Robert Orange. John Oliver Hobbes
that the minute she wilfully cut short had been the sweetest in her life.
“Pensée,” she said, “has been so kind to me. She gave me her room at Wight House last night. She had the little dressing-room just off it. Did you notice her dress? She was very anxious that you should like it.”
“She seemed all right,” said Robert; “and wasn't Reckage splendid?”
Having spoilt their perfect moment, they became as mere mortals, more at ease in this planet, where complete joy has an unfamiliar mien. Brigit's actual physical beauty returned. The sunshine stole in at the open window and lit up her golden hair, which was half hidden by a hat with white plumes. She looked down at her hand with its new wedding ring, and was pleasantly aware of Robert's admiration.
“I am so glad,” she exclaimed, “that you think my hand is nice. Because I have given it to you for all time. And if you are ever tired, or discouraged, or unhappy, or lonely, and you want me, I shall come to you.”
“But you will be with me now always.”
“Yes,” she answered. “Yes, Robert, always.”
They had now reached Almouth House. Her little foot, with its arched instep, seemed too slight and delicate for the pavement. Robert knew that her arm rested upon his, because he felt it trembling. They crossed the threshold together. The doors closed after them.
“And he never once kissed her on the way from church!” exclaimed the footman.
But the coachman did not think this very peculiar. “I don't hold with kissing,” said he; “to my mind there's nothing in it. Kissing is for boys and gals—not for men and wives.”
Baron Zeuill was unable to join them all at breakfast, but Pensée, and Reckage, and David Rennes (who had been especially invited the night before because he had proved so entertaining), did more than their duty as friends by talking feverishly, eating immoderately, and affecting the conventional joyousness universally thought proper at such times. Pensée ventured to make a reference to the forthcoming marriage of the “best man,” and expressed the faltering hope that “dear Agnes would be as happy as dear Brigit.” Reckage scowled. Rennes was seized with a fit of coughing. It was the one unlucky hit in the whole conversation, and it was soon forgotten by every one present except Orange, who remembered it frequently in later days. At last the hour for departure came. Pensée, weeping, kissed Brigit on both cheeks, looked into her grave eyes long and lovingly, put her arms around the slight, girlish form with that exquisite, indefinable tenderness, unconscious, unpremeditated, and protective, which married women show toward very youthful brides. Robert handed his wife into the brougham, the order was given “To Waterloo,” the horses started, rice and slippers were thrown.
“They go into the world for the first time,” exclaimed Rennes.
Then Pensée was assisted into the barouche, and drove homewards.
“We shall meet again,” she said, as she parted from Reckage; “we meet at Sara's at lunch.”
The two men were thus left alone. They decided to smoke, for they were both a little affected by the pathos of the situation.
“Explain Robert,” said his lordship, as they returned to the dining-room, “explain that kind of love. You are an artist.”
“Well, it isn't my way,” rejoined the other, with a forced laugh, “but there are many manifestations of personal magnetism.”
“This kind is very interesting,” said Reckage, “although it is, of course, high-flown. Orange is romantic and scrupulous—he knows next to nothing of the sensual life; and that next to nothing is merely a source of disgust and remorse. You follow me?”
“Perfectly,” said Rennes. “It is a question of temperament. The wonder is that he has not entered, in some delirium of renunciation, the priesthood.”
“That would mean, for his gifts, a closed career. It beats my wits to guess how this marriage will turn out. He is madly in love. He has suffered frightfully. Too much moral anguish has a depraving effect in the long run.”
“I am not so sure of that.”
“I think so, at any rate. Now many a decent sort of fellow can get along well enough—if he has a woman to his taste and wine which he considers good. You observe I condense the situation as much as possible. But Orange is different.”
“Not so different—except in degree, or experience. At present, he oscillates between the woe of love and the joy of life. You compared him to St. Augustine. St. Augustine never pretended that earthly happiness was a delusion. He knew better. He said, ‘Do not trust it, but seek the happiness which hath no end.’ Personally, I can accept with gratitude as much as I can get. ‘Is not the life of men upon earth all trial, without any interval?’ This may be; yet it is something to learn how to sympathise with happiness. Our best men and women devote themselves too exclusively to the diagnosis of misery.”
“You have thought a lot, I can see,” said Reckage.
The artist gave him a quick, friendly glance.
“I have played the fool,” said he. “I envy Orange. He will know things that I can never know—now. I haven't lived up to my thoughts. I am not remorseful—I don't believe in remorse. It is a thing for the half-hearted. But if I am not sad, I am not especially gay. The middle course between sentimentality and gallantry seems to me intimately immoral and ridiculous into the bargain. So I am an idealist with senses. There are times when I hate life. And why? Because life is evil? By no means; but because we tell lies about it, and write lies about it, from morning till night.”
“You seem a bit depressed,” said Lord Reckage. “But, by the by, how is the portrait going? My brother Hercy, who paints a little, always declared that Agnes was unpaintable. Do you find her unpaintable?”
“No,” said Rennes; “oh no!”
CHAPTER VII
When Reckage asked Rennes whether he found Miss Carillon “unpaintable,” the artist was conscious of a swift, piercing emotion, which passed, indeed, but left an ache. And as the day advanced the smart of the wound grew more intense. A visit to the National Gallery, a call at his tailor's, an inspection of maps at his club, afforded little relief to the indefinable misery. He was tortured by the disingenuousness of his own mind. He had done so much, and thought so much, and read so much; he could give so many scientific reasons for each idea and each movement of his mental and physical being, that the joy of life had been cut up in its machinery. He had lost the power of being natural either in his pains or his pleasures. He knew all the answers, but not one of the questions which trouble youth. He had never wondered at anything. Wonder—the lovely mistress of wisdom—had taught him none of her secrets. Dead certainty had dogged his steps from his first appearance on this unknowable world. Once, when a very little boy, he admired a vase full of pink roses. “They will keep twice as long,” said his nurse, “in dirty water. It is such a waste to put fresh water on roses!” This remark—slight in itself—remained in his memory as the first truth—the Logos, in fact—from which all other truths generated. He was now nine-and-thirty: he had executed an abnormal amount of work, and he had a just reputation as a portrait-painter. His technical skill was considered unique. The something lacking was that mysteriousness which belongs to all great art, and is, essentially, in life.
“Rennes,” said one of his friends, “can work for sixteen hours a day. It is all taken from without. He gives nothing except his undivided attention.” The saying was not true; he gave himself absolutely—soul, brain, and heart—to his task, but the gift was too premeditated, too accurately weighed. There was no self-abandonment, nor self-forgetfulness. His admiration for Miss Carillon had been of this kind. Having added up her attractions, her figure, her face, her youth, her intelligence, her grace, he decided that she