Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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YELfb0W ,/IS¥E^. BY © IOTA, CHAPTER XXVI. About a week later they ar rived in Paris. Gwen had nev er been there before, and her curiosity to see everything was insatiable and unresting. She often seemed to herself as if she were caught in the whirl of a mad iut jxicating race with fate; it was glorious; it stimula ted her like a draught of wine; it filled her veins with tire; it was as if the spirit of the world had got into her spirit and shot streams of the strength of im mortality through all her being. She was as a god to herself, and fate was as a thing of naught. This was in her times of exaltation however; but even in these early days there came moments of reaction in their due season. Fortunately she knew the symptoms of their ap proach. and could hide herself away from her husband’s eyes. Her room could tell strange tales whenever Gwen shut herself in and threw up the sponge till the next round. Then there came shame into that proud face, fear into those fearless eyes, a stoop into those stoopless shoulders. She neith er ranted nor raved, she dared not; if she had once raised her voice, she knew quite well she must shriek, and howl fourth the terror and disgust and dis may with which the possible ending to this race with fate filled her. Sometimes she would pull off her shoes and stockings, and go barefooted to and fro the length of the long polished floor with its strips of Eastern carpet—the cool slippery surface soothing the fever of her flying feet. In variably she would pull off her guard and wedding ring and lay them with curious gentle wistfulness down on the table. Once when she did this, she drew a deep breath, threw out her arms and laughed. “I am free, free!” she cried, ‘‘my body is my own again, and my soul, and my brain! I am myself again, Gwen Waring, a self-respecting creature, with no man’s brand on me—” In a few minuies she came back and looked at the golden bands “What is the use of lying!” she said, “that mends nothing, and only degrades me, I am not free; whatever happens, whatever could possibly hap pen, I shall never any more be what I was! Good Gol! And yet women take marriage as they do a box at the Opera!” But it was not in the strong nature of her, wholesome what there was of it awake, to Jose courage often, and her powers of recuperation were superb. Half an hour after she was striding wildly through the room, she came down as un ruffled and more untranslatable than ever, to propose some ex pedition. Strange looked at his watch. “Too late for that, suppo'e we go and see Brydon?” “O, yes. let us go,” she said eagerly. He looked at her, and knew all about it. For a minute he felt an over mastering desire to shake her, and make her eyes speak plain English, he was getting tired of their hieroglyphics. He was buttoning her glove at the time and involuntarily he gave the button a cross twist and twitch ed it out. “Oh, hang it, is the glove rot ten or are my methodi ? Will it matter?” he asked. “Oh, not at all, my sleeve will cover it.” It was a diabolical lottery al together, and the soul of the man groaned within him. It was even worse than he had an ticipated in the first hot glamour of love. He freely confessed this, but he had sworn to him self, in his foolish raptures, that he would face hell for the girl, and he was not the man to eat his words. They walked to Brydon’s. Gwen took a great delight in going in and out among the streets, and a shamed-faced pleasure in listening to her hus band’s stories of every twist and turning m them. There is no one like him for a companion!” she often confess ed to herself angrily, “no one I know that comes near him. What made me marry him, what? Even this part of him I can’t accept and enjoy without disgust and self-loathing.” At last they got to the little street that Brydon lived in, and climbed to the fourth flat of a tall house. When Brydon saw Strange he reddened with delight, but when he was presented to Gwen, he paled suddenly and his eyes fell. “You could have knocked me down with a feather!” he ex plained afterwards, to his cho sen comr ide. It was a superb compliment to her, and her husband laughed as he saw it. And then a queer wonder took hold of him as to the sort of ending this good-hu mored half-impersonal pride he took in her conquests would have, then this envolved anoth er wonder which dealt with the birth of a strong woman’s pas sion. Strange pulled himself up and thrust this out of his mind with a rough shove. “On the whole, what’s the re sult so far, Charlie?” he asked, when that young man had es tablished his wife in a big cane chair, softening the light from one side and strengthening it | f rom another in a lingering, ab sorbed way, as with half-closed eyes he furtively drank in the fullness of her beauty. The question stripped the gla mour from him at a rush, he flopped limply down on to a seat. “If only you hadn’t asked that question for three more months, but now, now, it is cruel! Just imagine a fellow, free all his life to ride his own nag, a sorry jade it might be, but anyway fit enough for him, and h ! s own; just fancy him strapped on a small donkey be longing to another fellow, that it would be more than his life was worth to prod into a gallop, and to have to peg along on this beast week in, week out, along the same old road! Oh Lord, the grind, it’s awful, aw ful, digging one’s heels into that confounded ass—Oh!—” He jumped up with a guilty start. “Lady Strange, 1 beg your pardon, I forget what la dies are like, and Strange is such a comfortable fellow to growl to, bad language slips out before one can catch it, at the very sight of him.” “Don't apologize to me, es peciallj if my husband is the cause of your offence,” said Gwen kindly. She had a fancy to be kind to this boy, if she had confessed it to herself, it was with a distinct view of getting to know a side of her husband, that Brydon knew all about and she nothing. She was making a study of him in spite of herself, and liked to collect evidence. Meantime Strange had been looking carefully through some of Brydon’s sketches, scattered everywhere. “You’ll draw as well as you color, old man, and that is more than I ever expected of you. What does Legrun say?” “He says he’ll say nothing until I have unlearned every cursed mannerism I have pick ed up in England, that den of bad taste. Then ’pent etre— who knows?’ ‘ But the fellow rages just as much against his own rapid methods, as he does against those we’ve been born and bred How dare we think to get in. an effect with a few strokes like he does, he, who has work ed, purMew! who has sweated, who has prayed, has blasphem ed, who has torn the heart out of his body to arrive at this ease, this divine confidence— ‘the head of us should be punch ed!’ he is great in English. We must take twenty strokes to one of his; we must do with pain with tears what is but 'delices' to him—details—we must know them as the 'bon Dieu’ knows them, before we venture to omit or even to suggest one! Then he ups and splutters out some delicious blasphemy on some unwary youth’s head. “Look at me, the ghost of a creature, stalking mournfully on e^gs, with furtive fear in all my lineaments. And this is an artist’s training! Good Lord, when I remember how I sat in that garret in Bland Street and thought of fame and myself in a new suit, dancing a war-dance before my masterpiece on the line, with duchess squabbling lor the first shake of my hand! —Lady Strange, I am going to make some tea.” “I wish you would” said Gwen laughing, “we wallked, and I am so thirsty.” “Hu!” said Brydon, examin ing his milk jug when he had filled his kettle and set it on the little charcoal stove, “every drop gone! I won’t be two min utes. The old lady on the first flat and I are affinities to a cer tain extent; in return for sundry packets of English tea, she keeps me in milk at odd times. Strange, will you shepherd the kettle?” “I wonder if his cups are clean?” said Strange rummag ing them out of a cupboard over the stove, “look, an inch thick with dust, and the handles! That fellow moons two much to be very cleanly. Look at the tea-cloth, Lord! Have you a clean handkerchief, Gwen?” Gwen’s brows contracted slight.y. She was a dainty per son and unpractical, and tea cups in connection with hand kerchiefs gave her an uncom fortable feeling of impropriety. She gave him a handkerchief, however, with a small gasp of disgust, and watched his doings with a faint, half-scornful in terest. “How particular you are!” she said, “1 had no idea you could trouble yourself about such things.” “I can’t star, dirt in man or beast,” “How did you standd travel ing—in Algeria, for example?” “Ah! there were compensa tions, the game was worth the candle, and if civilization has produced nothing better—give the devil his due—it has pro duced clean skins and clean eat ing. I fancy I was originally designed for an inspector of nuisances,” he continued run ning Gwen’s lovely morsel of cambric on the end of a pointed c tick in an out the handle of a cup. Gwen noticed with some won der the curiously delicate way in which he did it, “The thing would have smashed long ago in any other man’s hand,” she thought. “He treats women like that, he is very gentle, but he is the master, he holds them in his hand and does as he likes with them. And I have no doubt whatever, that there are hundreds of women that like it. W hy doesn’t that handle break and cut him—there is no legal bond between them?” This struck her grim sense of humor, and she had to bite her lips to keep in a wild laugh. “Yes, as a nuisance man I should have been a success,” he went on, “whereas, as a British landowner!” he gave an expres sive shrug, “Gwen, how do you think you’ll stand a flat clay country .overrun with wool ly-brained squires and their dames and daughters?” It was a horrid thought. Gwen gave a swift little turn to put it away from her; her dress caught in a stretched canvas put up face inwards against the the wall, and brought it down with a muffled crash. Strange came forward to help her put it up, and, with a hand of each of them on it, they paus ed suddenly and started, and with a quick turn of his hand Strange set it this time face out ward in its place, and looked in to it with eager excitement, while Gwen's face grew cold and still, with a touch of stern ness on it. While they were looking, the door burst open and Brydon came in with the milk and a soft paper parcel looking like cakes. “Strange, how did you find it?” he cried, “I never meant you to see it. Lady Strange, it is only a sketch.” “I beg your pardon,” she said, “my dress caught in it and knocked it down, and as we raised it we saw the face, then, I suppose, curiosity did the rest.” “When did you see my wife, Brydon?” said Strange, still ab sorbed in the picture. “In church, the day she was married. I know I should have been in Paris, but I wanted to make this sketch. I want, when I know well enough hov. to do it,” he said, turning to her humbly, “to make a picture of you, Lady Strange, and to give it to Strange, and this is just the idea for it.” “I am sure my husband must appreciate your kindness,” she said half absently. Perhaps she might have put a little more warmth into her voice if she had seen the fallen face of the boy os he turned to look f to his kettle. She had, however, already more to occu py her than she wanted. The sketch was a stroke of genius. It was a gracious, graceful girl, standing before the altar in her shimmering marriage robes, in actual flesh and blood, the great soul of a woman shining out from the violet eyes; the tender strength of the mouth, the resolute pose of the rounded chin, the russet f jold of her hair—the whole ived and thought. One held one’s breath to catch the regu lar soft rythm of hers, the very hand held out for its ring was palpitating with life. Naturally, the whole thing would have filled the soul of a dilettante with unutterable dis gust, being as glaringly full of faults of detail as it well could be, but an artist with half an eye in his head would have put all these by in a place by them selves to be dealt with later, and would have gone mad over the truth that remained. It was the girl's figure alone that made the picture; the man she stood before, was a mere blur of an idea, as were all the surroundings. Strange’s eyes, as he watched the woman, were brimful of a terrible joy, and of a more terrible sadness. As for Gwen, she fell to criticizing the details in a way that made Bry don’s flesh creep on his bones. “This is not the original sketch,” she said suddenly, stopping short in a sweepinf; criticism, “I wish you woulc show us that.” “It is very bad, you woulti like it still less than you do this.” “I might like it less as a pic ture, but, as a likeness, more, perhaps. Do show it to me.” The mere suspicion of entreaty she threw into her voice had never yet been rejected by any man, and soft-hearted Brydon was not going to be the first to run counter to her inclinations, so altogether against his will he pulled the sketch, about half the size of the other one, out from among a number of others, and put it in a good light where she could examine it at h e r ease “Ah!” she said, “yes, that’s me, myself! What induced you to idealize? It was unjust to wards me and dishonest to your self.” “It was neither, it was pro phetic,” said Strange in a low voice only audible to her. She glanced at him for a sec ond with curling scornful lips. “Was it impossible then to make a decent picture of me as I look now?” she asked with a laugh, turning to Brydon, who was blushing furiously and wishing he could swallow him self. “No fellow living could do justice to you,” he olurted out painfully, “however you may look! but I was trying to paint a bride, and there in that first study you didn’t look just like one—from my own confounded fault, no doubt, so I tried the other.” “You have certainly succeed ed in producing your bride,” she remarked with a curious, absent smile. To give her her due, she did not know how cruel her own pain made her. Her husband did, however; he winced as he put the two sketches side by to compare them. He had the delicate sensitive respect of most strong men for feelings and oth er frail nervous things of that sort. Gwen came and stood beside her husband, and looked from one to the other of the sketch es. ‘Now in this first one” she said, “the girl looks as if she were pre-ordained to the role of bride; in this other one, as you observe, she does not, but she is me. I am so sorry to disillusion you of your idea.” “You have not,” said Brydon softly, “only showed her many- sidedness.” “I can get ray wedding dress over,” said Gwen, with a touch of malice about her mouth, “shall I, and give you a few sit tings in the character of bride?” ‘‘No, thank you, Lady Strange,” said the boy, with admirable ceolness, “I shall stick to the ideal for my picture, * will work hard on it. And when it is finished will you have it, Strange?” Will I? The deuce I will! It would be a magnificent present without another stroke of work in it.” “What will you call it Hum phrey?” asked his wife. “I shall call it ‘The incogni ta’.” Mr. Brydm, tea is getting cold all this time, and I am so thirsty,” she said with serene imperiousness, turning from the sketches and going over to a lit tle table. “I hope you are as good at making tea as you are at making brides,” she went on mockingly. “Sugar? Yes please, two lumps, and—galette? How delicious! I do like French cake ” “Lady Strange, you said you would sit to me as a bride, did you mean it?” “I did,” she said amusedly. The ungainly-looking boy with his great saving clauses of eyes and his queer red blushes and open admiration of herself, gave her a sensation of interest. “Would you sit just once in that dress—or any other you ike? You don’t know how good of you it would be.” “Is it such a boon then when I require such an amount of ideal ization?” “Lady Strange!” he murmur ed reproachfully, with ludicrous woe. Ah, well, then, I will sit for you—where—here?” “Oh, not here! Did you think I would have the cheek to ask you to climb these steps to sit forme? Anywhere you arrange for me to come.” “Then come to our hotel, but I know my husband intends to ask you to dine with us to-day so we can settle the time.” “Thank you more than aw fully!” he cried with wost unaf fected fervor, “it’s such a boon for a fellow like me to get a la dy; we can get more or less col or and lovely flesh, you know, to paint from in the cheap mod els, but then they are grizette to the very marrow. Besides, it is not safe with Legrun even to experiment on th^m. We must learn to draw before we go about libelling even models,” he says, “Poor devils, they have enough to put up with without that! Bo you can see what an inestimable benefit you are be stowing on me. Strange, do you notice my walls? Not a rag to break the monotony.” “1 do; I thought the sternness of Art had come on you prema turely.” “No, but Legrun did. I brought all theold rags from the old shop and renewed the stock here, and those four walls were l n< one delicate glimmer of color, when, as Satan himself arrang ed it, who should come shamb ling and blaspheming up the stairs one blessed Sabbath day but Legrun, who insists upon having our addresses. Ithought he’d have a fit when he sat down gasping andglaringat the walls. ‘My good lad,’ he roared at last, ‘how old are you?’ ‘Nineteen,’ says I, shaking like a jelly fish. I thought you were nine,’ he elled* ’and making a doll’s ouse; clean down that filth, clean it from the decent lime- washed wall that never injured vou, and remember—remember, boy, that Art is serious, severe, stern, grave, terrible,’ h e shrieked, waving his arms like a maniac, and spitting horribly, ‘it will stand no tricks, no mock- ings, parbleu! Rags!—Filth!— with the disease shock full in them! Gur! Guz! Hu! Nev er no more let me see such sights!’ and raged down the stairs into the street, spitting, and scrap ing his throat,—he lived in an awful funk of infection,—and so I had to strip off my rags and leave the walls to their native nakedness.” “You can have your revenge when you set up on your own account. Gwen, it is nearly six o’clock.” “Yes, we must go. We’ll see you at dinner, Mr. Brydon?” “Will you walk or drive, Gwen?” “I will drive,” she said, and there was a dull, tired tone in her voice. CHAPTER XXVII. Gwen was in an unusual mor this afternoon. She silent until they got into hu- was the fiacre, but directly it moved she began to talk in a swift even way peculiarly her own. Everything she said had the calm cold brilliancy of steel about it, and she advanced the most dangerously heterodox opinion in a most unimpassion ed and frozen style. Strange shrugged his shoul ders with grim good humor as she went on. He admired her splendid insolence, as any man woul 1 have done; all the same, he felt a half frantic longing for that picture-bride and a never-increasing wonder as to how any woman cast in the same mould, eye for eye, mouth for mouth, dimple for dimple, curve for curve, could so atro ciously belie her nature. Suddenly Gwen veered round and turned the conversation in to a personal and analytical channel. She had never done it before, except in ber one brief allusion to the yellow aster. “That boy of yours is a genius, Humphrey, your swan is no oose,” she said, “but, tell me, id I look in the very least like that woman, the day you mar ried me?” He looked at her face of fine scorn. ‘Not in the least, except in the matter of form, and color, and pose. These are you in tangible flesh and blood.” “What did you mean by your prophetic’?” she demanded, casting pink shaddows over her face as she moved the red silk blind to and fro. “The possibility of your being like she is one day.” “Ah!” The blind moved a little faster and her hand held it tighter. I put it to you as a reasona ble man—do you believe in that possibility?” As a reaonable man, I do,” said he watching the pink shad ows playing in her dimnles. Yes—?’ And how is this to come to pass?” “Ah, there you have me!” he said, “I don’t know—possibly God may, or the modern mon ster, Evolution.” “Through what processes, 1 should very much like to know?” So should I, but I don’t, you see.” “She’d feel better if her face flushed like other women’s” he thought; “it must be ghastly to have to consume one’s own smoke like that ” Gwen looked out of the win dow, laughing softly to her self. “Y o u look super-humanly cool,” she said, put this minute pride is all agog to knead and mould me into that bridal crea ture. It would be a triumph of Art assuredly, and to your cred it. I wish you might have the kudos of it—why can’t you why can’t I help you to, for the life of me?” There came a rush of calm re strained vehemence into her cold tones that brought them to a sort of white heat. “Why am I not mouldable—or like other women?” “My good child, you could hardly expect that from the daughter of your father and mother—you are unreasona hie!” “Yes, you are right, I had forgotten them” she said. ‘‘It is abominable we should be such puppets, not only pres ent chances to play fast and loose with us.but to have to dance to the time of old, ignorant,half- daft ones, that should go an< rot in the grave of old failures Why should they stay and tor ment us? We have enough of their kind to deal with on our own account. Have you ever read the Bible?” “Have I ever read the Bible! Do I not know every inch of Syria, and every second inch of Egypt? Yes, I have read the Book, and on its native soil.” “Perhaps that may suit it, I don’t think ours does. There was one thing, however, I read in it, that took hold of me; you may know it—‘God’s ways are past finding out,’—this seems to me to contain a whole philoso phy capable of universal appli cation, and reaching to the pres ent time.” “You are going too fast my good Gwen; isn’t that rather the phi!ojophy of ignorance? Y< u are arguing from a point you rarely affect—from the point of view of Jewish theology with its strong and primitive, ami mystery-loving methods. God's ways, after all, if we choose to dig into them are no denser, and are just ou the same line as Natui e’s. She permits no cause without effect, or she will very will know the reason why.” “I wasn’t arguing from any point of view, Jewish or other wise, I was just applying a the ological axiom personally, thinking of parei ts and other chances.” “Ah, that’s an idle subject, isn’t it? By the way, you have a sneaking regard yourself for that bridal creature—you ad mire the woman, don’t you?” “Admire her! Yes, as a wo man, of course I do. Why, she is—superb! With that mature strong tenderness in every line of her, and that divine protec ting patient air of hers- that wo man might be a mother of na tions.” Strange started and his mouth twitched suddenly, the blood stopped in his veins and red and blue stars swam before his eyes. Gwen went on unheeding, in her passionless tones— “That woman is not, however, me. I am a beautiful girl—that, and no more—I contain nothing, I assure you, nothing that could be moulded into that woman.” “You contain everything,” said her husband slowly “only the deuce of the matter is, that none of us know where to find it!” “No, nor ever will.” She leaned forward so that her breath touched h i s cheek. “Humphrey, I wish you had never seen that picture! This necessity for idealization is an insult to me and to yourself— you should have had more in sight from the beginning.” “My'good child,” he said laugh ing softly, “I thought the exper- ment was an avowed fact.” She drew in her lips sharply, and was silent. When she spoke again her voice was rather hoarse. “I have often tried to imag ine the things that go to a mur der, and I really do think I un derstand the impulse now. I shall never altogether hate a murderer again. I am glad I know; one feels better—more liberal, for every new sensa tion.” Strange laughed. “And, after all, it was all su premely silly,” she wenton,“the experiment is two-sided, but you have no idea how infinitely brutal the bald fact sounded.” “Bald facts mostly do.” “Well—there is reason even in experiments, and remember, once for all, I am not a drama tic creature given to sudden new developments, I am no empo rium for the creation of fresh sensations; here I am, finished and complete ” Strange laughed. “‘Finished and complete!’ Was ever conceit like unto hers! My good girl, you are neither.” She threw up her head - “Well, here I am then, un finished and incomplete.” “Ah, but nature invariably finishes her work if it’s worth the tools.” “Like Providence shapes our ends,” she sneered with modu lated savageness. “Ah, this marriage truly is an experiment! Look at those two at the win dow—that girl and that man, that stunted creature there! Perhaps he’s an artist. She has a measley look and the man’s nose is awful! They are not a scrap like Browning’s artist and girl,and yet,I fancy, they think themselves in love with one an other—tell the man to stop for a minute!—here, here, at this house—there, do you see the id iotic simpers? And the two will marry, no doubt, on next Shrove Tuesday, but it won’t be an ex periment, I don’t think either of the pair looks as if he or she went in for observing new pha ses.” “They’ll have enough to do to keep tho wolf from the door. Perhaps in time, instead of ob serving new phases they’ll punch one another’s heads if they must have fresh sensa tions.” “Is that the usual and ortho dox end to being i n love— punching the head physically or morally, according to the rank of the lovers?” “No, the methods vary ac- to tho quality of the ave you had enough, cording t love. H shall we drive on?’ She nodded. “If it’s worth its salt, of course there’s no end.” “One even continuous stream into the ocean of—Nothingness! 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