Ideala Part 14

From the room Ideala looked to her companion. He was writing rapidly, and seemed absorbed in his subject. He was frowning slightly, his face was pale and set, and he looked older by ten years than when he had spoken last, and seemed cold and unimpa.s.sioned as a judge; but Ideala thought again that the face was a fine one.

Presently he became conscious of her earnest gaze. He did not look up, but every feature softened, and a warm glow spread from forehead to chin; it was as if a deep shadow had been lifted, and a younger, but less n.o.ble, man revealed.

"How you change!" Ideala exclaimed--"not from day to day, but from moment to moment. You are like two men. I wish I could get behind that horrid veil of flesh that hides you from me. I want to see your soul."

He smiled. "You are getting tired," he said. "Do let me persuade you to come and have some lunch. When you begin to speculate, I know you have done enough."

But Ideala could not go through the ordeal of who should pay for lunch again. She preferred to starve. The _camaraderie_ between them was mental enough to be manlike already, but only as long as there was no question of material outlay.

"Mayn't I stay here and read?" she said. "I can have something by-and- by, when I want it. Do go and leave me."

And he was obliged to go at last, wondering somewhat at her want of appet.i.te.

When he returned she was still working diligently, and they spent the rest of the afternoon together, reading, writing, and chatting, until it was time for Ideala to go. Lorrimer saw her into her train, and fixed another day for her to return and go on with her work.

And so the thing became a settled arrangement. Whenever she could spare the time she went and worked beside him, and he was always the same, kindly, considerate, helping her now and then, but not, as a rule, interfering with her. She just came and went as she pleased, and as she would have done had he been her brother. Sometimes they were alone together for hours, sometimes his secretary worked in the room with them, and always there were people coming and going. There was nothing to suggest a thought of impropriety, and they were soon on quarrelling terms, falling out about a great many things--which is always the sign of a good understanding; but after the first they touched on no dangerous subject for a long time. At last, however, there came a change. Ideala noticed one day that Lorrimer was restless and irritable.

"Am I interfering with your work to-day?" she said. "Do tell me. Any other day will suit me just as well."

"Oh, no," he answered. "I am lazy, that is all. How are you getting on?

Let me see." And he took the paper she was engaged upon, and looked at it.

She watched him, and saw that he was not reading, although he held it before his eyes for some time. He was paler than usual, and there was a look of indecision in his face, very unlike its habitual expression, which was serene and self-contained.

Looking up all at once, he met her eyes fixed on him frankly and affectionately, but he did not respond to her smile.

"How do you suppose all this is going to end?" he said, abruptly.

"Won't it do?" she answered, thinking of her paper. "Had I better give it up, or re-write it?"

He threw the paper down with a gesture of impatience, and got up; and then, as if ashamed of his irritability, he took it again, and gave it back to her. In doing so his hand accidentally touched hers.

"How cold you are," he said. "Let me warm your hands for you."

"They are benumbed," she answered, letting him take them and rub them.

After a moment he said, without looking at her, "Do you know, it is very good of you to come here like this."

"Why?" she asked. "It suits my own convenience."

"I know. But it is refres.h.i.+ng to find some one who will suit their own convenience so." "That sounds as if it were not the right thing to do!"

she exclaimed.

"Nonsense!" he answered. "You misunderstand me."

Ideala withdrew her hands hastily, and half rose.

"What is the matter?" he said. "Come, don't be idle! You should have mastered that book by this time."

But Ideala was disturbed. "I can't read," she said. "Tell me what you thought of me when I came to you that first day? I fancied you were old. And I have been afraid since, in spite of your cousin's suggestion, that you may have considered it odd of me to introduce myself like that."

"Oh, it is quite customary here," he answered. "But even if it had not been, we can't all be bound by the same common laws. The ordinary stars and planets have an ordinary course mapped out for them, and they daren't diverge an inch. But every now and then a comet comes and goes its own eccentric way, and all the lesser lights wonder and admire and let it go."

"That would be very fine for us if only we were comets among the stars," she said.

"Oh, you might condescend to claim a kindred with them," he answered lightly.

"The only heavenly body I ever feel akin to is one of those meteors that flash and fall," she said. "They go their own way, too, do they not, and are lost?" "There is no question of being lost here," he interposed. "The most scrupulous have made an exception in favour of one person, and the world has not blamed them. After having endured so much you are ent.i.tled to some relaxation. I should do as I liked now, if I were you."

She looked at him inquiringly. It seemed as if he were not expressing himself, but trying the effect of what he said upon her.

He was sitting in his usual place now, drawing figures on the blotting- pad.

"You have read, I suppose?" he added, after a pause, and without looking up. "I wish I had never read anything," she exclaimed pa.s.sionately. "I wish I could neither read, write, nor think."

But the trouble now was, if only she could have recognised it, that she did not think; she only felt.

She got up and went to the mantelpiece; he remained where he was, sitting with his back to her. Presently she began to look at the china, absently at first, but afterwards with interest. There were some new specimens, just unpacked, and all crowded together.

"What a lovely lotus-leaf," she said at last. "Satsuma, I suppose--no, Kioto; but what a good specimen. And it is broken, too. What a pity! I should so like to mend it."

"Would you?" he said, rousing himself. "Then you shall."

He went to one of the cabinets and got out the materials, and in a few minutes they were bending busily over the broken plaque, as interested and eager about it as if no subject of more vital importance had ever distracted them. They were like two children together, often as quarrelsome, always as inconsequent; happy hard at work, and equally happy idling; apt to torment each other at times about trifles, but always ready to forget and forgive, and with that habit in common of forgetting everything utterly but the occupation of the moment.

They talked on now for a little longer, but not brilliantly. They were both considered brilliant in conversation, but somehow on these occasions neither of them shone. I suppose when two such bright and s.h.i.+ning lights come together they put each other out.

Then it was time for Ideala to go. A bitter wind met them in the face on their way to the station, and before they had gone far Ideala noticed that Lorrimer's mood had changed again. His face grew pale, his step less elastic, his manner cold and formal. All the brightness, all the sympathy, which made their intimacy seem the most natural, because it was the pleasantest, thing in the world to Ideala, had gone; he was like a man seized with a sudden fit of remorse, disgusted with himself, and moved to repent.

"I should bear with your husband, if I were you," he said at last, breaking the silence. "He behaves like a brute, but I dare say he can't help it. A man can't help his temperament, and probably you provoke him more than you think."

Ideala was surprised, it was so long since they had mentioned her husband. "I fear I am provoking," she answered, humbly. "But how am I to help it? I have tried so hard, and for so long, to be patient. And I only want to do right."

They were parting then, and he looked down at her in silence for some seconds, and when Ideala saw the expression of his face, her heart sank. In that one moment she realised all that his friends.h.i.+p had been to her, and foresaw the terrible blank there would be for her if it should ever end. That there was any danger, that there could be anything but friends.h.i.+p between men and women who must not marry, had not even yet occurred to her. Her intimacy with myself had prepared the way for Lorrimer, and made this new intimacy seem also perfectly right.

"What is the matter with you to-day?" she said. "What spirit of dissatisfaction has got hold of you?"

"I _am_ dissatisfied," he said, raising his hat, and brus.h.i.+ng his hand back over his hair. Then he looked at her. "Why don't you help me?" he asked.

"How can I help you?" she answered. "I don't understand you."

"You ought to. I wish to goodness you did"--and then his face cleared.

"But you will come again," he added, in the old way. "I shall expect you soon."

And so he let her go; and Ideala was glad, because an unpleasant jar was over. She did not trouble herself about his private worries; if he wished her to know he would tell her. Lorrimer had a temper--but then she had known that all along; and Lorrimer was Lorrimer--that was all about it.