But Louie neither saw Billy nor heard his grumblings because the knife was not to hand. She was looking past Billy, past the easel with the study upon it, at the man who had entered. For one moment she was wondering that she had not always known, not only that he would come some day, but that he would come that day; the next moment she had told herself that she had always known that.
Of her whole body, from the foot near the crochet to the last brown hair of her head, her lips were the only portion that did not receive him with a lightsome, quiet, fair, trusting smile.
Absurd ever to have supposed that they would never meet! Wise to have known so perfectly what would happen when they did!
What had happened? Oh, every particle of her seemed to sing to every other particle what had happened! Those pittings of her profession?
Oh, there they went, washed out, all out, in the baptism of a look!
Her fancies--those idle promises to pay drawn on a non-existent bank?
Oh, they had gone, and here was payment itself, the solid, actual cash! She was suddenly rich. As she stood there, rich in seeing him, rich in being seen by him, every one of those worthless bills was honoured in full. She could have laughed at her past poverty. She could have cried aloud: "Jim, I"m here--look at me--no, not my eyes only----"
And he too seemed to be as she had always known he would be--singled out, down to his very manner of wearing his clothes--among men.
Stupid, that of all those times she had thought of him she had never once thought of him as in evening-dress! But that, in all this perfection, was only one more reciprocated perfection: she so--he so----
"Oh, Jim--_not_ my eyes only!" she well-nigh cried again.
But the lion"s eyes never moved from her own grey ones.
"Right, Louie, I"ve finished," said Billy, looking up from his palette-sc.r.a.ping.
And within herself she wailed: "Oh, _so_ soon? Must it be over already? Must I sit for men all these days, and then, when _my_ man comes----? Oh, a moment!... Well, he shall see me move--and I won"t look at him--I"ll tell myself--oh, just one more fancy!--that he isn"t here."
She descended from the throne and pa.s.sed behind the screen.
Was it strange that already, as she dressed in Billy"s studio, she knew that she would never dress in an artist"s studio again, and made of her fastening of hooks and strings a grave little ceremonial?--(There! With that fastening yet another chapter was closed; oh, trust her, there should be no reopening of it!)--Or that she should have a little shiver, at the thought that he might not have come? Suppose he had knocked at the door, and Billy had cried: "Half-a-moment--slide, Louie--come in!" Suppose--but the tremor pa.s.sed. She had always known he would come; she had known it just as she had known everything else about him. Again every fibre of her was joyous. She was here on the earth--she, Louie Causton, daughter of a pugilist and of a Scarisbrick, gardener, typist, artists" model, and all else she might ever be--that she might know all about this man. To have ever doubted it would have been not to deserve him. And here he was, in the same room with her--he, beyond the screen, she behind it--only the two of them, for Billy had gone down to the tap to wash his brushes.
_Now_ what should she do?
No, she would not go out and join him; not as she now was; not a skirt and blouse, after that fairness. Nor yet would she speak. Surely it was for him to speak now! She had been speaking to him, singing to him, all music to his eyes; there does come a point (she told herself) when the woman ceases to do everything; he must speak now. She knew he would speak. So she stood, upright, close to the screen, waiting.
He did speak, and like smoke another flock of fancies fled for ever.
They were the fancies in which she had tried to remember his voice. It came, henceforth unforgettable, pure rest after her strivings. He too seemed to be near the screen; only a screen between them; but the phrases that were breaking their long silence were merely automatic.
He was saying something about seeing her presently; she heard him p.r.o.nounce the word "Piccadilly," and the most familiar image of Piccadilly sprang up in her mind. "Swan and Edgar"s," she was whispering back over the screen.
"No, no." This came quickly, protestingly.
"At half-past ten," she whispered.
"Yes."
Then the dialogue was at an end. Billy had returned. Some moments later she heard more words, a laugh, and the closing of a door. She realised that he had gone.
Only then did she come out from behind the screen.
Billy was wriggling into his overcoat and muttering something about being late. "Got to go and keep that chap"s wife company," he said.
"Regular little Philistine, she is; I suppose that"s why I go; can"t stand these blessed artists. I say, he"d no idea I"d a model, you know--sorry."
"All right, Billy," said Louie demurely.... "Sorry!" So was not she!
"And I say, I"m afraid I shall have to pay you next time. I"m cleaned out."
"It doesn"t matter. Send me a steak in as you go out; I"ll have my dinner here."
"Right. Odd-looking chap that, isn"t he? A good sort though. I picked him up at the Langham one night. I took this place from him when he got married."
"He lived here?" (What, another wonder?)
"Yes. Well, I"ll send your steak in. Good-bye." Billy bolted.
He had lived there too! How ex--how entirely to have been expected!
Louie walked round the room, looking at the walls, the ceiling, out of the windows, anew. He had lived there: read, eaten, slept there; what a coinci--what a perfectly natural circ.u.mstance! Then, leaning against the wall, she found Billy"s study. Her eyes devoured it. She set it against the throne, and then walked to where he had stood when he had entered. She gave a rich, low laugh; she told herself what a fool she was; but folly so lovely made life. Again she looked at the wet painting. She had looked so to him----
She put the study back against the wall, but in another place. "That study"s mine, Billy," she muttered; "mine, not yours or anybody else"s, do you understand? You gave him my violets; he"s welcome to them; this belongs to me. Jim! Jim!" she murmured.
"Well, I suppose it"s crochet now," she went on by-and-by. "Do you realise, Louie Causton, that you"ve sat your last? And have you any idea of what you"re going to do instead? It looks as though Kitty"s fifteen shillings would come in useful after all."
As if otherwise she might have forgotten it, she repeated to herself, over and over again, that she was to meet him at Swan and Edgar"s at half-past ten. At one of the repet.i.tions--it was as she was cooking her steak over the little gas-ring that, perhaps, had once been his--it occurred to her why he had muttered that quick "No, no," when she had proposed that meeting-place. She glowed, she laughed through a sheen of tender tears. "Dear, dear one! _You_ don"t think that corner good enough for us, my sweet little outcast and me. Well, we won"t thank you; we won"t belittle him by thanking him, will we, Jimmy?----"
But she did not promise not to look her thanks when she met him at Swan and Edgar"s at half-past ten.
Presently she pushed her plate away; she could not eat. She had felt her bosom rise once more. It had risen as it had never risen for anything or anybody save for the little Jimmy, and it rose, it seemed to her, for a similar reason. For in her hands even his physical safety lay. He was to be mothered too. Her unfelt arms were to be about him, the milk of her protection to be his life. By his strength he had thought to give himself to somebody else, but by his need he was still hers. A gladness richer than she had ever, ever known swelled within her. He, the great weakling--she, the strong one, to cherish and support----
"Jim!" she murmured, smiling, uplifted, lost. It was as if his weary, tawny head was on her breast.
And she was going to hear his voice again, at Swan and Edgar"s, at half-past ten.
She feared that her own emotion might have exhausted her ere ever the hour came.
II
"Your hat will be spoiled if you don"t take your share of the umbrella," she said. It was a silk hat, and she supposed that silk hats cost money. A fine, persistent rain was falling.
She thought that he answered that it didn"t matter.
"Then you might at least turn your trousers up." Her own shabby old grey coat didn"t matter, but his trousers----
He seemed to be on the point of replying that they didn"t matter either, but changed his mind. He stooped and turned them up. She held the umbrella while he did so, and then gave it to him again, replacing her right hand where it had been--on his left forearm.
It was on these mere externals of him--his hat, his coat, his trousers, his boots--that she had hardly for a moment ceased to feed her eyes. Anything else might wait; for the present the stuff of his sleeve was more to her than the stuff of his soul. She luxuriated shamelessly in the smallest actualities of his presence; why, even mirth stood but a remove away. His overcoat, for example: it was not that old tawny one that had made him so much like a lion, but it was an old one for all that; was she _never_ to see her man in a new overcoat? Jim and his overcoats! But the rest of him was beyond criticism. Certainly he must be making money. She wished she could have called money to him with a wand, conjured it to him, as much as ever he wanted. Had it not been that she would have had to take her hand from his sleeve, she would have liked to step back to look at his great church-door of a back again. Of his face she could see little, but that did not prevent her looking until it would hardly have surprised her had he flushed and said, "Don"t gloat over me like that." His hat was tilted down, the large peaks of his overcoat collar projected like wings.
No, she did not want to know what he thought or felt; bother all that part of him! When her thirsty senses had drunk their full, then would be time enough for the other things.
They were walking somewhere behind the Horse Guards. Stretching before them was the long, empty avenue of the Mall. She was looking at the perspective of lamps and trees and drizzle, when suddenly he spoke.
Instantly all her faculties seemed to become one overgrown faculty, that of hearing. Not that he was saying anything; he was, as a matter of fact, only asking her whether she was warm; and she replied, "Quite." She was almost amused that he should ask. His nearness warmed her more than did her garments. Her hand thrilled deliciously on his sleeve again....
Oh, the satisfaction of that, just that, after all her past inquisitions into his soul!
But come to speech they must, and that very soon; and perhaps that curious magnification of trifles made it easier. Indeed, half the formidableness of the single question she wanted to ask him had vanished already. To say to him, now or in a few moments: "Did you kill Archie Merridew?" seemed somehow not very much more unusual than asking him the time. Now that she came to think of it, even that question seemed less important than another one: "Can you kill somebody and still be happy?" She hoped in her heart that he could. It would be his justification. Had it been an unrighteous killing, that would have been another matter; as it was, she would have had him unhappy only had he not killed. And, as he showed no sign of breaking silence, she might as well ask him that now.