"There is another kind of life, Iris, which you do not know. You must let me teach you. It is the life of Art. If you would only condescend to show the least curiosity about me, Iris, I would try to show you something of the Art life."
"How can I show curiosity about you, Arnold? I feel none."
"No; that is just the thing which shames me. I have felt the most lively curiosity about you, and I have asked you thousands of impertinent questions."
"Not impertinent, Arnold. If you want to ask any more, pray do. I dare say you cannot understand my simple life."
"And you ask me nothing at all about myself. It isn"t fair, Iris."
"Why should I? I know you already."
"You know nothing at all about me."
"Oh, yes, I know you very well indeed. I knew you before you came here. You showed me yourself in your letters. You are exactly like the portrait I drew of you. I never thought, for instance, that you were an old gentleman, as you thought me." He laughed. It was a new thing to see Iris using, even gently, the dainty weapons of satire.
"But you do not know what I am, or what is my profession, or anything at all about me."
"No; I do not care to know. All that is not part of yourself. It is outside you."
"And because you thought you knew me from those letters, you suffer me to come here and be your disciple still? Yet you gave me back my letters?"
"That was because they were written to me under a wrong impression."
"Will you have them back again?"
She shook her head.
"I know them all by heart," she said simply.
There was not the slightest sign of coquetry or flattery in her voice, or in her eyes, which met his look with clear and steady gaze.
"I cannot ask you to read my portrait to me as you drew it from those pictures."
"Why not?" She began to read him his portrait as readily as if she were stating the conclusion of a problem. "I saw that you were young and full of generous thoughts; sometimes you were indignant with things as they are, but generally you laughed at them and accepted them. It is, it seems, the nature of your friends to laugh a great deal at things which they ought to remedy if they could; not laugh at them. I thought that you wanted some strong stimulus to work; anybody could see that you were a man of kindly nature and good-breeding. You were careful not to offend by anything that you wrote, and I was certain that you were a man of honor. I trusted you, Arnold, before I saw your face, because I knew your soul."
"Trust me still, Iris," he said in rather a husky voice.
"Of course I did not know, and never thought, what sort of a man you were to look at. Yet I ought to have known that you were handsome. I should have guessed that from the very tone of your letters. A hunchback or a cripple could not have written in so light-hearted a strain, and I should have discovered, if I had thought of such a thing, that you were very well satisfied with your personal appearance. Young men should always be that, at least, if only to give them confidence."
"Oh, Iris--oh! Do you really think me conceited?"
"I did not say that. I only said that you were satisfied with yourself. That, I understand now, was clear, from many little natural touches in your letters."
"What else did you learn?"
"Oh, a great deal--much more than I can tell you. I knew that you go into society, and I learned from you what society means; and though you tried to be sarcastic, I understood easily that you liked social pleasure."
"Was I sarcastic?"
"Was it not sarcastic to tell me how the fine ladies, who affect so much enthusiasm for art, go to see the galleries on the private-view day, and are never seen in them again? Was it not sarcastic--"
"Spare me, Iris. I will never do it again. And knowing so much, do you not desire to know more?"
"No, Arnold. I am not interested in anything else."
"But my position, my profession, my people--are you not curious to know them?"
"No. They are not you. They are accidents of yourself."
"Philosopher! But you must know more about me. I told you I was an artist. But you have never inquired whether I was a great artist or a little one."
"You are still a little artist," she said. "I know that, without being told. But perhaps you may become great when you learn to work seriously."
"I have been lazy," he replied with something like a blush, "but that is all over now. I am going to work. I will give up society. I will take my profession seriously, if only you will encourage me."
Did he mean what he said? When he came away he used at this period to ask himself that question, and was astonished at the length he had gone. With any other girl in the world, he would have been taken at his word, and either encouraged to go on, or snubbed on the spot. But Iris received these advances as if they were a confession of weakness.
"Why do you want me to encourage you?" she asked. "I know nothing about Art. Can"t you encourage yourself, Arnold?"
"Iris, I must tell you something more about myself. Will you listen for a moment? Well, I am the son of a clergyman who now holds a colonial appointment. I have got the usual number of brothers and sisters, who are doing the usual things. I will not bore you with details about them."
"No," said Iris, "please do not."
"I am the adopted son, or ward, or whatever you please, of a certain cousin. She is a single lady with a great income, which she promises to bequeath to me in the future. In the meantime, I am to have whatever I want. Do you understand the position, Iris?"
"Yes, I think so. It is interesting, because it shows why you will never be a great artist. But it is very sad."
"A man may rise above his conditions, Iris," said Arnold meekly.
"No," she went on; "it is only the poor men who do anything good. Lala Roy says so."
"I will pretend to be poor--indeed, I am poor. I have nothing. If it were not for my cousin, I could not even profess to follow Art."
"What a pity," she said, "that you are rich! Lala Roy was rich once."
Arnold repressed an inclination to desire that Lala Roy might be kept out of the conversation.
"But he gave up all his wealth and has been happy, and a philosopher, ever since."
"I can"t give up my wealth, Iris, because I haven"t got any--I owe my cousin everything. But for her, I should never even have known you."
He watched her at her work in the morning when she sat patiently answering questions, working out problems, and making papers. She showed him the letters of her pupils, exacting, excusing, petulant--sometimes dissatisfied and even ill-tempered, he watched her in the afternoon while she sewed or read. In the evening he sat with her while the two old men played their game of chess. Regularly every evening at half-past nine the Bengalee checkmated Mr. Emblem. Up to that hour he amused himself with his opponent, formed ingenious combinations, watched openings, and gradually cleared the board until he found himself as the hour of half-past nine drew near, able to propose a simple problem to his own mind, such as, "White moves first, to mate in three, four, or five moves," and then he proceeded to solve that problem, and checkmated his adversary.
No one, not even Iris, knew how Lala Roy lived, or what he did in the daytime. It was rumored that he had been seen at Simpson"s in the Strand, but this report wanted confirmation. He had lived in Mr.
Emblem"s second floor for twenty years; he always paid his bills with regularity, and his long spare figure and white mustache and fez were as well known in Chelsea as any red-coated lounger among the old veterans of the Hospital.
"It is quiet for you in the evenings," said Arnold.