The Man with the Double Heart Part 46

"Well?"

"She's asleep. At last!" Jill sighed--"Lizzie's sitting in the room, so I stole away to you."

She flung herself into the armchair and curled her feet up under her, arms clasped behind her head, dark shadows round her eyes.

"Tired, old girl?" Roddy's voice was tender. He saw that the long nights of vigil were leaving their mark on the fresh young face that began to look white and strained.

"Just a bit----" Jill smiled bravely. "But I think she's improving.

She's more like herself. If only she'd stay in bed for a month and give it a chance--get really strong before she begins to think of work."

Roddy nodded and turned to his task. A silence fell in the bare room, broken by the buzz of a blue-bottle blundering round the chandelier and the sound of water stirred in the gla.s.s as the boy washed his paint brushes.

"What are you doing, Roddy?" Jill asked lazily.

"Oh--a ship. It's _rotten_!" his voice was full of despair. "I can't get the sea--it looks thick and flat--like a blooming table-cloth!

Think I shall tear it up..." he paused gloomily, sucking his brush.

"No--don't." With a quick movement Jill rose to her feet. She bent over her brother, an arm thrown round his shoulder.

"It's jolly good. Really, old boy--the ship, I mean. Though the sea's all wrong," she added honestly. "But there's something I like--most awfully--" her grey eyes narrowed, criticizing.

"What?" Roddy lifted a wistful face, with that longing for praise peculiar to the artist, which has nothing to do with vanity but the deeper need for encouragement in the long up-hill fight of creative work.

"It's the way the ship's moving before the wind. It's alive, somehow, and one feels the struggle. It isn't just chased along--it's up against the strong tide--and the slap of the waves..."

"Of course it is." He smiled. "It's getting the full swell round the headland. The drawing's all right--it's the colour that's wrong. I _do_ want some painting lessons!"

"Well, perhaps we'll manage it by-and-bye--next summer holidays. You'd like to go in for Art, wouldn't you, Roddy?"

"Yes." The boy's voice was gruff. He felt too deeply for easy speech.

Jill looked anxious. Long since she had guessed the secret hope in the schoolboy's heart. But she knew it was not a paying profession and where was the money to come from for it?

Her mother--a typical soldier's wife--held a curious contempt for the artist cla.s.s. She wanted Roddy to go to Sandhurst, if means permitted, with the idea of the Indian Army in the future.

How would she take this new departure?

"D'you remember," said Roddy suddenly, "that old fellow up at Whitby we used to see painting near the harbour?"

"Who took you up with him on the moors, that moonlight night, to the Abbey?--Yes--why?" She sat down, leaning her elbows on the table.

"Well--he taught me an awful lot. Not exactly painting, you know, but to use my eyes. I can't explain! Values of light and shade--such as the sea, with its colour merely a question of depth and reflection ...

not dyed water! I showed him, at last, some of my sketches and--Jill----" the boy looked up wistfully, struggling with a sudden shyness--"he said ... he thought--well, I'd got it in me."

"I _know_ you have." Jill nodded. Into her thoughtful eyes there came a look of strong determination. "And I'll do all I can--you know that, Roddy."

"You always were a brick," said the boy.

He stared ahead through the open window.

"There's such an awful lot to learn--and I want to begin--you _must_ start young. I remember he said to me one day--I've never forgotten it, somehow--'I've been painting now for fifty years--and I'm just beginning to master my art. I know that my hand is one with my brain and the long apprenticeship is past. And now'--he looked so awfully sad--'there are just a few years left and then I shall die--and it's all over'!"

"But he'd had the keen joy of the fight." Jill had a horror of morbidity. "And he'd won through--that must feel fine!" A warm colour flushed her cheek.

"Yes--but it seemed so awfully hard, that just as life was worth living, all that labour and knowledge must go, with everything else ...

I call it rotten!"

"I don't believe it does," said Jill. "Peter doesn't, either," she added. "We were talking of that the day we drove to Henley and stopped at the Fair. I think all real effort survives--somehow--somewhere--that nothing's lost. Or else the struggle--to say nothing of failure!--would be too cruel--just sheer waste! Think of all the pioneers--Cecil Rhodes--Gordon--Scott? I can't believe that their energy and heroism doesn't go on... You remember Moses and his death? How he only _looked_ on the promised land. It always seemed to me so unfair until one day when I was reading of the Transfiguration on the Mount--when Moses and Elijah appeared--(in their earthly forms, remember that!--) and there he was--_in_ the promised land. Moses, I mean--centuries later. He'd got there, you see, _after_ death."

"That's jolly fine," said the schoolboy--"I never thought of it that way."

The speech sank into his memory. Years ahead, in his hour of need--one of those moods of black despair which creative art brings to a man who strains up to a high ideal--he would see before him Jill's clear eyes, the oval face, slightly flushed, and illumined by an inner light which seemed to rise from her brave young soul.

She glanced now up at the clock. "I must go, Roddy--there's Mother's soup--and in half an hour we'll have tea. Down in the kitchen, it's easier."

"All right. I'll make some toast. I'll just finish this and come.

Have you got any anchovy paste, old girl? If so, I'll do you some 'devilled biscuits.'"

"I'm afraid not." Jill laughed. It sounded a hot entertainment for the sultry summer afternoon. "You might keep an eye on the front door.

Lizzie's upstairs, sewing, by Mother."

"I'll answer it--don't you worry."

He flung an arm about the girl and gave her a sudden boisterous kiss.

Jill responded eagerly. Roddy was not demonstrative and she knew the value of the caress, hungry herself for a little love. Then, with a bright face, she departed into the depths of the bas.e.m.e.nt, picking her way with careful feet and a keen look-out for black beetles.

Roddy sat where she had left him. Through the window he saw the scattered trees on Primrose Hill and the gra.s.s still green on account of the long wet season. A heavy bank of thunder clouds, lined with a pale coppery light, hung suspended against the blue and the boy was lost in a dream of colour.

Suddenly he gave a start. An angry look came into his eyes. He got up hurriedly, left the room and on noiseless feet crossed the hall.

Carefully he opened the door.

"Don't ring!" he checked the caller. "What do you want? Mother's asleep." He looked back with defiance at Stephen.

"I've come round to inquire for her."

Somerfield coolly pa.s.sed the boy, hung up his hat on the stand, straightening his tie in the gla.s.s, with a smile at his languid reflexion.

"Don't make a row then," Roddy whispered. "I suppose you'd better come into the dining-room----" He closed the door softly behind them.

"How is Mrs. Uniacke?"

Stephen sauntered to the sideboard, opened a box standing there and helped himself to a cigarette.

Roddy watched him with a scowl.

"Anything else you'd like?" he asked.