Part 17 (1/2)

”Indeed!” said Sara thoughtfully. ”Did you give him many sittings?”

”He knows my face pretty well. We are acquaintances of some years'

standing. Papa has a high opinion of him.”

”And you?”

”I am no judge. Women can know so little about men.”

”I don't agree with you there. They are far more conventional than we are. They are trained in batches, thousands are of one pattern--especially in society. But each woman has an individual bringing-up. She is influenced by a foreign governess, or her mother, or her nurse. This must give every girl peculiar personal views of everything. That is why men find us hard to understand. We don't understand each other; we suspect each other: we have no sense of comrades.h.i.+p.”

”Perhaps you are right,” said Agnes, rather sadly. ”Yet our troubles all seem to arise from the fact that we cannot manage men. It matters very little really whether we can manage women. With women, one need only be natural, straightforward, and unselfish. You can't come to grief that way. But with men, it is almost impossible to be quite natural. As for being straightforward, don't they misconstrue our words continually? And when one tries to be unselfish, they accuse one of hardness, coldness, and everything most contrary to one's feelings. Of course,” she added quickly, ”I speak from observation. I have nothing to complain of myself.”

”Of course not. Neither have I. I have grown up with most of my men friends. I had no mother, and I exhausted dozens of governesses and masters, I am sure I was troublesome, but I had an instinctive horror of becoming narrow-minded and getting into a groove. My English relations bored me. My foreign ones made my dear papa jealous and uncomfortable.”

”Then you liked them?” said Agnes at once.

”Enormously. You see, I am always an alien among English people.”

Agnes, following an instinct of kindness, pressed her arm and murmured, ”No, no.”

”Yes, my dear, yes. And this is why I am devoted to Mr. Disraeli, and so much interested in Robert Orange. We three are citizens of the world.”

”But English people who have lived, for any length of time, abroad are quite as sensible and tolerant as you are. Take Mr. Rennes, of whom we are just speaking.”

”To be sure. But artists and poets are like stars--they belong to no land. A strictly national painter or a strictly national poet is bound to be parochial--a kind of village pump. And you may write inscriptions all over him, and build monuments above him, but he remains a pump by a local spring. David Rennes is a genius.”

”I am glad you think so,” said Agnes, with flus.h.i.+ng cheeks. ”I wonder whether he will ever be an Academician?”

”Would you feel more sure of his gifts--in that case?”

There was a slight note of sarcasm in the question.

”It is stupid of me, I know,” said Agnes frankly, ”but one can't help feeling rather shy until one's opinions are officially endorsed.”

”How Britis.h.!.+”

”I suppose it is my bringing-up. It sounds very feeble. I often feel that if I once began--really began--to think for myself I wouldn't stick at anything.”

”That is British, too,” said Sara, laughing. ”You are a true _Jane_ Bull! But as you are going to marry a public man, that is as well. Your life will have many absorbing interests.”

”Oh yes,” returned Agnes; ”I hope to help Beauclerk in his const.i.tuency, and with the members of his a.s.sociation.”

”So far as I can make out they are a weak, selfish lot, but these qualities do not affect the question of his duties toward them.”

”You express, better than I could, my own feeling. I fear they don't always appreciate his motives.”

”Beauclerk,” said Sara slowly, ”is impulsive. He is never afraid of changing his mind. Many people are called firm merely because they haven't the moral courage to own their second thoughts.”

Agnes drew a long sigh, slackened her pace, and stood looking at the strange, autumnal lights in the sky, the martins flying over the paddocks toward the wood, and the crescent moon which already shone out above them.