Saint's Progress

“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 passion 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 passed with its other-worldliness and the fine holiness which belongs to beauty, passed 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.

“I’ve been away. How are you going to paint me, monsieur?”

“In that dress, mademoiselle; Just as you are now, warming yourself at the fire of life.”

“But it isn’t there.”

“Yes, fires soon go out. Mademoiselle, will you come and see my wife? She is ill.”

“Now?” asked Noel, startled.

“Yes, now. She is really ill, and I have no one there. That is what I came to ask of your sister; but – now you are here, it’s even better. She likes you.”

Noel got up. “Wait one minute!” she said, and ran upstairs. Her baby was asleep, and the old nurse dozing. Putting on a cloak and cap of grey rabbit’s fur, she ran down again to the hall where the painter was waiting; and they went out together.

“I do not know if I am to blame,” he said, “my wife has been no real wife to me since she knew I had a mistress and was no real husband to her.”

Noel stared round at his face lighted by a queer, smile.

“Yes,” he went on, “from that has come her tragedy. But she should have known before I married her. Nothing was concealed. Bon Dieu! she should have known! Why cannot a woman see things as they are? My mistress, mademoiselle, is not a thing of flesh. It is my art. It has always been first with me, and always will. She has never accepted that, she is incapable of accepting it. I am sorry for her. But what would you? I was a fool to marry her. Chere mademoiselle, no troubles are anything beside the trouble which goes on day and night, meal after meal, year, after year, between two people who should never have married, because one loves too much and requires all, and the other loves not at all – no, not at all, now, it is long dead – and can give but little.”

“Can’t you separate?” asked Noel, wondering.

“It is hard to separate from one who craves for you as she craves her drugs – yes, she takes drugs now, mademoiselle. It is impossible for one who has any compassion in his soul. Besides, what would she do? We live from hand to mouth, in a strange land. She has no friends here, not one. How could I leave her while this war lasts? As well could two persons on a desert island separate. She is killing herself, too, with these drugs, and I cannot stop her.”

“Poor madame!” murmured Noel. “Poor monsieur!”

The painter drew his hand across his eyes.

“I cannot change my nature,” he said in a stifled voice, “nor she hers. So we go on. But life will stop suddenly some day for one of us. After all, it is much worse for her than for me. Enter, mademoiselle. Do not tell her I am going to paint you; she likes you, because you refused to let me.”

Noel went up the stairs, shuddering; she had been there once before, and remembered that sickly scent of drugs. On the third floor they entered a small sitting-room whose walls were covered with paintings and drawings; from one corner a triangular stack of canvases jutted out. There was little furniture save an old red sofa, and on this was seated a stoutish man in the garb of a Belgian soldier, with his elbows on his knees and his bearded cheeks resting on his doubled fists. Beside him on the sofa, nursing a doll, was a little girl, who looked up at Noel. She had a most strange, attractive, pale little face, with pointed chin and large eyes, which never moved from this apparition in grey rabbits’ skins.

“Ah, Barra! You here!” said the painter:

“Mademoiselle, this is Monsieur Barra, a friend of ours from the front; and this is our landlady’s little girl. A little refugee, too, aren’t you, Chica?”

The child gave him a sudden brilliant smile and resumed her grave scrutiny of the visitor. The soldier, who had risen heavily, offered Noel one of his podgy hands, with a sad and heavy giggle.

“Sit down, mademoiselle,” said Lavendie, placing a chair for her: “I will bring my wife in,” and he went out through some double doors.

Noel sat down. The soldier had resumed his old attitude, and the little girl her nursing of the doll, though her big eyes still watched the visitor. Overcome by strangeness, Noel made no attempt to talk. And presently through the double doors the painter and his wife came in. She was a thin woman in a red wrapper, with hollow cheeks, high cheek-bones, and hungry eyes; her dark hair hung loose, and one hand played restlessly with a fold of her gown. She took Noel’s hand; and her uplifted eyes seemed to dig into the girl’s face, to let go suddenly, and flutter.

“How do you do?” she said in English. “So Pierre brought you, to see me again. I remember you so well. You would not let him paint you. Ah! que c’est drole! You are so pretty, too. Hein, Monsieur Barra, is not mademoiselle pretty?”

The soldier gave his heavy giggle, and resumed his scrutiny of the floor.

“Henriette,” said Lavendie, “sit down beside Chica – you must not stand. Sit down, mademoiselle, I beg.”

“I’m so sorry you’re not well,” said Noel, and sat down again.

The painter stood leaning against the wall, and his wife looked up at his tall, thin figure, with eyes which had in them anger, and a sort of cunning.

“A great painter, my husband, is he not?” she said to Noel. “You would not imagine what that man can do. And how he paints – all day long; and all night in his head. And so you would not let him paint you, after all?”

Lavendie said impatiently: “Voyons, Henriette, causez d’autre chose.”

His wife plucked nervously at a fold in her red gown, and gave him the look of a dog that has been rebuked.

“I am a prisoner here, mademoiselle, I never leave the house. Here I live day after day – my husband is always painting. Who would go out alone under this grey sky of yours, and the hatreds of the war in every face? I prefer to keep my room. My husband goes painting; every face he sees interests him, except that which he sees every day. But I am a prisoner. Monsieur Barra is our first visitor for a long time.”

The soldier raised his face from his fists. “Prisonnier, madame! What would you say if you were out there?” And he gave his thick giggle. “We are the prisoners, we others. What would you say to imprisonment by explosion day and night; never a minute free. Bom! Bom! Bom! Ah! les tranchees! It’s not so free as all that, there.”

“Every one has his own prison,” said Lavendie bitterly. “Mademoiselle even, has her prison – and little Chica, and her doll. Every one has his prison, Barra. Monsieur Barra is also a painter, mademoiselle.”

“Moi!” said Barra, lifting his heavy hairy hand. “I paint puddles, star-bombs, horses’ ribs – I paint holes and holes and holes, wire and wire and wire, and water – long white ugly water. I paint splinters, and men’s souls naked, and men’s bodies dead, and nightmare – nightmare – all day and all night – I paint them in my head.” He suddenly ceased speaking and relapsed into contemplation of the carpet, with his bearded cheeks resting on his fists. “And their souls as white as snow, les camarades,” he added suddenly and loudly, “millions of Belgians, English, French, even the Boches, with white souls. I paint those souls!”

A little shiver ran through Noel, and she looked appealingly at Lavendie.

“Barra,” he said, as if the soldier were not there, “is a great painter, but the Front has turned his head a little. What he says is true, though. There is no hatred out there. It is here that we are prisoners of hatred, mademoiselle; avoid hatreds – they are poison!”