The 'Cause'

Dennes were going home. Dickie Denne had put his wife into the carriage—they could afford one now that he had fluked into the Academy—and knew that the little woman was dying to ask questions.

“An old flame of yours, this Mrs. Rooper?” she began almost immediately.

But Denne protested. “Only middle-aged,” said he.

She disregarded the flippancy. “You were badly gone—you know you were.”

“You were in pinafores then,” said Dickie Denne.

“But confess; how could you leave a brilliant creature like Mrs. Rooper, even if I was in pinafores? How could you, Dickie?” demanded Mrs. Denne.

“I thought I'd told.”

“As though I'd sit here and ask if you had! Now begin, and don't fib—because you were gone; you said so.”

“Only to oblige—you wouldn't have had me if I hadn't made you awfully jealous and despairing,” said Denne. He knew she liked the mood.

“But you were engaged?”

“No, only near it—confoundedly near it,” and Dickie Christopher Denne, A.R.A., went back to the beginning and the end.

“Go on, I'd like to know, because I've often wondered why they do it, these Mrs. Roopers. Now isn't she awfully clever? I couldn't make a speech like she did, and run a club like that, and talk about the Cause, and art, and literature, and women's work in the world. I couldn't do it, Dickie.”

Denne smiled. 'No, thank Heaven; you couldn't! And as for 'art and literature'—well, take my word, you'll always find them when there's something particularly unedifying going on!”

“But she is clever, and good-looking, and womanly—she said she was.”

Now Dickie intervened. “Do you want the whole yarn?” he asked; “it's so long and silly, and yet, perhaps, there's something in it,” he admitted. “Wait till we get in, it'll be more comfortable.”

And so they filled the hour before bedtime with Mrs, Rooper.

“You know I went to Madrid after I left the schools,” began Dickie Denne. “I'd won the gold medal and had to travel, so, of course, I made for the Prado. Lord, how I worked! I often wonder I've never got sick of Velasquez, I followed him so then—but he never bores you, does he, Madam?”

Madam only smiled.

“After Madrid, Venice, and there I met Mrs. Rooper. She was about the same only younger, and had just buried old Rooper. I've never seen him, but he was old. Everybody said he was old and very wealthy. She had the money now and was forgetting him. We were of the Colony, and you see a lot of people abroad if you're in the same set and pretty young. She was good enough to be interested in me and my work. We did the galleries, and the palaces, and the gondolas, and I did most of the talking then. I must have taught her a lot, because people said how clever she was when she passed me on. I enjoyed it, but it was the work that I cared about and not the talking. She wasn't a woman, at least, as far as I was concerned, but another pilgrim. It couldn't be different then, for there were too many other things. I thought she looked at me in the same way, or, I would have done, if I had thought about it. A young ass, wasn't 1?”

“Slightly,” said Mrs. Denne.

“When we said good-bye I promised to call in town. She was a bit funny that night, but I didn't see it. It was moonlight and it was April, and we were both under thirty, but I only saw the moonlight, the water and the colour of the sleeping city. When she dropped my hand I looked up and thought of girls of eighteen. But I went off, humming a tune I suppose, and turning back at the picture she made.”

“And wasn't she angry?” asked Mrs. Denne.

“No; we wrote to one another, she eight pages to my one; you know that speech she just made, well, half of it was water, wasn't it? It went down splendidly because her voice is a good one and she's handsome, but there was nothing much in it. The letters were like that, although I didn't see it then. I had a studio off the Euston Road; she often came to tea there and talked about my future. How that woman loved the Academy! And I was to have a place with china and cosy corners of hangings—all the wealth of Wardour Street and Tottenham Court Road was to encircle me, and my coat was to be of velvet and I 'at home' on Sundays, Alluring prospect! And yet I was glad when she came and diluted me, and suggested new furniture. But it was mostly water, and I wasn't specially strong milk as things were. Lord, how she praised the pretty and the safe; but always discreetly—she knew me well enough for that. And of an evening I was trotted out and made clean to say how-de-do to people. Her flat was always full of 'em, friends of old Rooper and her family, who talked rot and sang songs. Half my income went into shirts and tailors' bills during the summer. But the Academy hung my first—I'd painted it to her, and she belonged to a class the Academy's fond of—and she gave me a ring in honour of the event. I took it, and we had a holiday at Dorking and came back in the evening. How I must have tired her talking about next year's and a portrait I wanted her to sit for! The ring was the beginning. She brought other things, and it was nice enough having them, and I filled the flat with sketches.”

“And then, Dickie?” asked Mr. Denne.

“I got to the flat one day, and she came in and said people Were talking about us, and what should we do? She cried and I stood there thinking, thinking in the same old dunderheaded way. I ought to have foreseen all this, and I would go away for a bit till it blew over. I would give up the studio, and she mustn't cry, for everything would be all right if I went away for six or eight months, and people were asses, criminal, low asses to even think of such things! Of course she kept on and wouldn't be comforted, not till I said good-bye. It was a moment, and she liked them. She stood there, playing leading lady in the great scene. Her hand was in mine, and I played up too—kissed it reverently and went out into the night, or rather into the afternoon. I found a telegram when I got home, asking me back for dinner. I didn't go, and that was the end.”

“Everything?” asked Mrs. Denne.

“More than enough, wasn't it?—I lost nearly two years, or the best part of them.”

“But didn't it make you think, Dickie?”

“A good deal. That's why I wanted to go to-night and make sure.”

“She received us very well, considering,” said Mrs. Denne. Then she asked: “And The Cause—the League of Women and all that sort of thing—don't you think she really cares? She spoke beautifully and has such a lovely voice; and it was she who started the club, and she's the President, and everybody except us seemed to think no end of her; don't you think she cares about the women?”

Dickie Denne reflected. “When she wanted me it wasn't me she wanted, but a magnet, an R.A. She thought I'd do the trick—believed in me, if you like to put it that way.

“But I was to be a draw—you see old Rooper's people and her people weren't draws—I was to attract an audience, something specially selected—'the best actresses aren't on the stage,' as somebody says,” observed Dickie Denne. “Well, I was a disappointment, I suppose, but she's got there all the same. The Cause has done the trick, and she can go down to the League and speechify whenever she likes. That's the way I see it. She's in the papers, she's a personage, she's got her audience. And most of it's claque, I fancy. She's running the club, paying the rent and all that, and it must cost her half old Rooper's money. The League listens to her whenever she wants to talk, and on big nights when guests come she's more leading lady than ever. It's the way with appalling mediocrity.”

“And the women that belong, don't they know?” asked Mrs. Denne.

For answer Dickie Christopher Denne, A.R.A., picked her up bodily and carried her upstairs to the night-nursery, Here three little Dennes breathed in three little beds, and a bead of gas sprang to a flame at Dickie Denne's touch.

“What's this got to do with the women and Mrs. Rooper?” whispered Mrs. Denne.

“Nothing, I hope—but don't you see, dear, that the League are a pack of children, and the club's Mrs. Rooper's nursery?”

“I prefer ours,” whispered Mrs. Denne.

And Dickie Denne kissed her.

author:Albert Kinross