Spring Days Part 20

"Never mind, so much the better."

With some difficulty she extracted her hat from the hairpins, and the bright hair hung loose about her white plump face. Frank drank a gla.s.s of champagne; he was proud of her beauty.

"By Jove, how this does pick one up! not half bad tipple, is it?"

They hastened through their lunch, unconsciously avoiding the too critical looks of those at the far corner table; nor did they suspect, as they descended the hill and got into their boat and rowed away, that they were still the subject of conversation.

"She is no doubt a very pretty girl. He seems very fond of her. I hope he won't make a fool of himself."

"I think he is 'mashed.' We saw him the other night in the bar. He was paying her a great deal of attention--the night we saw you at the theatre."

Lady Seveley's face slightly altered. Harding noticed the change of expression, and he said: "She is called the belle of the bar. Hers is the kind of prettiness that appeals to a young man, for somehow, I cannot explain, it is a thing you must feel; she epitomises as it were the beauty of the English girl; she is the typical pretty English girl; all that English girls have of charm, she has; and the co- ordination is an irresistible force against some young men; their natures demand the freshness the spontaneity, the innocence of--"

"Of the Gaiety bar! I have never been there, but from what you tell me of it, it is the last place to find innocence and freshness."

"That may be or not be. We find a rose blooming in very out-of-the-way places; but, as a matter of fact, I made no accusation of virtue; vice does not rob a youth of its spontaneity. You may rouge the cheeks of May and blacken her eyes, but she is May nevertheless. I say that the lover of the young girl cannot love the woman of thirty. Her charms touch him not at all; but there are others who may love only the woman of thirty, and, strange to say, they are only loved by the woman of thirty. The universal Don Juan is a myth, and does not exist out of literature. There is the Don Juan who plays havoc among the women of thirty, there is the Don Juan who plays havoc among young girls, but-- "

"And you think our friend Frank Escott belongs to the latter cla.s.s?"

"No, I don't. He is good-looking; he is to all appearance a young man that any woman would like, but I don't think you'd find this to be so if it were given to you to see into his life. Every man of the world must have noticed that there are times when, speaking generally, every second woman will run after him--ladies of rank, prost.i.tutes, maid- servants--when he may pick and choose his mistresses, and change his mind as often as he pleases; there are other times when he finds himself womanless, when none will look at him, when in fact without an allusion to rings, and sometimes a very direct allusion is required, he will not be able to persuade a chorus girl to come out to supper with him. He thinks he is getting old, he looks in the gla.s.s with fear."

"You mean to say there are men who look in the gla.s.s with fear?"

"Of course, after five-and-thirty the gla.s.s whispers as awful truths to the man as to the woman--worse, for woman's youth is longer than man's. The contrary is the received opinion, but, like all popular opinions, it is wrong; a woman is frequently loved after forty, a man never. I was saying that a man often thinks he is getting old because the chorus girl took an early opportunity of speaking of rings, because the lady of fashion begged of the old gentleman who had taken up his hat to go to stay a little while longer, because the chamber- maid did not look lusciously round the corner when he pa.s.sed her in the pa.s.sage. He looks in the gla.s.s and imagines all kinds of monstrous changes in his person. His fears have no foundation in fact--or should I say in the flesh? A year after the d.u.c.h.ess makes overtures, the chorus girl threatens to throw up her engagement for him, and the chambermaid pesters him with unnecessary questions concerning baths and towels. These facts tend to show, indeed I think they prove, that love is a magnetism, which sometimes we possess in almost irresistible strength, and which sometimes fades away into powerless and apparent extinction."

"Then you think that good looks have nothing to do with the faculty of making oneself beloved?" said Fletcher.

"The phenomenon of love has. .h.i.therto eluded our most eager investigation; when we have traced each desire to its source, and cla.s.sified--"

"We women will have ceased to take any interest in the matter. What a humbug you are, Mr. Harding; one never knows when you are serious. But what has all this to do with that poor boy who has gone off with his barmaid?"

"This: he is unquestionably good-looking, but I don't think he possesses at all the magnetism, the power--call it what you will--that I have been speaking of. He will never influence either men or women, he will never make friends; that is to say, he will never make use of his friends. He will, I should think, always remain a little outside of success. It will never quite come to him; he will be one of those muddled, dissatisfied creatures who rail against luck and bad treatment. I cannot see him really successful in anything; yes I can, though, I believe he would make an excellent husband. I have spoken a great deal to him. He has told me a lot about himself, and I can see that he asks and desires nothing but leave to devote himself to a woman, to pander to her caprices. All that violent exterior will wear off, and he will yield to and love to be led by a woman. He writes a little, and he paints. I don't know if he has any talent; but he never will be able to work until he is obliged to work for a woman."

"Then you think he will marry that barmaid?"

"Most probably. He will struggle against it; but unless chance intervenes--she may die, she may run away with some one to-morrow, for she does not care for him--he will be sucked into the gulf."

"He is Lord Mount Rorke's heir; he will have twenty thousand a year one of these days."

"Mount Rorke will never forgive him a bad match. I know Mount Rorke,"

said Lady Seveley, "and you do, too, Mr. Fletcher."

"Yes, a little."

Unfearing prophecy and oracle launched from the windows of the hotel, the young people rowed, lost to all but each other, amazed at the loveliness of the river. They floated amid the bulrushes. Cries and regret when Frank's oar crushed the desired blossom. Never before were lilies as desirable as those that were gathered that day--that bud, it must be possessed, that blown flower must not be left behind. Lizzie dipped her arm to the elbow, and rejoiced in the soft flowing water.

The river rose up into what beautiful views and prospects. The locks, the sensation of the boat sinking among the slimy piles with Frank erect holding her off with the boat-hook, or the slow rising till the banks were overflowed, and the wonderful wooden gates opened, disclosing a placid stream with overhanging boughs and a barge. And the charming discoveries they made in this water world, the moorhen's indolence, and the watchful rat swimming for its hole; each bend was a new picture. How beautifully expressive of the work of the field were the comfortable barns. If life is never very fair, a vision of life may be fair indeed, and once the tears came to the bar girl's eyes, for she, too, suddenly remembered her life of tobacco and whisky; long weary hours of standing, politeness, washing gla.s.ses, and listening to filthy jokes. Would there be no change? If she might live her life here! She thought of the morning light, and the home occupations of the morning, and then the languid and lazy afternoons in this boat, amid the enchantment of these river lands.

Frank laid by his oars, and as regardless as a s...o...b..y of observers, he took her hand and begged of her to confide in him. He thought, too, of seeing her daily, hourly, of her presence in his daily life; he saw her amid his painting and poetry, and this pleasant scenery. Then the vision vanished like the shine upon the stream, she withdrew her hands, a shadow had fallen.

They pa.s.sed a summer-house where three girls were sitting; one sat on the edge of a table and sang the ballad of "Biddy Malone." There was a house so red, and so full of gables and narrow windows, that Frank said it was a perfect specimen of Elizabethan architecture; and he treated Lizzie to all he could pretend to know on the subject, and he condemned the owner for the glaringly modern garden benches with which the swards were interspersed. The sun was setting, there was la.s.situde in every pa.s.sing boat, the girls leaned upon the arms of the young men, and the woods stood up tall and contemplative, as beautiful in the deep blue river as upon the pale sky.

They landed at Pangbourne Woods by the wide gra.s.sy path between the reedy river and the spreading beeches. There a man was boiling a kettle. He spoke to them; he instructed them in the life of camping out, and he invited them to tea. Lizzie went into the tent and got out the tea-things. Two men came up, jolly fellows enough; and such little adventures endeared and memorised the day.

They climbed, oh! what a climb it was, Lizzie's ankles and courage giving way alternately; but at last they reached a pathway, and they walked at ease into the green solitudes of the wood. It seemed endless, so soft and so still. He spoke to Lizzie, whom he now called Liz, of her past, of the reasons that had led her to leave home and "go to business." Her brother, she said, was a painter, a celebrated bird-painter.

"Then we should know each other, I am a painter." He told her of his ideas and projects, of how he had been to France; he might go there again, unless something happened to keep him in England. He wrote a little too, in the papers, and he might do something to help her brother--a paragraph in _Fashion_, he could get one in. For fear of wounding her he did not ask if her brother was a decorative painter, employed by a firm, or an artist who exhibited pictures. Her father had married again. She did not like her stepmother, and that had determined her to go into business.

Had she ever been in love? Yes, she supposed she had; but it was all over now. The last words sounded, and died away in a great abyss of soul.

Parts of the path were marked "Dangerous." The earth had given way, creating fearful chasms, over which trees leaned dangerously or hung out fantastically by a few roots. In the dell below there stood a small green painted table, and the young people leaning on the protecting railing wondered at this mysterious piece of furniture.

There was in them and about them an illusive sense of death and the beauty of life. One slight push would hurl them headlong hundreds of feet down to the painted table.

The silver of the river sparkled through silence and the foliage of June, and the songs of the boatmen came and went like voices in a dream.

The days of youth are long, and in tender idleness the hours lingered, their charm unbroken in the rattle of London; and happy with love and tired with the great air of the river and its leafy scenery, Frank fell asleep that night.

VII

One of the French artists he had met in Rome wrote to him from Paris.

Why should he not go there? There was nothing for him to do in London; Lizzie Baker had disappeared, and in the year and a half that he spent in Paris learning to draw he forgot her and his friends in Southwick.

Nor did he remember them when he returned to London; not until one evening, strolling down Regent Street, he came upon w.i.l.l.y Brookes suddenly.

"How do you do, my dear w.i.l.l.y? I haven't seen you for--for--how long?"

"I should think it must be now, let me see, I have got it down somewhere; when I get home I'll look it up."

"Hang the looking up; better come and look me up."

The young men laughed.

"It must be nearly a year and a half."

"I should think it must. Where are you staying? I am staying at Morley's Hotel, Trafalgar Square. Come and dine with me to-night."

w.i.l.l.y reflected. He stroked his moustache reflectively.

"No," he said, "I am afraid I can't. I have something to do."

"Nonsense! I don't believe you. What have you to do?"

"I have some cheques to write."

"That won't take you a moment. You can do that at my place."