Part 4 (1/2)
”How could I?” he asked, annoyed at the mention of the man's name, reminding him, as it did, of the apparent and inexplicable intimacy between the two, and also telling him they must already have seen each other.
”You could easily have found him if you had inquired among the boys. He lives in his studio and he has scarcely left it the whole time I've been away. By the way, you remember Katharine, don't you? She's married again. To her editor this time. This is my school.”
They came to a standstill and faced each other to say ”good-bye.”
”I scarcely feel like working this afternoon,” observed Miss Brooke. ”My laziness really overpowers my ambition. Did you not say something before, Mr. Middleton, about your being tempted to cut the Beaux Arts?
Do be nice and yield to that temptation. I want to give way to mine so badly, but being a woman I daren't do anything unless somebody else is doing it at the same time.”
Paul's fibres of resistance did not relax gradually; they collapsed all at once.
”Well,” he laughed. ”I've been so good all along, I think I've earned the right to play truant for once.”
”Mr. Middleton! That's bringing morality into it again, and I wanted to indulge in undiluted wickedness. You have to carry my box as I'm sufficiently occupied in holding up my skirts. I'll give you some tea afterwards as a reward.”
They strolled slowly in the suns.h.i.+ne, making for the river and crossing by the Pont des Arts; and pa.s.sed through the Jardins des Tuileries, where the freshness of the greens, and the playing fountains, and the leafy trees, and the pretty children, and the odour of lilac proclaimed the spring. They sauntered across the Place de la Concorde and into the shady avenues of the Champs Elysees, where huge spots of sunlight freckled the ground; talking the while of the life of the city, of the foreign elements, of the Old and New Salons. Miss Brooke explained how her own day was spent. Seven o'clock in the morning found her punctually at school, and she worked two hours before taking her _cafe au lait_, afterwards continuing till midday. In the afternoon she usually copied and studied at the Louvre or Luxembourg. Such had been the routine of her work before, and she had had no difficulty in falling into it again.
She could not hope to exhibit even next year, as she could neither afford a studio nor the expense of models. At the present she was living with some friends at their _appartement_ in the Avenue de Wagram. After their departure at the end of May she would enter into the _pension_, which was within a stone's throw of her school.
Paul, eagerly listening to all these details, was only conscious in a far-off way of the eternal roll of smart carriages in the roadway, or of the mult.i.tude of children playing under the trees in charge of _bonnes_, whilst the mammas sat about on chairs, chatting, or with books or needlework. Onward the pair strolled past the Arc de Triomphe and down the great Avenue into the Bois de Boulogne, only stopping to rest by the laughing lake. Here the appeal of the water and the moored boats soon became irresistible. They fleeted the remainder of the afternoon ideally, till Miss Brooke announced it was time to repair to the Avenue de Wagram. Paul was afraid of her friends--he was scarcely presentable.
”Be calm, my friend,” she rea.s.sured him. ”We shall have a nice little tea all to ourselves. The others have gone to Versailles and are only coming back in time to dine. We dine _chez nous_, as we have a _bonne_ who cooks. Of course I can't be in to _dejeuner_, as the distance is too great from my school. You must come one evening and I'll present you.”
He thanked her for the suggestion, glad to welcome every arrangement that promised in any way to throw their lives together, for he had been not a little afraid he might not after all have the opportunity of seeing very much of her.
As Miss Brooke made the tea in the pretty drawing room of the cosy flat, Paul began to realise with surprise how much progress their friends.h.i.+p had made in that one day. His dream had turned out true! He was so happy that the consciousness of all but the moment faded from him. London, his mother, Celia, and even chess were for the time absolutely non-existent.
”Charlie,” too, was forgotten, as the obnoxious name had not again dropped from Miss Brooke's lips.
He took his leave at last, filled with joy by Miss Brooke's promise to run in on the morrow to _dejeuner_ at the same little restaurant. But as he turned from the broad stairway into the hall, he almost collided in his pre-occupation with a tall well-dressed man. Both murmured ”_Pardon!_” and pursued their ways. Paul had seen the other's face, but he had taken several steps forward before the features sank into his brain, and he realised with a great shock they were those of ”Charlie.”
CHAPTER V.
HOWEVER, Miss Brooke said nothing to him about Charlie in the days that followed, though he saw her often. Without it being specially mentioned again, it was somehow understood they were, for the present, to meet at mid-day at the little restaurant, and, moreover, she allowed him to take her several times to the two Salons. He might easily have dragged in references to Pemberton, but he felt it would not be right to do so for the mere purpose of discovering what it would have been an impertinence to demand outright.
And the more his _camaraderie_ with Miss Brooke became an established fact, the more did this question of Charlie disturb him. He had discovered by this time that a harmless friends.h.i.+p between a man and a girl was by no means unusual among the students and was not necessarily a.s.sumed to imply matrimonial intentions. He knew, moreover, that such friends.h.i.+ps grew rapidly on this soil where the English-speaking students gravitated together during the years of their voluntary exile.
But, if this thought pacified him as to Miss Brooke and Charlie, the very pacification carried with it a sting. For it led to the further tormenting suspicion that Miss Brooke did not take the relations.h.i.+p between her and himself as seriously as he would have liked her to. Her conduct and bearing towards him were all he could wish, yet he seemed to feel behind them a stern limit to the intimacy, a barrier, as it were, that might bear on its face: ”I am put here by way of giving you a reminder you are not to make any mistakes as to the extent of your rights over this property.”
Sometimes, indeed, in envisaging the position, he came to the conclusion that this was entirely due to his own imagination and that he might safely ask her to share his life. But at that point uncertainty would rise again, warning him that to make any such impulsive proposition just then might be to jeopardise the future of his romance. The remembrance of the distress caused him by his effort to determine the precise degree of Celia's claim on him by reason of his having engaged her for five dances in the same evening intruded in grotesque contrast now that he was endeavouring to determine the precise degree of his claim on Miss Brooke.
Despite these p.r.i.c.kings, and despite Charlie, sweetness predominated in his life. He felt untrammelled and unwatched over, recalling with a shudder the old strands that had tethered him. Though he wrote regularly to his mother, whom he had seen twice last autumn, on her way southward and on her return, all reference to Miss Brooke was excluded from his letters. He would not discuss his relation to her with anybody else, foreseeing that would only lead to a deal of useless and perhaps endless talk.
After Miss Brooke had moved to the _pension_, where she had arranged to take all her meals, he no longer saw her every day. But it was understood he could take his chance of finding her at home whenever he chose to call in the evenings. She generally received him in her little oblong sitting-room on the second floor, that opened out on a pleasant balcony, overlooking the street. He soon grew to love this room, to the decorations of which she had added a huge j.a.panese umbrella, which hung from the ceiling, and two j.a.panese lights, and a piece of Oriental tapestry, besides her personal nicknacks. Paul's usual lounging-place, whilst Miss Brooke gave him his after-dinner coffee, was an old cretonne-covered ottoman, on which a broken spring made a curious hump, and over his head were suspended some book-shelves. Now and again he would find other callers, of both s.e.xes, for Miss Brooke was ”at home”
once a week to all her friends. Of course, Paul did not abuse his privilege, but firmly restricted the number of his visits. Occasionally, too, he had the happiness of taking her to dine at some one or other of the great cafes on the Grands Boulevards, and they would stroll back together along the river bank, enchanted by the wonderful nocturnes. On Sunday sometimes, they would make an excursion beyond the fortifications to some rural spot, she taking her paint-box and sketching lazily whilst they talked; and if, on rare afternoons, he left his work, and looked in at the Luxembourg to find her deftly plying her brush in her big blue coa.r.s.e linen ap.r.o.n, with its capacious pockets, she seemed by no means displeased.
Every legitimate topic was talked over between them. He had long since exhausted the theme of his own life, that is, he had told it so far as he cared to tell it. Celia, for one thing, did not appear in it, and there were one or two little matters he was especially careful to suppress. He felt vaguely saint-like, when, in the course of this judicious selection from his biography, he arrived at his slumming experiences, and hinted at his charities, which were being continued during his absence. Miss Brooke repaid the confidence in kind, enabling him, by her various reminiscences, to reconstruct a fairly continuous account of her existence, which, it never struck him, might also be selected.
They drifted, too, into the realm of ideas, exchanging their notions on--among other things--love and platonic friends.h.i.+p. They discussed the last-mentioned phenomenon in great detail, Paul, aflame with self-consciousness, but quite unable to pierce beneath the sphinx-like demeanour with which Miss Brooke made her impartial and freezingly impersonal statements. From ideas they pa.s.sed on to the consideration of conduct and how it should be determined under divers subtle conditions.
”Yes, but don't you really think that one _ought_ to listen to such an appeal _if_....,” she would gravely interpose with her sweet voice as her brush made sensuous strokes on the canvas. And Paul became more and more impressed with the n.o.bility of her soul, and strove likewise--as was but natural in the circ.u.mstances--to impress her with the n.o.bility of his. He usually felt ethically perfect after such conversations, and, had the occasion immediately arisen, it would have found him equal to acting along the lines of the ”ought” laid down by Miss Brooke. He imagined that he certainly was receiving endless benefit from this thres.h.i.+ng out of things with a quick and sympathetic personality.