December Love Part 63

Garstin's eyes had said to her with sharp imperativeness:

"Keep him! You're not to let him go!"

And she had kept her promise; she had gone away from the studio with Arabian leaving Garstin smiling at the door. And at that moment she had almost hated Garstin.

Arabian had asked her to lunch with him. She had consented. He had suggested a cab, and the Savoy or the Carlton, or the Ritz if she preferred it. But she had quickly replied that she knew of a small restaurant close to Sloane Square Station where the food was very good.

Many painters and writers went there.

"But we are not painters and writers!" Arabian had said.

Nevertheless they had gone there, and had lunched in a quiet corner, and she had left him about three o'clock.

On the day of Craven's call at Claridge's she had been with Arabian again. Garstin had begun another picture, and had worked on through the lunch hour. Later they had had some food, a sort of picnic, in the studio, and then she had walked away with Arabian. She had just left him when she met Craven in the hall of the hotel. Garstin had not allowed either her or Arabian to look at what he had done. He had, Miss Van Tuyn thought, seemed unusually nervous and diffident about his work. She did not know how he had gone on, and was curious. But she was going to dine with him that night. Perhaps he would tell her then, or perhaps he had only asked her to dinner that she might tell him about Arabian.

And in the midst of all this had come Craven with his changed manner and his news about Lady Sellingworth.

Decidedly things were taking a turn for the better. To Miss Cronin's increasingly plaintive inquiries as to when they would return to Paris Miss Van Tuyn gave evasive replies. She was held in London, and had almost forgotten her friends in Paris.

She wondered why Adela had gone away so abruptly. Although she had half hinted to Craven that she guessed the reason of this sudden departure, and had a.s.serted that Adela would presently come back bringing sheaves with her, she was not at all sure that her guess was right. Adela might return mysteriously rejuvenated and ready to plunge once more into the fray, braving opinion. It might be a case of _reculer pour mieux sauter_. On the other hand, it might be a flight from danger. Miss Van Tuyn was practically certain that Adela had fallen in love with Alick Craven. Was she being sensible and deliberately keeping out of his way, or was she being mad and trying to be made young at sixty in order to return armed for his captivation. Time would show. Meanwhile the ground was unexpectedly clear. Craven was seeking her, and she, by Garstin's orders and in the strict service of art, was pus.h.i.+ng her way towards a sort of intimacy with Arabian. But the difference between the two men!

Craven's visit to Claridge's immediately after the hours spent with Arabian had emphasized for her the mystery of the latter. Her understanding of Craven underlined her ignorance about Arabian. The confidence she felt in Craven--a confidence quite independent of his liking, or not liking her--marked for her the fact that she had no confidence in Arabian. Craven was just an English gentleman. He might have done all sorts of things, but he was obviously a thoroughly straight and decent fellow. A woman had only to glance at him to know the things he could never do. But when she looked at Arabian--well, then, the feeling was rather that Arabian might do anything. Craven belonged obviously to a cla.s.s, although he had a strong and attractive individuality. English diplomacy presented many men of his type to the emba.s.sies in foreign countries. But to what cla.s.s did Arabian belong? Even d.i.c.k Garstin was quite comprehensible, in spite of his extraordinary manners and almost violent originality. He was a Bohemian, with touches of genius, touches of vulgarity. There were others less than him, yet not wholly unlike him, men of the studios, of the painting schools, smelling as it were of Chelsea and the _Quartier Latin_. But Arabian seemed to stand alone. When with him Miss Van Tuyn could not tell what type of man must inevitably be his natural comrade, what must inevitably be his natural environment. She could see him at Monte Carlo, in the restaurants of Paris, in the _Galleria_ at Naples, in Cairo, in Tunis, in a dozen places. But she could not see him at home. Was he the eternal traveller, with plenty of money, a taste for luxury and the wandering spirit? Or had he some purpose which drove him about the world?

After Craven had left her that day at Claridge's she had a sudden wish to bring him and Craven together, to see how they got on together, to hear Craven's opinion of Arabian. Perhaps she could manage a meeting between the two men presently. Why not?

Arabian had not attempted to make love to her on either of the two occasions when she had been with him alone. Only his eyes had seemed to tell her that he admired her very much, that he wanted something of her.

His manner had been noncommittal. He had seemed to be on his guard.

There was something in Arabian which suggested to Miss Van Tuyn suspicion. He was surely a man who, despite his "open" look, his bold features, his enormously self-possessed manner, was suspicious of others. He had little confidence in others. She was almost certain of that. There was nothing cat-like in his appearance, yet at moments when with him she thought of a tomcat, of its swiftness, suppleness, gliding energies and watchful reserve. She suspected claws in his velvet, too.

And yet surely he looked honest. She thought his look was honest, but that his "atmosphere" was not. Often he had a straight look--she could not deny that to herself. He could gaze at you and let you return his gaze. And yet she had not been able to read what he was in his eyes.

He was not very easy to get on with somehow, although there was a great deal of charm in his manner and although he was full of self-confidence and evidently accustomed to women. But to what women was he accustomed?

That was a question which Miss Van Tuyn asked herself. Craven was obviously at home in the society of ordinary ladies and of women of the world. You knew that somehow directly you were with him. But--Arabian?

Miss Van Tuyn could see him with smart _cocottes_. He would surely be very much at ease with them. And many of them would be ready to adore such a man. For there was probably a strain of brutality somewhere under his charm. And they would love that. She could even see him, or fancied that she could, with street women. For there was surely a touch of the street in him. He must have been bred up in cities. He did not belong to any fields or any woods that she knew or knew of. And--other women?

Well, she was numbered among those other women. And how was he with her so far? Charming, easy, bold--yes; but also reserved, absolutely non-committal. She was not at all sure whether she was going to be of much use to d.i.c.k Garstin, except perhaps in her own person. Instead of delivering to him the man he wanted to come at perhaps she would end by delivering a woman worth painting--herself.

For there was something in Arabian that was certainly dangerous to her, something in him that excited her, that lifted her into an unusual vitality. She did not quite know what it was. But she felt it definitely. When she was with him alone she seemed to be in an adventure through which a current of definite danger was flowing. No other man had ever brought a sensation like that into her life, although she had met many types of men in Paris, had known well talented men of acknowledged bad character, reckless of the _convenances_, men who snapped their fingers at all the prejudices of the orthodox, and who made no distinction between virtues and vices, following only their own inclinations.

Such a man was d.i.c.k Garstin. Yet Miss Van Tuyn had never with him had the sensation of being near to something dangerous which she had with Arabian. Yet Arabian was scrupulously polite, was quiet, almost gentle in manner, and had a great deal of charm.

She remembered his following her in the street at night. What would he be like with women of that sort? Would his gentleness be in evidence with them, or would a totally different individual rise to the surface of him, a beast of prey perhaps with the jungle in its eyes?

Something in her shrank from Arabian as she had never yet shrunk from a human being. But something else was fascinated by him. She had the American woman's outlook on men. She expected men to hold their own in the world with other men, to be self-possessed, cool-headed, and bold in their careers, but to be subservient in their relations with women. To be ruled by a husband would have seemed to her to be quite unnatural, to rule him quite natural. She felt sure that no woman would be likely to rule Arabian. She felt sure that his outlook on women was absolutely unlike that of the American man. When she looked at him she thought of the rape of the Sabines. Surely he was a primitive under his mask of almost careful smartness and conventionality. There was something primitive in her, too, and she became aware of that now. Hitherto she had been inclined to believe that she was essentially complex, cerebral, free from any trace of sentimentality, quiveringly responsive to the appealing voices of the arts, healthily responsive to the joys of athleticism almost in the way of a Greek youth in the early days of the world, but that she was free from all taint of animalism. Men had told her that, in spite of her charm and the fascination they felt in her, she lacked one thing--what they chose to call temperament. That was why, they said, she was able to live as she did, audaciously, even eccentrically, without being kicked out of society as "impossible." She was saved from disaster by her interior coldness. She lived by the brain rather than by the senses. And she had taken this verdict to herself as praise. She had felt refinement in her freedom from ordinary desire. She had been proud of wors.h.i.+pping beauty without any coa.r.s.e longing. To her her bronzes had typified something that she valued in herself. Her immense vanity had not been blended with those pa.s.sions which shake many women, which had devastated Lady Sellingworth. A coa.r.s.eness in her mind made her love to be physically desired by men, but no coa.r.s.eness of body made her desire them. And she had supposed that she represented the ultra modern type of woman, the woman who without being cold--she would not acknowledge that she was cold--was free from the slavish instinct which makes all the ordinary women sisters in the vulgar bosom of nature.

But since she had seen Arabian she felt less highly civilized; she knew that in her, too, lurked the horrible primitive. And that troubled and at the same time fascinated her.

Was that why when she had seen Arabian for the first time she had resolved to get to know him? She had called him a living bronze, but she had thought of him from the first, perhaps, with ardour as flesh and blood.

And yet at moments he repelled her. She, who was so audacious, did not want to show herself with him at the Ritz, to walk down Piccadilly with him in daylight. As she had said to d.i.c.k Garstin, an atmosphere seemed to hang about Arabian--an unsafe atmosphere. She did not know where she was in it. She lost her bearings, could not see her way, heard steps and voices that sounded strange. And the end of it all was--"I don't know."

When she thought of Arabian always that sentence was in her mind--"I don't know."

She was strangely excited. And now Craven came to her. And he attracted her, too, but in such a different way!

Suddenly London was interesting! And "I don't know when we shall go back to Paris!" she said to Miss Cronin.

"Is it the Wallace Collection, Beryl?" murmured "Old f.a.n.n.y," with plaintive suspicion over her cup of camomile tea.

"Yes, it's the Wallace Collection," said Miss Van Tuyn.

And she went away to dress for her dinner with d.i.c.k Garstin.

She met him at a tiny and very French restaurant in Conduit Street, where the cooking was absolutely first rate, where there was no sound of music, and where very few English people went. There were only some eight or ten tables in the cosy, warm little room, and when Miss Van Tuyn entered it there were not a dozen people dining. d.i.c.k Garstin was not there. It was just like him to be late and to keep a woman waiting.

But he had engaged a table in the corner of the room on the right, away from the window. And Miss Van Tuyn was shown to it by a waiter, and sat down. On the way she had bought _The Westminster Gazette_. She opened it, lit a cigarette, and began to glance at the news. There happened to be a letter from Paris in which the writer described a new play which had just been produced in an outlying theatre. Miss Van Tuyn read the account. She began reading in a casual mood, but almost immediately all her attention was grasped and held tight. She forgot where she was, let her cigarette go out, did not see Garstin when he came in from the street. When he came up and laid a hand on her arm she started violently.

"Who's--d.i.c.k!"

An angry look came into her face.

"Why did you do that?"

"What's the matter?"

He stared at her almost as if fascinated.

"By Jove . . . you look wonderful!"

"I forbid you to touch me like that! I hate being pawed, and you know it."

He glanced at the pale green paper.

"The sea-green incorruptible!"

He stretched out his hand, but she quickly moved the paper out of his reach.

"Let us dine. You've kept me waiting for ages."

Garstin sent a look to his waiter, and sat down opposite to Miss Van Tuyn with his back to the room.

"I'll buy a _Westminster_ going back," he observed. "Bisque! Bring a bottle of the Lanson, Raoul."

He addressed the waiter in French.

"_Oui, m'sieu_."

"Well iced!"

"_Certainement_, Monsieur Garstin."