An Engagement of Convenience Part 10

"No," he confessed; "though America has largely crossed to me."

Mr. Shanner looked puzzled.

"How do you mean--America has crossed to you, Mr. Wyndham?" he asked.

"Oh, I hope I did not seem to suggest that I have been a centre of pilgrimage," laughed Wyndham. "Only, in past years, when I was running a good deal about the Continent, I often used to live with New York, Chicago, and Boston, for considerable periods."

"Mr. Wyndham has often given us charming sketches of the Americans,"

chimed in Miss Robinson.

"Oh, I don't pretend to be much of a hand at that sort of thing," said Mr. Shanner, with pleasant humility. "I can only just give my impressions as a plain observer. But then I'm a man of affairs, and nothing at all of an artist or a literary man." Wyndham observed how careful and honeyed his delivery was; it seemed to advertise a perpetual self-consciousness of being a gentleman.

"Mr. Shanner is unduly modest," put in Mr. Robinson. "His descriptions are most entertaining."

"Well, of course, I can speak of things within my experience, and make myself fairly clear--in my own way, of course. But, from all that you people have been telling me, I shouldn't attempt to emulate Mr.

Wyndham."

Mr. Shanner gave a strange little laugh, full of insincere echoes; which failed in its implication of good-fellowship, and only emphasised the ill-nature it was meant to cover. Wyndham was not a little bewildered; conscious of some suppressed excitement in the man, some ruffling of the ashen chiaroscuro. This impression was deepened when dinner was announced, and Mr. Shanner made what was perilously like a dart to the side of Miss Robinson and offered his arm. Wyndham stepped out of their way, bowing as they pa.s.sed him.

At table Mr. Shanner gave no undue signs of modesty or self-distrust, but talked about "things within his experience" with the utmost unconstraint. An unmistakable note of a.s.surance animated the honeyed voice, which soared away occasionally, yet sedulously recollected itself; drew back within bounds, reverted to the lesser pitch and the deliberate pace. Mr. Shanner was at pains to let it be seen that he was a man of affairs on the grand scale, one to be ranked with diplomatists and amba.s.sadors. In the course of business he had come into contact with exalted personages of almost every kingdom, and had corresponded voluminously with some of them. He carried an a.s.sortment of their letters in his pocketbook, which lay on the table as a perpetual source of ill.u.s.tration. He spoke of some of these great ones of the earth with extreme familiarity--he had been closeted with them on confidential business, and he flattered himself he had counted for something in certain important decisions of policy. And, as he warmed to the conversation, far from being "out of it," he was king of the table, his honeyed words emerged endlessly. There was a distinct flash of challenge in his occasional glances at Wyndham--he was not to be overborne by the presence of any aristocrat on earth. And not content with all this insistent implication of his personal importance, he even related by way of pleasant interlude how, with ear to one private telephone and mouth to another, he had smartly seized a sudden opportunity, and, buying an incoming cargo through the first telephone and selling it through the second, had netted twenty thousand pounds for his firm. Whereas Wyndham amused himself trying to measure the depths of Mr. Shanner's contempt should he suspect that the sole resources of his vis-a-vis were the guineas to be paid him from Mr. Robinson's treasury.

It was evident, too, that Mr. Shanner was more familiarly at home in the house than Wyndham. He called its master "Robinson"; most significant of all, Miss Robinson was Alice to him. Indeed, his manner, as he sat next to her, was almost proprietorial; at any rate it had easy, affectionate suggestions about it. She, however, had fallen back into a shy constraint; though she emerged at moments, lifting her deep-glancing eyes to Wyndham and flashing him the friendliest of messages. Wyndham understood by now; knew also that it was clear to Mr. Shanner that they were rivals--that a mutual detestation lurked beneath their pleasant amenities. He had gathered also that Mr. Shanner meant to show that he did not concern himself one jot about the new star that had appeared in the firmament during his absence. But Wyndham came off easily the victor, displaying for Mr. Shanner a charming deference, and pursuing the unruffled tenour of his entertaining conversation without manifesting in the slightest degree any of the emotions that the evening had raised in his breast. Such perfect unconsciousness of matters intensely present, Mr. Shanner could not hope to emulate. It was clear he was uneasily alive to the contrast--that he had the growing consciousness of defeat. His note of self-emphasis rang louder, though smothered continuously.

The war continued after dinner; Mr. Shanner eagerly turning the pages of Miss Robinson's music, and so entirely appropriating her that Wyndham could scarcely contrive to approach her during the rest of the evening.

However, Wyndham smilingly kept his place in the background, disdaining to a.s.sert himself or to enter openly into emulation; though there were opportunities he, the socially experienced, might have seized adroitly.

After all, why annoy this admirable, upright gentleman? Even as it was, poor Mr. Shanner was fated to receive one or two sharp slashes; as when, in the course of describing the sittings, Mrs. Robinson let it be clearly seen that she was not always present to chaperone her daughter in the studio. At that moment Mr. Shanner's face was an extraordinary face to look upon; although he affected to laugh and smile, and packed even more honey into his voice. All of which forced sweetness notwithstanding, it began to be evident that the topic of the picture, and of Wyndham's work in general, bored him considerably. At last, when Mrs. Robinson innocently suggested that Wyndham should ask him to come to see the portrait at the studio, he deprecated the idea with some degree of vehemence. He really was very busy in the daytime now.

Besides, he added pleasantly, on principle he never cared to see an article whilst yet on order; time enough to examine it when it was tendered for delivery. He smiled meaningly at Wyndham as if to accentuate that these commercial metaphors were merely by way of pleasantry.

"And then it's so extremely difficult for an outsider to get any idea of an unfinished picture, and of course I don't profess to be a judge of art in any case, though I know what I like."

So, if Mr. Wyndham would excuse him, he added, he would rather wait till the portrait had come home, and had been hung in the house.

It was not without difficulty that Wyndham found his opportunity of arranging the little tea-party at which the ladies were to meet his sister. Miss Robinson was to give him the final sitting on the Tuesday; so it was therefore agreed that the tea should take place on that day after work was over. The sitter herself crimsoned deeply at learning that Mary "had admired her immensely," and her eyes glistened in a way that showed her pleasure and rapturous appreciation.

XIII

The definite figure of Mr. Shanner with his magnificent appropriation of Miss Robinson merely impelled Wyndham to smash up this rival at once and have done with the business. The evening had obscured all the repugnance that lay in the depths of him; had stimulated roseate conceivings of possible felicity.

On the Tuesday he found his opportunity. Miss Robinson came alone, explaining that her mother would not appear till the time fixed for the tea-party. The weather was rigorously wintry now, and a biting wind blew in as the door was opened. A new layer of snow had fallen during the last hour, and Miss Robinson had come across wrapped in a big, heavy cloak. He ushered her through the ante-room with a charming air of solicitude, to which she vibrated like a struck harp, and gave him the softest and tenderest intonations of her voice. He helped her off with the cloak, and hung it away carefully, the whilst she stooped and warmed her long hands at the lavishly heaped-up fire. Her throat and arms now showed at their best, and her face had some strange, almost mystic undertone of happiness. As she bent down there before his eyes, she completely blotted out the impression of the insignificant plain woman whom he had suddenly come upon in the streets; of the everyday Miss Robinson that at one time had almost become an obsession. At that moment she was well-nigh the idealised figure he had painted. Yet there was something even subtler in her which he had missed, and knew that he had missed. But, studying his own work again, he saw that that was just as well; for the picture existed as a separate creation, a piece of painting first and foremost, in which he had exhibited the cleverness of his brush. It was paint--distinguished, intellectual paint--more than it was human portraiture; in spite of all the significance with which he had tried to invest it. As this new truth dawned upon him, he kept glancing from sitter to canvas, and from canvas to sitter, with a strange, surprised interest. But her hands suddenly arrested his attention, and he became aware that, for the first time since he had known her, they were absolutely bare of rings.

"You have no rings to-day," he remarked, his voice showing his surprise.

"I might have wanted to touch up the hands."

Her colour deepened unaccountably. "I thought the hands were finished,"

she breathed, all of a flutter. "Shall I go back for them?"

"What a goose it is!" he said lightly, and she smiled again, as if pleased they were on so charmingly intimate a footing.

"Shall we not need them?" she asked.

"I think not," he answered, studying the hands a little. "You were perfectly right; they had best remain as they are."

She took the pose, and for a minute or two he worked silently; she maintaining the perfect stillness that had at first been her cherished ambition. He was still pondering about her bare hands and her confusion at his having observed them, and light came to him. Was it to show him that no man--not even Mr. Shanner--had any claim on her? After the close attentions he had witnessed the other evening, was she afraid he might infer that some understanding existed between herself and Mr.

Shanner?--that one of these rings, even if not a formal pledge, might be his and worn for his sake? Her neglect of such favourite trinkets to-day was then to indicate that no one of them had any special sentimental interest for her!

"You are sitting perfectly to-day," he presently remarked. "It doesn't tire you?"

"What an unkind suggestion! I thought I had got beyond the amateur stage long ago."

"I'm sorry. You didn't hear, though, the beginning of my remark."

"I agreed with that," she answered with a sly humour.

"So that it hadn't to be reckoned. Do you know all women are like that?"

She considered. His brush made strokes. "Like what?" she asked at last.

"If you pay them the greatest of tributes, but are incautious enough to hint the tiniest of qualifications, the tribute dwindles to nothing, and they remain tremendously annoyed at the suggestion of imperfection."

"Am I like that?"

"You were just now."

"I was such a bother and a hindrance to you when we started," she explained. "I used to get tired every few minutes. And now at last, just when I am flattering myself on my improvement----"

"You take me too seriously," he broke in.

"You _were_ serious," she insisted.

"Serious--yes; in so far as I was afraid you were tired. I didn't even mean it as a qualification of my tribute; it was only genuine concern for you."

"How stupid of me!" she exclaimed. "I ought to have felt that at once."

There was another spell of silence; he intensely absorbed in his brush, she obviously considering.

"I am not really like that," she said at last.

He stood away from the canvas, glanced critically at certain points, levelled his mahl-stick at her, took up a rag, and wiped a bit out.

"Like what?" he asked.

"Like women."

"But you are. You see, it is sticking in your mind." He smiled wickedly.