Chapter XV

In June she went to Surrey for a month. She generally managed to make studies in the country during a few weeks in the year, and more often than not took Hilda with her, the Professor agreeing to their departure with as generous an air as if he were paying the expenses. Hilda went with her again this time. They had the luck to light on Godstone, where they found surprisingly attractive quarters, and--what was stranger still--a sufficiency of simple food, the typical village consisting chiefly of drawbacks and public-houses.

Godstone was quite exceptional. Although it was the very quintessence of the country--all cows, and clover, and quietude--the milk there was not watered with an audacity that would have startled a dairyman of the London slums. Fresh butter could actually be obtained without much difficulty, at a price only a little higher than it was sold at in the cities. Crowning marvel in the country, they were not bowed under a burden of obligation in securing green vegetables, though that was certainly because the Kemps grew such luxuries in the garden. Village tradesmen never "supply" what the customer orders--they occasionally "oblige him" with it. To foster a fine spirit of indifferentism there is nothing like the knowledge that your competitors are as bad as yourself. Laundresses and village tradesmen are the only truly independent classes in England.

Of course there were drawbacks even here. There were, for instance, a butcher's and a grocer's opposite Daisymead, and this meant flies and wasps investigating Daisymead in large numbers. The butcher threw the onus of the wasps on the grocer's sugar, and the grocer said, that wasps were harmless things if you hadn't no fear of 'em, and was bitter about the butcher's flies. Panics were frequent in the lodgers' parlour, and as the window faced the shops, it became a question whether it was better to be stifled or stung.

In the morning, while the artist worked, Hilda loitered under the apple-trees, and languished in basket-chairs and light frocks where the shade lay deepest in the landlord's field. One could see the railway from the field, and many a young fellow in the trains saw Hilda, and regretted that Godstone wasn't his destination. In the afternoon there was the tangle of the woods to wander through--so close that it was a constant temptation to get lost there. And there was the way that began with wild strawberry blossom, and rose to wooded heights, below which the county spread like a green tablecloth decked with a box of toys; and then, after avenues of giant firs where darkness fell, no matter how fierce the sun, there were the surprises of lichened glades where one tiptoed among the ferns in hope of fairies. With her easel, and her canvases, and her camera, Bee found the days all too short. She found the days too short, but there was a charm in the evenings too. The final saunter along the still white road before supper, just as far as the gate where the rabbits scampered, or the bridge by the water-mill where strange birds sometimes flashed among the boughs; the hush of the little lamplit room with a book afterwards; if one liked, a glimpse of the stars from the garden-path, a breath of the flowers--and then to bed.

She had written to David a few days after her arrival, and his first letter to Surrey came when she had been installed in Daisymead about a fortnight. She opened it by the little stack of hay which was all that the field had granted this year.

He wrote that her description of her surroundings made London still more loathsome to him, that he wished vainly he could escape from it. A somewhat laboured reference to his journalistic work followed--a plaint that though they had become such good friends, it seemed unlikely they would meet. A pucker crept between her brows as she read; she wondered why he said that, wondered why he found it necessary all at once to harp upon the difficulties of taking a short journey to see her. It was as if he were warning her not to expect him. Had he interpreted her enthusiasm for the place as a hint to him to come? She tried, discomfited, to remember what her words had been. After a minute she went on reading, and then she saw that all this had been the prelude to a request--a none too skilful prelude; but that she did not see. "So I have been summoning my courage to ask you----" She scanned the next lines rapidly, and the letter quivered in her hand. He asked her for her photograph.

She leant against the fence, dismayed. Her first thought--to explain that she hadn't a likeness of herself to send--forsook her under the fear of his thinking her ungracious if she did not promise to be photographed when she went home. Confused, she sought an excuse that would sound natural. Never had she exaggerated her disfigurement more morbidly, never had her face appeared uglier to her, her shoulders higher, her back more bent. To send him her photograph? She felt that it demanded the courage of a heroine.

His petition darkened the day to her; it threatened her in the night; she woke to be harassed by it again. To send him her photograph--to show him what she was? Again and again she asked herself if her hold on him was strong enough to withstand the revelation. Momentarily she wished she were a man; it was woman's mission to be beautiful. And he, he shrank from ugliness, she could read it in his work. To him "woman" meant "beauty"--

"Beauty of worshipped form and face ...
Sweet hands, sweet hair, sweet cheeks, sweet eyes,
sweet mouth,
Each singly wooed and won."

The lines of Rossetti's that had flouted her insignificance since she was a girl, jeered at her now. She found no comfort in the next:--

"Yet most with the sweet soul
Shall love's espousals then be knit."

Yes, "then"--after the rest was wooed! "Woman" meant features to inspire men, and a form to make them mad. In a transport of imagination she imagined almost with a man's desires, and hung before her glass, abased.

But, after all, how could confession rob her of her happiness? She had woven the tie between them of her thoughts, her spirit; it was her mind that pleased him--how could the knowledge that she was misshapen destroy his interest in her mind? She insisted that it could not--and deep in her heart was hurt to feel that his interest in her was this purely intellectual thing. He cared too little for her hand-clasp even to travel to see her. Then she was a fool to hesitate--she would write him the truth! Next, resentment scorched her that, caring so little, he had put this humiliation upon her. A whim, a spasm of curiosity, and he had made her suffer so. Her misery cried that he was not worth it, but tears sprang to her eyes at the same moment. She would write to him before her courage failed her. She would write as soon as Hilda was settled in the field for the morning; her folly should end to-day!

She was eager to write at once, fearful that if she waited long, her mood would change. When she saw the landlady's daughter in the passage, she asked her to come to the parlour before she went out and take a letter to the post. The girl said she wouldn't forget, and the arrangement, trivial though it was, gave to the woman a sense of something accomplished. She was dimly aware, too, that it would shorten her ordeal.

On the breakfast-table there was another letter for her, redirected by the Professor. Hilda called her attention to it.

"For you," she piped in her thin voice. "What hours you've been dressing! I began to think you were never coming down. Do pour the tea out, or it will be cold; it has been standing there ten minutes."

"You shouldn't have waited for me." She poured the tea, and picked up the letter absently. It was an invitation to exhibit "The Sun's Last Rays" in Liverpool, and at any other time the request would have excited her; now she was too preoccupied to find it interesting.

"Oh," she murmured.

"'Oh,' what?"

"They want 'The Sun's Last Rays' at the Walker Art Gallery when the Academy closes, that's all."

"Where's that? Pass me the salt, will you?"

"Liverpool."

"Shall you let them have it?"

"Oh yes," she said, "I suppose so. Why not?"

"The carriage will cost a lot, won't it?"

"No, it won't cost anything. They'll send for the picture, and return it to me free of charge, if it isn't sold." Her lips tightened, and she looked away through the window. Engrossed as she was, she noticed that her sister did not say "How jolly for you!" but "Won't the carriage cost a lot?" In the course of the summer Hilda would refer to the invitation casually as "That nice letter you had from Liverpool," quite unconscious that she had shown no perception of its being "nice" when it came.

"Why don't you eat your breakfast?" she asked now, having exhausted the subject of the picture.

"I don't want it," said Bee. "You can have this egg too, if you like."

When the table was cleared, and she was left alone, she sat down to her task. What should she say? Now that the pen was in her hand her eagerness deserted her, and the thought of dispelling his delusion made her tremble again. Her arguments of a while ago recurred to her vainly--she was as sure that he imagined her what she would like to be as she was sure that ugliness repelled him. She set her teeth, and dipped the pen in the ink.

She could find no words. Presently she addressed the envelope, but the notepaper was still blank. In the kitchen the mother and the girl were talking; she could hear them quite distinctly: "And don't forget to call in about the bread as you come back!" She glanced at the clock, and wrote desperately.

"I cannot do as you wish," she scrawled, "because I have never been photographed in my life. I have never been photographed because I am deformed, and----"

No! not like that, she couldn't say it like that. She sat motionless again, hearing the loud ticking of the clock, and hating herself. The clock struck insistently. She pushed the sheet of paper aside, and searched through the blotting-book for another. There was no other in it, so she went to the chiffonnier and opened the drawer. In the drawer there were several things besides the stationery: a sketch-book, some unmounted photographs that she had taken last week in Penshurst, some unmounted photographs that she had taken last week of Hilda. She picked one of them up mechanically, and stood looking at it; stood looking at the photograph of Hilda--a study in sunlight and shadow, dreaming in a garden chair under the boughs.

There was a knock at the door, and Miss Kemp came in.

"I'm just going, Miss," she said. "Have you got your letter ready?"

"What?" said Bee huskily, without turning.

"I'm just going. Is your letter ready?"

"Yes," muttered the woman. She ran back to the table, and thrust the photograph in the envelope, and put it in the girl's hand.