Daphne in Fitzroy Street/Chapter 20

INCE the night of Henry’s first kiss Daphne had waked each morning with a cloud on the heart, that materialised as a rose of joy when she remembered him, and all he seemed to be to her, and all that she had deeply determined to be to him.

On the morning after the picnic she awoke as usual to this experience. But almost instantly the rose was obscured by cloud on cloud of remembered happenings. Colombe and Madaleine had come—two more chaperons.

St. Hilary had been at the picnic, playing the friendship for all it was worth—devoted, observant. Another watch-dog.

There had been a picnic. He had not been there. The poor Russian had been hurt. He was so kind: much of his time would be given to his hurt friend. Daphne grudged the giving. “Beast that I am,” she said, “what has happened to me?”

There had been a picnic—pleasant, amid beautiful surroundings. Her eyes were filled even now with pictures: grey Norman arches, the crumbling lichened stone of high walls, lilies on still water, the calm dignity of old elm-trees, the everlasting peace of the hills. Claud had quite obviously “told all” to Columbine. She had enjoyed it. And Madeleine, little Madeleine, who should have been a nun, she had had at her feet the prize parti of the Fitzroy Street crowd. Mr. Seddon had never relented for a moment in that insistent homage which had begun before even she had spoken to him. He had recognised the child as a Botticelli and all was over—as someone had once foretold. Madeleine, shy, angular, attractive, self-conscious, had accepted his homage. How easily things went for some people!

Everyone had been very happy yesterday. Even Green Eyes, even the boy who leaned against walls. How pleased one would be if one could be pleased so easily. Doris had been pleased, too—delighted, passionately interested, till the little live, eager soul, sated with pleasure, had sunk from pleasure to sleep. Not in her sister’s arms, though. In Cousin Jane’s. Daphne roused herself. Was she going to be jealous now? And of Cousin Jane?

“Doris,” she called, “come and wake me up!”

Doris came. But why had she to come? Why was she not there, safe cradled in her sister’s arms? Daphne would not let herself remember how she had acceded to Cousin Jane’s entreaty that the child might sleep with her. At the time Daphne had taken credit for self-denial. Now she knew that she had wished to be alone with her dreams, free to hold them to her heart without the restraining, disturbing influence of little arms that loved her.

“I shall see him tomorrow anyway. Perhaps today—if I go to see Vorontzoff,” was, however, the outcome or her musings.

But when she announce her intention of visiting the wounded Russian, Cousin Jane experienced one of her rare spasms of conscious conscientious chaperonage.

“Do you think, dear,” she asked, “that it’s quite the thing for you to go and see a gentleman—in bed, I suppose he is? I don’t want to force my company on you—but won’t you at least take the child?”

“I don’t really think it’s necessary,” said the girl.

“I don’t want to go and see horrid gentlemen in bed,” said Doris, her lip drooping. “Lady Green Eyes has got tickets for the Zoo gardens where it’s full of beautiful beasts. She said she’d take me. Green tickets they are, too,” she added as though the colour consummated the proposed outrage.

“Then—may I come with you, Daphne?” said Cousin Jane, so tenderly, so humbly, that Daphne told herself: “Well, I shall see him tomorrow anyhow”—and agreed, smilingly agreed, to the companionship that would make it impossible for her to see him today—alone, even if he were with Vorontzoff. “And of course most likely he isn’t,” she assured her disappointed heart.

So it was that she and Cousin Jane came together to the East End studio, and stood on the steps outside, and Daphne knocked.

The door was opened by a prim nurse in blue, with a crackling white apron and an aggravating cap, and an air of feeling herself to be in her own proper person the whole college of physicians and surgeons.

When she understood their errand, which was not at once, for she was as stupid as she was self-contented, she led them across the studio, smoothed over with a merciless superficial neatness, to the door of the smaller room beyond, where the sick man lay.

“He’s rather feverish,” the nurse said; “he wanders a good deal. I hardly had any sleep all night. I expected his friend to come and relieve me, but he has not come. I am very tired, and I have had no proper meals since I came.” She flung open a door, and said in loud, distinct accents, such as one might use in speaking to a deaf idiot:

“Here are some ladies to see you, Mr. Vorontzoff.”

And they passed to the bedside where the Russian lay, his heavy hair tossed on a not too clean pillow, and his hands moving restlessly on a sheet turned down and tucked in with neat, relentless tightness. His eyes fastened on Daphne.

“Ca fait mal,” he said, just as a child might have done, and caught at her hand.

“I suppose you’ll be staying some time,” the nurse said. “I shall go out for my hour’s exercise. Of course you’ll not leave him.”

She went.

“Is she gone, that terrible woman?” Vorontzoff asked, clinging to Daphne’s hand. “Yes? Permit her never to return. If she returns I die. I am very ill. I suffer atrociously. If she returns I perish.”

“Very well,” said Daphne; “she shan’t come back.”

The Russian’s eyes wandered restlessly about the room.

“Who is that?” he asked suddenly—“there, in the shadow of the door? Come where I can see you; come into the light.”

“It is my cousin,” said Daphne; and Miss Claringbold moved forward. “You met her at my rooms, don’t you remember?”

“How are you?” she said.

“I am ill,” he said pitifully. “I suffer. But—who is this—it is not your cousin. This woman has been in prison—I have been in prison, and this woman also.”

“Daphne,” said Miss Claringbold on a note of horror.

“Sh!” said Daphne. “Don’t you see how ill he is?”

“You think I do not know?” said Vorontzoff—“I who have passed so many years shut out from the free sky. I see the look in her eyes. How should I not know it? Do not be afraid, sister,” he said in tones exquisitely tender. “I too have suffered.”

“My goodness!” said Miss Claringbold, and sat down suddenly on a pile of portmanteaux.

“Must the sheet remain so fastened across my chest?” Vorontzoff inquired.

Daphne loosened it.

“It is good on your part to come to me,” he said—“and of her, your poor cousin who has suffered, it is good too. Ask her not to be afraid. Ask her to sit near to me. I desire much to drink tea. That woman of wood in the white coif cannot make tea.”

Daphne looked at Miss Claringbold, who slowly drew near to the bed, sat down on the kitchen chair, and slowly let her hand go into the one that the Russian held out for it.

“I have been in prison,” he said, “like you—not for any wrong-doing. You have never merited the prison where you suffered so long time. Nor I. It was because I spoke the truth that I suffered the loss of freedom. And you?”

“I don’t understand,” said Cousin Jane. “I have never been in prison.”

“There are prisons that have not locks nor keys, and further, no doors for escaping. My sister, I can see it in your eyes. You have lived in a life where there was no love, no freedom; where no person cared if you should suffer, none were glad of your gladness”

“Ah,” said Cousin Jane, on a deep indrawn breath.

“Where your will was not free; where another will trampled yours; where the good and the right were not the good and the right as you see them. You have borne torture at the pleasure of another. And do you tell me that you have not been in prison?”

“Ah, that,” said Cousin Jane. “How do you know all this?”

“It is written on your face. I know the handwriting of tyrants. And now you are free, and it feels so strange, like when at first in convalescence you put your feet weak to the ground. Is it not, my sister?”

“Ah,” said Cousin Jane for the third time, “you do understand.”

Then Daphne, who had lingered near the door went to make tea.

When she came back she found Miss Claringbold stroking the hand of the Russian as she was used to stroke the hand of Doris.

“We are already old friends,” said he; “she stays and takes care of me. The wooden woman shall not return. She has promised.”

“I said she shouldn’t come back,” Miss Claringbold’s fluttered voice explained, “but as for staying”

“Someone must,” said Daphne.

“Do you think I might? Stay, I mean?”

“Why not?” Daphne asked. “Or I’ll stay if you like—at any rate till we get another nurse.”

“No more wooden women,” the patient insisted. “She slept all night like a pig, I crying vainly for tea—or even, at last, for water. I will not any more of her. You will stay with me, my sister?”

“I should, if I were you,” said Daphne—“if you feel you’d not mind the bother, I mean. I’ll go home and get your things. It will be most awfully good of you.”

“I used to be considered a good nurse,” Cousin Jane murmured. “I nursed your father once, Daphne.”

“Yes,” said Daphne, pouring tea. She wished she could speak with a clear heart, see with a straight eye. Of course it was kind of Cousin Jane. Russians always expect everyone to do everything for them. And it would be good for Cousin Jane, be interesting, make her feel of importance. It would be pleasant for her to be wanted, to be needed. Yes. She tried not to hear the voice that, speaking from the back of her mind, told her that it would be a relief to her to be free once more from her cousin’s gentle chaperonage.

She made the journey to Fitzroy Street—lent Doris to Green Eyes for the rest of the day, returned with Miss Claringbold’s things, fetched food for her, and left her, oddly in charge of a Red Revolutionary, who, already was calling her by her Christian name, and further, insisting that she should call him, not merely by his, but by its affectionate diminutive.

Then Daphne was quite free. And, for once, she used her freedom as she wanted to use it. She went straight to Mr. Henry’s studio. Would he be in? Of course he would not. But she could leave a note about Vorontzoff. If he were in—but of course he would not be in—she would just tell him about the wooden woman and the substitute that Vorontzoff had found for her.

She climbed the stairs, through the reek of paraffin and musk that always clung there, crossed the bridge and found herself at his familiar door. She stood a moment before she dared to knock, dared to risk the yes or no that her heart, half asleep, feared and hoped.

It was yes.

He rose from his divan where he had been lying at full length.

“You!” he said, and her heart awoke instantly in a garden of roses and nightingales. “Dear Beautiful! I was wishing for you. But I did not think you would come. It’s so very seldom the time and the place and the loved one all together.” He held her in his arm, and shut the door with his other hand. “You never went to see Vorontzoff?”

“I should have gone this evening. I left a nurse. But now I needn’t go. You’ve been. Tell me all about it.”

Daphne, held closely by his arm, told.

“And Doris? Where is she?”

Daphne told that too.

“Good! Then for hours—five, six—you’re mine! Now we’re going to be happy. Your eyes are as blue as the sky, your mouth’s a rose, your face is a flower, your hair is threads of sunshine, and it’s all mine, mine.”

He spoke gaily, tenderly. He drew her head to his shoulder. Never before had she met in him this mood.

“Let me map out our immediate future, my Pretty,” he said. “First tea. Then I shall sit at your feet and you shall read to me. Poetry. I’ve got some dusty poetry books somewhere. Then we’ll go out to dinner—a real dinner, not Soho. Then we’ll come back here for more poetry—only we’ll make that ourselves. The world’s full of flowers and sunshine. I am eighteen and so are you, and we have loved each other since the beginning of the would,”

“And shall to the end,” said she.

“Yes, that’s part of the play—to the very end.”

“Is it only a play?” she asked, and moved from him, but he held her fast. Her resistance, resisted, set her heart beating faster.

“No, no, no—I told you I never pretend. I only say what I feel. Today I feel that there’s no one else in the world, only you and me. There’s no such thing as art. There’s no such thing as yesterday and tomorrow. There never is, by the way. There’s always only today. You love me, and I worship you. Tell me that you love me. Tell me why you love me. Tell me if it’s my beautiful eyes, or my charming smile, or my pretty manners.”

“I don’t know,” she said—“it’s—it’s you.”

“Best of answers!” he said gaily.

“How smooth you are, and slender. It is like having one’s arm round a lily stalk. Are you happy? Do you love me? Very much?”

“You know,” said Daphne, her eyes hidden in his neck.

Then there was silence.

It was he who broke the spell. It always was he. He sprang up.

“Tea,” he cried, “tea! Boil the kettle, loveliest lady on earth, while I fetch the milk.”

The programme he had sketched was carried out in every detail, and through it all he was gay, devoted, tender as she had never seen him. Every moment brought its interest, its joy. And she hugged it all to her heart with innocent abandonment.

Only when, after the long, lazy dinner of many courses in a room that was all silver and mirrors, with discreet waiters and a hushed sense of enormous luxury, they stood together in the dark outside his studio door, something caught her, and she said:

“Hadn’t I better say good night and go home now?”

“Not for all the kingdoms of the world,” he said, and his key clicked in the lock.

They entered, and she stood alone a moment in the dark while he stumbled toward the table where the candles were. Their faint blue flames burned low, burned bright. He came to her, drew out her hat-pins, gently removed hat and gloves. Then he set her in the big chair and kneeled before her.

“How quiet it is here,” she said.

“Yes,” said he. “We are all alone in the quiet night.” He sat at her feet, and laid his head on her knee, drawing her hand to lie against his face. “You were perfectly right. This is worth everything else in the world, to be alone with you, just you and me, and the world shut out.”

“I never said that.”

“You have never said anything else. Your eyes, your lips, your pretty hands, they’ve all been saying that to me from the first moment we met, and by heaven they have been right, all the time.”

“I—are you sure you mean it?”

“It’s the only thing I do mean. Ah, the nonsense I talk about art—oh, you foolish dear one, did you think I meant it? Didn’t you know it was only because I was afraid of—this—fool that I was.”

Daphne, drunk with the joy of being near her lover who loved her, was silent. But without knowing why she said presently:

“I ought to go.”

“Why should you ever go? Why can’t you be here always?”

Daphne supposed herself to be listening to an offer of marriage.

“Do you really want me?” she asked tenderly.

At that his arms went round her—and there came a knock at the door, and another—three knocks very distinct. He sprang to his feet. Daphne put up her hands to her hair. He moved toward the door, but before he could get to it it opened, and a girl came in: Green Eyes.

“Oh, I came to ask about poor Vorontzoff,” she said calmly. “Mrs. Delarue’s with the child, Daphne.”

Daphne had to hold on with both hands to keep herself from explanations, apologies almost. She insisted to herself that no one in Fitzroy Street circles thought anything of anyone’s being in anyone else’s studio at nine o’clock at night.

Henry was slowly and carefully, with much detail, elaborating an account of the condition of Vorontzoff.

“My Cousin Jane is staying with him,” said Daphne, breathing more freely as Green Eyes unconcernedly sat down. Certainly she would not have sat down if she had had any idea that she had interrupted an offer of marriage.

“I shall go and see him tomorrow, of course,” Henry was saying. “It is very sweet of you both to come asking after him. See what it is to be popular. Oh, these Russians, these Russians! Take your hat off, won’t you? I was just making coffee for Miss Carmichael. I’ll go and see if the kettle’s boiling yet.”

He went.

“Your French friends are delightful,” said Green Eyes. “I wish we could persuade them to join our camp next week.”

“Yes—you’re all going away,” said Daphne; “how lonely I shall be.”

“You ought to come, too,” said Green Eyes.

“Perhaps I will,” said Daphne, who knew better.

“It will boil almost instantly,” Henry returned to say. “You are all going to live in some wonderful Kentish farm-house, they tell me; and sleep in tents in the orchard. How idyllic. Why don’t you go, Miss Carmichael?”

“I think I will,” she said. “One must get away from London some time in the year.”

“Then will you come?”

“I couldn’t next week,” Daphne said. “You see there’s the portrait.”

“Oh, I should hate that to interfere with your plans,” Henry said. “Three more sittings at most will be enough now.”

“If it’s as near completion as that, mayn’t one see it?”

“But surely,” said Henry. “I wouldn’t show it to anyone else, but you and I are such old friends, aren’t we?”

He turned the canvas from the wall, lifted it to an easel, lighted the hanging lamp, and pulled it down to the right level.

Green Eyes looked and looked, drew a long breath.

“Oh, but it’s fine!” she said. “It’s the best thing you’ve ever done.”

It was Daphne in the Salvation Army dress, her hair a halo under the Salvation Army bonnet, her raised hand holding the tambourine, and on her face the light that transfigures equally the face of the religious enthusiast and of the woman in love.

“You are great,” said Green Eyes, grudgingly, after a long pause. “Yes, you are.”

“A thousand thanks!” said he, and put the picture back against the wall.

Daphne saw by this time that she must either give Green Eyes her secret, the beautiful secret as yet hardly even quite her own, or else go when Green Eyes went. She chose the latter. Henry talked much and saved her from the need of much talking. He talked of art, but not as he had talked to Daphne; he talked as though art were a trade, and eccentricity its advertisement—a pose its trade-mark. And they drank coffee when, after a very long time, the kettle boiled. And then Green Eyes rose to go, and Daphne went with her. Henry’s hand-clasp did not linger on Daphne’s hand that night. He lighted the girls to the street and bade them good night, with cheerful courteous banalities.

“Daphne,” said Green Eyes, as they went down the street, “may I come home with you? There’s something I want to tell you.”

Daphne experienced that sinking of the heart which comes like a physical nausea to the Utterly Found Out.

Because the voice of Green Eyes was changed, and Daphne knew that she knew.

“Of course,” she said, “I should love you to come. You might begin to tell me as we go.”

“No,” said Green Eyes; “I’ll wait till we get to your place. Unless you’d rather come to mine.”

“No, no,” said Daphne, hospitably; “come home with me. Mrs. Delarue’ll be wanting to get away. And there’s Doris.”

“Yes,” said Green Eyes, “there’s Doris,”