Chapter 9. Confession

________________________________________________
_ CHAPTER IX. CONFESSION

So many guests were arriving from Iron Hill, Cloudy Mountain, and West Gate Village that the capacity of Roya-Neh was overtaxed. Room had to be made somehow; Geraldine and Naida Mallett doubled up; twin beds were installed for Dysart and Bunny Gray; Rosalie took in Sylvia Quest with a shrug, disdaining any emotion, even curiosity, concerning the motherless girl whose imprudences with Jack Dysart had furnished gossip sufficient to last over from the winter.

The Tappans appeared with their guests, old Tappan grimmer, rustier, gaunter than usual; his son and heir, Peter--he of the rambling and casual legs--more genial, more futile, more acquiescent than ever. The Crays, Beckmans, Ellises, and Grandcourts arrived; Catharine Grandcourt shared Mrs. Severn's room; Scott Seagrave went to quarters at the West Gate, and Duane was driven forth and a cot-bed set up for him in his studio at Hurryon Lodge.

The lawns and terraces of Roya-Neh were swarming with eager, laughing young people; white skirts fluttered everywhere in the sun; tennis-courts and lake echoed with the gay tumult, motors tooted, smart horses and showy traps were constantly drawing up or driving off; an army of men from West Gate Village were busy stringing lanterns all over the grounds, pitching pavilions in the glade beyond Hurryon Gate, and decorating everything with ribbons, until Duane suggested to Scott that they tie silk bows on the wild squirrels, as everything ought to be as Louis XVI as possible. He himself did actually so adorn several respectable Shanghai hens which he caught at their oviparous duties, and the spectacle left Kathleen weak with laughter.

As for Duane, he suddenly seemed to have grown years younger. All that was careless, inconsequential, irresponsible, seemed to have disappeared in a single night, leaving a fresh, boyish enthusiasm quite free from surface cynicism--quite innocent of the easy, amused mockery which had characterised him. The subtle element of self-consciousness had disappeared, too. If it had remained unnoticed, even undetected before, now its absence was noticeable, for there was no longer any attitude about him, no policy to sustain, nothing of that humourous, bantering sophistication which ignores conventionality. For it is always a conscious effort to ignore it, an attitude to disregard what custom has sanctioned.

Kathleen had never realised what a really sweet and charming fellow he was until that morning, when he took her aside and told her of his engagement.

"Do you know," he said, "it is as though life had stopped for me many years ago when Geraldine and I were playmates; it's exactly as though all the interval of years in between counted less than a dream, and now, at last, I am awake and taking up real life again.... You see, Kathleen, as a matter of fact, I'm incomplete by myself. I'm only half of a suit of clothes; Geraldine always wore the rest of me."

"However," said Kathleen mischievously, "you've been very tireless in trying on, they say. It's astonishing you never found a good fit----"

"That was all part of the dream interval," he interrupted, a little out of countenance, "everything was absurdly unreal. Are you going to be nice to me, Kathleen?"

"Of course I am, you blessed boy!" she said, taking him in her vigorous young arms and kissing him squarely and thoroughly. Then she held him at arms' length and looked him very gravely in the eyes:

"Love her a great deal, Duane," she said in a low voice; "she needs it."

"I could not help doing it."

But Kathleen repeated:

"Love her enough. She will be yours to make--yours to unmake, to mould, fashion, remould--with God's good help. Love her enough."

"Yes," he said, very soberly.

A slight constraint fell between them; they spoke of the fete, and Kathleen presently left to superintend details which never worried her, never disturbed the gay and youthful confidence which had always from the beginning marked her successful superintendence of the house of Seagrave.

Geraldine and Scott were very busy playing hostess and host, receiving new-comers, renewing friendships interrupted by half a summer's separation; but there was very little to do except to be affable, for Kathleen's staff of domestics was perfectly adequate--the old servants of the house of Seagrave, who were quite able by themselves to maintain the household traditions and whip into line of duty the new and less conscientious recruits below stairs.

A great many people were gathered on the terrace when Duane descended the stairs, on his way to inspect his temporary quarters in Miller's loft, at Hurryon Lodge.

He stopped and spoke to many, greeted Delancy Grandcourt's loquacious and rotund mother, politely listened to her scandalous budget of gossip, shook hands cordially with her big, handsome daughter, Catharine, a strapping girl, with the shyly honest eyes of her brother and the rather heavy but shapely body and limbs of an indolent Juno. A harsh voice pronounced his name; old Mr. Tappan extended a dry hand and bored him through with eyes like holes burnt in a blanket.

"And do you still cultiwate the fine arts, young man?" he inquired, as sternly as though he privately suspected Duane of maltreating them.

Duane shook hands with him.

"The school of the indiwidool," continued Mr. Tappan, "is what artists need. Woo the muses in solitude; cultiwate 'em in isolation. Didn't Benjamin West live out in the backwoods? And I guess he managed to make good without raising hell in the Eekole di Boze Arts with a lot of dissipated wagabonds at his elbow, inculcating immoral precepts and wasting his time and his father's money."

And he looked very hard at Duane, who winced, but agreed with him solemnly.

Geraldine, on the edge of a circle of newly arrived guests, leaned over and whispered mischievously:

"Is that what _you_ did at the Ecole des Beaux Arts? Did you behave like all that or did you cultivate the indiwidool?"

He shook hands again, solemnly, with Mr. Tappan, stepped back, and joined her.

"Where on earth have you been hiding?" she inquired.

"You said that if I carved certain cabalistic signs on the big beech-tree you would presently appear to me in a pink cloud--you faithless little wretch!"

"How could I? Three motor-loads arrived from Iron Hill before I was half dressed, and ever since I've been doing my traditional duty; and," in a lower voice, "I was perfectly crazy to go to the beech-tree all the time. Did you wait long, you poor boy?"

"Man is born to wait. I came back just now to find you.... I told Kathleen," he added, radiant.

"What?" she whispered, flushing deliciously. "Oh, pooh! I told her about it this morning--the very first thing. We both snivelled. I didn't sleep at all last night.... There's something I wish to tell you----"

The gay smile suddenly died out in her eyes; a strange, wistful tenderness softened them, touching her lips, too, which always gave that very young, almost childish pathos to her expression. She put out her hand instinctively and touched him.

"I want to be alone with you, Duane--for a little while."

"Shall I go to the beech-tree and wait?"

She glanced around with a hopeless gesture:

"You see? Other people are arriving and I've simply got to be here. I don't see how I can get away before luncheon. Where were you going just now?"

"I thought I'd step over to the studio to see what sort of a shake-down you've given me to repose on."

"I wish you would. Poor child, I do hope you will be comfortable. It's perfectly horrid to send you out of the house----"

"Oh, I don't mind," he nodded, laughing, and she gave him a shy glance of adieu and turned to receive another guest.

In his extemporized studio at Hurryon Lodge he found that old Miller had already provided him with a washstand and accessories, a new tin tub and a very comfortable iron bed.

The place was aromatic with the odour of paints, varnishes, turpentine, and fixative; he opened the big window, let in air and sunshine, and picked up a sheaf of brushes, soft and pliable from a fresh washing in turpentine and black soap.

Confronting him on a big improvised easel was the full-length, half-reclining portrait of Rosalie Dysart--a gay, fascinating, fly-away thing after the deliberately artificial manner of the French court painters who simpered and painted a hundred and fifty years ago. Ribbons fluttered from the throat and shoulder of this demure, fair-skinned, and blue-eyed creature, who was so palpably playing at masquerade. A silken parody of a shepherdess--a laughing, dainty, snowy-fingered aristocrat, sweet-lipped, provocative, half reclining under a purposely conventional oak, between the branches of which big white clouds rolled in a dark-blue sky--this was Rosalie as Duane had painted her with all the perversely infernal skill of a brush always tipped with a mockery as delicate as her small, bare foot, dropping below the flowered petticoat.

The unholy ease with which he had done it gave him a secret thrill of admiration. It was apparently all surface--the exquisite masquerader, the surrounding detail, the technical graciousness and flow of line and contour, the effortless brush-work. Yet, with an ease which demanded very respectful consideration, he had absorbed and transmitted the frivolous spirit of the old French masters, which they themselves took so seriously; the portrait was also a likeness, yet delightfully permeated with the charm of a light-minded epoch; and somehow, behind and underneath it all, a brilliant mockery sparkled--the half-amused, half-indifferent brilliancy of the painter himself. It was there for any who could appreciate it, and it was quite irresistible, particularly since he had, after a dazzling preliminary study or two from a gamekeeper's small, chubby son, added, fluttering in mid-air, a pair of white-winged Loves, chubby as cherubs but much more Gallic.

Nobody excepting Rosalie and himself had seen the picture. What he meant to do with it he did not know, half ashamed as he was of its satiric cleverness. Painters would hate it--stand hypnotised, spellbound the while--and hate it, for they are a serious sort, your painters of pictures, and they couldn't appreciate an art which made fun of art; they would execrate the uncanny mastery and utterly miss the gay perversity of the performance, and Duane knew it and laughed wickedly. What a shock! What would sober, seriously inclined people think if an actor who was eminently fitted to play _Lear_, should bow to his audience and earnestly perform a very complicated and perfect flip-flap?

Amused with his own disrespectful reflections, he stood before the picture, turning from it with a grin from time to time to compare it with some dozen vigorous canvases hanging along the studio wall--studies that he knew would instantly command the owlish respect of the truly earnest--connoisseurs, critics, and academicians in this very earnest land of ours.

There was a Sargent-like portrait of old Miller, with something of that great master's raucous colouring and perhaps intentional discords, and all of his technical effrontery; and here, too, lurked that shadow of mockery ever latent in the young man's brush--something far more subtle than caricature or parody--deeper than the imitation of manner--something like the evanescent caprice of a strong hand, which seems to threaten for a second, then passes on lightly, surely, transforming its menace into a caress.

There were two adorable nude studies of Miller's granddaughters, aged six and seven--quaintly and engagingly formal in their naive astonishment at finding themselves quite naked. There was a fine sketch of Howker, wrinkled, dim-eyed, every inch a butler, every fibre in him the dignified and self-respecting, old-time servant, who added his dignity to that of the house he had served so long and well. The latter picture was masterly, recalling Gandara's earlier simplicity and Whistler's single-minded concentration without that gentleman's rickety drawing and harmonious arrangements in mud.

For in Duane's work, from somewhere deep within, there radiated outward something of that internal glow which never entirely fades from the canvases of the old masters--which survives mould and age, the opacity of varnish, and the well-intentioned maltreatment of unbaked curators.

There was no mystery about it; he prepared his canvas with white-lead, gave it a long sun-bath, modelled in bone-black and an earth-red, gave it another bath in the sun, and then glazed. This, a choice of permanent colours, and oil as a medium, was the mechanical technique.

Standing there, thoughts remote, idly sorting and re-sorting his brushes, he heard the birds singing on the forest's edge, heard the wind in the pines blowing, with the sound of flowing water, felt the warmth of the sun, breathed the mounting freshness from the fields. Life was still very, very young; it had only begun since love had come, and that was yesterday.

And as he stood there, happy, a trifle awed as he began to understand what life might hold for him, there came quick steps on the stair, a knock, her voice outside his door:

"Duane! May I come in?"

He sprang to the door; she stepped inside, breathing rapidly, delicately flushed from her haste.

"I couldn't stand it any longer, so I left Scott to scrape and bow and pull his forelock. I've got to go back in a few minutes. Are you glad to see me?"

He took her in his arms.

"Dearest, dearest!" she murmured, looking at him with all her heart in her brown eyes.

So they stood for a little while, her mouth and body acquiescent to his embrace.

"Such a long, long time since I saw you. Nearly half an hour," he said.

"Yes." She drew away a little:

"Do you know," she said, looking about her, over his shoulder, "I have never been here since you took it as a studio."

She caught a glimpse of the picture on the easel, freed herself, and, retaining his hand in both of hers, gazed curiously at Rosalie's portrait.

"How perfectly charming!" she said. "But, Duane, there's a sort of exquisite impudence about what you've done! Did you mean to gently and disrespectfully jeer at our mincing friends, Boucher, Nattier, _et al._?"

"I knew you'd understand!" he exclaimed, delighted. "Oh, you wonderful little thing--you darling!" He caught her to him again, but she twisted away and tucked one arm under his:

"Don't, Duane; I want to see these things. What a perfectly dear study of Miller's kiddies! Oh, it is too lovable, too adorable! You wouldn't sell that--would you?"

"Of course not; it's yours, Geraldine."

After a moment she looked up at him:

"Ours?" she asked; but the smile faded once more from eyes and lips; she suffered him to lead her from canvas to canvas, approved them or remained silent, and presently turned and glanced toward the small iron bed. Manner and gaze had become distrait.

"You think this will be comfortable, Duane?" she inquired listlessly.

"Perfectly," he said.

She disengaged her hand from his, walked over to the lounge, turned, and signed for him to seat himself. Then she dropped to her knees and settled down on the rug at his feet, laying her soft cheek against his arm.

"I have some things to tell you," she said in a low voice.

"Very serious things?" he asked, smiling.

"Very."

"All right; I am listening."

"Very serious things," she repeated, gazing through the window, where green tree-tops swayed in the breezy sunlight; and she pressed her cheek closer to his arm.

"I have not been very--good," she said.

He looked at her, suppressed the smile that twitched at his mouth, and waited.

"I wish I could give myself to you as clean and sweet and untainted as--as you deserve.... I can't; and before we go any further I must tell you----"

"Why, you blessed child," he exclaimed, half laughing, half serious. "You are not going to confess to me, are you?"

"Duane, I've got to tell you everything. I couldn't rest unless I was perfectly honest with you."

"But, dear," he said, a trifle dismayed, "such confidences are not necessary. Nor am I fit to hear your list of innocent transgressions----"

"Oh, they are not very innocent. Let me tell you; let me cleanse myself as much as I can. I don't want to have any secrets from you, Duane. I want to go to you as guiltless as confession can make me. I want to begin clean. Let me tell you. Couldn't you let me tell you, Duane?"

"And I, dear? Do--do you expect me to tell _you_? Do you expect me to do as you do?"

She looked up at him surprised; she had expected it. Something in his face warned her of her own ignorance.

"I don't know very much about men, Duane. Are there things you cannot say to me?"

"One or two, dear."

"Do you mean until after we are married?"

"Not even then. There is no use in your knowing."

She had never considered that, either.

"But _ought_ I to know, Duane?"

"No," he said miserably, "you ought not."

She sat upright for a few seconds longer, gazing thoughtfully at space, then pressed her pale face against his knee again in silent faith and confidence.

"Anyway, I know you will be fair to me in your own way," she said. "There is only one way that I know how to be fair to you. Listen."

And in a shamed voice she forced herself to recite her list of sins; repeating them as she had confessed them to Kathleen. She told him everything; her silly and common imprudence with Dysart, which, she believed, had bordered the danger mark; her ignoble descent to what she had always held aloof from, meaning demoralisation in regard to betting and gambling and foolish language; and last, but most shameful, her secret and perilous temporising with a habit which already was making self-denial very difficult for her. She did not spare herself; she told him everything, searching the secret recesses of her heart for some small sin in hiding, some fault, perhaps, overlooked or forgotten. All that she held unworthy in her she told this man; and the man, being an average man, listened, head bowed over her fragrant hair, adoring her, wretched in heart and soul with the heavy knowledge of all he dare not tell or forget or cleanse from him, kneeling repentant, in the sanctuary of her love and confidence.

She told him everything--sins of omission, childish depravities, made real only by the decalogue. Of indolence, selfishness, unkindness, she accused herself; strove to count the times when she had yielded to temptation.

He was reading the first human heart he had ever known--a heart still strangely untainted, amid a society where innocence was the exception, doubtful wisdom the rule, and where curiosity was seldom left very long in doubt.

His hands fell over hers as her voice ceased, but he did not speak.

She waited a little while, then, with a slight nestling movement, turned and hid her face on his knees.

"With God's help," she whispered, "I will subdue what threatens me. But I am afraid of it! Oh, Duane, I am afraid."

He managed to steady his voice.

"What is it, darling, that seems to tempt you," he asked; "is it the taste--the effect?"

"The--effect. If I could only forget it--but I can't help thinking about it--I suppose just because it's forbidden--For days, sometimes, there is not the slightest desire; then something stirs it up in me, begins to annoy me; or the desire comes sometimes when I am excited or very happy, or very miserable. There seems to be some degraded instinct in me that seeks for it whenever my emotions are aroused.... I must be honest with you; I--I feel that way _now_--because, I suppose, I am a little excited."

He raised her and took her in his arms.

"But you won't, will you? Simply tell me that you won't."

She looked at him, appalled by her own hesitation. Was it possible, after the words she had just uttered, the exaltation of confession still thrilling her, that she could hesitate? Was it morbid over-conscientiousness in the horror of a broken promise to him that struck her silent?

"Say it, Geraldine."

"Oh, Duane! I've said it so often to Kathleen and myself! Let me promise myself again--and keep my word. Let me try that way, dear, before I--I promise you?"

There was a feverish colour in her face; she spoke rapidly, like one who temporises, trying to convince others and over-ride the inward voice; her slender hands were restless on his shoulders, her eyes lowered, avoiding his.

"Perhaps if you and Kathleen, and I, myself, were not so afraid--perhaps if I were not forbidden--if I had your confidence and my own that I would not abuse my liberty, it might be easier to refrain. Shall we try it that way, Duane?"

"Do you think it best?"

"I think--I might try that way. Dear, I have so much to sustain me now--so much more at stake! Because there is the dread of losing you--for, Duane, until I am mistress of myself, I will never, never marry you--and do you suppose I am going to risk our happiness? Only leave me free, dear; don't attempt to wall me in at first, and I will surely find my way."

She sprang up, trying to smile, hesitated, then slowly came back to where he was standing and put her arms around his neck.

"Good-bye until luncheon," she said. "I must go back to my neglected guests--I am going to run all the way as fast as my legs can carry me! Kathleen will be dreadfully mortified. Do you love me?... Even after my horrid confessions?... Oh, you darling!... Now that you know the very worst, I begin to feel as clean and fresh as though I had just stepped from the bath.... And I _will_ try to be what you would have me, dear.... Because I am quite crazy about you--oh, completely mad!"

She bent impulsively and kissed his hands, freed herself with a breathless laugh, and turned and fled.

For a long time her lover stood there, motionless, downcast, clenched fists in his pockets, face to face with the past. And that which lay behind him was that which lies behind what is commonly known to the world as the average man. _

Read next: Chapter 10. Dusk

Read previous: Chapter 8. An Afterglow

Table of content of Danger Mark


GO TO TOP OF SCREEN

Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book