Джон Голсуорси
The Dark Flower
III
Crossing the Green Park on his way home, was he more, or less, restless? Difficult to say. A little flattered, certainly, a little warmed; yet irritated, as always when he came into contact with people to whom the world of Art was such an amusing unreality. The notion of trying to show that child how to draw – that feather-pate, with her riding and her kitten; and her ‘Perdita’ eyes! Quaint, how she had at once made friends with him! He was a little different, perhaps, from what she was accustomed to. And how daintily she spoke! A strange, attractive, almost lovely child! Certainly not more than seventeen – and – Johnny Dromore’s daughter!
The wind was bitter, the lamps bright among the naked trees. Beautiful always – London at night, even in January, even in an east wind, with a beauty he never tired of. Its great, dark, chiselled shapes, its gleaming lights, like droves of flying stars come to earth; and all warmed by the beat and stir of innumerable lives – those lives that he ached so to know and to be part of.
He told Sylvia of his encounter. Dromore! The name struck her. She had an old Irish song, ‘The Castle of Dromore,’ with a queer, haunting refrain.
It froze hard all the week, and he began a life-size group of their two sheep-dogs. Then a thaw set in with that first south-west wind, which brings each February a feeling of Spring such as is never again recaptured, and men’s senses, like sleepy bees in the sun, go roving. It awakened in him more violently than ever the thirst to be living, knowing, loving – the craving for something new. Not this, of course, took him back to Dromore’s rooms; oh, no! just friendliness, since he had not even told his old room-mate where he lived, or said that his wife would be glad to make his acquaintance, if he cared to come round. For Johnny Dromore had assuredly not seemed too happy, under all his hard-bitten air. Yes! it was but friendly to go again.
Dromore was seated in his long arm-chair, a cigar between his lips, a pencil in his hand, a Ruff’s Guide on his knee; beside him was a large green book. There was a festive air about him, very different from his spasmodic gloom of the other day; and he murmured without rising:
“Halo, old man! – glad to see you. Take a pew. Look here! Agapemone – which d’you think I ought to put her to – San Diavolo or Ponte Canet? – not more than four crosses of St. Paul. Goin’ to get a real good one from her this time!”
He, who had never heard these sainted names, answered:
“Oh! Ponte Canet, without doubt. But if you’re working I’ll come in another time.”
“Lord! no! Have a smoke. I’ll just finish lookin’ out their blood – and take a pull.”
And so Lennan sat down to watch those researches, wreathed in cigar smoke and punctuated by muttered expletives. They were as sacred and absorbing, no doubt, as his own efforts to create in clay; for before Dromore’s inner vision was the perfect racehorse – he, too, was creating. Here was no mere dodge for making money, but a process hallowed by the peculiar sensation felt when one rubbed the palms of the hands together, the sensation that accompanied all creative achievement. Once only Dromore paused to turn his head and say:
“Bally hard, gettin’ a taproot right!”
Real Art! How well an artist knew that desperate search after the point of balance, the central rivet that must be found before a form would come to life… And he noted that to-day there was no kitten, no flowers, no sense at all of an extraneous presence – even the picture was curtained. Had the girl been just a dream – a fancy conjured up by his craving after youth?
Then he saw that Dromore had dropped the large green book, and was standing before the fire.
“Nell took to you the other day. But you always were a lady’s man. Remember the girl at Coaster’s?”
Coaster’s tea-shop, where he would go every afternoon that he had money, just for the pleasure of looking shyly at a face. Something beautiful to look at – nothing more! Johnny Dromore would no better understand that now than when they were at ‘Bambury’s.’ Not the smallest good even trying to explain! He looked up at the goggling eyes; he heard the bantering voice:
“I say – you ARE goin’ grey. We’re bally old, Lenny! A fellow gets old when he marries.”
And he answered:
“By the way, I never knew that YOU had been.”
From Dromore’s face the chaffing look went, like a candle-flame blown out; and a coppery flush spread over it. For some seconds he did not speak, then, jerking his head towards the picture, he muttered gruffly:
“Never had the chance of marrying, there; Nell’s ‘outside.’”
A sort of anger leaped in Lennan; why should Dromore speak that word as if he were ashamed of his own daughter? Just like his sort – none so hidebound as men-about-town! Flotsam on the tide of other men’s opinions; poor devils adrift, without the one true anchorage of their own real feelings! And doubtful whether Dromore would be pleased, or think him gushing, or even distrustful of his morality, he said:
“As for that, it would only make any decent man or woman nicer to her. When is she going to let me teach her drawing?”
Dromore crossed the room, drew back the curtain of the picture, and in a muffled voice, said:
“My God, Lenny! Life’s unfair. Nell’s coming killed her mother. I’d rather it had been me – bar chaff! Women have no luck.”
Lennan got up from his comfortable chair. For, startled out of the past, the memory of that summer night, when yet another woman had no luck, was flooding his heart with its black, inextinguishable grief. He said quietly:
“The past IS past, old man.”
Dromore drew the curtain again across the picture, and came back to the fire. And for a full minute he stared into it.
“What am I to do with Nell? She’s growing up.”
“What have you done with her so far?”
“She’s been at school. In the summer she goes to Ireland – I’ve got a bit of an old place there. She’ll be eighteen in July. I shall have to introduce her to women, and all that. It’s the devil! How? Who?”
Lennan could only murmur: “My wife, for one.”
He took his leave soon after. Johnny Dromore! Bizarre guardian for that child! Queer life she must have of it, in that bachelor’s den, surrounded by Ruff’s Guides! What would become of her? Caught up by some young spark about town; married to him, no doubt – her father would see to the thoroughness of that, his standard of respectability was evidently high! And after – go the way, maybe, of her mother – that poor thing in the picture with the alluring, desperate face. Well! It was no business of his!
IV
No business of his! The merest sense of comradeship, then, took him once more to Dromore’s after that disclosure, to prove that the word ‘outside’ had no significance save in his friend’s own fancy; to assure him again that Sylvia would be very glad to welcome the child at any time she liked to come.
When he had told her of that little matter of Nell’s birth, she had been silent a long minute, looking in his face, and then had said: “Poor child! I wonder if SHE knows! People are so unkind, even nowadays!” He could not himself think of anyone who would pay attention to such a thing, except to be kinder to the girl; but in such matters Sylvia was the better judge, in closer touch with general thought. She met people that he did not – and of a more normal species.
It was rather late when he got to Dromore’s diggings on that third visit.
“Mr. Dromore, sir,” the man said – he had one of those strictly confidential faces bestowed by an all-wise Providence on servants in the neighbourhood of Piccadilly – “Mr. Dromore, sir, is not in. But he will be almost sure to be in to dress. Miss Nell is in, sir.”
And there she was, sitting at the table, pasting photographs into an album – lonely young creature in that abode of male middle-age! Lennan stood, unheard, gazing at the back of her head, with its thick crinkly-brown hair tied back on her dark-red frock. And, to the confidential man’s soft:
“Mr. Lennan, miss,” he added a softer: “May I come in?”
She put her hand into his with intense composure.
“Oh, yes, do! if you don’t mind the mess I’m making;” and, with a little squeeze of the tips of his fingers, added: “Would it bore you to see my photographs?”
And down they sat together before the photographs – snapshots of people with guns or fishing-rods, little groups of schoolgirls, kittens, Dromore and herself on horseback, and several of a young man with a broad, daring, rather good-looking face. “That’s Oliver – Oliver Dromore – Dad’s first cousin once removed. Rather nice, isn’t he? Do you like his expression?”
Lennan did not know. Not her second cousin; her father’s first cousin once removed! And again there leaped in him that unreasoning flame of indignant pity.
“And how about drawing? You haven’t come to be taught yet.”
She went almost as red as her frock.
“I thought you were only being polite. I oughtn’t to have asked. Of course, I want to awfully – only I know it’ll bore you.”
“It won’t at all.”
She looked up at that. What peculiar languorous eyes they were!
“Shall I come to-morrow, then?”
“Any day you like, between half-past twelve and one.”
“Where?”
He took out a card.
“Mark Lennan – yes – I like your name. I liked it the other day. It’s awfully nice!”
What was in a name that she should like him because of it? His fame as a sculptor – such as it was – could have nothing to do with that, for she would certainly not know of it. Ah! but there was a lot in a name – for children. In his childhood what fascination there had been in the words macaroon, and Spaniard, and Carinola, and Aldebaran, and Mr. McCrae. For quite a week the whole world had been Mr. McCrae – a most ordinary friend of Gordy’s.
By whatever fascination moved, she talked freely enough now – of her school; of riding and motoring – she seemed to love going very fast; about Newmarket – which was ‘perfect’; and theatres – plays of the type that Johnny Dromore might be expected to approve; these together with ‘Hamlet’ and ‘King Lear’ were all she had seen. Never was a girl so untouched by thought, or Art – yet not stupid, having, seemingly, a certain natural good taste; only, nothing, evidently, had come her way. How could it – ‘Johnny Dromore duce, et auspice Johnny Dromore!’ She had been taken, indeed, to the National Gallery while at school. And Lennan had a vision of eight or ten young maidens trailing round at the skirts of one old maiden, admiring Landseer’s dogs, giggling faintly at Botticelli’s angels, gaping, rustling, chattering like young birds in a shrubbery.
But with all her surroundings, this child of Johnny Dromoredom was as yet more innocent than cultured girls of the same age. If those grey, mesmeric eyes of hers followed him about, they did so frankly, unconsciously. There was no minx in her, so far.
An hour went by, and Dromore did not come. And the loneliness of this young creature in her incongruous abode began telling on Lennan’s equanimity.
What did she do in the evenings?
“Sometimes I go to the theatre with Dad, generally I stay at home.”
“And then?”
“Oh! I just read, or talk French.”
“What? To yourself?”
“Yes, or to Oliver sometimes, when he comes in.”
So Oliver came in!
“How long have you known Oliver?”
“Oh! ever since I was a child.”
He wanted to say: And how long is that? But managed to refrain, and got up to go instead. She caught his sleeve and said:
“You’re not to go!” Saying that she looked as a dog will, going to bite in fun, her upper lip shortened above her small white teeth set fast on her lower lip, and her chin thrust a little forward. A glimpse of a wilful spirit! But as soon as he had smiled, and murmured:
“Ah! but I must, you see!” she at once regained her manners, only saying rather mournfully: “You don’t call me by my name. Don’t you like it?”
“Nell?”
“Yes. It’s really Eleanor, of course. DON’T you like it?”
If he had detested the name, he could only have answered: “Very much.”
“I’m awfully glad! Good-bye.”
When he got out into the street, he felt terribly like a man who, instead of having had his sleeve touched, has had his heart plucked at. And that warm, bewildered feeling lasted him all the way home.
Changing for dinner, he looked at himself with unwonted attention. Yes, his dark hair was still thick, but going distinctly grey; there were very many lines about his eyes, too, and those eyes, still eager when they smiled, were particularly deepset, as if life had forced them back. His cheekbones were almost ‘bopsies’ now, and his cheeks very thin and dark, and his jaw looked too set and bony below the almost black moustache. Altogether a face that life had worn a good deal, with nothing for a child to take a fancy to and make friends with, that he could see.
Sylvia came in while he was thus taking stock of himself, bringing a freshly-opened flask of eau-de-Cologne. She was always bringing him something – never was anyone so sweet in those ways. In that grey, low-cut frock, her white, still prettiness and pale-gold hair, so little touched by Time, only just fell short of real beauty for lack of a spice of depth and of incisiveness, just as her spirit lacked he knew not what of poignancy. He would not for the world have let her know that he ever felt that lack. If a man could not hide little rifts in the lute from one so good and humble and affectionate, he was not fit to live.
She sang ‘The Castle of Dromore’ again that night with its queer haunting lilt. And when she had gone up, and he was smoking over the fire, the girl in her dark-red frock seemed to come, and sit opposite with her eyes fixed on his, just as she had been sitting while they talked. Dark red had suited her! Suited the look on her face when she said:
“You’re not to go!” Odd, indeed, if she had not some devil in her, with that parentage!
V
Next day they had summoned him from the studio to see a peculiar phenomenon – Johnny Dromore, very well groomed, talking to Sylvia with unnatural suavity, and carefully masking the goggle in his eyes! Mrs. Lennan ride? Ah! Too busy, of course. Helped Mark with his – er – No! Really! Read a lot, no doubt? Never had any time for readin’ himself – awful bore not having time to read! And Sylvia listening and smiling, very still and soft.
What had Dromore come for? To spy out the land, discover why Lennan and his wife thought nothing of the word ‘outside’ – whether, in fact, their household was respectable… A man must always look twice at ‘what-d’you-call-ems,’ even if they have shared his room at school!.. To his credit, of course, to be so careful of his daughter, at the expense of time owed to the creation of the perfect racehorse! On the whole he seemed to be coming to the conclusion that they might be useful to Nell in the uncomfortable time at hand when she would have to go about; seemed even to be falling under the spell of Sylvia’s transparent goodness – abandoning his habitual vigilance against being scored off in life’s perpetual bet; parting with his armour of chaff. Almost a relief, indeed, once out of Sylvia’s presence, to see that familiar, unholy curiosity creeping back into his eyes, as though they were hoping against parental hope to find something – er – amusing somewhere about that mysterious Mecca of good times – a ‘what-d’you-call-it’s’ studio. Delicious to watch the conflict between relief and disappointment. Alas! no model – not even a statue without clothes; nothing but portrait heads, casts of animals, and such-like sobrieties – absolutely nothing that could bring a blush to the cheek of the young person, or a glow to the eyes of a Johnny Dromore.
With what curious silence he walked round and round the group of sheep-dogs, inquiring into them with that long crinkled nose of his! With what curious suddenness, he said: “Damned good! You wouldn’t do me one of Nell on horseback?” With what dubious watchfulness he listened to the answer:
“I might, perhaps, do a statuette of her; if I did, you should have a cast.”
Did he think that in some way he was being outmanoeuvered? For he remained some seconds in a sort of trance before muttering, as though clinching a bet:
“Done! And if you want to ride with her to get the hang of it, I can always mount you.”
When he had gone, Lennan remained staring at his unfinished sheep-dogs in the gathering dusk. Again that sense of irritation at contact with something strange, hostile, uncomprehending! Why let these Dromores into his life like this? He shut the studio, and went back to the drawing-room. Sylvia was sitting on the fender, gazing at the fire, and she edged along so as to rest against his knees. The light from a candle on her writing-table was shining on her hair, her cheek, and chin, that years had so little altered. A pretty picture she made, with just that candle flame, swaying there, burning slowly, surely down the pale wax – candle flame, of all lifeless things most living, most like a spirit, so bland and vague, one would hardly have known it was fire at all. A drift of wind blew it this way and that: he got up to shut the window, and as he came back; Sylvia said:
“I like Mr. Dromore. I think he’s nicer than he looks.”
“He’s asked me to make a statuette of his daughter on horseback.”
“And will you?”
“I don’t know.”
“If she’s really so pretty, you’d better.”
“Pretty’s hardly the word – but she’s not ordinary.”
She turned round, and looked up at him, and instinctively he felt that something difficult to answer was coming next.
“Mark.”
“Yes.”
“I wanted to ask you: Are you really happy nowadays?”
“Of course. Why not?”
What else to be said? To speak of those feelings of the last few months – those feelings so ridiculous to anyone who had them not – would only disturb her horribly.
And having received her answer, Sylvia turned back to the fire, resting silently against his knees…
Three days later the sheep-dogs suddenly abandoned the pose into which he had lured them with such difficulty, and made for the studio door. There in the street was Nell Dromore, mounted on a narrow little black horse with a white star, a white hoof, and devilish little goat’s ears, pricked, and very close together at the tips.
“Dad said I had better ride round and show you Magpie. He’s not very good at standing still. Are those your dogs? What darlings!”
She had slipped her knee already from the pummel, and slid down; the sheep-dogs were instantly on their hind-feet, propping themselves against her waist. Lennan held the black horse – a bizarre little beast, all fire and whipcord, with a skin like satin, liquid eyes, very straight hocks, and a thin bang-tail reaching down to them. The little creature had none of those commonplace good looks so discouraging to artists.
He had forgotten its rider, till she looked up from the dogs, and said: “Do you like him? It IS nice of you to be going to do us.”
When she had ridden away, looking back until she turned the corner, he tried to lure the two dogs once more to their pose. But they would sit no more, going continually to the door, listening and sniffing; and everything felt disturbed and out of gear.
That same afternoon at Sylvia’s suggestion he went with her to call on the Dromores.
While they were being ushered in he heard a man’s voice rather high-pitched speaking in some language not his own; then the girl:
“No, no, Oliver. ‘Dans l’amour il y a toujours un qui aime, et l’autre qui se laisse aimer.’”
She was sitting in her father’s chair, and on the window-sill they saw a young man lolling, who rose and stood stock-still, with an almost insolent expression on his broad, good-looking face. Lennan scrutinized him with interest – about twenty-four he might be, rather dandified, clean-shaved, with crisp dark hair and wide-set hazel eyes, and, as in his photograph, a curious look of daring. His voice, when he vouchsafed a greeting, was rather high and not unpleasant, with a touch of lazy drawl.
They stayed but a few minutes, and going down those dimly lighted stairs again, Sylvia remarked:
“How prettily she said good-bye – as if she were putting up her face to be kissed! I think she’s lovely. So does that young man. They go well together.”
Rather abruptly Lennan answered:
“Ah! I suppose they do.”