The Bond/Part 4/Chapter 5
V
SILENCE came to be the atmosphere of the house—a silence with no peace in it. Basil was now working hard, at a picture for which he had made innumerable studies from models in town—a group of nude figures in a sylvan landscape, in astonishing tones of blue and yellow colour. He was absorbed, and he had no moments of relaxation. When he was not working he roamed moodily about by himself. When Teresa spoke of his picture he looked at her gloomily and answered shortly; and once when she pressed him with questions he said, "Don't talk about it. You're not interested in my work." She saw in him a desire to bury himself in that work, to shut her out. Yet he might have retreated to his studio in town, and he did not do so. He sought no other person. Apparently he wished to be near her and yet apart from her; and to make her feel daily, hourly, the cold pain of this separation of spirit.
After a week or more it grew intolerable to Teresa. She went into town, spent the day with Alice Blackley, looked up her Aunt Sophy, who had just come back from a lecture-tour in the West, and finally telegraphed to Basil that she would dine and stay the night with Alice. The dinner was gay. Alice made up a little party on the spur of the moment. One of the men was Jack Fairfax. They went to a theatre and ended with supper at a restaurant, prolonged into the early hours of the morning. Teresa threw herself into the rather boisterous merriment of the occasion; her gaiety had a sharper, harder edge than of old. Fairfax talked to her and watched her with reawakened and growing interest. She talked to him as though she found him interesting; and before they parted it had been arranged that he was to motor out with Alice on the next day but one and lunch at Teresa's house.
That luncheon was also boisterous, owing, as Teresa now perceived, to Alice's new atmosphere. Alice had quite done being æsthetic. She was living now with smarter people, and she was conscientiously playing at being fast, as she had before played at being artistic. She drank two cocktails before luncheon, and during the meal alternately chaffed Basil and made eyes at him. Basil returned the chaff and the eyes with interest and rather brutally. Alice was beautifully dressed; Basil, with the frankness of a student of the human form, admired her figure, and received on the spot a request to paint her portrait.
"Only in town, you know," she said. "I can't come out to this dreary place. Why on earth do you stay here? Only a pair of turtle-doves like you two could stand it."
"Hard up," said Basil laconically.
"Oh, nonsense—come to town and I'll get you heaps of people to paint. Or if you've got a few thousands by you, ask Horace for a tip. He can put you on to something good, he's been making pots of money."
Basil smiled—at Teresa, and she flushed hotly over all her face. It was the first smile for ten days! It meant, she knew, only an ironic comment on that "few thousands" of Alice's—they would have felt rich with a few thousands by them. At least they still had their poverty in common! Alice noticed her flush and stared curiously at her.
"Flirting across the table," she said. "I always say you are the most domestic people I know. By the way, do you know Isabel Perry's back? She's somewhere near you here, isn't she?"
"Half a mile away," said Teresa.
"No, really! I'm coming down to stay a week-end with her next month. How jolly! You'll be there, too, perhaps—you're great chums, aren't you?"
"I haven't seen her for nearly a year."
"Oh, but you were great chums? Or was it Basil? Yes, now I think of it, it was Basil," and Alice smiled wantonly. She was not ill-natured, but she was a little excited.
Basil looked at Teresa and she saw boredom and disgust in his quick glance. He became ceremoniously polite to his guests, which always meant, with Basil, that he wished them away. His finely-cut face, with the new look of austerity that the last fortnight had given it, with its new hardness, took on an expression of satiric patience. He paid Alice some outrageous compliments, and at last even her not very acute sensibilities were touched.
"What an old prig you're getting to be, Basil," she said carelessly, as they left the table. "You're so different from what you used to be—there isn't any more jollity about you now than there is about a town-pump. And you look as if butter wouldn't melt in your mouth. Really, you're a wet blanket. I'm going to take Teresa off with me in the motor. I'm sure she wants a little life, poor dear."
"By all means, give it to her," said Basil. "I'm quite aware that I'm dull company, as you say—I'm only a poor grub, plugging away. I don't pretend to compete with bright butterflies like you and Fairfax."
Teresa went off in the motor, which Alice insisted on driving herself at a flying speed, and which came to grief, descending a hill, at a sharp turn. A tire burst, and the machine was left with the chauffeur. Alice and Fairfax walked to a near-by station and took a train, and Teresa walked home—six miles along the silent country roads. It was dark when she reached the house, and Basil came out to meet her.
"An accident?" he said irritably. "I thought there would be one—it's lucky your neck isn't broken. I wish you wouldn't go out on that sort of a tear again."
"Oh, it's amusing," said Teresa coldly.
"Amusing! You find those people amusing! Or was it the chance of breaking your neck that amused you?"
"Both, I think. I like the sensation of something happening, even if it's only rushing along in a motor."
"Or swilling cocktails at lunch and flirting, I suppose?"
"I didn't swill any cocktails. Really, Basil, you're turning over a new leaf."
"I'm not the only one. I don't care much for this last leaf that you've turned over. Alice is getting too vulgar"
"Anything is better than living in an ice-box, as I've been doing lately."
"Is it? All right, but if you want to bring that sort out here, I shall have to work in town."
He went into the studio, and Teresa looked after him despairingly. After a few moments she followed him. The room was dark, except for the firelight. He had thrown himself into a big chair before the fire, and was staring into it, his head bent in an attitude of weariness. She went over to him and put her arm about his shoulders. Brusquely he shook it off.
"Don't do that," he said sombrely.
"Bas ..."
His name died on her lips. She stood for some moments, looking dumbly at his head, at the gleam of the fire-light on his hair and his averted cheek, then turned and went out of the room.
••••••
That week Basil's father came out to spend a day. He had been ill, at his suburban home, for a month or more. Twice Teresa had been out there to see him, in a little house full of half-grown children and the odours of liberal German cooking. The Major seemed much more himself, away from that atmosphere. Yet he was greatly changed, physically, by his illness. His smart clothes hung upon a wasted figure, his cheeks had fallen in, and the old scar near his eye showed more distinctly against his present pallor. He was changed mentally, too. He talked about himself and his ailments, and the old wounds he had received in the war, which were troubling him again. His voice was querulous, and he moved feebly.
But he had all his habitual fondness for Teresa, and showed it. Several times he called her "Daughter"—the name was sweet to her. He brightened up to talk to Ronald, but a half-hour with the child fatigued him. It tired him, too, to talk to Basil, and Teresa caught more than one troubled and puzzled glance as the old man began to feel some change in his son. It frightened him, she could see; and she saw, too, that he dreaded any fresh blow to his sapped strength; his own troubles were all he could bear. When Basil went away, saying he had work to do, and leaving them together, the Major was visibly relieved. He did not ask about Basil, but leaning over the fire he began to talk again about himself. He told Teresa in what battles he had been wounded, and strayed into detailed war-time reminiscences, and talked about his hero, Grant; and rambled and wandered on, while she half-listened, putting in a gentle word now and then, and looking at the fire.
She was thinking, first about the Major, and realising with a shock his physical breaking-up. Then she thought what a blow to him would be any trouble between herself and Basil, and how an open rupture would affect him. If it came to that—and she was thinking it might—they ought, if possible, to spare the Major the knowledge of it. They would not have very long to wait. … He was the only one of the family on either side who would keenly feel it. Her own parents were dead, her Aunt Sophy would rejoice at her freedom, and Nina—Nina would say she had deserved it, perhaps. A hot flush blazed up in her face at the thought of Nina—and she became aware suddenly that she had not been listening to the Major, and that he was talking in a new tone.
He was talking about Basil's mother. He seemed to-day to be living altogether in the past He seemed now to be living over again vividly the love of his youth. Physical weakness had made him garrulous and he talked as though he were talking to himself. He murmured and crooned over old scenes of his wooing; her looks and words; her daring, her cleverness, her beauty.
"I've never seen a woman like her, my dear," he said. "I've lived thirty years in the world since she died, and I've never seen a woman fit to tie her shoes. I used to tie 'em, by Jove, and put 'em on for her. She'd never put on her own shoes and stockings in her life before she married me. She might have had many a more brilliant match than I was, but she took me, a poor young soldier. Good God, what was I, to deserve such a creature? The day she promised herself to me, it seemed to me as if a goddess had stooped down and kissed me. And she was proud! … You can't imagine how beautiful she was … when she took down her hair it covered her to her knees in a glory like copper and gold …"
Something like a sob broke the old man's voice. "My happiness was brief," he whispered, and became silent; his lips moving now and then, without sound.
Teresa thought: He is dying, though perhaps he does not know it. He is thinking of her because she was the great emotion of his life, and he feels that he is going to find her again. Perhaps he will find her. But then what will become of poor Agatha, who has cooked for him these many years—and what will she do when she gets to heaven and looks for him? He is her husband, too. But he's forgotten her, and her children, and even Basil—and he remembers only the woman with the copper hair that he loved thirty years ago—and has loved ever since. But perhaps there will be different heavens. The Major and his lady with the copper hair will live in one full of bright armour and glorious warriors and champing steeds; and Agatha will have one full of the most wonderful things to cook—and I daresay the Major will drop in to dinner with her occasionally, and fib to the beautiful lady about it. …
She glanced up at him. His eyelids had dropped and she thought he was asleep. She sat perfectly quiet for fear of waking him, and her face was tender as she looked at him.
But all the same—she thought—there might have been some difficulties in living with Basil's mother. Perhaps the Major hadn't had time to find them out. But if he had ever offended her, he might have found his goddess a stern judge. … And she smiled with bitter melancholy.
The Major, when he came to go away, as she walked out with him to the carriage, took her hand and looked wistfully at her, and said:
"You're not looking well, Teresa."
"Oh, I'm quite well," she said in surprise.
The Major shook his head.
"No, you're not," he said, and she caught again that look of troubled apprehension in his eyes.
Basil, who was going to take the Major home, looked at her too, a sudden quick scrutiny, but he said nothing.
Ronald came to kiss his grandfather good-bye, and Teresa, too, kissed him; and as she leaned over the gate and watched the carriage drive away down the darkening road, it seemed to her that all the world was sinking in decay: the old man there, the fading sunset that she saw through leafless trees, her own fading life. For the Major was quite right—the strain of the last weeks was beginning to show in her face. The colour and the life had died out of it, under the freeezing pressure of pain and dread.