Just at first I felt only amus.e.m.e.nt and annoyance. Then gradually I used to expect the soft look to come into the beautiful eyes, the touch of the warm lips on my hand began to stir and thrill me. I felt a vague dislike and distrust of the girl mentally, I thought she was vain, selfish, mercenary, revengeful, and bad-tempered, but with all that Nature had nothing to do. Her servants, the senses, submitted to the youth and beauty of the newcomer, and that was all Nature cared about.
One afternoon she was posing as usual, and I was painting, deeply absorbed, on the picture of the "Bacchante" when her voice suddenly disturbed me.
"May I move just for a minute?"
"Certainly," I exclaimed, looking up and laying down my brush.
The girl laid down her spray of ivy-leaves, walked across the s.p.a.ce intervening between us, and, before I was aware of her intention, threw her arms round my neck and kissed me.
The kiss seemed to burn my lips, but with the current of pa.s.sion I also felt a storm of anger against her. I sprang up and seized her shoulders, pushing her away from me.
"Don"t, Trevor, don"t, you are hurting me; you are hurting my shoulders," she exclaimed, the tears starting to her eyes.
I took my hands from her arms, and saw my grasp had left deep marks of crimson on them.
"Go and get dressed then, and go," I said furiously; "I"m not going to paint any more." I pushed my chair away and threw the palette and brushes on to the table near.
Veronica shrank from me and turned pale. In that moment the intense beauty of the face and figure was borne in upon me, she clung as if for support to the easel with one soft hand, all the youthful body seemed to shrink together in a beautiful dismay, great tears rolled down the cheeks from the dark reproachful eyes. I saw it all for one moment, feeling the anger sinking down under that strange influence that beauty has upon us. But I would not look at her. I turned my back on her and went over to the window, hardly conscious of what I did. I stood there for a few moments; then, suddenly, there came a cry and the sound of a fall behind me. I looked round and saw her lying, a little crushed heap, by the couch where she usually dressed.
I sprang forward, full of self-reproach. How foolish I had been! So unnecessarily harsh! I went to her. In obedience to my order, she had put some of her clothes on, and now lay there senseless apparently and quite white, her arms, still bare, stretched out on the floor beside her. She looked so pretty, so small, round, and helpless, that my heart went out to her. I felt I had been such a brute. As I stooped over her to raise her I saw the great crimson bruises I had left on her arms.
I picked her up and put her on the couch. She lay there quite still, pale, her eyes closed, unconscious.
I pushed the hair off her forehead, and, dipping my handkerchief into a gla.s.s of water on the table, pressed it on to her head. I was kneeling by the couch. The sweet, little, rounded face, the soft unconscious body lay just beneath my eyes.
She opened her eyes slowly:
"Trevor, do forgive me," she whispered, and smiled up at me just a little, opening the curved lips; "do say you forgive me, give me one kiss."
In the violent reaction of feeling, in the torrent of self-reproach for being so hard on a child like this, the senses conquered, I put my head down, and kissed her pa.s.sionately, far more pa.s.sionately from that great reaction of preceding anger, on her lips.
"Dear, dear little girl, are you better?"
She threw her arms round me.
"Oh, Trevor, I do love you so, I do love you, I do love you."
Full of that great delight, so transient, so baseless, so unreasoning, yet so great, which the senses give us, of that pa.s.sion in which the mind has no part, that pa.s.ses over us as the wind ruffles the surface of the lake without moving the depths below, I kissed her over and over again, and pressed her to me, soft shoulders and undone hair and wounded arms.
The next moment the vision of Viola came before my brain, and I rose to my feet. Veronica caught at my hand, and, raising it to her lips, kissed it in a tempest of pa.s.sion. I drew it away--
"Get up and finish your dressing," I said very gently. "This sort of thing can do you no good, Veronica. It will only mean that I cannot let you come to the studio at all."
Veronica rose from the couch obediently and resumed her dressing. She gave me somehow the impression she was satisfied at having broken down my self-control, and hoped to win me over further by extreme docility.
I walked away to the window, angry with myself, and yet angry again that that anger should be necessary. I had always been so free till now, able to gratify the fancy of the moment. This need for self-restraint was new and irritating.
Veronica came up to me when she was dressed, and asked for a parting kiss. I gave it, and she went away with a demure and sad little sigh.
When I came down from the studio I went at once to our bedroom to dress. We were dining early and going out after, and I knew I had not much time. Viola was not there; she had dressed evidently and gone down. Sometimes she would be sitting in the armchair at the foot of the bed waiting for me, but to-night she had gone down.
I walked about the room, quickly collecting my evening things and thinking. Why did I, now that I had left Veronica, feel self-reproach and regret at what had pa.s.sed? What was a kiss? It was ridiculous to think of it twice.
I ran downstairs and found Viola as I had expected in the drawing-room. In her white dinner-gown and with a few violet pansies at her breast, she looked, I thought, particularly charming. She smiled as I came in, but when I approached to kiss her as was usual between us after the shortest absences, she got up, almost started up and moved away from me.
"Don"t kiss me! I am so afraid you will crush my flowers."
I stopped disconcerted; she coloured slightly and took a chair further from me, I flung myself into one close to me.
It was so unlike Viola to resist any advance of mine, and on such a score, that it astonished me. Often and often I had hesitated when she had been in some of her magnificent toilettes to clasp her to me for fear of disturbing the wonderful creations, and had been laughingly derided for so doing.
"Your kiss is worth a dozen dresses," she would say, and crush me to her in spite of whatever laces or jewels might lie between; and such words had been very dear to me.
This phrase now, usual with many women, unheard before from her, struck me. The blood rushed to my head for a moment as the thought came--she have seen or heard in any possible way the scene in the studio? and then I dismissed it as quite impossible. It was coincidence, merely that. She could know nothing. Then, staring away from her into the little fire, I thought suddenly--"Is not this the most despicable, the worst part of all infidelity, this deceit it must bring with it? The lies, either spoken or tacit, to which it gives birth?"
There were only a few moments and then the bell called us to dinner.
Viola was just as sweet and charming as usual through the meal and after, both during the theatre party to which we went, and when we were driving home together.
The next morning when we were at breakfast alone she said in a very earnest tone:
"Trevor, you will be careful about that model of yours, won"t you?"
I raised my eyebrows.
"How do you mean?"
"Don"t let her draw you into anything you don"t really want to do. Be a little on your guard with her. You know how detestable some women can be. They try to make men compromise themselves, and then worry them afterwards."
"I should think I ought to be able to take care of myself," I replied.
Of course I was annoyed, and showed it.
"Well," said Viola, getting up from the table, "it is difficult when a girl is as beautiful as that and you are shut up for hours alone with her. When do you think the picture will be finished?"
"I don"t know at all," I said, feeling more and more annoyed. "I shall probably keep her on for another after it."
This was a pure invention of my anger at the moment, for I had fully resolved last night to get rid of Veronica and as soon as possible, and never see her again; but I objected to what seemed to me interference.
Viola turned paler almost than the cloth before us.
"Do you really wish to do so?" she asked.
"Yes," I said coldly. "Have you any objection?"
"Yes, I think it would be a great pity," she replied quietly. "You will get so drawn to her, so interested in her, it will come between us."
I looked at her in amaze and anger. Was this all coincidence? It must be. How could she possibly know what had occurred?
We are nearly all of us beasts to women when they appeal to us. Had the position been reversed and had I been speaking to Viola as she was to me, she would have been all sweetness, accepting my jealous anxiety as a compliment, recognising how sure a sign of pa.s.sion it is.