The Nest, The White Pagoda, The Suicide, A Forsaken Temple, Miss Jones and the Masterpiece Part 6

And that she made a great effort upon herself, so that to his eyes the ugliness might not be betrayed, he guessed presently when, looking persistently away from him and out at the garden--their garden!

alas!--where a fine rain fell silently, she said: "I am glad that your sorrow is over. I hope that you will find happier things--and realler things--than you have found in this month. I will remember all that you have said to-day. I think that you have cured me for ever. I shall not be in love again."

"Kitty! Kitty!" he breathed out. She hurt him too much, the poor child, arming its empty heart against him. "Don't speak like that.

Remember--the month has been beautiful."

The tears rose in her eyes, but the hostility did not leave them.

"Beautiful? When it has not been real?"

"Can't we remember the beauty--make something more real?" he now almost wept. But there it was, the shallow, the hard child's heart. He was not in love with her. And, like a nest of snakes, the memory of all her humiliations--her appeals, her proffered love, his evasions and withdrawals--was awake within her. She smiled, a smile that, seeking magnanimity, found only bitterness. "You must speak for yourself, dear Nicholas. For me it was real, and you have spoiled the beauty."

The servants came in while she spoke and she moved aside to make way for the placing of the tea-table. Traces of the fever were upon her yet; her delicate face was flushed, her eyes sparkled. But she had regained the place she meant to keep. She would own to no discomfitures deeper than those that were creditable to her. Moving here and there, touching the flowers in a vase, straightening reviews scattered on a table, she was even able to smile again at him a smile almost kind, and keeping, before him, as well as for the servants, all the advantage of composure.

That smile would often meet him throughout life, and so he would see her, moving delicately and gracefully, making order and comeliness about her, for many years. She set the key. It was the key of their future life together, Holland knew, as he heard her say: "Do sit down and rest.

You must want your tea after that tiresome journey."

THE WHITE PAG.o.dA

The drama of the drawing-rooms had begun years ago, but Owen Stacpole did not come into it until the day on which his cousin Gwendolen, after examining the box of bric-a-brac, remarked, refolding the last pieces of china in their dusty newspapers, that they were rubbish, and silly rubbish, too, of just the sort that Aunt Pickthorne had always unerringly acc.u.mulated. The box had arrived that morning, a legacy from this deceased relative; it had been brought up to the drawing-room and placed upon a sheet near the fire, so that Mrs. Conyers might examine its contents in comfort, and Owen, while he wrote at the black lacquer bureau in the window, had been aware of Gwendolen's gibes and exclamations behind him. Now, when she a.s.serted that she would send the whole futile collection down to Mr. Glazebrook and see if he would give her enough for it to buy a pair of gloves with, Owen rose and limped to join her and to look down at the wooden box into which she was thrusting, with some vindictiveness, the dingy parcels.

"Have you looked at them all?" he inquired. "I forget--was your Aunt Pickthorne a Mrs. or a Miss? And how long has it been since she died?"

"About six months, poor old thing. And these treasures have evidently never been dusted since. She was a Mrs. Her husband was old Admiral Pickthorne--don't you remember?--and they lived, after he retired, at Cheltenham. Two more guileless Philistines I've never known. It used to make me feel quite ill to go and stay with them when I was a girl. I've hardly been at all since then, and that's probably why she selected all the most hideous objects in her drawing-room to leave me. How well I remember that drawing-room! Crocheted antimaca.s.sars; and a round, mahogany centre-table on which a lamp used to stand in the evening; and the wall-paper of frosted robin's-egg-blue, with stuffed birds in cases, and terracotta plaques framed in ruby plush, hanging upon it--a perfectly horrible room. Half a dozen of the plaques are in there; the birds she spared me. She had one or two lovely old family things which I'd allowed myself to hope for; a Spode tea-set I remember. But, no; there's nothing worth looking at."

Mrs. Conyers lightly dusted her hands together, and rose from her knees.

She was, at thirty-eight, a very graceful woman; tall, of ample form, and attired with fas.h.i.+onable ease and fluency. Fas.h.i.+on had been a late development with Gwendolen. In her gaunt and wistful girlhood she had worn her hair in drooping Rossettian ma.s.ses, and her throat had been differently bare. Now she was as accurate as she was easy. Her hair was even a little too sophisticatedly distended, and her long pearl ear-rings, though they became the tender violet of her eyes, emphasized, as her former Pre-Raphaelite ornaments had not seemed to do, a certain genial commonplaceness in the contours of her cheek and chin. But almost fat and decisively unpoetical as she had become, it was undeniable that this last phase of dress and, in especial, these widow's weeds, with sinuous lines of jet and l.u.s.trous falls of fringes, became her better than any in which Owen remembered to have seen her.

Gwendolen's drawing-room, too, had undergone, since the days of her girlhood, as complete a metamorphosis as she had. When she had married and left the big house in Kensington where Owen had spent many a happy holiday--when she had married crabbed old Mr. Conyers, the Chislebridge dignitary, and gone to live in Chislebridge, her convictions had at once expressed themselves luxuriantly in large-patterned wall-papers and deep-cus.h.i.+oned divans and in Eastern fabrics draping the mantelpiece or cast irrelevantly over carved Indian screens. Her teas had been brought in on trays of Indian beaten bra.s.s, and the mosque-like opening between the front and back drawing-room had been hung with translucent curtains of beaded reeds, through which one had to plunge as though through a sheet of dropping water. Owen well remembered their tinkle and rattle and the perfume of burning Eastern pastilles that greeted one when, emerging, one found oneself in the dim, rich gloom among the divans and the bra.s.ses and the palms. In those days Gwendolen had been draped rather than dressed, and the gestures and att.i.tudes of her languid arms and wrists seemed more adapted to a dulcimer than to a tea-pot. But she dispensed excellent tea, and though her eyes were appropriately yearning, her talk was quite as rea.s.suringly commonplace as Owen had always found it.

It was only in the course of years that the reed curtains and the carved Indian screens and the divans ebbed away; but the change was complete at last, and he found Gwendolen, with undulated hair puffed over a frame, and a small waist,--large waists not having then come in,--receiving her visitors in the most clear, calm, austere of rooms, with polished floor, Sheraton furniture, and j.a.panese colour-prints framed in white hanging on pensive s.p.a.ces of willow-leaf-green wall.

Gwendolen talked of Strauss's music and of the New English Art Club, was indignant at the prohibition of "Monna Vanna," and to some no longer apt remark of an aspiring caller answered that to speak so was surely to Ruskinize. He realized on this occasion that Gwendolen had become the arbiter of taste in Chislebridge. He followed her into several drawing-rooms and observed that she had set the fas.h.i.+on in furniture and wall-paper; that some were pus.h.i.+ng their way toward j.a.panese prints, and some were even beginning to babble faintly of Manet. Five years had pa.s.sed since then, and now, on this his first visit to Chislebridge since old Mr. Conyers's death, another change had taken place.

Gwendolen's hips were compressed, her waist was large once more, though of a carefully calculated largeness, and only in a fine bit of the old furniture here and there did a trace of the former green drawing-room remain. This was certainly the most interesting room that Gwendolen had yet achieved. There had been little character, if much charm, in the green drawing-room; one knew so many like it. With a slight self-discipline, its harmonies were really easy to attain. But it was not easy to attain a mingled richness and austerity; to be recondite, yet lovely; to set such cabinets of rosy old lacquer near such Chinese screens or hang subtle strips of Chinese painting on just the right shade of dim, white wall. It took money, it took time, it took knowledge to find such delicate cane-seated settees framed in black lacquer, and to pick up such engraved gla.s.s, such white Chinese porcelain and white Italian earthenware. Melting together in their dim splendour and s.h.i.+ning softness, they had so enchantingly arrested Owen the night before that, pausing on the threshold, he had said with a whole-heartedness she had never yet heard from him, "Well, Gwen, yours is the loveliest room I've ever seen."

It was indeed triumphantly lovely, although, examining it more critically by the morning light, he had found slight dissatisfactions.

It was perhaps a little too much like an admirably sophisticated curiosity-shop. It was an object to be examined with delight, hardly a subject to be lived with with love. And it almost distressed him to see the touch of genial commonplaceness expressing itself pervasively in the big bowls and jars and vases of pink roses that burgeoned everywhere.

They showed no real sense of what the lacquer and gla.s.s and porcelain demanded; for they demanded surely a more fragile, less obvious flower.

And one or two minor ornaments, though evidently selected with scrupulous conscientiousness, seemed to him equally at fault. Still, he had again that morning, before seating himself to write, repeated in all sincerity, "This is really the loveliest room," and Gwendolen, from where she knelt above Aunt Pickthorne's box, had answered, following his eyes, "I am _so_ glad you like it, dear Owen."

Gwendolen was very fond of him, and her fondness had never been so marked. It was of that he had been thinking as he wrote. He had never felt fonder of Gwendolen. Her drawing-room was lovely, her widow's weeds became her, and she was, as she had always been, the kindest of creatures. In every sense the house would be a pleasanter one to stay at than in old Mr. Conyers's lifetime. Owen had not liked old Mr. Conyers, who had had too much the air of thinking himself an historical figure and his breakfast historical events, who snubbed his wife and quoted Greek and Latin pugnaciously, and took the cabinet ministers and d.u.c.h.esses who sometimes sojourned under his roof, with an unctuousness that made more marked the aridity of his manner toward less ill.u.s.trious guests. The Conyers had come to count in the eyes of Chislebridge and the surrounding country as the social figure-heads of the studious old town, and Owen had found himself, as Gwendolen's crippled, writing, cousin, year by year of relatively less importance in the eyes of Gwendolen's husband. Actually, as it happened, he had during those years become almost ill.u.s.trious himself; but his austere distinction, such as it was, had been as moonrise rather than dawn, and had left him as gently impersonal as before, and even more impoverished.

Negligible-looking as he knew he was, he had sometimes been amused to note old Mr. Conyers's bewilderment when a cabinet minister or a d.u.c.h.ess manifested their pleasurable excitement in meeting him. As for Gwendolen, her essential loyalty and kindness had always remained the same since the days when she had protected him from the sallies of her boisterous brothers and sisters in the Kensington family mansion--the same till now. Last night and to-day he had recognised a difference. He wondered whether he was a conceited fool for imagining in Gwendolen a dwelling tenderness, a brooding touch, indeed, of reminiscent wistfulness. Was it to show an unbecoming complacency if he allowed his mind to dwell upon the possibilities that this development in Gwendolen presented to his imagination? He was delicate and poor and, despite a large visiting-list, he was lonely. He was fond of Gwendolen and of her two nice, dull boys. She amused him, it was true, as she had always amused him; for though her drawing-room had become interesting, though she had developed a sense of humour, or at least the intention of humorousness, though she often attempted playfulness and even irony, she was still at heart as disproportionately earnest as she had been in youth. But Gwendolen would make no romantic demands upon him, and she would not expect him to take even red lacquer as seriously as she did, or to follow with the same breathlessness the erratic movements of modern aestheticism. She was accustomed to his pa.s.sive unresponsiveness, and would resent it no more in the husband than in the friend.

Altogether, as he sat there writing at Gwendolen's lovely bureau, he knew that a sense of homely magic grew upon him.

Next morning, wandering about the pleasant streets of the old town, he found himself before the window of Mr. Glazebrook's curiosity-shop--a shop well known to more than Chislebridge. He paused to look at the objects disposed with a dignified reticence against a dark background, and his eye was attracted by a very delightful red lacquer box that at once made him think of Gwendolen's drawing-room. Just the thing for her, it was. But as he entered the shop, Mr. Glazebrook leaned from within and took it from its place in the window. He was showing it to another customer.

Owen now quite vehemently longed to possess the box, which, he saw, as Mr. Glazebrook displayed it, was cunningly fitted with little inner segments, beautifully patterned in gold. Feigning an indifferent survey of the shop, he lingered near, hoping that his rival would relinquish her opportunity.

"Five pounds! O dear, that is too much for me, I'm afraid," he heard her say, and, at the voice, he turned and looked at her. The voice was unusual--a rapid, rather husky voice that made him think of m.u.f.fled bells or snow-bound water, gay in rhythm, yet marred in tone, almost as though the speaker had cried a great deal. She was an unusual figure, too, though he could not have said why, except that her dress seemed to recall bygone fas.h.i.+ons quaintly, though without a hint of dowdiness or affectation. She wore a skirt and jacket of soft gray, with pleated lawn at neck and wrists, and her small gray hat was wreathed with violets.

She held the lacquer box, and her face, rosy, crisp, decisive, and showing, like her voice, a marred gaiety, expressed her reluctant relinquishment and her strong desire. Owen had seen a child look at a forbidden fruit with just such an expression and he suddenly wished that he could give the box to her rather than to Gwendolen, to whom five pounds was a matter of small moment.

"I think I mustn't," she repeated, after a further hesitation, and setting the box down with cheris.h.i.+ng care. "Not to-day. And I have so much red lacquer. It's like dram-drinking."

Mr. Glazebrook smiled affably. He was evidently on old-established terms with his customer. "Perhaps you'd like to look round a bit, Mrs.

Waterlow," he suggested. "There are some nice pieces of old gla.s.s in the inner room, quite cheap, some of them--a set of old champagne gla.s.ses."

Mrs. Waterlow, saying that she wanted some old champagne gla.s.ses, moved away.

"Do you think the lady has given up that box?" Owen asked. "I don't want to buy it if there's a chance of her changing her mind."

Mr. Glazebrook said that there was no such chance, the lady being one who knew her own mind; so the box was bought and Owen ordered it to be sent to Gwendolen. He said then that he would like to have a look round, too. He really wanted to have another look at the lady with the rosy face and the small gray hat trimmed with violets. He peered into cabinets ranged thickly with old gla.s.s and china, examined the Worcester tea-set disposed upon a table and the case of Chinese tear-bottles and j.a.panese netzukes, and presently made his way into the smaller, dimmer room at the back.

"Oh, Mr. Glazebrook," said the lady in gray. She had heard his step, but had not turned. She was kneeling before an open packing-case and holding an object that she had drawn from it. Owen suddenly recognised the case.

It was the one that Gwendolen yesterday had sent down to Mr. Glazebrook.

He called this person, raising his hat, and the lady looked round at him, too preoccupied to express her recognition of her mistake by more than a vague murmur of thanks. "Mr. Glazebrook," she said, holding up a whitish object, "may I have this? Is it expensive?"

"Well, really, I only glanced over the box. A customer sent it down to me to dispose of, and I didn't think there was anything in it worth much. Let me see, Mrs. Waterlow; it's a paG.o.da, I take it, a Chinese paG.o.da. We've had them from time to time, in ivory and smaller than this."

"This is in porcelain," said the lady, "and beautifully moulded."

"I see, I see," said Mr. Glazebrook, taking the fragile top segment of the disjointed paG.o.da in his hand, and rather at a loss; "and it's slightly damaged."

The lady in gray evidently was not a shrewd bargainer. "Only a little,"

she said. "One or two bits have been chipped out of the roofs, and it's lost one or two of its little crystal rings; but I think it's in quite good condition, and I have it all here." She was placing one segment upon the other. "They are all made to fit, you see, with the little openings in each story."

She had built it up beside her as she knelt on the floor, and it stood like a fragile, fantastic ghost, with the upward tilt of its tiled roofs, its embossed patterns, and the crystal rings trembling from each angle of the roofs like raindrops. "What a darling!" said Mrs. Waterlow.

"How much do you ask for it, Mr. Glazebrook?"

Mr. Glazebrook, adjusting his knowledge of the limitations of Mrs.

Waterlow's purse to his present appreciation of the paG.o.da and of her desire for it, said genially, after a moment, that from an old customer like herself he would ask only forty-five s.h.i.+llings.

"Well, I think it's a great bargain, Mr. Glazebrook," said Mrs.

Waterlow. "And I'll have it."

"Shall I send it round?" Mr. Glazebrook asked.

"Yes, please; or, no, it isn't heavy,"--she lifted it with both hands, rising with it and looking like a Saint Barbara holding her tower,--"I can manage it to just round the corner. Wrap it up for me, and I'll carry it off myself."

When Owen saw his cousin again at lunch, the red lacquer box had not yet arrived, and, with a touch of friendly mockery, he said:

"Well, you have been unlucky, my dear Gwen. There was the most charming piece of old Chinese porcelain in that scorned Cheltenham box, and I saw Mr. Glazebrook sell it this morning to a lady who wasn't to be put off by dust and newspapers and plush-framed plaques. She carried it off in triumph, saying that it was a great bargain. And so it was; but she might have had it for half the money if she hadn't informed Mr.

Glazebrook of its probable value."

Gwendolen fixed her mild, violet eyes upon him. "A piece of old Chinese porcelain? Do you mean that silly white paG.o.da?"

"You did see it, then?"

"See it? Haven't I seen it all my life? It stood on a purple worsted mat on a little bamboo table between the Nottingham lace curtains in one of Aunt Pickthorne's drawing-room windows, and looked like some piece of childish gimcrackery bought at a bazaar, where, I'll wager, she did buy it."