Chapter VII. Whitewash and Paint
A narrow passage led from the back of the lounge-hall into the grounds, and as Leicester Pratt passed out into a sheltered lawn, its dark surface streaked with slits of light from upper windows—one window being that of his bedroom—he noticed a thin coil of smoke spiralling upwards. Then Nadine Leveridge gleamed at him out of a shadow.
She was a creature of dazzling white, softened by the deep green of her dress. Her shoulders were perfectly formed and perfectly revealed. One was tempted to envy the narrow green strips curving with such apparent insecurity over them. A double rope of pearls made a loop in front of the simple green bodice. A silk wrap, also of green, but deeper and more brilliant in hue, partially covered one shoulder.
“Nadine Leveridge is Life’s relentless weapon,” thought Pratt. “A woman for fools to fear.”
Pratt did not fear her. He could even stand and regard her, deliberately studying her subtle challenges with the impertinent privilege of an artist.
“You’ve dressed early,” he said. She nodded. “Not afraid of the cold?”
“Not a bit.”
He felt for his cigarette-case, and found he had left it in his room.
“I’m sorry I can’t oblige,” remarked Nadine. “Mr. Taverley gave me this.”
She held up her cigarette. Pratt noticed that it was a State Express 555.
“Don’t move for a moment,” he said. She stood motionless, her eyebrows raised a little. Only the cigarette smoke continued its movement. “The lady with the cigarette. The lady in green. Modern Eve. Woman. Anything you damn like. When do I paint her?”
“She’d have to pawn her pearls to pay your price,” smiled Nadine, puffing the cigarette again.
“That’s terribly material.”
“Goes against the grain?”
Now Pratt smiled.
“You must hate meeting pieces of wood like Bultin and me,” he observed.
“Nonsense—nobody’s wood!” retorted Nadine. “Some people build wooden walls around themselves, that’s all. Bultin does, certainly.”
“Yes, I agree. He’s chained himself inside in case he should get out and collapse. But—me?”
“Something could move you.”
“What?”
“I’ve no idea. But I couldn’t. That’s why I don’t think I’ll pawn my pearls, thank you. Any one who paints me must be an out-and-out idealist.”
“An idealist is merely another sort of man who builds a wall round his passions.”
“And whose passions are the most ardent when the wall goes?” replied Nadine. “Yes, I know all about that! But he begins with a kind heart, and I only allow artists with kind hearts to paint me. I’ve seen your Twentieth-Century Madonna!”
“I should never have thought you feared the truth, Nadine,” reproved Pratt.
“I don’t. But no artist can paint the whole truth. He just paints his half—and the other half can’t answer back from the canvas. The half I fear is your half—all by its little lonesome!”
“Touché,” murmured Pratt, “although I am not admitting there is any other half.”
“Didn’t you paint the other half when you were twenty? I remember a picture called ‘Song of Youth.’”
“My God, spare me!” he winced. “Must that ghastly song follow me to the grave? And anyway,” he added, “how on earth do you remember that ancient atrocity? From your appearance, your memory shouldn’t take you back so far.”
“I’m in shadow.”
“Kindly step out of it.”
She hesitated, then did so.
“I repeat my astonishment,” said Pratt, staring at her. “You look twenty yourself! And now, I suppose, you will charge me with gallantry? No, I couldn’t stand that! Not immediately after the resuscitation of my ‘Song of Youth!’ Excuse me, before I become utterly whitewashed!”
“I’ll excuse you,” answered Nadine, throwing her cigarette away, “but I don’t think I’m exactly the kind of person to whitewash anybody.”
“Thank God!” said Pratt devoutly.
He watched her pass back to the house, then stepped on to the dark lawn. It was thirty strides across. Beyond, a flagged path led between bushes to the studio.
As he reached the building he felt in his pocket for the key. There had been no afternoon sitting that day, for horses had supplanted canvas; and there was not much chance of a sitting on the morrow, either. A stag was to be routed out of Flensham Forest, to perform its entertaining death-run. Well, he could add a few touches to the picture by himself, and finish the thing on Sunday. He’d have to get it out of the way by then, if Ruth Rowe’s was to follow.
“Where the devil—?” he murmured.
Then he saw the key in the door, and recalled that he must have left it there after his visit with Mr. Rowe before tea. It was then that the picture of Ruth had been decided on.
He turned the key and entered the large room. Ruth’s picture would be dull compared with Anne’s. There was little to paint about Ruth. There were fathomless depths to reveal in Anne. He knew them. He could pierce through right down to the bed. Yes, he liked this picture—there was something definitely challenging in it. “No whitewashing, my child—we’ll show ’em—a bit of real collaboration. As a rule, I’m the only one that understands, but you understand, too. That’s what makes it!”
And Earnshaw’s presence here this week-end added its touch of ironic justification. Anne could sell her soul, like the rest of them—or the mythical thing that was called a soul!
He switched on the light, and turned to the picture of the Honourable Anne Aveling.
It was almost obliterated by a long, broad smudge of paint. The smudge, crimson lake, began at Anne’s right ear, and descended diagonally across the dark-green riding habit.
“Something could move you!” Nadine’s words screamed through his ears, as though repeated by an invisible loud speaker turned full on. He found himself trembling. He fought against vulnerable emotion.
“Somebody’s gone mad here,” he thought. “All in a moment.”
He recalled the moment when he had seen red in the passage outside his bedroom. Yes… it could happen.
He turned away from the canvas, to control himself. He stared round the studio. On another easel was a large painting of a stag, done by Anne herself. It was not good, saving for the terrible, dull fear she had somehow planted in the stag’s eyes—a fear she should not have known about, since she hunted. He concentrated on the stag’s eyes for a few seconds, then turned his own eyes back to the ruined canvas. The fit of trembling had passed.
“Queer game,” he said aloud. “I wonder whether I shall ever have the pleasure of painting the person who did this?”
He glanced at his watch. Five minutes to seven. He left the studio abruptly, locked the door, and put the key in his pocket. A spent cigarette-end loomed dully from the ground. He picked it up.
Some one was moving in the path. He dashed forward and grabbed. Sheer instinct had caused the sudden action. A hand banged him in the chest, and he staggered. When he had recovered, he was alone.
As he came to the end of the flagged path a figure met him off the edge of the lawn.
“Good-evening,” said the figure.
Pratt regarded the face that rose abruptly before his, and smiled.
“Good-evening, Mr. Chater,” he answered.
“That’s a good guess,” replied Chater. “We’ve not met.”
“No, that’s how I guessed,” responded Pratt. “Process of elimination. You came on the 5.56, didn’t you?”
“That’s right.”
“You’ve not been here before?”
“No, my first visit. Rather a nice place, isn’t it? I’m just having a stroll round.”
“I’m afraid you won’t see much in this darkness.”
“Enough to get one’s bearings. Where does this lead? Is that building over there the stables?”
He was gazing along the flagged path.
“No, that’s a studio,” answered Pratt.
“Oh, yes, there’s an artist here, isn’t there?”
“Well—he calls himself an artist. Are you interested in art, by any chance?”
“Me? Not particularly. Who’s the fellow?”
“What fellow?”
“The artist?”
“Leicester Pratt.”
“Oh, Leicester Pratt! He’s rather the craze just now, isn’t he?”
“Some people like his work.”
“And some don’t?”
“They all pay big prices for it.”
“Then I don’t suppose he worries! Is he painting anybody here?”
Pratt paused for a second before replying.
“I have just been looking at a picture he is painting of somebody here.”
“Good?”
“He thinks so.”
“Who’s it of?”
“Lord Aveling’s daughter.”
“Oh, not his wife.”
The remark was made carelessly, but Pratt realised that his face was being watched, and he took great pains that it should convey nothing as he answered dryly:
“I said his daughter.”
“So you did,” smiled Chater. “Rather an attractive girl, though I’ve only seen her for a moment. Isn’t she just going to be engaged or something?”
“Do I follow you?”
“Eh?”
“The ‘something?’”
Chater’s smile augmented to a laugh, and his teeth gleamed in the dusk.
“Don’t mean to insinuate anything,” he said. “It’s Earnshaw, isn’t it?” As Pratt did not respond, he added, “Hope I’m not asking too many questions; but when you’re a sort of stranger—well, it’s helpful to know things. Often saves you from making a faux pas. Curiosity’s not one of my natural vices.”
“That idea would never occur to me, Mr. Chater,” observed Pratt ironically.
The irony made no impression.
“I admit I would rather like to see that picture, though,” Chater went on. “Is one allowed in the studio?”
“I’m afraid it’s locked,” replied Pratt.
“Locked? Then how did you get in?” inquired Chater.
“I have the key,” said Pratt, “and I locked it.”
“That sounds as if you’re Leicester Pratt.”
“I am.”
“You might have warned me. Now I shall spend the rest of the evening trying to recall our conversation to see if I’ve put my foot in it! Or p’r’aps you’ll save me the trouble? Have I?”
There was something cheap, almost insulting, in Chater’s coolness, which appeared to have been deliberately acquired, whereas the sangfroid of Pratt was a natural inheritance. The artist answered:
“You have not even put your foot in my studio. Or—have you?”
“What, put my foot in your studio?” exclaimed Chater. “How could I have, if it’s locked?”
“It wasn’t locked ten minutes ago.”
Chater’s expression changed slightly. It was still cool, but a watchful quality entered into it.
“Ten minutes ago I was saying good-evening to a maid,” he said.
A clock struck seven as he spoke. It was a clock over the stables.
“I see,” murmured Pratt. “Then you have not been out here ten minutes?”
“I’d just come out when I met you.”
“Did you meet anybody else?”
“Excuse me, Mr. Pratt, but what’s all this about?”
Pratt shrugged his shoulders.
“Nothing important,” he replied. “See you at dinner.”
Chater turned his head as Pratt began to resume his way.
“Do we like each other?” he asked.
“Not a bit,” answered Pratt.
That was also Chater’s conviction as, after watching the artist disappear into the house, he himself turned back to the flagged path and walked towards the studio. If Pratt had not locked the studio door, he would not have seen the thirteenth guest at dinner.
Bultin was fixing an over-large white tie round his collar when Pratt rejoined him. Bultin liked large things. His soft felt hat was of Italian dimensions, although it came from a shop in Piccadilly.
“Enjoy your walk?” asked Bultin, without turning his head.
“Immensely,” answered Pratt, throwing off his coat, “though not quite as much as Edyth Fermoy-Jones would have enjoyed it in my place. ‘Why?’ the famous journalist refused to inquire. Because, my dear Lionel, Edyth Fermoy-Jones would have made a most sensational discovery, and would have torn up the first chapter of that novel of hers.”
“The one thing I have never learned to do without an effort,” said Bultin, “is to tie a white tie.”
“And she would have started her story afresh, you vile pretender! Yes, Lionel, I made a mistake when I described her plot to you just now. It will certainly contain the marvellous necklace round the neck of the attractive widow—a double rope of pearls worth—you like to quote figures, don’t you?—worth every penny of ten thousand pounds. You can make it twenty, if you like. Edyth Fermoy-Jones will make it fifty. But it won’t be stolen! Not, at least, for several chapters—till her editor has put the wind up her by shouting for more drama. No, a picture will be mutilated, instead. Less hackneyed idea, isn’t it? With first-rate possibilities for development, and an unimpeachable setting. Studio—model’s screen—artist’s lay figure—strange pictures on large easels—somebody hiding behind one of ’em—” He paused, arrested by a thought, then continued: “The mutilated picture in Miss Fermoy-Jones’s studio will be of a baron’s daughter. Value—no, price—one thousand guineas. Smeared over with paint, my boy. Smeared over with paint.”
“I thought that was the fate of all pictures,” remarked Bultin.
“The fate is bearable when there is only one artist,” answered Pratt. “But here there are two. The first artist’s smear has been smeared out by the second. I wonder how Epstein feels when people daub his statues? Scornful? Callous? Cynical? Or just bloody angry? I must ask him.”
Bultin’s nose for a true scent was as accurate as any hound’s. He paused for a moment in his struggle with his tie.
“Like that?” he said quietly.
“I don’t suppose, Lionel,” replied Pratt, kicking off his shoes, “there’s a soul alive without his vulnerable spot. An elephant’s got one behind his ear. I’ve got one behind my paint. Where’s yours?”
“You’ll have to paint me, as you paint other people, to find out,” answered Bultin, almost humanly.
“Perhaps I’ve found out already, without using my brushes.”
“Or perhaps I haven’t got one? Or perhaps the only individual who will ever find it out is the unpleasant old man with the scythe.”
“Death,” mused Pratt. “I’m not thinking of Death. That’s miles away....”
He stopped abruptly. Bultin loosened his tie, pulled it off, and began again.
“Are you sure, Leicester?” he inquired. “Are you quite sure—with your mutilated picture only a few yards away? There may be murder committed in Miss Fermoy-Jones’s novel yet—eh? By an artist?”
“I don’t kill,” said Pratt. Then he recalled the moment when he had seen red in the passage, and again when he had found himself trembling in the studio. He held up his hand. It was perfectly steady. He smiled. “No; I don’t kill. The murder may appear in Miss Fermoy-Jones’s shocker, but it won’t be reported in Monday’s newspaper. I’m afraid I won’t be giving you that paragraph. Just the same, Lionel,” he went on contemplatively, “there’s a lot beneath a quiet surface. The person who spoilt my picture may have been a quiet sort of a person. He may have been more surprised than any one at his action. A sudden moment of passion, eh? A sudden dizziness? It can happen.” He raised a slender finger. “Listen! Dead quiet, isn’t it? Not a sound! But if we could really hear, Lionel? Storms brewing in the silence? There’s silence in the passage outside this door here—silence in the hall below—silence on the lawn, silence in the studio—silence in a room where an invalid lies. A brooding silence, my boy—that’s not going to last!”
Bultin looked at Pratt, whose hand now dropped into a pocket to emerge with two small objects. One was a cigarette-end. State Express 555. The other was the key to the studio.
“Damn this tie,” said Bultin, and chose another.
Chapter VIII. How Things Happen
John looked up quickly as Nadine entered the ante-room, and there was something apprehensive in his eye.
A feeling of peace had come to him when, shortly before dinner, his couch had been rolled in here from the hall and he had escaped temporarily from social responsibilities. Nadine, dressed early, had herself supervised the removal and the arranging of the room, assuming responsibility for his comfort, but she had only lingered for a moment or two afterwards. He gained an impression—it was correct—that she had originally intended to stay longer, and had then abruptly changed her mind.
A perfect dinner had followed. Its character gave no hint that it had been designed and cooked by a Chinaman. He had had one visitor during the meal. Anne had left her table to make sure that everything was all right. “I suppose I really ought to have watched you being shoved in here,” she had said, “but I’m afraid I never do half the things I ought to do, and anyway Mrs. Leveridge was looking after you, wasn’t she? She’s terribly nice, isn’t she? I love her. Be sure to give a view-halloa if you want anything, won’t you?” The idea that any one in Bragley Court should have to shout for service made John smile.
The dark lawn outside the window sheltered by the long ballroom wing—had the ballroom been a lecture-hall and the ante-room less luxuriously furnished, he might have fancied himself back in college, staring out into the dark quadrangle where studious figures flitted not always with studious thoughts—had contributed to the sense of mental repose.
Then the peace had been broken. Guests, impelled by kindness or curiosity, had paid him short visits, or popped their heads in to give him a word or a smile. Apart from Harold Taverley, the men had fought rather shy of him, but the women had formed an intermittent procession. Mrs. Rowe had introduced her daughter, Ruth, who had been thoroughly unmodern and had blushed rather painfully. Miss Fermoy-Jones, on the other hand, had been quite unblushing, and during ten boring minutes had contrived to mention the titles of six of the sixteen mystery novels she had written. “Of course, they’re terrible stuff, really,” she had gushed, when she had become mistakenly convinced that she would not be believed, “but if people demand a thing, what are you to do? And just as you can write a bad psychological novel, I suppose you can write a good detective story. Lift your readers up, I say, and it doesn’t really matter where you start from—if you understand what I mean, Mr. Foss. But I mustn’t make your head ache by talking literature!” Lady Aveling had introduced Zena Wilding. Maybe she had hoped Zena would stay, but this interview had ended rather abruptly when the actress had suddenly noticed Lord Aveling in the doorway, and had whispered confidentially, “I’m so sorry, I’ve got to go and talk shop, but perhaps I’ll see you again later.” Anne, too, had paid him a second visit.
But Nadine Leveridge had kept away, and during the intervals of the procession John had visualised her in the ballroom, from which music faintly floated. He visualised her with painful clearness and struggled not to.... And he was struggling not to now, when she appeared, and caught his expression.
If she had been dancing, there was little sign of it.
She looked as neat as when he had last seen her, and the double row of pearls lay against smooth, cool skin.
“Shall I go?” she asked with disarming bluntness.
“Go? Good Lord, no!” he exclaimed. “Why on earth?”
“You look worried.” His mind raced for the right answer, but her mind raced his. “I expect your foot’s still giving you the devil.”
“Just a bit.”
“So I will go. You’d rather be alone. I know you’ve had a string of visitors. Good-night.”
“I say—you’re not—wait a minute—you’re not really going, are you?”
“You’re quite sure you don’t want me to?”
“I should hate you to!”
“Well, after all, I didn’t really come here just to turn round and go back again,” she smiled.
She entered the room and walked towards the window. A dog across the dark lawn was barking.
“Haig’s a bit restless to-night,” she remarked. “Haig is our watch-dog, and Lord Aveling’s method of keeping the Great War green. Though why anybody wants to keep a war green I’ve never learned.” She pulled the long curtains across the window, shutting out the lawn and muffling Haig’s war-cry. Then she rolled a large green silk pouffe towards the couch and sat beside him. “What do we talk about, Mr. Foss? Things that matter, or things that don’t?”
“I’ll leave the choice to you,” he hedged. “But perhaps cabbages and kings would be the safest.”
“Safest?”
He turned red. What a fool he was! What a blundering ass! Usually he was rather good at conversation, but now he could not even talk of cabbages and kings without putting his foot in it. He did not realise that there are some women with whom it is almost impossible for a man to talk insignificantly. Beneath their trivial words they are telling him all the while that they like him or dislike him, love him or loathe him. The personal equation is all that lives behind their conversation.
“Have a cigarette, and don’t worry,” said Nadine. She produced a tiny gold case and held it out to him. “Forgive their idiotic size.”
She struck a match. As the light flickered on her features, their perfection almost hurt him. Of course, it was beauty-parlour perfection. Therefore, not really perfection at all. He held on to that thought while he advanced his head to the light. She blew the match out as soon as he had used it, then struck another and lit her own cigarette from a greater distance.
They smoked for a few moments in silence. He had an agonising sensation that valuable seconds were slipping away, dropping irreclaimably into the void of time. Suddenly she raised her head.
“Yes,—I remember—one can just hear the music from this room,” she exclaimed. “Has it tantalised you, as it tantalised me when I was lying on that couch two years ago?”
“I’m not a great dancer,” he answered, “but I like it.”
“You’re cut out for the diplomatic service,” she smiled, “you answer questions so tactfully! I could hardly lie still! There were better dancers that time than this. Apart from Mr. Taverley—and even he trod on my foot once”—She advanced a shoe and regarded the gold-sandalled toe—“there’s not a good dancer here. Well, Lord Aveling’s not bad—but the rest! Sir James dances with a sort of pompous caution. Mr. Pratt seems to have the one object of preventing you from knowing what steps he’s going to do next. I can usually follow anybody, but he beats me. I’m sure it’s on purpose. Of course, his bosom companion, Mr. Bultin, doesn’t dance at all. Or, if he does, he won’t. He just watches with a kind of insulting boredom. So I escaped him. Also Mr. Rowe. But Mr. Chater—oh, my God! We almost came to blows!”
“How does Mr. Chater dance?” inquired John, feeling that all this conversation was mere prelude. “I can’t imagine him dancing attractively.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, you’re right, anyway. He—how can one describe it?—he seems to press, and yet he doesn’t. I think it’s because he is pressing with his mind. He was asking questions—quite quietly and casually—all the time we danced.” She laughed. “He even asked a question about us.”
“What—you and me?”
“You and me. He wanted to know whether we’d known each other a long while.”
“Confound the fellow! It wasn’t his business!”
“So I implied. Although he did it quite nicely. Shall I tell you what he reminds me of? A fairly intelligent worm—and after talking with fairly intelligent worms, I always feel I want a bath!”
“I suppose it was when you implied that it wasn’t his business that you nearly came to blows?” asked John.
“No—we just survived that one. It was when he said, ‘Did I hear somebody say your husband’s in the army?’”
“I—see,” murmured John.
“I believe you do,” she answered.
A wave of anger swept through him.
“The man’s a cad!” he exclaimed. “What’s he doing here?”
“That’s what I’m wondering, Mr. Foss,” replied Nadine thoughtfully. “Lord Aveling sometimes collects queer folk, but he’s rather excelled himself this week-end—I’ve not come across Mr. Chater’s type here before. By the way—do you know my husband isn’t in the army?”
John nodded, and hoped he was not flushing as he recalled the information Taverley had given him.
“Would it be cricket to ask who told you?”
“But you know that, don’t you?”
“Yes, of course. Harold Taverley. He was one of my husband’s best friends.”
“He still is.”
She looked at him quizzically, then smiled.
“You put that rather nicely,” she said. “And is Harold Taverley still my friend? No, never mind. I’m asking unfair questions.” She paused. She gave a queer little sigh. “Well, we’ve exhausted the cabbages and kings!”
She checked a movement to rise from the pouffe, and hunched her shoulders instead. The green wrap slipped from her back. As she half-turned to pick it up, a bare shoulder touched his sleeve.
“Your first impulse was right,” he said.
“What impulse?” she answered.
“Weren’t you going?”
“Yes. And then I decided not to.”
“Well—I think you’d better!”
“You’re not afraid of Mr. Chater?”
“Hell, no! I beg your pardon.”
“I like honest swearing, and hell’s a good word. Mr. Leveridge used it constantly. Are you afraid of me?”
“That’s possible. But more of myself. So, you see, you’d really better go.”
“It wouldn’t do any good.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’d only want me back again.”
He took a breath. He could not decide at that instant whether she were wonderful or hateful.
“Suppose that’s true?” he demanded.
“There’s no need to suppose it,” she replied smoothly. “It is true. I’m sorry I brought you here. That’s one thing I wanted to say. But, as I have, let’s face it and talk it out, shall we? It’s only when you don’t face facts that they become exaggeratedly distorted—or fruitless.”
