Daphne in Fitzroy Street/Chapter 10

HEN Daphne promised to sit for the sketch club (in that white and gold gown) Doris had, for the moment, been forgotten. A pang of remorse pierced sharply the elder sister’s heart when she had closed the door on that comb-playing company and found herself alone with the bare attic, and the soft regular breathing of the sleeping Dormouse.

“Life is very difficult,” she told herself, standing rigid in her gold and white and the spacious bareness of her kingdom. “If the Dormouse is going to feel like a hindrance—that means there’s something wrong.”

Undressing in the bigness that almost seemed publicity, she asked herself whether any of her sketches—the pictures of saints that girls had begged for their paroissiens, the satirical sketches that had convulsed submissive classes—might, after all, be marketable. One could—insisted a swift-motioned Daphne divesting herself of petticoats—one could but try. Anyhow, the child was the centre of her universe, the one thing that must not be neglected or set aside. If she could not sit for the sketch club without neglecting the child—well sitting for sketch clubs was not her vocation. That was all. White-night-dressed, brushing out her red hair, she stiffened her limbs to rhyme with her new courage that sprang to life at the instance of that sleeping ball of soft related childhood. She would, whatever happened, she would be all in all to the child. She would be more patient, more resourceful. After all, there was the allowance. If she wrote to Cousin Jane—asked for Uncle Hamley’s address? His firm’s name? Cousin Jane was always down before anyone else. It was her place, as a charity-supported worm. She would get the letter. She would not betray. Wouldn’t she? She should not have the chance. Tobacconists, Daphne’s reading of detective novels assured her, received letters for a consideration. Her letters should be received. Cousin Jane should have a chance of betraying—nothing. She fell asleep in the act of composing the affecting letter that should draw from Cousin Jane the address of her guardian, and should at the same time insist on sympathy and silence. Then swift across the soft incoming tide of sleep came the memory of that night when a desolate woman had leaned across a corpse and spoken as the naked soul speaks.

“Poor Cousin Jane,” said Daphne. “Suppose I’d asked her to run away with me. I might have, quite safely. She never would have.”

And there Youth spoke of Age with all the cocksureness of Youth and all Youth’s inaccuracy. It was the next day that Daphne went through her portfolio of sketches, selected the least unworthy and spent a shilling on May’s “Press Guide.” Then, wearing her quietest hat and gown, with Doris in one hand and the sketches in the other, she went down into the City to call on editors. Someone had said last night that the only way to sell your stuff for magazines was to call on editors yourself. The students had talked enough when once it was realised that Daphne was not a prig but a dear. And someone else had said that the worse your work was the better editors liked it. This in itself encouraged Daphne. The point of view had been mainly commercial. There had been plenty of shop talked, but there had been no talk of the aims of art or the dignity of art, or of anything but the application of art as a means to getting one’s bread and butter. Only the tall, dark man, who had been unable or unwilling to dissociate himself from his charcoal dust, the man who had looked at her through half-closed eyes, had scowled a little, and muttered something about crossing-sweepers and rotten work. But nobody had paid any attention to him, least of all Daphne. He was the only one, she remembered resentfully, who had seemed able to go on, to the very end of the evening, not realising at all how nice she was.

She went out gaily, the child stepping beside her. She returned heavy footed with the child dragging after. And the brown paper parcel of sketches, whose string had been untied so often and so wearily, had grown strangely heavy to carry. The three double flights of stairs seemed like the ascent of Mont Blanc. They sat down on the lowest step of the second flight to rest. At least Daphne did. Both Doris’s shoelaces had come undone, and she planted a brown foot on her sister’s lap.

“Dorothy Draggletail,” she said, gloomily.

“We’ll have tea directly we get up,” said Daphne, knotting swiftly.

“Tired, Doris?” a voice from above called suddenly, and a round, dark head showed above the banisters overhead. “Hold on. I’ll come and carry you up.” Then boots on the stairs louder and nearer.

“Here’s the elephant.” He hoisted the child to his shoulder. “The signorina looks fairly fagged,” he went on; “if she will crawl slowly up to my unworthy dwelling the tea will just be made by the time the light of her presence dawns upon it. Yes, really. I’ve got it all ready.”

“But we can’t be always having tea with you,” said Daphne.

“Oh, yes we can,” Doris assured him. “Quite easily we can.”

“Well, today’s my birthday,” said Claud, as though that settled it, and went off three steps at a time.

So there was tea, without the trouble of getting it, and a chair easier than her own chair, and a large, handsome, friendly boy dealing with tea-things in a clumsy yet adequate way. And Doris having kicked her shoes off and chosen the largest piece of cake, “crummled” it on the table and breathed into her cup unreproved.

“I’ve been trying to sell my drawings,” said Daphne, suddenly. “Oh, editors are hateful—even when you see them—and when you don’t, and you generally don’t—they’re fiends, I believe.”

“I know. But I didn’t know you drew.”

“I don’t; only someone said last night that the worse a thing was the better. For selling.”

“May I?” He laid a large hand on the parcel.

“I’d rather you didn’t. Much rather.”

“Have some more tea,” he said, taking the hand away again.

“Very well then. Look. But you’ll only laugh.” He did not laugh when he had undone the paper and looked at the half-dozen drawings. And Daphne would rather he had laughed. He looked at the drawings carefully, laid them down and in silence poured out more tea.

“I suppose they’re no good,” she broke a quite uncomfortable silence to say.

“You—you want to study a bit,” he said, slowly.

“I see,” said Daphne from the depths.

“There’s a lot of thought in them, and humour and all that. But you have to learn drawing, don’t you know, the same as any other trade.”

“I see,” she said again, from deeper depths; and did.

The drawings lay accusingly face upward. She put out a hand to turn them over, but before she could do it the charcoal covered man who had looked at her and not liked her, the man who had talked about crossing-sweepers and rot, was in the room. He seemed not so much to enter as suddenly to be there. She drew back her hand. She did not want to claim those drawings, or indeed to lead attention to them in any way.

The newcomer bowed with a carelessness that did not lack courtesy and turned to Claud. “Your door was open. So I knew you were in. I say, shall you be seeing Vorontzoff, tonight?”

“Most likely.”

“Just tell him I’ve got him a studio. I’ll meet him at the Mont Blanc tomorrow at two and take him down there. I’ve had the things moved in that he left at my place, and I’ll lend a hand getting them straight. That’s all. What’s all this rubbish?”

Daphne would not put out a hand to shield her drawings. Claud, instead, put out a ready, kindly lie.

“They’re by a friend of Miss Carmichael’s,” he said. “I don’t know whether you ought to look at them.”

“I have looked at them, thank you,” said the other; and indeed he had swept them one and all with quickly moving fingers and a swift withering glance.

“Mr. Winston is mistaken,” said Daphne; “the drawings are mine.”

It was as well that she did, for as she spoke Doris, hastily swallowing an incredibly large mouthful of cake, said:

“They aren’t any old friend’s drawings. They’re Daffy’s very own—and they’re perfectly beautiful. So there.”

“I’m sorry,” said the man, “that I said they were rubbish. But they are.”

Daphne recognised the voice of truth.

“But if I were to study?” she said, a new note of respect in her voice, “to study very hard?”

“You really want to know? Well, I’m afraid you’d never do the least bit of good if you studied from now till Doomsday. They’re no good at all. You chuck it and try something else.”

“Don’t mind him, Miss Carmichael,” said Claud, very uncomfortable indeed. “There’s room for all sorts in the Temple of Art.”

“There’s not room for these,” said the stranger.

“Oh, but I do mind him,” said Daphne at the same moment, “because I know he knows.”

The stranger looked straight at her for the first time with eyes not narrowed.

“Couldn’t I,” she went on, “if I worked very hard—do things good enough to sell? Some of the things in magazines are very bad.”

“If you want to sell your soul for tuppence-half-penny it only shows that that’s all your soul’s worth.”

“Oh,” said Claud, “when Henry begins to talk about his soul”

Daphne seemed to sweep him out of the conversation.

“You mean?” She turned to Henry.

“I mean that if one deliberately does bad work for money, one does sell one’s soul, whether one’s P.R.A. or an old charwoman. There must be something that you can do well, and not despise yourself for doing. What you’ve got to do is to find out what, and then do it. And don’t let anything else in the world interfere with your doing it. You put that stuff in the fire, and never touch a pencil again except to do your accounts. What’s the good of getting a little money if you can’t look yourself in the face afterward?”

“I don’t think I like you,” said Doris suddenly.

“You’re not the only one, princess,” said Henry, turning dark eyes on the child.

“Why do you call me that?”

“Because you are, of course.”

“You’re not a prince,” Doris retorted.

“Don’t be rude,” whispered Daphne.

“A statement of the obvious isn’t rudeness,” said Henry; “it’s quite clear that I’m not a prince.”

“Daffy and I have got two fairy princes already, even if you were,” Doris informed him.

“I congratulate you. Good-bye, princess.” He took the child’s hand and kissed it. And immediately was not there any more. There is no other way to describe the utter abruptness of the man’s entrances and exits.

“He’s a rum chap,” said Claud, apologetically. “I’m sorry he was so rude.”

“He wasn’t. He only said what he thought. Don’t you think that’s rather fine?”

“It’s very unusual, thank goodness.” Claud was still disturbed and displeased.

“Well, I’m not offended, anyhow. Is he a great artist?”

“Well, some people think a lot of him. Oh, he can draw all right! And his work’s sincere—and that’s something.”

“I should think it would be,” said Daphne, thoughtfully.

“I don’t think,” Doris announced, “that I’ll have any more tea, thank you; and I don’t think I don’t like him as much as I thought I didn’t. But he’s not a prince like you are.” She turned to Claud.

“I’m afraid you’ve labelled yourself once for all,” Daphne hastened to say.

“I suppose the world is full of princes—to Doris,” said Claud.

“No, it isn’t,” the child insisted, “only you and the one we met in the train, the story-telling one. I think he might be a prince, that black one, if he was to try very hard!”

“I don’t think he’ll ever try hard enough,” said Claud. “He doesn’t want to be a prince either. He wants to be an artist. And he is, confound him.”

“What he said about my drawings was true enough, though, wasn’t it? Doris says you’re a prince. Princes cannot lie—they’re like George Washington.”

“Well, then.”

“Well?”

“Well, he is right. He generally is, the brute. Only no one else would have been such a brute as to say it as he did. I meant to break it to you gently.”

“I hate gentle breakages,” Daphne smiled full at him, and the words lost their sting.

“I say,” he said, instantly, “since we’re cousins, don’t you think you might call me Claud? My relations do—my other relations, I mean. Everyone else calls me Bill. Will you?”

“Yes, Claud,” said Daphne, unhesitatingly.

“I shall call you Bill, like everyone else,” said Doris, superior.

“And”—Claud was divided between a fear of going too far, too fast, and a conviction that it is good to strike while the iron is hot—“what may I call you?”

suggested Doris, kindly anxious to advise and assist.

“Too long,” said Claud, promptly; and the two laughed, and she said:

“Daphne, I suppose, cousin.”

“I do think cousins are such darlings,” said the child, snuggling her black head close to him. “Don’t you, Daff?”

That evening Green Eyes came, and the two girls talked in the quiet of the room where Doris slept and the water in the great cisterns interjected splashings and gurglings into their talk. And their talk was of work and of work and of work again. And also of Henry, when Daphne engineered it on to that line.

“Oh, no, he’s not the only one who believes in his art and himself; only the rest don’t make themselves so jolly disagreeable over it. And then, of course, he’s not a student any more. And he knows all the big painters. I can’t think why he doesn’t stick to them and keep away from us students.”

“You don’t like him?”

“Oh, I like him right enough. But he can be a fiend. Prides himself on saying just what he thinks, and then every now and then he’ll say anything he can lay his tongue to—whether he thinks it or not—for the simple pleasure of quarrelling with the person he happens to be with.”

“I think he’s interesting,” said Daphne.

“All girls do,” the other answered dryly. “It’s only because he’s rude to them.”

“He hasn’t been rude to me.”

“Give him time. You’ll know it when he is.”

“I shouldn’t think Mr. Winston was ever rude to anyone.”

“Oh—isn’t he! He’s rude in that casual easy way of his; if he doesn’t happen to be interested. But the more the other one’s interested the more he hits.”

“I do think the world’s full of interesting people,” said Daphne, “cramful. And they’re nice, too.”

“Some of them,” said Green Eyes. “You have to be careful who you trust.”

“I’d rather die than do that,” said Daphne, strongly. “You have either to think everyone’s nice till you know they aren’t, or that everyone’s horrid, till you find out that they’re decent. I’d rather believe that everyone’s nice. Nearly everyone is.”

“You’ll hurt yourself if you think everyone nice and everyone interesting. Because they aren’t, and when you find that out it’ll hurt. It’s safer to mistrust everyone.”

“Do you mistrust everyone?”

“Yes.”

“And do you,” said Daphne, slowly, “tell everyone this?”

“I should think not! I don’t know why I’m telling you. They all think I’m so jolly and friendly, and undiscriminating. They haven’t the sense to see that I’m simply nice to everyone because anyone may have the chance of doing you an ill-turn some day, and it’s as well to be on the safe side. I don’t trust one of the lot.”

“You’re trusting me, now,” said Daphne.

“Oh, well, everyone’s a fool sometimes,” said Green Eyes, hardly.

“Everyone’s wise sometimes,” said Daphne. “I do like it—your telling me things you don’t tell everybody.”

“Pleases your vanity, doesn’t it? I suppose you know that you’re as vain as a pretty peacock? Oh, it becomes you.”

“Oh, I’m not,” said Daphne. “How can you! And I don’t think it’s that. I’m sure it isn’t only that. Do you know I’ve never had a girl to talk to except the girls at school? And I never knew a young man—to speak to—till two months ago.”

“No wonder you find them interesting – and nice.”

“You’ve told me things. I’ll ask you something. Are young men really more interesting than girls, or do they only just seem so?”

“Of course they are—to us.”

“It’s not—not quite nice, do you think?—to find them all so interesting. It ought to be only one.”

Green Eyes laughed. “Not nice? It’s nature. The One will come fast enough, and then for a little time all men else will be but shadows, as the silly song says.”

“I thought,” said Daphne, low-voiced, “that he had come. But it’s two months ago—and he’s never written.”

“And other people aren’t shadows?”

“I think they would be,” said Daphne, trying to be honest, “if he were here. I don’t mean that I care the least bit for anyone else. I don’t; I couldn’t. Only, people are—interesting.”

“Have you ever let a man kiss you?” The question was abrupt, yet somehow not to be resented.

“Yes—once.”

“And did you like it?”

“I—isn’t it rather horrid to talk about things like that?”

“No. But don’t tell me if you’d rather not.”

“I will—I’ll try to. I don’t know whether I liked it. It seemed quite right then. And it was as if—as if there was no one in the world but us—and he didn’t exactly kiss me. It just happened as if nothing else was possible.”

“I know,” said Green Eyes; and plainly she did. “And then?”

“I’ve never heard from him. I’ve been very unhappy. Because you see, if I was never going to see him again it made it all different—about the kiss, you know.”

“You thought he loved you?”

“I didn’t think at all.”

“Some men kiss every girl who’ll let them. And half the girls I know will let anybody kiss them. There was a Slade dance once, and two University College men bet that they’d kiss all their partners.”

“Oh!” breathed Daphne, on a note of horror.

“And when they came to compare notes they found they’d each kissed all their partners except three, and they were the same three.”

“Do you mean to say men tell those sort of things?”

“Of course they do—and that’s one of the first things you’ve got to learn.”

“I don’t believe,” said Daphne, “that he would have told anyone.”

“Of course you don’t. That’s just it. If one cares one never does believe it. And there you are.”

“I hope,” said the girl who found men so interesting, “that it’s only art students who are so hateful.”

“Those two at the dance weren’t art students. They were just ordinary college students. Don’t you trust any of them. That’s all.”

“If you mean don’t let them kiss me,” said Daphne loftily, “you needn’t be afraid. I’m not likely to.”

“You see,” the other went on, slowly, “I didn’t understand when I first went to the Slade. I thought a kiss meant—everything it ought to mean. I don’t want anyone to hurt you like that.”

“I’m afraid”—Daphne got hold of the other girl’s hand —– “I’m afraid you’re very unhappy.”

“Not now. But I have been. Light the lamp, will you? I must go. And I don’t like having to make you think differently of people. And you’re so horribly trustful.”

“I’m afraid I always shall be,” said Daphne, “but not about kissing people. I think all that’s simply hateful. Any way, I’ve got a friend I can trust haven’t I?”

“Well, so have I, it appears,” said Green Eyes.

She went, and Daphne, left alone, felt a little sick. So much gilt had so roughly and so suddenly been scraped from the gingerbread.

“But I don’t think she can be right,” she told herself. “She’s soured, I expect. Someone must have hurt her very much. But I do like her.”

The next day Daphne rose with the stern determination not to be interested in anyone but Doris; and Doris, in consequence, had lessons. Lessons with Daphne were a complete novelty, and therefore, as complete a success.

The child had written six times, “My cat is pink,” an interesting sentence and one giving food for reflection, and that not of the trite, repugnant kind suggested by the abstract reflections which usually head the pages of copybooks. “Be virtuous and” on one page “you will be happy” on the next lent wings to no such romance as lay for the child behind that plain statement of the colour of her cat.

“I haven’t got a cat,” she said, “but if I had, oh, how pink it should be, and I should know why and I should tell you, and it would be our deep and loyally secret.”

“I know the reason why your cat was pink,” said Daphne; “just write it once more, that’ll make seven, for luck—write that it was pink, to make quite sure, and then I’ll tell you exactly how it came to be pink, and what particular kind of pink it became.”

“And when it became to be pink, and where it was when it became to be it?”

“Yes, my Dormouse, every single pink thing I can think of about your cat I’ll ten you the minute you’ve put the K to pink. No, don’t put it in Cat.”

“You said put K,” said the child, labouring with stiff, warm, inky fingers. “I’ll put a C as well—it makes it more Catty, I think. Kcat—and may I put an extry K to pink —– to make it as pink as ever it can be? Oh, here’s someone come to ask us to tea again.”

“It’s only me, miss,” said the sailor-hatted charwoman. “It was only to ask you if you knew when Mr. Claud’ll be in, and where ’e is.”

“No, of course I don’t,” said Daphne. “Why should I?”

“Young ladies often does,” said Mrs. Delarue, “especially when cousins.”

“I’ll give him a message when he comes in,” said Daphne, “if you like.”

“That ain’t no good, miss, thanking you kindly. ’E’s wanted at once, an’ Mr. Henry said ’e’d hang me to the stoodio stove pipe if I come back without ’im.”

“Don’t go back; then,” was the obvious suggestion.

“I ’ave a ’eart,” said Mrs. Delarue, with dignity, “and a conscience. I couldn’t recognise it to my conscience leaving ’im there in that state of blood—and is language!”

“Blood?” said Daphne, aghast.

“He never will have no cleaning,” said Mrs. Delarue, “but yesterday ’im being out I took down ’is big looking-glass to dust behind it—such a muck an’ crock you never see, except it might be down a harea-grating, and all the letters ’e never answers stuffed down behind to ’arbour all sorts.”

“But the blood?”

“Oh, don’t you ’urry me,” said the woman, her voice as flat as her feet. “I’m a coming to the blood if you give me time. ’E says it was my doing, not fixing the glass up again—but if you leave a nail in forever it stands to reason it ain’t going to ’old forever. So down it all come when ’e was a shoving ’is letters in behind the frame as usual, and smashed to hatoms on ’is foot and the blood spurted out all over.”

“For goodness sake fetch a doctor,” cried Daphne, in extreme and disgusted impatience.

“Much as my place is worth,” said the charwoman calmly. “He’ll be all right. Only wants tying up. It’s a errand ’e wants done and ’e won’t let me—and”

“He’ll bleed to death,” said Daphne. “Some one ought to go at once.”

“Thank you, miss,” said the woman, in tones of relief. “I was sure you’d say so when you come to think it over. Don’t stop to put your gloves on. It’s only just down opposite the Omopatty Orspittle in Great Ormonde Street.”

“You expect me to go?”

“Thank you kindly, miss—yes—and I wouldn’t lose no time. You could go of ’is errand. And if you’ve got a bit of clean rag, for there’s not a stitch in ’is place that ain’t thick with chalk and charcoal. I’ll stay along of the little girl and get her her bit of dinner while you’re gone.”

“You’d much better go yourself,” Daphne urged, in intense indecision, “and get a doctor.”

“Not to have my head sworn off I don’t,” said Mrs. Delarue firmly, “so I tell you.”

The woman would not go back. So much was plain. If she went, it would be a liberty, an intrusion. She did not want to take liberties with that man. She did not like him or the detached way he had of looking at people. But suppose he bled to death. She would not like anyone to bleed to death—not even people who half shut their eyes when they looked at you. And the youth in her leapt to meet the little adventure—an injured man, a ministering angel. . . But of course she couldn’t go. It was absurd.

“You’d best be starting, miss,” said Mrs. Delarue, as though everything were settled. “Would you like Mrs. Delarue to stay with you, Dormouse?” Daphne was pulling out drawers in a hunt for handkerchiefs.

“Yes—very,” said Doris, cheerfully. “She’ll tell me about when she was a little girl—won’t you?”

“Yes, lovey—I’ll be bound she will,” said Mrs. Delarue. “If I was you, miss, I should ’urry. You don’t know what a hour may bring forth, when it comes to bleeding, more so when ’e’s swearing like ’e is, which always makes the blood run free, as well I know by my husband’s nose.”

“Does he swear at you?” Daphne asked, spearing on a hat with hasty hat-pins.

“Till he’s black in the face sometimes. Not that I ever give him cause.”

“Then he’s not a gentleman,” said Daphne, definitely.

“Oh, miss, ’e is now,” the tone was of injured protest, “the very way he swears shows it. Never a low word—only gentleman’s swearing.”

“I shall fetch a doctor,” said Daphne, firmly.

“I wouldn’t, not if I was you,” said Mrs. Delarue. “Leastways see ’im first. I don’t ’old with doing anything for nothing—and ’e’d send ’im off with a flea in is ear as likely as not. Best go quiet and find out what ’is errand is.”

“Who says I ain’t got a ’eart,” she added to herself, as the stairs yielded hollow echoes to the quick patter of Daphne’s descending feet. “’Oo says I ’aven’t a eye for a likeness? I’d a got her over to get acquainted with ’im one way or the other even if ’e ’adn’t ’appened to ’ave hurted of ’is foot. Well, then, what did ’e want to draw fifty little pictures of her red ’ead all on one bit of paper for?”

“When you was a little girl?” said Doris encouragingly.

“When I was a little girl,” said Mrs. Delarue, smartly, “I ’ad to wash my ’ands an’ face thorough, and comb my ’air out afore I ’ad my dinner, same as what you’re agoing to do, miss. See?”