom I knew personally; they weren't to be compared with this girl, and they would have been the first to say so themselves. She had no need to write her novels and symphonies; she lived them. One would have said a person most wonderfully fitted for life. Oh, I could go on praising her for ever; except once, I never fell so completely in love as I did with her. To see her dance and romp--I hadn't realised before how a great nature can show itself in everything a person does. It is a joy to think of her.

"One day she came to me, it was twenty years ago, I was a little over forty, she was just nineteen. She had fallen in love with a boy of her own age, and was in terrible difficulties with herself. I suppose it would have been more fitting if I'd given her advice; but I was so full of pity at the sight of this exquisite nature in torments that I could only try and comfort her and tell her above all things she mustn't be oppressed by any sense of her own wickedness; we all had difficulties of the same kind, and we couldn't expect to do more than just get along somehow as well as we could. I was angry with Fate that such a harmonious being had been made to jar with so heavy a strain.

She had been free, and now she was to be confounded and brought to doubt. I don't think I can express it in words; but I feel as if I really understood why she killed herself a few days later. She had come among us, a wonder, ignoring the littlenesses of life, or else making them worthy by the spirit in which she treated them, and the first strain of this dragging ordinary affliction bewildered her.

Whether a little more experience would have saved her, or whether it was a superior flash of insight which prompted her to end her life--at any rate it wasn't merely unreturned love which oppressed her."

"And what was the man like?"

"He was quite a boy, and never knew she was in love with him; in fact I can't tell how far she did love him. The older I grow the more certain I feel that this actual love wasn't deep; but it was the sudden revelation of a whole mystery, a new set of difficulties, which confounded an understanding so far-reaching and superior. I remember her room distinctly; she was unlike most women in this respect, she had no desire to furnish her own room and be surrounded by pretty things of her own choice. She left the room just as it was when the family took the furnished house, with its very common ugly furniture, vile pictures on the walls, and things under gla.s.ses. She carried so much beauty with her, she didn't think her room worth troubling about.

I always imagine that her room has never been entered or changed since her death: nothing stirs there, except in the summer a band of small flies dance their mazy quadrille at the centre of the ceiling. I remember how she used to lie on the sofa and wonder at them with her half-laughing, half-pathetic eyes."

"And what did her people think!"

"Her family adored her: they were nice people, very ordinary----"

There was a knock at the door and Henry appeared, red-checked and smelling of the cold street. Janet rose from her stool to shake hands with him: his entrance was an unpleasant interruption; she thought that his mother too must feel something of the sort, although he was the one thing in the world she loved most.

"How was your play, Harry?"

"Oh, simply wonderful."

"Was the house pretty full?"

"Not very, though people were fairly enthusiastic; but there was a fool of a girl sitting in front of us, I could have kicked her, she would go all laughing."

"Perhaps she thought you were foolish for not laughing!"

"But such a sloppy-looking person had no right to laugh."

"Opinions differ about personal appearance."

"Well, at any rate she had a dirty dress on; the swan's-down round her cloak was perfectly black."

"Ah, now your attack becomes more telling!"

Lady Beamish had not changed her position. When Henry left, Janet feared she might want to stop their confidential talk; but she showed no signs of wis.h.i.+ng to go to bed.

"I wish boys would remain boys, and not grow older; they never grow into such nice men, they don't fulfil their promise."

She sat down once more, and went on to tell Janet another story, a love story. When Janet, happy as she had not been for months, kissed her and said good-night, she told her how glad she was that no one else had been with her that evening.

Janet went to bed, feeling that the world was possible once more. Her mind was relieved of a great weight, she was wonderfully light-hearted, now that she rested weakly upon another's generosity, and was released from her egotistical hopelessness. She no longer had a great trouble which engrossed her thoughts, her mind was free to travel over the comforting circ.u.mstances of that evening: the intimate room, Lady Beamish's face with the tears gathering in her eyes, the confession she had made of her own loneliness, her offer of help which had made the world human again, her story and Henry's interruption, and the funny little argument between the mother and the son whom she adored; and after that, Lady Beamish had still stayed talking, and had dropped into telling of love as willingly as any school-girl, only everything came with such sweet force from the woman with all that experience of life. Every point in the evening with Lady Beamish had gone to give her a deep-felt happiness; hopes sprang up in her mind, and she soon fell asleep filled with wonder and pity, thinking of the lovely Jewess whom Lady Beamish had known and admired so long ago, when Janet herself was only five or six years old.