CHAPTER X

THE MASTER

HE half groped his way down the stairs. In this mist of tears all things were obscured, even the image of Eleanor Wyndwood.

No, one thing was clear-the figure of the sweet Puritan woman with her simple righteousness.

He emerged into the Rue de Rivoli with its pretentious architecture, its glittering shop windows, its bustle of life; across the road the gardens of the Tuileries stretched away in the sunshine; but the gentle figure stood between him and Paris. He tried to shake her off, to think of the transcendent raptures that awaited him on the morrow; he tried to see Eleanor's face steadily, but it was all wavering lines like a reflection in storm-shaken water. He bethought himself of selecting the secluded restaurant and hiring the private room for the dinner, but the figure of Ruth resurged, blotting Eleanor's out. He took out her photograph and kissed it again. "She's a little angel," he cried aloud. And then, from that chaos of ancient memories, freshly stirred up, came like an echo Mad Peggy's cry: "She's a little angel. . . A girl passing him laughed in his face, and he put away the portrait, flushing and chilled to the marrow.

He told himself he must soak himself in Paris and forget her. He walked towards the Grand Boulevards, trying vainly to absorb and assimilate the gaiety of the streets. He returned to his hotel and dressed, and dined with dainty dishes and sparkling wines, such as Herbert himself would have recommended. But the quivering roots of his being had been laid bare; his soul vibrated with intangible memories, and the image of Ruth still possessed his imagination: the candid eyes, the pure skin. As ever his soul was touched through the concrete.

After dinner he wandered about the gay city, adding the red of his cigar-tip to the feverish dusk athrob with a myriad stars above and a myriad lights below; the soft spring air was charged with the pleasurable hum of ceaseless pedestrians; the theatres and music-halls and dancing-places blazoned themselves upon the night; the great restaurants flared within and without, their

pavement tables thronged with light-hearted men and pretty women, gossiping, laughing, clinking glasses. Women, everywhere women. They looked out even from the illustrated papers of the illumined kiosks. The shining city seemed to waft an incense of pleasure up to the stars; to breathe out an aroma of sinless voluptuousness that rose like a thank-offering for life. His heart expanded to all this happiness; he felt himself being caught up by the great joyous wave, and Eleanor Wyndwood's face came back, radiant and seductive. But Ruth Hailey was still at his side, and ever and anon he saw her as in her later guise-stern, sorrowful, negativing; she stood out against the whole city.

He seated himself before one of the innumerable little marble guéridons. He was at the cross-roads of the great arteries dominated by the fulgent façade of the Opera-House, where he could watch the perpetual currents of gladsome life. He observed the countless couples with emotion, striving to concentrate himself on the thought of his imminent happiness, when the love that sustained the world and made it sustainable should be his at last; when he should become as other men, living the natural life of the race and the sexes in sympathetic fusion. But the figure of Ruth Hailey stood firm amid the swirling crowds, and her pure eyes shamed his thought, and filled his breast with an aching tenderness for the poor human atoms he had deserted— for Rosina, for Billy, for "Aunt Clara"-for whom there was no happiness and no natural life. He fought against this obsession of Ruth's spirit, he struggled to fix his vision on the glitter and the gaiety, but he had to see her standing like a rock or a tower, four-square against smiling, treacherous seas.

But if he went back to Rosina in honourable acknowledged union, then farewell to Society! To take her about with him was out of the question; she would be more unhappy than he in those high glacial latitudes of humanity. Well, what was Society to him? He could shake it off as easily as the Micmac of his childhood shook off the clothes of Christendom. To be shut out from Society were no privation for him. He had the advantage of his fellow-artists, who sacrificed at its shrine and were sacrificed to it. He could couch on fir boughs, he had lived on bread and water. This constant concern with wines and cookery, with couches and carriages; this gorging and gormandising and selfpampering did it add dignity to life? Was it worth the hecatomb of hearts and souls offered up for it-this low luxury of the higher classes? Was not simplicity the note of greatness-in life as in Art? And howsoever simple the complex comfort of their

lives might seem to those born to it, was it for artists to imitate this lowest side of the upper classes, especially if it frittered away their Art? Was it for Bohemia to ape Philistia, and for Art— the last of the rebels against the platitudinisation of life-to bow the knee and swear allegiance to the vulgar ideals of fashion? They had drawn him even from boyhood, these showy ideals; from the days when he had peered wistfully into the cricketground at Halifax. But he was done with boyhood now.

Ah, but if he went back to Rosina-and the new thought struck a chill as of graveyard damps-it was all over with his Art. That, just beginning to revive under the inspiration of Eleanor Wyndwood, would be a sheer impossibility under the daily oppression of Rosina with her kitchen horizon. His imagination would be clogged with the vapours of cabbage. And of the old bad work he had had enough. He would retire from Art as from Society, and the Exhibitions should know him no more. He would go out of the business; that was all it was, he told himself with a bitter smile. His fame was a bauble, a bagatelle. For all it mattered to him it might have been his dead uncle, Matthew Strang, whose name was on the lips of strangers. There was still work in the world for an honest man to do; he remembered again that his hands could wield more than the brush; besides, he had a little capital now, Rosina had still her income. Perhaps they would go back to Nova Scotia and buy a farm. They would sow and reap, far from the glare of cities, and the sweet simple sun and rain would bless the work of their hands. His life would be joyless, but perchance his soul would be at peace.

Yes, but to give up Art! Art, which was the meaning of his life! Rosina's life stood for nothing. It was out of all proportion to give up his for hers. Had he not suffered enough? Had he not already expiated his marriage, the hapless union he had entered into when distracted by illness and disgrace and hunger, when perhaps his whole future had hinged-such were the tragiwhimsical turns of life—on his reluctance to change his last two dollars?

He rose and walked about restlessly through the glistening streets. Everywhere restaurants, open-air tables, men, women. He wandered to Montmartre. More restaurants, more couples, cafés, cabarets, queer entertainments: Le Chat Noir, Le Rat Mort, the red sails of the famous Mill turning tirelessly, lights, gaiety, women, always women, of all shades of prettiness and piquancy, with rosy cheeks and lips not always painted, and eyes that could shine without bismuth. He walked back through the Grand Boulevards—they were one flush of life.

But the reasoning was inexorable. He had sacrificed Rosina to his Art; Art had slipped through his fingers, but Rosina remained none the less sacrificed. Now his Art must be sacrificed to Rosina-the atonement was logical. That was not a surrender, he told himself angrily, to Ruth Hailey's view of life-a view whose narrowness he and everybody around him had outgrown. He refused to recognise, in the face of this radiant Paris, that each human soul came into the world to sacrifice its happiness to other human souls. That seemed to him a preposterous paradox rather than a solution; a world of reciprocal whipping-boys was an absurdity, and, at any rate, if such were the scheme of creation, it did not work at all with the gross run of mankind, to say nothing of animals. The only reason for going back to Rosina must be honestly to fulfil his side of the bargain. She had done her part, he must do his. That his return to her meant the ruin of his life and his life-work was not her concern; these larger issues were too wide for her comprehension; she loved her husband and she desired him. That was enough. He owed himself to her, and to shirk his obligation was as dishonourable as to disown a debt. He had paid off the Stasborough storekeeper, although absolved by bankruptcy; he must be equally honourable with Rosina, though his life had been bankrupted. Practically his Art had always been sacrificed to her; it was her pettiness that had driven him to produce in haste for the market, so as to escape indebtedness to her; well, let the sacrifice be consummated.

He had come to the Place de la Concorde-it seemed a fairyland of romantic lights, a dance of fire-flies; it wooed him towards the calm and solitude of the river. He leaned on the parapet and saw the sombre, fire-shot water stretching away in marvellously solemn beauty, hushed and lonely, its many-twinkling perspective of green and red and yellow gleams palpitating in the air dim with a yearning poetry. He felt the presence of Ruth Hailey at his side; she looked like the photograph now; he held her little hand and gazed into her candid eyes. Good God! This girl had loved him all those long years, and would be hopelessly faithful even unto death.

But if he went back to Rosina, what of Eleanor Wyndwood? Would he spoil her life, too, and more culpably than he had spoiled Ruth Hailey's? He sighed wearily; it was impossible to do wrong and have the result simple. Life was so intercomplicated. But he had been honest with Eleanor, thank Heaven; she knew the truth about his life; he would be honest with her to the end. He would tell her the truth now. The same noble, uncalculating simplicity that had accorded him friendship, that

had been ready to give him love, would bear her triumphantly through the new trial. He remembered her brave words: "If I did not suffer I should think I had not grown." Perhaps there would be consolation for both in the thought that she remained unsullied before the world.

He crossed the river, and his mood changed. He got towards the Latin Quarter, and wandered into the " Boule Miche" amid the students' restaurants, where young humanity sat in its couples again, amorous and gay; every place was full within and without, and there was the gurgle of liquids with the sounds of singing and laughter; he was back again amid the blithe, insouciant, easygoing life of the eternal undergraduate, with the local variation of bocks; rakish young men danced through the restaurants arm in arm in tipsy merriment; poets with lack-lustre visages and tumbled hair imbibed vermouth, clinking glasses with their mistresses; the smoky air vibrated with irresponsible gaiety; it was full of invitations to careless happiness, joyous levity, forgetfulness of an austere view of life. Puritanism seemed a form of dementia, asceticism a sunless folly. The atmosphere gained upon him. He tossed off a bock, then walked recklesly past Mrs. Wyndwood's studio. The whole courtyard was in darkness, but he thought of to-morrow night, and it glowed as with bonfires of joy. He resolved to sup famously. He jumped into a victoria and drove to a fashionable restaurant. It was near midnight; the theatres had emptied, but the streets were only the fuller. He passed through rooms full of dazzling women in gorgeous evening costumes, sipping champagne; women, always women: the city blossomed with them like roses. He ordered some oysters and chablis, and forgot to eat; opposite him a self-conscious celebrity of the footlights, blazing with diamonds, held her court, surrounded by a bevy of dandies; behind him a black-eyed demimondaine in red playfully rapped her cavalier's knuckles; at the next table the exuberant liveliness of a supper party diverted him; he drank, drank, listening greedily to the gay repartees. Life should be joy, joy, joy, he thought. That was what modern life lacked, gray with problems, wrinkled with thought. These people lived-lived in splendid insolence under the midnight sun. There was a touch of bigness that appealed to him in their arrogant vitality. Society was an organised insipidity, afraid of life.

The figure of Ruth Hailey rose rebuking; he paid the bill and went out.

But his heart cried, ached for happiness. Ah, no! He could not give up so young; go into a living grave. He roved the