Part 32 (2/2)

”HONOR M. DESMOND.”

Quita smiled as she folded up the note, though her lashes were wet with more than mist. Tears came too readily to her eyes just now, a fact that engendered occasional bickerings between herself and Michael.

”And to think that I was blind enough to hate that dear woman,” she thought. ”I, who pride myself on my intuition!”

Then she scribbled a hasty note of acceptance, despatched the _jhampanni_, and remained standing absently by the verandah rail, looking out into nothingness; trying to grasp the fact that the longest, hardest three weeks of her life were over; that in less than four hours' time she would once more set eyes on the man who was, to all intents and purposes, her newly accepted lover; would verify in the flesh the remembrance of that wonderful night and morning.

The thought so unsteadied her, that she clenched her hands, and jerked herself together. Having more of Diana than of Venus in her composition, the intensity of her love--since avowal had levelled all barriers--was a constant surprise to her; and now she was even a little ashamed of her natural longing for the touch of hands and lips, that she had at times been disposed to scorn. None the less, she hoped, unblus.h.i.+ngly, that she would be allowed to have him to herself for an hour, or so; hoped also--nay, confidently expected--that she would end in overruling this stern purpose of his, that irritated her, even while it compelled her admiration.

To her, as to all eager natures, the appeal of the present was all-powerful, the more so when that present offered her with both hands the best that life has to give. To sacrifice it on the altar of a problematical future seemed sheer folly; magnificent folly, perhaps, but, in the circ.u.mstances her quickened heart leaned towards a less magnificent wisdom. She detected in this unmanageable husband of hers a strain of unpretentious heroism, which delighted her in the abstract.

But when the heroic puts on flesh and blood, and shoulders itself into our narrow lives, it is apt to appear a little too big for the stage; and Quita had an artist's eye for proportion, whether in pictures or in the human comedy.

Moreover, a mingling of French and Irish blood rarely results in an irksome development of the conscience, or of that moral bugbear, a sense of responsibility; and deep down, Quita knew herself to be more like her brother in both respects than she quite cared to acknowledge.

For all her husband's conscientious suggestion that marriage was a ”complicated affair,” she persisted in regarding it simply as the crown and completion of their great love, a happiness to which they were ent.i.tled by every law human and divine. The generations still to be had not yet laid their arresting hand upon her. In her esteem, such shadowy probabilities had neither right nor power to stem the new imperious forces at work within her.

It remains to add that Eldred's avowal had not shocked or repelled her as much as he had feared. For, among Michael's promiscuous intimates in Paris, Vienna, Rome, she had seen and heard more than Lenox was likely to guess of that enslavement to drugs and absinthe to which the artist's temperament seems peculiarly p.r.o.ne; though she was far from realising in detail the full horror and degradation involved. She merely felt certain that--heredity or no--Eldred was, by the nature of him, incapable of travelling far down that awful road; that with her at his side to hearten and help him, he could not fail to free himself from ”the accursed chain.”

But they must fight the battle together. That was the Alpha and Omega of her thoughts. He had not yet measured the height and depth of her love. Let her only make this clear to him, and he must give in; if not to-night, at least before his leave was up. Years of living with Michael had accustomed her to getting her own way in all essentials.

But she had yet to try her strength against the bed-rock of Scottish granite underlying her husband's surface quietness; against the terrible singleness of mind that cannot--even for Love's dear sake--view harsh facts through a medium of rosy mist.

While she stood thus, trying to see into the darkness that shrouds the coming day, even the coming hour, from inquisitive eyes, the drifting vapour all about her paled from grey to white, from white to a gossamer film; and finally uprose from the valley, like a spotless scroll rolled backward by an unseen Hand, giving gradually to view a mult.i.tude of mountains, newly washed; mountains that glowed with richest tints of purple and amethyst and rose, in the level light of afternoon. And Quita, being in a fanciful mood, saw in this ”good gigantic smile” of the rain-soaked earth a happy omen; an a.s.surance that so would the mists rise from her own life, and the sunlight prevail. A sudden recollection of the buffalo ”_Mela_” set her smiling.

”How idiotic I am!” she reproved herself gently;--we are apt to be gentle with our own foolishness; it never seems quite so egregious as other people's--”I might be a girl of twenty, after my first proposal, instead of nearly thirty, and a nominal wife of five years' standing.”

She drew out her watch. Four o'clock. Three mortal hours before she could even think of starting. There was nothing for it but to have recourse to her easel, _faute de mieux_. The last words waked her normal self. They were no less than heresy, treason to her art.

Michael would have disowned her, had she spoken them in his hearing!

Was Art, then, so small a thing when compared with this overwhelming force of Love, which dwarfed all thoughts and acts that did not minister to its needs? It was too early days as yet to answer so large a question. She simply knew that since that first kiss had set her on the threshold of an unexplored world, Art had lost its grip; that, for the present, at all events, she did not want to paint, but to love and live!

”Pity Michael isn't here to scold me,” she thought, as she turned back into the house.

But Michael was away at Jundraghat, the Rajah's summer Residency. His finished portrait had been sent off that afternoon; and he had followed it, for the pleasure of hearing Elsie's thanks and praise in person.

The little room, robbed of the picture that had been its chief ornament for many weeks, looked empty, desolate; and with a restless sigh she went over to her easel. This also was empty. Her study of a hill girl,--begun half jestingly, as a contrast to Michael's flower of Western Maidenhood,--had so grown and beautified under her hands, that it had been voted worthy of a Home Exhibition; and its case now stood against the wall, awaiting mail day. Three or four unfinished pictures leaned against the easel. Quita looked through them, aimlessly, in search of a congenial subject. But they were chiefly landscape studies; and in her present mood Nature seemed a little tame, and bloodless. Her heart cried out for something human, and she wished that Michael would come back.

Then, like a ray of light, came the required inspiration, satisfying at once the counter-claims of Art and Love. She sought out a fresh canvas, set it on the easel, and plunged, forthwith, into a rough head-and-shoulder study of her husband.

Now time no longer stood still. Michael was forgotten. And, while her brush sped hither and thither, she crooned low and clear, the song that had proved the open sesame to her cave of enchantment.

And, in the meantime, Michael--the forgotten--was manipulating a new and delicate complication in a fas.h.i.+on peculiarly his own.

On entering Mrs Mayhew's drawing-room, he had found, not his ”moonlight maiden,” as it pleased him to call her, but the b.u.t.ton Quail herself, who greeted him with a rather embarra.s.sing effusion of thanks.

”And the best point about it is, that it's really _like_ Elsie,” she concluded, with an air of paying an exceptional tribute to his skill.

<script>