Part 49 (1/2)
”You looked so out of it; you were as gloomy as if every earthly hope had left you, and you didn't make a single contribution to any discussion that took place. Don't you think I observe you?” she asked with an irony tempered by a tenderness unsuccessfully concealed.
”Ah my darling, what you observe--!” Nick cried with a certain bitterness of amus.e.m.e.nt. But he added the next moment more seriously, as if his tone had been disrespectful: ”You probe me to the bottom, no doubt.”
”You needn't come either to Griffin or to Severals if you don't want to.”
”Give them up yourself; stay here with me!”
She coloured quickly as he said this, and broke out: ”Lord, how you hate political houses!”
”How can you say that when from February to August I spend every blessed night in one?”
”Yes, and hate that worst of all.”
”So do half the people who are in it. You, my dear, must have so many things, so many people, so much _mise-en-scene_ and such a perpetual spectacle to live,” Nick went on. ”Perpetual motion, perpetual visits, perpetual crowds! If you go into the country you'll see forty people every day and be mixed up with them all day. The idea of a quiet fortnight in town, when by a happy if idiotic superst.i.tion everybody goes out of it, disconcerts and frightens you. It's the very time, it's the very place, to do a little work and possess one's soul.”
This vehement allocution found her evidently somewhat unprepared; but she was sagacious enough, instead of attempting for the moment a general rejoinder, to seize on a single phrase and say: ”Work? What work can you do in London at such a moment as this?”
Nick considered. ”I might tell you I want to get up a lot of subjects, to sit at home and read blue-books; but that wouldn't be quite what I mean.”
”Do you mean you want to paint?”
”Yes, that's it, since you gouge it out of me.”
”Why do you make such a mystery about it? You're at perfect liberty,”
Julia said.
She put out her hand to rest it on the mantel-shelf, but her companion took it on the way and held it in both his own. ”You're delightful, Julia, when you speak in that tone--then I know why it is I love you.
But I can't do anything if I go to Griffin, if I go to Severals.”
”I see--I see,” she answered thoughtfully and kindly.
”I've scarcely been inside of my studio for months, and I feel quite homesick for it. The idea of putting in a few quiet days there has taken hold of me: I rather cling to it.”
”It seems so odd your having a studio!” Julia dropped, speaking so quickly that the words were almost incomprehensible.
”Doesn't it sound absurd, for all the good it does me, or I do _in_ it?
Of course one can produce nothing but rubbish on such terms--without continuity or persistence, with just a few days here and there. I ought to be ashamed of myself, no doubt; but even my rubbish interests me.
'_Guenille si l'on veut, ma guenille m'est chere_.' But I'll go down to Harsh with you in a moment, Julia,” Nick pursued: ”that would do as well if we could be quiet there, without people, without a creature; and I should really be perfectly content. You'd beautifully sit for me; it would be the occasion we've so often wanted and never found.”
She shook her head slowly and with a smile that had a meaning for him.
”Thank you, my dear; nothing would induce me to go to Harsh with you.”
He looked at her hard. ”What's the matter whenever it's a question of anything of that sort? Are you afraid of me?” She pulled her hand from him quickly, turning away; but he went on: ”Stay with me here then, when everything's so right for it. We shall do beautifully--have the whole place, have the whole day, to ourselves. Hang your engagements!
Telegraph you won't come. We'll live at the studio--you'll sit to me every day. Now or never's our chance--when shall we have so good a one?
Think how charming it will be! I'll make you wish awfully that I may do something.”
”I can't get out of Griffin--it's impossible,” Julia said, moving further away and with her back presented to him.