‘I’m afraid I haven’t gone into the matter,’ replied Richard, rising from his seat. ‘My economics are terribly personal.’
Karmakoff laughed softly. ‘How English! Everything you do and think and feel is personal. Do you know, my good friend, you English are so individualistic that I wonder sometimes that any of you manage to get born at all!’
‘Isn’t that rather a personal matter?’ murmured Richard.
Karmakoff positively stared at him. ‘Personal?’ he said. ‘You don’t mean to say you still think — wait a little. Wait a little. You evidently have never been in love.’
‘What are you talking about?’ asked Richard, almost petulantly.
The man laughed aloud. ‘I’m talking about the utter impersonality of the most devastating force in the universe! I should like you to overhear Catharine Gordon when she’s got her knife into me. Don’t you know what it is to worship the flesh of a girl and to hate her for it? Do you know nothing of that malice? But I beg your pardon. You’re an Englishman. The great forces of the world are your child’s toys. Well! It must have something in it, your little method. Everything must be genteel and well-behaved and respectable and personal. But good Lord!’
Chapter 15
About a week after Richard’s reversion to his old love, Nelly according to her custom was preparing lunch for herself and Canyot in his studio in Seventy-fifth Street.
His model, a handsome girl from Siena, beautiful as that purest Italian race is beautiful, with a certain glowing and yet chaste voluptuousness, was resting from an exhausting pose, and eating cream chocolates.
The two were conversing together without embarrassment, though the richly coloured garment that half-swathed her was more in harmony with a picture by Veronese than with a New York apartment.
Nelly, through the open door leading into the little passage containing the kitchenette, joined amicably, when she could, in their conversation.
‘Amelia swears she’s never had a lover and never means to,’ remarked the young painter, raising his voice a little. ‘Did you hear that, Nelly?’
‘She’s a sensible girl, then,’ came the, answer from the passage.
‘You see? The lady agrees with me!’ cried the model, selecting another chocolate with exquisite care. ‘It’s all nonsense this, about love being so important. I do my work. I help artists. I put myself into pictures. I make pictures. And then I go home and look after the little mother. I cook us a good dinner — a very good dinner. I smoke cigarettes. The little mother smokes cigarettes. We go to the theatre together. We go to hear the singers. And then we go home and sleep till morning and — that’s all!’
‘But haven’t you ever fallen in love, Amelia, dear?’ inquired Canyot, putting a dab of crimson lake upon his canvas and retreating a little to observe its effect.
‘Why should I fall in love? I know what men are. I know what women are. Chocolates are much better. And when the great Caruso sings — basta! I don’t want to think of such things. I go to Mass too, and I love Our Lady. Our Lady didn’t need to have a lover. Her Son was enough for her; and the little mother’s enough for me.’
‘But Amelia darling, don’t you find it rather difficult to be so good? I should have thought with your profession—’
‘That’s just where you’re wrong, Mr Canyot. You’re a good man. You don’t have any lover or any woman about, except Madam, and anyone can see how good she is! And I can tell you that lots of the people I work for are like that. Artists are good men. They love their work. And I’m part of their work.’
‘But haven’t you ever, not ever, seen anyone you’d like to marry?’
‘Don’t tease her so, Robert,’ came the voice from the passage.
‘It’s all right, lady,’ cried the girl from Siena; and then, in a lower voice: ‘If there ever was anyone, it was that Russian gentleman who talked to me about the strike in Milano in this very room. Now don’t you go and tell him what I’ve been telling you, Mr Canyot! Of course I’d never really have him, because of mother. Mother doesn’t like Russians. But I think he was beautiful — as beautiful as St Anthony.’
‘Well run away and dress now, Amelia; I shan’t want you any more this afternoon.’
When the girl reappeared in her street costume she still looked adorably handsome; but no one would have guessed how flawlessly classical her limbs were.
Nelly begged her to stay and share their meal; but she flatly refused to do this. ‘I always go to Castignac’s to get my dinner. They cook me little yellow omelettes, full of red jam. I love Madame. She has a great heart. I am her protector.’
When Amelia had gone, Canyot said to Nelly, ‘I wonder what it is about that fellow Ivan that attracts women so? You’re a woman, Nelly, you ought to know what it is.’
‘You’ll have an opportunity of watching his effect upon me very soon,’ Nelly replied, as she carried in her dishes and arranged them on the table. ‘He’s going to come round at two o’clock; so we’d better hurry up and get our meal over.’
‘What’s he coming here for? I can’t stand the fellow. He must know I detest him.’
‘Oh my dear,’ cried Nelly, regarding him with an affectionate smile across the plate she held in her hand, ‘no one minds the way you detest them! Of course he’s coming because Catharine is coming.’
‘I don’t like Catharine,’ remarked Canyot pulling a chair up to the table and making his guest sit down while he went to fetch the knives and forks.
‘Why don’t you like her?’ asked Nelly giving a sigh of weariness.
‘I don’t like her because she pulls you about so and makes such a fuss over you. I don’t like her arms or her legs.’
‘Poor old Cathy! She can’t help that, you know. I like both of them. I think she has a very interesting figure.’
‘I don’t like the way she treats that fellow Ivan,’ Canyot went on, eating his food in great hungry mouthfuls but keeping a still hungrier look, full of infinite tenderness, fixed on his friend’s face. ‘Why doesn’t she take him altogether or let him go altogether? I can’t stand all this messing about and playing around.’
‘It is a bit hectic, her life, I admit,’ said Nelly. ‘But I’m not at all sure Ivan loves her.’
‘Loves her? He’s mad about her. He follows her everywhere with those confounded woman’s eyes of his.’
‘He may be mad about her. But that’s not the same thing as loving her. Do you know, Robert dear, I think that there are very few men who really love their woman — love her for herself, I mean, and not for the sensations they get out of her.’
Canyot glanced meaningly at the grey eyes that met his own across the table.
Impulsively Nelly stretched out her hand and, seeking his, gave it a tight squeeze.
‘I’m not thinking of you, Robert,’ she said. ‘You’re one in a thousand. I’m thinking of all the rest.’
Canyot frowned savagely as was his wont when his love for her troubled him.
‘Men and women want different things of each other,’ he muttered, ‘and always will.’
‘But would we want different things — if things had been different with us?’
As soon as she had uttered the words she would have given anything to recall them, for she saw the pain upon his face.