The Bond/Part 1/Chapter 8
VII
THE May morning was warm. Its soft radiance penetrated the studio, even with the north light, and the patch of sky seen through the upper half of the open window was tenderly, opaquely blue, crossed by an occasional small downy cloud. The first touch of summer languor was in the air. The rattle of wheels and whirr of cars in the streets below, and the street cries, seemed oddly softened, as though the world had grown more spacious. Two great masses of lilacs, in brown jars, set on the floor of the studio, sent out their fresh perfume. Basil sang tunelessly as he worked, and his eyes glowed happily. Teresa was posing for a picture, begun some weeks before, but interrupted by her own engagements, or Basil's. Basil had usually a picture of Teresa in some stage of progress. He had painted her a dozen times, and each time the picture had been sold. However, Basil was only "one of the promising younger men." He had often occasion to laugh at such a judgment upon himself. Newspaper praise or blame merely amused him, and he did not even care much whether he sold his pictures or not; "except," as he said, "that one doesn't want too many of them round, mussing up the place. I shouldn't like to live in the midst of an unbroken circle of my creations, like Erhart, for instance. And giving them away is an unworthy subterfuge." His successes had been made so far with portraits. Character interested him as much as paint, and, though brother artists agreed that " his colour was sour, and his drawing bad," the sitters were always interested in what he made of them. The portrait was something to talk about, though usually, "It doesn't half do you justice, my dear. Your nose really isn't as large as that, and as for your complexion—well, I suppose yellow and mauve are the latest discoveries, so we must say nothing—still, there is a likeness"
Teresa was sitting in a high-backed Italian chair; she wore a white dress, and a flat, black chip hat, tied under her chin. In her hands she had a bit of red clay, from which she was modelling a tiny statuette of a faun. She did not like posing, and had stipulated, in this picture, for something to do. Basil, accordingly, painted her looking down, musingly, under the shadow of the hat, at the faun. He had roughly sketched in the lower part of the figure, and was still working on the face.
"I shall call it 'The Girl and the Clay,'" he said. "You may be supposed to be 'making a poet out of a man'—though the ordinary thing would be to make a man out of a poet."
"A man is better than a poet," said Teresa lazily. "But I am only making a faun out of nothing."
"Out of nothing—out of nothing!" murmured Basil, studying his canvas with knitted brows. He laid down his sheaf of brushes and palette, and stretched his arms with a yawn. "You are making it out of red dirt and borrowed ideas. What so absurd as making a faun at this era of the world's history?"
"It is good enough for the handle of a paper-knife, anyway," said Teresa placidly.
"So inappropriate! What on earth has a faun got to do with cutting books?"
"I am making him with a leer, so that he will say, every time you look at him, 'What a fool you are to waste your time!' Of course, he is only to be used for cutting German philosophers. I think I'll engrave on the blade,
"'Grau, meine Freund, ist alle Theorie,
Und grün des Lebens goldne Baum.'"
"You're an immoral little wretch, with your fauns and sprites and pixies! What a day—o-oh!" And he stretched out his arms again with a groan.
"What's the matter with the day? It's a good day. You're lazy."
"No, it's the spring! Don't you feel it, cold one?"
"Yes, I feel it, but it doesn't make me yawn like a gryphon, and deliver myself of uncouth noises."
"Well, it does me. I'm an earth creature. I want to get out and roll in the grass—ow-woof! Let's go out in the country."
"All right!" said Teresa, springing up. "Anything to get out of this beastly posing. Now, remember, you stopped this of your own accord."
"So I did." Basil enveloped her in his arms and bit her neck. She cried out and pushed herself away from him.
"Basil! I'm sure that will leave a mark, and you know I'm going out to dinner to-night!"
She fled to the mirror, and it reflected an angry countenance.
"No, it won't, and, if it does, it will only make you look nicer. There—forgive me, will you?—I didn't mean to hurt."
"You're so rough," sighed Teresa. She took off the chip hat, and began changing her dress. "Lock the door, will you? Some of your ladies might come bursting in."
"My ladies!" scoffed Basil.
He locked the door, and came back with some letters in his hand to hinder Teresa from dressing. To divert his attention, she snatched one of the letters—a fat grey envelope, addressed in a dashing hand.
"There—love letters again! I'm going to open it!"
"All right. But I thought we agreed not to read each other's letters? How pretty you are to-day, Teresa! I must paint you in a low dress—something blue—that white skin of yours, with the ivory undertone"
Teresa had opened the grey envelope, and looked at the signature,
"Isabel Perry! Now, why should she write to you, Basil? You didn't tell me"
"Don't know. I've never had a letter from her before. About the picture, I daresay."
"Picture! Eight pages about the picture! Shall I read it?"
"Oh, if you want to. But perhaps you might let me read it first, as it's addressed to me."
Basil was "perfectly good-humoured and unembarrassed. He looked amused.
"No, I shall read it to you," said Teresa, sitting down half-dressed and glancing rapidly over the first pages. "The interesting parts, that is. There's a lot about the motor and the roads and the people—she pretends to be bored—'I sit with a veil over my face, and he sits beside me with goggles on, and he could not see me even if I had no veil and he no goggles'—how silly! She's a femme incomprise, is she? 'Can't tell you how many thousands of miles distant I feel from these people, stupefied by so many hours' rushing through the fresh air, or by food and drink and their own physical well-being. … But, oh, the glory of the sea, the wind, the clouds. …' She loves nature, does she? …'I've thought of you a good deal, and of our talks. You have the gift of making one say more than one means to say, but you understand so well that it makes it all right. Who taught you all you know about life? I am older than you, I've seen a good deal of the world, and yet you are so much surer than I, of yourself and of other people. I'm sure of nothing, except that I cannot go on as I am living now. I don't know what is before me, but already I feel as though I had left all this crowd of people that are despoiling me of my life far behind, as though I were flying along the road to freedom—Freedom! It may be only death. I'm in a machine that's beyond my control, and who knows what the next turn of the road may bring? Oh, God! if I could only give myself to something entirely worthy, if I could get away from this trivial self of mine. …'"
Teresa's voice faltered. She threw the letter down, and sat looking at the floor, her lips pouting with an injured expression. Basil was silent, and when she glanced up at him she saw that he looked uncomfortable. He took the letter, folded it, and put it in his pocket.
"Why does she write to you like that?"
He shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know. She's an expressive person."
"Expressive! She's hysterical. But you aren't her father-confessor, are you?"
"Don't be foolish, Teresa. Why shouldn't she talk or write to me, if she feels like it? She's an interesting woman, and she's unhappy."
"Of course she's unhappy. It's very easy for a woman who has a heap of money, good looks, and a kind husband to be unhappy. To be contented would be simply commonplace. It would prove that she had no soul at all. And, besides, what could she talk about to other men?"
Basil was grave. "She isn't a trivial woman," he said. "You don't understand that temperament, Teresa. She is really unworldly, she has a lot of energy which she can't put into ordinary channels"
"Very well, but she needn't employ it on you!" Teresa got up and flung herself into his arms. "She is in love with you! That's what she means by 'something entirely worthy.' …"
"You little idiot! … What's the matter with you lately, Teresa? When did you get this idea that women fall in love with me? They don't! And even if they did, it wouldn't matter. You know perfectly well I never think of anyone but you."
She made no answer, but clung to him, and he began coaxing her, with half-laughing, tender phrases that showed a distinct pleasure in her jealousy.
"I believe you put it on, simply to please me," he suggested.
"No!" she said passionately.
••••••
In an hour they were in a train, going out through the smoky tunnel, and the bleak rectangular outskirts of the city, into the fields. The car was almost empty. They sat hand-in-hand. Teresa's face was full of light and colour; her narrow eyes gleamed joyously; she leaned against Basil's shoulder with a soft nestling of her pliant body. They opened the window as soon as they were out of the tunnel, and the spring air blew in upon them, mixed with cinders which nobody minded. Then came the smell of the sea. They got out at a smart suburban station and walked away from it, over a hill, through budding woods and newly turned fields and banks of green grass mixed with shelves of rock. The blue sky was dappled all over now with cloud-feathers that melted and formed anew every moment. Teresa sang:
"'Im wunderschönen Monat Mai,
Als alle Knospen sprangen,
Da ist in meinem Herzen
Die Liebe ausgegangen.
"Im wunderschönen Monat Mai,
Als alle Vögel sangen,
Da hab' ich ihr gestanden
Mein Sehnen und Verlangen.'"
Their eyes met. The song was enwrapped with memories of the first days of their marriage. Heine had been the poet of their love.
They lunched gaily together at a little restaurant on the edge of a bay, a sort of road-house with a stuffy parlour and one slow waiter, like a winter-frozen fly, waiting for warm weather to unlimber. They were alone on the wide verandah overlooking the wet flats from which the tide was still receding; and they clasped hands and even kissed one another across the little table. After lunch they found a warm nook by the side of a rock in an old apple orchard. Before them were only silent fields and woods and the smooth blue Sound. The apple trees were in bloom, a mist of pink spread over the hillside, and white petals drifted down on the grass with every soft breath of wind. Teresa sat on the ground, leaning against the rock. Basil lay with his head in her lap, and his grey hat over his eyes. She hummed dreamily:
"Es war ein König im Thule," and prevented him from going to sleep by teasing him with a feathery grass. She had taken off her hat; the sun shone down on her through the pink blossoms; her eyes were as blue as the sea or sky, and expressed a wistful happiness.
"What are you thinking about?" asked Basil, looking up sleepily, and imprisoning her hand with the tormenting grass.
"Nothing very wise."
"'Que m'importe que tu sols sage?
Sois belle, et sois triste!'"
"Yes, but you don't like me when I'm triste."
"I like you any way, my child, any way—if only you'll talk to me, and tell me why and wherefore"
"One can't talk all the time. It always makes me sad to be happy, for then you dread change, and everything changes."
"Dearest, would you like to go on as we are, then?"
"Yes, forever. I don't want anything more, nor anything less."
"You want whatever you have. You didn't want me till you got me! Life has to be forced on you—then you like it well enough!"
"But no more of it—I don't want any more. I'm afraid of you, you're so omnivorous! You're always wanting something new, always being interested in new people. Some day you'll be tired of me."
He laughed. "It's much more apt to be the other way round. I'm surer than you are. I lived for thirty years in the world before I saw you, and never saw another woman that I wanted for more than a moment. When I saw you I knew I wanted you forever. But you didn't want me."
"I want you now, though! And I don't want anyone else to have even a thought of you—I hate to think that some women have memories of you. I don't like it that women write to you, and tell you their secrets"
She broke off suddenly and laughed.
"What an idiot I'm getting to be! You hardly know me, do you? What would my Aunt Sophy say if she could hear me? … No, I know what I said is absurd, from any reasonable point of view. And I am reasonable, you know. And so I admit that I'm glad I married an attractive man, and that it's necessary other women should be more or less interested in him, and he in them. I don't want to be a jealous idiot. I want you to be perfectly free. I like you partly because you know the world—it amuses me—your experience. I don't mind your peccadilloes one bit. …" Again she stopped for a moment.
"I know you don't," said Basil.
"Wait a bit—do you? Of course you prefer to think I don't, and I prefer to think I don't—so you bring your arguments to bear on my reason, and I bring my reason to bear on your arguments, and we agree, and are as jolly as possible. … But there's another person in me that's quite different. You are responsible for that person—she never existed till you insisted that she should be—and she makes me very uncomfortable. She's responsible for my moods and silly jealousies of women that I know you don't care for. I am rational, but she is blind instinct. I know you belong to me, but she doubts it. I believe that even if another woman had a physical attraction for you, it wouldn't touch your feeling for me—but she would go wild at the thought of it. So look out for her. I am reasonable, as I said, but she"
"What an imagination you have!" laughed Basil, and he kissed her wrist. "Are you trying to make me believe that there's primeval passion in you? I know better. You're the most charming creature in the world, one of the most intelligent, and deliciously pretty, and thoroughly civilised. I don't believe for a minute in this other person you describe. You will dramatise everything! You don't care enough about me to be jealous, even with good reason. I only wish you did."
"All right," said Teresa composedly. "Give me a cigarette. What a heavenly day! What a delightful world! I love you, Basil. I do think I'm one of the luckiest people alive."