Saint's Progress Part 27

"Very thin; Mr. Lauder is back again from the Front for a bit, and taking some of the work now."

"Do I hurt him very much still?"

"He's awfully pleased that you've come. He's as sweet as he can be about you."

"Yes," murmured Noel, "that's what's dreadful. I'm glad he wasn't in when I came. Has he told anyone?"

Gratian shook her head. "I don't think anybody knows; unless--perhaps Captain Fort. He came in again the other night; and somehow--"

Noel flushed. "Leila!" she said enigmatically. "Have you seen her?"

"I went to her flat last week with Dad--he likes her."

"Delilah is her real name, you know. All men like her. And Captain Fort is her lover."

Gratian gasped. Noel would say things sometimes which made her feel the younger of the two.

"Of course he is," went on Noel in a hard voice. "She has no men friends; her sort never have, only lovers. Why do you think he knows about me?"

"When he asked after you he looked--"

"Yes; I've seen him look like that when he's sorry for anything. I don't care. Has Monsieur Lavendie been in lately?"

"Yes; he looks awfully unhappy."

"His wife drugs."

"Oh, Nollie! How do you know?"

"I saw her once; I'm sure she does; there was a smell; and she's got wandering eyes that go all gla.s.sy. He can paint me now, if he likes. I wouldn't let him before. Does he know?"

"Of course not."

"He knows there was something; he's got second sight, I think. But I mind him less than anybody. Is his picture of Daddy good?"

"Powerful, but it hurts, somehow."

"Let's go down and see it."

The picture was hung in the drawing-room, and its intense modernity made that old-fas.h.i.+oned room seem lifeless and strange. The black figure, with long pale fingers touching the paler piano keys, had a frightening actuality. The face, three-quarters full, was raised as if for inspiration, and the eyes rested, dreamy and unseeing, on the face of a girl painted and hung on a background of wall above the piano.

"It's the face of that girl," said Gratian, when they had looked at the picture for some time in silence:

"No," said Noel, "it's the look in his eyes."

"But why did he choose such a horrid, common girl? Isn't she fearfully alive, though? She looks as if she were saying: 'Cheerio!'"

"She is; it's awfully pathetic, I think. Poor Daddy!"

"It's a libel," said Gratian stubbornly.

"No. That's what hurts. He isn't quite--quite all there. Will he be coming in soon?"

Gratian took her arm, and pressed it hard. "Would you like me at dinner or not; I can easily be out?"

Noel shook her head. "It's no good to funk it. He wanted me, and now he's got me. Oh! why did he? It'll be awful for him."

Gratian sighed. "I've tried my best, but he always said: 'I've thought so long about it all that I can't think any longer. I can only feel the braver course is the best. When things are bravely and humbly met, there will be charity and forgiveness.'"

"There won't," said Noel, "Daddy's a saint, and he doesn't see."

"Yes, he is a saint. But one must think for oneself--one simply must. I can't believe as he does, any more; can you, Nollie?"

"I don't know. When I was going through it, I prayed; but I don't know whether I really believed. I don't think I mind much about that, one way or the other."

"I mind terribly," said Gratian, "I want the truth."

"I don't know what I want," said Noel slowly, "except that sometimes I want--life; awfully."

And the two sisters were silent, looking at each other with a sort of wonder.

Noel had a fancy to put on a bright-coloured blue frock that evening, and at her neck she hung a Breton cross of old paste, which had belonged to her mother. When she had finished dressing she went into the nursery and stood by the baby's cot. The old nurse who was sitting there beside him, got up at once and said:

"He's sleeping beautiful--the lamb. I'll go down and get a cup o' tea, and come up, ma'am, when the gong goes." In the way peculiar to those who have never to initiate, but only to support positions in which they are placed by others, she had adopted for herself the theory that Noel was a real war-widow. She knew the truth perfectly; for she had watched that hurried little romance at Kestrel, but by dint of charity and blurred meditations it was easy for her to imagine the marriage ceremony which would and should have taken place; and she was zealous that other people should imagine it too. It was so much more regular and natural like that, and "her" baby invested with his proper dignity. She went downstairs to get a "cup o' tea," thinking: 'A picture they make--that they do, bless his little heart; and his pretty little mother--no more than a child, all said and done.'

Noel had been standing there some minutes in the failing light, absorbed in the face of the sleeping baby, when, raising her eyes, she saw in a mirror the refection of her father's dark figure by the door. She could hear him breathing as if the ascent of the stairs had tired him; and moving to the head of the cot, she rested her hand on it, and turned her face towards him. He came up and stood beside her, looking silently down at the baby. She saw him make the sign of the Cross above it, and the movement of his lips in prayer. Love for her father, and rebellion against this intercession for her perfect baby fought so hard in the girl's heart that she felt suffocated, and glad of the dark, so that he could not see her eyes. Then he took her hand and put it to his lips, but still without a word; and for the life of her she could not speak either. In silence, he kissed her forehead; and there mounted in Noel a sudden pa.s.sion of longing to show him her pride and love for her baby.

She put her finger down and touched one of his hands. The tiny sleeping fingers uncurled and, like some little sea anemone, clutched round it.

She heard her father draw his breath in; saw him turn away quickly, silently, and go out. And she stayed, hardly breathing, with the hand of her baby squeezing her finger.

II

1

When Edward Pierson, afraid of his own emotion, left the twilit nursery, he slipped into his own room, and fell on his knees beside his bed, absorbed in the vision he had seen. That young figure in Madonna blue, with the halo of bright hair; the sleeping babe in the fine dusk; the silence, the adoration in that white room! He saw, too; a vision of the past, when Noel herself had been the sleeping babe within her mother's arm, and he had stood beside them, wondering and giving praise. It pa.s.sed with its other-worldliness and the fine holiness which belongs to beauty, pa.s.sed and left the tormenting realism of life. Ah! to live with only the inner meaning, spiritual and beautifed, in a rare wonderment such as he had experienced just now!

His alarum clock, while he knelt in his narrow, monkish little room--ticked the evening hour away into darkness. And still he knelt, dreading to come back into it all, to face the world's eyes, and the sound of the world's tongue, and the touch of the rough, the gross, the unseemly. How could he guard his child? How preserve that vision in her life, in her spirit, about to enter such cold, rough waters? But the gong sounded; he got up, and went downstairs.

But this first family moment, which all had dreaded, was relieved, as dreaded moments so often are, by the unexpected appearance of the Belgian painter. He had a general invitation, of which he often availed himself; but he was so silent, and his thin, beardless face, which seemed all eyes and brow, so mournful, that all three felt in the presence of a sorrow deeper even than their own family grief. During the meal he gazed silently at Noel. Once he said: "You will let me paint you now, mademoiselle, I hope?" and his face brightened a little when she nodded. There was never much talk when he came, for any depth of discussion, even of art, brought out at once too wide a difference. And Pierson could never avoid a vague irritation with one who clearly had spirituality, but of a sort which he could not understand. After dinner he excused himself, and went off to his study. Monsieur would be happier alone with the two girls! Gratian, too, got up. She had remembered Noel's words: "I mind him less than anybody." It was a chance for Nollie to break the ice.

2

"I have not seen you for a long time, mademoiselle," said the painter, when they were alone.

Noel was sitting in front of the empty drawing-room hearth, with her arms stretched out as if there had been a fire there.