At the Gate of Samaria. William John Locke

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СКАЧАТЬ gracious, no. What have I to do with elves and fairies and that sort of thing? He is the son of Cophetua—supposing the king had not married the beggar maid.”

      “Then why not the son of any other king?”

      “Why not, indeed?” said Clytie drily. “Or of any other beggar maid?”

      “Oh!” said Winifred, looking into the fire.

      And then after a pause:

      “What makes you think that?”

      “Did you see his mother? I did. Such a stupid-looking, red-faced woman. I think she said she was a charwoman by profession. There are generations of drudgery in her face, whereas in Jack's there is vigour and intelligence—something so different; he must have some better strain of blood in him than she and a husband of her class can have given him. Don't you think so, dear?”

      “He's a very pretty boy,” replied Winifred, “but, oh, he is so dirty and”—with a shudder—“so animal.”

      “Well, he fascinates me,” said Clytie meditatively. “I am going to paint one of my wildest pictures—all for my own self—and a bit for you if you like, Winnie.” Winnie accepted this tribute of affection with a little flush of pleasure, although Clytie's “own” pictures seldom gave her unqualified æsthetic delight, and turned her face towards Clytie, who laughed in her frank way.

      “Don't look at me with those great eyes of yours, child! You make me angry for you. They are just the sort of eyes that make women miserable. You must not trust in people like that, believe me.”

      “I trust them when they are good like you, dear.”

      “Oh, but you mustn't. Don't you know I am the wickedest girl going—always thinking of the most dreadful things? Look at the wall. How can you love anybody that can do these silly things?”

      She pointed to a series of grotesque charcoal caricatures on the studio wall. She had been dissatisfied a day or two back with a picture she had been engaged on for a month, and in a fit of wilfulness had daubed it out and then proceeded to make a cruel, fantastic travesty of it on the wall.

      “You wanted your tea, dear, just as you do now,” replied Winifred.

      This tea hour was Winifred's great delight. At home, on account of the children, they had to sit round the dining table and butter their own thick slices of bread and drink out of substantial breakfast cups. In the studio the girls had provided a dainty little afternoon tea equipage, and Mrs. Gurkins always cut thin bread and butter from a fancy loaf. Generally it was Winifred who poured out the tea, but to-day Clytie busied herself with the cups, thus making some slight amends, perhaps, for having shocked Winifred. Women are full of these odd feminine impulses, and other women understand them. Men don't.

      They sat talking, as they usually did, over their tea, and long afterwards, until it was time for Winifred to go home. As they were taking leave of each other on the landing a man sprang up the stairs, checked himself, and raised a slouch hat as he passed them and vanished up the next flight. He was a fresh-faced man, with a brown and tawny beard; tawny ends, too, to his moustaches; bright gray eyes flashing humourously as he passed the girls. His dress was careless, loose and unfashionable, yet it was marked with a certain individuality.

      “Who is that?” Winifred whispered when the last foot of the ascending figure had disappeared.

      “That's another protest,” said Clytie—“a better one. He has the courage of his convictions.”

      “What do you mean, Clytie?”

      “Well, can't you recognise a protest when you see one?”

      “Oh, Clytie, don't tease and puzzle me,” cried Winifred, giving her friend's arm a little shake. “Do you know him?”

      “Of course not. How should I? But Mrs. Gurkins was telling me about him only this morning. His name is Kent. He seems to frighten the life out of her, and therefore I say he is a protest. Now you know, so run away home.”

      When Winifred had reached the street door Clytie leaned over the banisters and called after her.

      “Winnie! I must have been in a sweet temper this afternoon.”

      “Of course, dear. Why do you say so?”

      “Because you have left your basket of anemones for me to take care of!”

CHAPTER IV.

       Table of Contents

      When Winifred had gone Clytie took an omnibus to Cheyne Walk, where some friends of hers lived, and after her visit returned to her solitary dinner. It argued some strength of mind in Clytie that she did not give way, as many lonely women do, to a distaste for ordinary food, and a corresponding craving for the miscellaneous and not over wholesome meal denominated high tea. She had not reached the stage of feminine depression and sense of helplessness when inchoate banqueting on bread and butter and penny buns seems to bring cheerless solace. Her temperament seemed almost virile in its vigour, and although she had her sex's antipathy to gastronomy, she nevertheless found it reasonable that she should be provided with a decently served dinner. Besides, Mrs. Gurkins, who was professionally interested in food stuffs, held solid views on the subject. She herself had a good appetite, and her little girl children ate everything they could lay their little white teeth to; she did not believe in not being hungry. It was one of her grievances that her other lodger, Mr. Kent upstairs, cooked his own victuals scramblingly, and would not allow her to see that his wants were duly satisfied. Accordingly she bestowed extra care upon Clytie.

      After the cloth was removed Clytie continued the book she had been reading during the meal, and at last flung it aside. She rose and walked about the room, somewhat restless. She felt lonely—vaguely desirous of action, and yet idle. Was it a dumb premonition of fate, this restlessness? At any rate it led her to perform a trivial action which set in motion the currents of her future life.

      She sat down at her writing table that stood in the recess between the fireplace and the light-curtained window and lit a couple of candles, whose pretty red paper shades threw a rosy glow around the corner of the room. It was only a simple note that she scribbled, hastily, boldly, as was her wont. Then she left the candles burning, and returned to her armchair by the fire and gave herself up to meditation.

      The boy model she had engaged that morning interested' her powerfully. She shrank from an insistence upon the solution of the little problem she had offered to Winifred during the afternoon, hovering over and away from it. Her sense of type and personality was too acute not to be profoundly struck by the difference between his mother and himself. On the one hand was dulness, commonness, a coarse-fibred nature responsive to the stirrings of neither hope nor despair, a dull, uncomplaining drudge; on the other hand a quick, fiery temperament, showing itself in flashing black eyes, delicate nostrils, wiry, curly brown hair—all made picturesque by unqualified dirt. And yet, despite this refinement of feature, there was cruelty, brutality even, written on the childish face. That might be the fault of his upbringing, thought Clytie. But his beauty—where did it come from? She smiled as she thought of King Cophetua. It was the beggar maiden's grace that had won the king's heart, and grace was a quality that Jack's mother most distinctly СКАЧАТЬ