Delorme suddenly raised his great head from his easel.
"That was a delicious creature that sat by me last night."
"Miss Penfold? She is one of your devotees."
"She paints, so she said. _Mon Dieu_! Why do women paint?"
Victoria, roused, hotly defended the right of her s.e.x to ply any honest art in the world that might bring them either pleasure or money.
"_Mais la peinture_!" Delorme"s shoulder shrugged still higher. "It is an infernal thing, milady, painting. What can a woman make of it? She can only uns.e.x herself. And in the end--what she produces--what is it?"
"If it pays the rent--isn"t that enough?"
"But a young girl like that! What, in G.o.d"s name, has she do to with paying the rent? Let her dance and sing--have a train of lovers--look beautiful!"
"The whole duty of woman!" laughed Victoria with a touch of scorn; "for our grandmothers."
"No: for all time," said Delorme stoutly. "Ask milord." He looked toward the house, and Victoria saw Tatham emerging. But she had no intention whatever of asking him. She rose hastily, excused herself on the score of needing a few minutes" rest, and went to meet her son.
"I forgot to tell you, mother," he said, as they approached each other, "Faversham"s coming this afternoon. I had a letter from him this morning.
He seems to be trying to make the old man behave."
"I shall be glad to see him."
Struck by something lifeless and jaded in the voice she loved, Victoria shot a glance at her son, then slipped her hand into his arm, and walked back with him to his library.
He sat down silently to his books and papers. A couple of official reports lay open, and Victoria knew that he was going to an important county meeting that evening, where he was to be in the chair. Many older men, men who had won their spurs in politics or business, would be there, and it was entirely by their wish--their kindly wish--that Harry would take the lead. They desired to see him treading in the steps of his forefathers.
Perched on the end of his writing table, she watched her son a moment. It seemed to her she saw already what the young face would be like when it was old. A pang struck her.
"Harry--is there anything wrong?"
He looked up quite simply and stretched his hand to her.
"I asked her to marry me last night."
"Well?" The colour rushed into the mother"s face.
"No go. She doesn"t love me. She wants us to be friends."
Victoria gasped.
"But she"s coming to sit to Delorme this afternoon!"
"Because I asked her."
"Harry, dear boy, for both your sakes--either all or nothing! If she doesn"t care--break it off."
"There"s nothing to break off, dearest. And don"t ask me not to see her.
I couldn"t. Who knows? She"s got her ideas. Of course I"ve got mine.
Perhaps--after all--I may win. Or, if not--perhaps"--he shaded his face with his hand--"she"ll show me--how not to mind. I know she wants to."
Silence a moment. Then the lad"s hand dropped. He smiled at Victoria.
"Let"s fall in! There"s nothing else to do anyway. She"s not like other girls. When she says a thing--she means it. But so long as I can see her--I"m happy!"
"You ought to forget her!" said Victoria angrily, kissing his hair.
"These things should _end_--one way or the other."
He looked perplexed.
"She doesn"t think so--and I"m thankful she doesn"t, mother--don"t say anything to her. Promise me. She said last night--she loved you. She wants to come here. Let"s give her a jolly time. Perhaps--"
The patience in his blue eyes nearly made her cry. And there was also the jealousy that no fond mother escapes, the commonest of all jealousies. He was pa.s.sing out of her hands, this creature of her own flesh. Till now she had moulded and shaped him. Henceforward the lightest influence rained by this girl"s eyes would mean more to him than all the intensity of her own affection.
Victoria"s mind for the rest of the sitting was in a state of abstraction, and she sat so still that Delorme was greatly pleased with her. At luncheon she was still absent-minded, and Lady Barbara whispered in Gerald Tatham"s ear that Victoria was always a poor hostess, but this time her manners were really impossible.
"But you intend to stay a fortnight, don"t you?" said Gerald, not without malice.
"If I can possibly stay it out." The reply was lofty, but the situation, as Gerald knew, was commonplace. Lady Barbara"s house in town was let for another fortnight, and Duddon"s Castle was more agreeable and more economical than either lodgings or a hotel.
Meanwhile a pair of eyes belonging to the young man whose dinner jacket and black tie had marked him out amid the other male guests of the night before were observing matters with a more subtle and friendly spirit behind them. Cyril Boden was a Fellow of All Souls, a journalist, an advanced Radical, a charmer, and a fanatic. He hated no man. That indeed was the truth. But he hated the theories and the doings of so many men, that the difference between him and the mere revolutionary was hard to seize. He had a smooth and ruddy face, in which the eyebrows seemed to be always rising interrogatively; longish hair; stooping shoulders, and an amiable, lazy, mocking look that belied a nature of singular pa.s.sion, always occupied with the most tremendous problems of life, and afraid of no solution.
He had been overworking himself in the attempt to settle a dock strike, and had come to Duddon to rest. Victoria was much attached to him in a motherly way, and he to her. They sparred a good deal; she attacking "agitators" and "demagogues," he, fierce on "feudal tyranny," especially when masked in the beauties and amenities of such a place as Duddon. But they were friends all the same, exchanging the unpaid services of friends.
In the afternoon, before Lydia Penfold appeared, Boden found amus.e.m.e.nt in teasing Delorme--an old acquaintance. Delorme was accustomed to pose in all societies as Whistler"s lawful and only successor. "Pattern" and "harmony" possessed him; "finish" was only made for fools, and the story-teller in art was the unclean thing. His ambition, like Whistler"s, was to paint a full length in three days, and hear it hailed a masterpiece. And, like Whistler, he had no sooner painted it than he sc.r.a.ped it out; which most sitters found discouraging.
Boden, meanwhile, made amends for all that was revolutionary in his politics or economics, by reaction on two subjects--art and divorce. He had old-fashioned ideas on the family, and did not want to see divorce made easy. And he was quaintly Ruskinian in matters of art, believing that all art should appeal to ethical or poetic emotion.
"Boden admires a painter because he is a good man and pays his washing bills," drawled Delorme behind his cigarette, from the lazy depths of a garden chair. "His very colours are virtues, and his pictures must be masterpieces, because he subscribes to the Dogs" Home, and doesn"t beat his wife."
"Excellently put," said Boden, his hat on the back of his head, his eyes beginning to shine. "Do men gather grapes off thistles?"
"Constantly. There is no relation whatever between art and morality."
Delorme smoked pugnaciously. "The greater the artist, generally speaking, the worse the man."
"I say! Really as bad as that?"
Boden waved a languid hand toward the smoke-wreathed phantom of Delorme.
The circle round the two laughed, languidly also, for it was almost too hot laugh. The circle consisted of Victoria, Gerald Tatham, Mrs. Manisty, and Colonel Barton, who had reappeared at luncheon, in order to urge Tatham to see Faversham as soon as possible on certain local affairs.
"Oh! I give you my head in a charger," said Delorme, not without heat.
"For you, Burne-Jones is "pure" and I am "decadent"; because he paints anemic knights in sham armour and I paint what I see."
"The one absolutely fatal course! Don"t you agree?"
Boden turned smiling to Mrs. Manisty, of whose lovely head and soft eyes he was conscious through all the chatter.