The Derelict (Bottome, Century Magazine, 1917)/Chapter 5
CHAPTER V
Emily could do what she disliked better than most people can. For one thing, she very seldom did it, because she was almost always sure that what she disliked was wrong. On the rare occasions when she accepted a challenge to her will she did it with a force which overrode not only her own dislike, but the dislike of everybody else who was involved in it.
It was in one of these infrequent moments that she accepted Marcel Dupin's criticism. It broke against her most cherished faith that her love was helping Geoffrey to paint. She could hardly bear to believe it possible that she hindered him. How could love, the redemptive, assuaging passion, be a thing to stab your artistic toe against? It did not make her think less of Geoffrey, she was too fond of him for that, but it made her think rather less of men. She said to Mrs. Dering, in a flash of impatience:
"I can't understand men. There is a certain coarseness—" She left her sentence vague.
"There ought to be," said Mrs. Dering, mysteriously.
Emily left this cryptic remark alone; she did not wish to have to think her mother coarse.
Emily, like everybody else, knew that what she wanted was truth; it had n't occurred to her that what she did n't want was truth as well. She made a new plan, and sent for Geoffrey. He came with an eagerness which set her heart at rest.
They sat hand in hand on the sofa in Emily's studio. Emily wore a cloudy blue dress embroidered with silver lilies.
"I 've thought of something wonderful," she explained—"something I want you to do for me. Will you, Geoffrey?"
"Blind?" asked Geoffrey. He took her in his arms and kissed her.
He knew that he would probably do it blind even if she gave him explanations. Emily was unaware that she loaded her dice before she played them; she never meant to be unfair.
"Of course I 'll tell you first," she said, returning his embrace. "Only you must be good and listen. After you left us yesterday Marcel Dupin told me something which I'm horribly afraid was true. He said you were n't painting as well as you did, and that it was my fault."
Emily paused. She rather hoped, after all, that Geoff would laugh at the idea, and that it would n't be her duty to do what she did n't like; but he sat with his eyes lowered and said nothing.
"He said all kinds of strange things," Emily went on a little hurriedly,—she was trying not to be disappointed in Geoffrey,—"and I thought them all over afterward, Geoffrey darling. For a little while I want you to go away from me."
Geoffrey said:
"Where?" Any other Amberley would have said "Damn!" and "Damn!" would have been better than "Where?"
"I think it had better be St. Ives," Emily said firmly, "because mother would like us to take a cottage there this summer, and you could find one for us in your spare time. And it's full of the most wonderful bits to paint."
Geoffrey cleared his throat. He had never been able to make Emily understand how totally useless other people's wonders are in the field of art.
"It's too far away for week-ends," Emily went on, "so that it would be a real separation. And you must take Fanny there and paint her."
"I must do what!" cried Geoffrey. "Good God, Emily, you 're mad! Why, in Heaven's name, saddle me with that girl!"
Emily had expected a little resistance, but she was startled at the vehemence of Geoffrey's exclamation. It seemed almost a pity to have to make him do what he resented. Still, she knew she would have to make him do it.
"It must be Fanny," she explained patiently. "Of course you can do St. Ives, too. But I saw what Marcel Dupin meant. You really are a portrait-painter, and you must have, at any rate, to start with a subject that perfectly appeals to you. Fanny does appeal to you. I saw how good she was for your work from the sketch you did of her."
"Well, let me wait till I come back," Geoffrey urged. "Fanny 'll keep. I don't want that girl on my hands; she might fall into all sorts of mischief. And how the deuce am I to manage her? I can't do it; honestly, I can't, Emily!"
Emily smiled gently.
"You don't know how wonderful you are, dearest," she said inexorably. "Fanny came back from the country this morning; she is n't really strong yet. The whole thing will fit in perfectly; besides, I don't want Marcel Dupin to see her. He is just the kind of man who might be bad for Fanny. I want her taken out of his way. You will help her far more than you know. The quiet companionship of a man who respects women will be like another life to her. You realize, dearest, how utterly I trust you?"
Geoffrey groaned; he realized it.
"Look here," he said, "I 'll agree to any plan you like, Timbuctoo, the Scilly Isles, Clapham Junction, but, for Heaven's sake, Emily, come with me! Marry me! Don't send me away alone, not now."
Emily was tenderness itself, but she was quite inflexible. She was secretly a little relieved to see how much Geoffrey disliked her plan. What they both disliked so much must be very good for them. She bound the sacrifice with chains to the horns of the altar. It is very difficult to see that no one has the least right to this form of sacrifice unless the only victim is oneself.
Emily did not see it; she knew she was going to miss Geoffrey, and she cried a little, pleasantly, against his shoulder. Geoffrey did n't cry; he urged and implored her to change her mind. And Emily kissed him through her tears, and said how glad they would always be that they had n't been impatient and studied personal happiness at the expense of saving a soul alive. Together they would see Fanny through. Geoffrey's pictures would convince the world and the Amberleys of his genius, and then they would have plenty of time to get the house properly furnished and the wedding arranged.
A hurried wedding sullied an ideal.
"Because we know the highest, truest type of human love," she explained, "we have a great responsibility to show it to the world, with all its dignity and loveliness fresh upon it; and then even more I feel we have deep responsibility to Fanny."
A responsibility to the downtrodden Fanny was far plainer than a responsibility to the upright Geoffrey. It was plainer even to Geoffrey. He gave up argument and fell back upon simple invective.
"I won't be good to her," he asserted. "I hate her. I always did hate that kind of woman and I'm not likely to like her any better for having her palmed off on me to paint when I want to be with you."
Emily explained how bad hatred was for such a woman. She said several wise and generous things about her unfortunate sisters, but she had come up against something quite immutable in Geoffrey. He disliked the whole subject and said so. He'd go to St. Ives and paint Fanny if he must, but he'd be hanged if he'd help her.
Emily had to be contented with this. She wondered that men's hearts could be so hard, and had no idea that her safety depended upon Geoffrey's ability to keep his heart hard enough. She kindled the intensity of his love for her, and then sent him away.
On the steps outside he met Fanny coming in, and scowled at her. Afterward he thought of that look as the wickedest act he had ever committed. Fanny gave him in return a bold, unwavering stare; but she had flushed before she stared.
Emily had spent a most satisfactory week-end with Fanny. They had taken walks in the woods, and she had opened her heart to Fanny. Fanny had followed her almost like a dog, and listened as if she were drinking in Emily's words. She had cried suddenly and noiselessly when Emily went away. She had n't, it is true, made any answering confidences to Emily; but Emily thought that on the whole it was better for Fanny not to look back upon the past, but forward into the future.
Fanny quite agreed with that. She said she never had been one to brood.
Physically she was much better. Her eyes had more light in them, and her cheeks the faintest natural color. She wore some of Emily's old clothes. They had to be taken in for her; but she looked very lovely in them, and taller than Emily. She took a large arm-chair opposite Emily and asked if she might smoke.
"If we 're to talk," she explained, "I'd be better with something between my teeth. I never was much of a talker."
"Dear Fanny, do just as you like," Emily murmured. "I want you always to feel perfectly comfortable with me."
"Well, you can hardly expect me to be comfortable, can you, when you 've been so good to me?" Fanny remarked unexpectedly. "It's no use pretending I can talk to you as if you were a man, is it?"
Emily was not quite sure how Fanny talked to men, so she let the subject drop.
"You really do feel better?" she asked tenderly.
"I feel all right," Fanny said; "I could do all sorts of things now."
"Well, then," said Emily, gaily, "I feel sure you can do what I particularly want. I don't think you are fit for London just yet, but my great friend Mr. Amberley is going to St. Ives, and I should like you to go there, too, so that you can act as a model for him. I have found a nice, comfortable room for you at Carbis Bay, and you can walk over to St. Ives and sit for him whenever he wants you. I know you would like to feel you are earning money and helping me at the same time."
"Will you be at Carbis Bay," Fanny asked, "or at St. Ives?" She did not seem to see any other alternative.
"I shall stay here," said Emily; "but you 'll be all right at Carbis Bay. The landlady is an old friend of mine and has children."
"Look here," said Fanny, suddenly leaning forward and touching Emily's knee with her hand, "don't you do that! You 're making a big mistake. You don't want to send Mr. Amberley away like that! you're going to marry him, are n't you?"
Emily's arched eyebrows rose a trifle ominously.
"Yes, my dear," she said. "Certainly I am going to marry him; next spring or summer, probably."
"Well, why not now?" asked Fanny, looking about her. "It can't be money."
"It is n't altogether money," Emily explained, "though Mr. Amberley would like, I think, to be earning more. It is one of my theories, dear Fanny, not to marry too prematurely, but to grow into each other's ways and ideas. I think that perfect community of tastes before marriage makes for much greater happiness afterward."
"Still, what's a theory," asked Fanny, "compared to flesh and blood?"
Emily frowned. She did n't like talking about flesh and blood.
"I don't suppose, Fanny," she said, "that you know what the love of a good man is. It is far higher and finer and more disinterested than you can imagine. Mr. Amberley loves me in an ideal way. He only wants what is best for us both; he knows that in the deepest sense of all I am his forever."
"Of course a man 'll do what you want," Fanny agreed, "while he's keen about you; that's where you get them. Still, what I say is, live and let live. No matter how funny his ideas are, a man's a man, is n't he? You can't get away from that. Besides, I should think you'd want him yourself."
Emily colored with annoyance; then she reminded herself of how little opportunity poor Fanny had had to understand any ideal relationship. No wonder her imagination had been tainted by the dingy falsities of her experience.
"My dear," Emily said patiently, "one day perhaps you will realize as you cannot do now how true men and women love. I don't blame you in the least, but will you do what I ask you meanwhile, and go down to St. Ives for a month and let Mr. Amberley paint you?"
"Oh, I 'll do what you ask me right enough," said Fanny. "Just look at the money you 've spent on me!"
That was not what Emily wanted Fanny to look at, but it was what sent Fanny to St. Ives.