She turned to him with a smile. There was a peculiar charm in this sudden softening of the stern, untried face.
"No one told me you were bad; and if they did, I shouldn't believe it at second hand. I do think you have a long memory; but that's a family failing. There are some things I remember..."
She broke off.
"Tiddles?" he asked.
Her face lit up suddenly, wonderfully. "How did you know? "
Then they both laughed, and in the silence that followed their kinship was real to them for the first time.
"He is a most unhappy man," she said, looking out across the green space with sombre, thoughtful eyes. "He has spent his life in trying to shape the souls of his fellow creatures; and there's not one living thing that loves or respects him."
"Except Aunt Sarah..."
"Her life has been spent in keeping up a fiction. She's getting old now, and it's wearing thin; and she's scared at the truth underneath it, and miserable."
"The truth?"
"That she despises him in her heart."
"Was that why you couldn't come to Paris? " he asked abruptly.
She slipped her arm through his. "You're good at understanding. I couldn't leave her; you don't know what a desolate house it is.
They go through life avoiding each other's eyes; they are like people haunted by a ghost. Uncle keeps up an elaborate pretence of having forgotten that you ever existed, and she pretends he's not pretending."
"And you?"
"I pretend not to see. And the neighbours pretend there was never any old scandal about you. We all pretend."
"Molly, don't you see how all that will end? Some day you'll come to a split with uncle, a deadly split. That's inevitable, because you're a live human creature."
"Possibly; but it won't be in her lifetime."
"She's not so old; she may live another thirty years. And what do you suppose she'd do then?"
"Whatever he told her to do."
"And if he told her to turn you out?"
"She'd do it, of course. But it would kill her. And it won't happen. Remember, I'm just all she's got in the world, even if she is lukewarm. And he knows that; he's grateful to me for sticking to her. Poor thing, she can't help it if she was born that way; I don't suppose the man in Laodicea could. Why didn't the Lord give him more courage, instead of abusing him for being a coward?"
He laughed softly. "At least no one will accuse you of being 'born that way', my dear."
They walked back like old friends, talking of his plans for future work. Since Helen died he had not spoken so confidentially to any one.
For the next month London wore a sunny face to Jack. He relaxed the grind of his work alittle, and spent happy afternoons wandering about Westminster Abbey and the National Gallery with Molly. Sometimes, however, they would find themselves saddled with Mildred Penning, and all their pleasure froze to death under hard, inquisitive, disapproving eyes. It was in order to escape from her that Molly one day proposed spending the next Saturday afternoon at Jack's lodgings. After a short and stormy scene with Mrs. Penning, the brother and sister climbed on to the roof of an omnibus together, unchaperoned.
"I suppose she'll write to uncle and complain of you?" said Jack. She shrugged her shoulders.
"I dare say. I've given up a good deal for uncle; but I'm not going to give up my only brother for him, and the sooner he understands that the better. He'll be angry for a bit, and then give in. He always does when he sees I really mean a thing."
Jack's heart beat quicker as he took out his latch-key. The thing that he had longed for, toiled for, waited for, the close, intimate sister-love, had become an actual possibility at last. If only for one afternoon he would have her alone with him, by his fire, a vivid presence in his life.
"Come in, Molly; I've only a bed-sitting-room, you know. Oh, Mrs. Smith has made a fire! That was thoughtful of her."
Then he drew back suddenly and stood on the threshold, staring blankly into the room. Theo was stretched at full-length on the hearth rug, watching the dance of shadows on the fire-lit ceiling. The hot glow of the red coals shone on his head; on the slim, strong hands with their blunted finger-tips; on the characteristic, irregular lines of chin and brow. He seemed to bask in the heat like a sunned snake.
"Hullo, Jack!"
Even in the first moment of surprise Jack was conscious once more of the musician's splendid indolence of posture and freedom of movement. Theo never needed to scramble to his feet; getting up, after lying flat on the floor, he seemed merely to change one appropriate and graceful attitude for another.
"My sister," said Jack. "Theodore Mirski."
His own voice sounded dull and harsh in his ears. He had already seen the stiffening and hardening of Molly's face; the instant reserve in which she had enwrapped herself; and his heart was as lead within him.
"I thought you were in Vienna," he said.
"Joachim can't come, and they telegraphed, asking me to play instead of him at St. James's Hall to-morrow. I was glad enough of the chance to see you. Why, Jack, I never saw you look so well, or so sulky. Don't you want me? You can turn me out, Miss Raymond, if I'm in the way."
"I'm afraid it's I that am in the way," said Molly. Her voice fell like a little icicle into their midst, chilling even Theo. He muttered some polite commonplace with a startled glance at her; and they sat down, decorously stiff and depressed.
Jack did his conscientious best to smooth away the queer awkwardness between his visitors. But, looking from Molly to Theo and back again to Molly, he realised how hopeless it was. These two, between whom lay all his personal life, appeared incompatibility personified; the artist, half angel, half baby, to whom he must be never-failing mother and devotee, guardian and slave; and the unformed, intolerant, passionate little Puritan girl who held him at arm's length, and for whose sake he would have died. He was as chained to both of them, and it seemed to him that their mutual repulsion must tear him piecemeal.
The miserable effort at small-talk failed at last, hopelessly, and Jack looked up from the red coals with a desperate feeling that something must be done to end the silence before it became unbearable. Theo's face was curiously agitated; Molly's, inscrutable and grave. He looked round the room, and the violin-case, lying on the sofa, caught his eyes.
"Theo," he said, "I wish you'd play. My sister has never heard you."
The musician rose at once, and fetched his instrument. He seemed to find the suggestion a relief.
"What do you want?" he asked, curling himself down on the hearth rug with the violin against his neck. "Folk-songs? They don't want accompaniments."
"Slavonic ones, if you will. Did you ever hear a Polish folk-song, Molly?"
"You know I've never heard anything."
She leaned back, drawing the fire-screen forwards; her brow a little contracted, her eyes grave and wide in a shadowed, listening face, while the folk-songs trailed their low sound through the half-darkened room like disembodied ghosts of music buried long ago.
"Jack," said Theo, laying the violin down on his knee, "do you remember a fancy mother had just before she died, about the crocus-flowers in the grass? Well, I... I've been seeing that in my head lately, and it's coming into tune. I think it's going to be for orchestra, I'm not sure yet; but I must play you some bits. Miss Raymond, did you ever look at a crocus, — I mean, really look at it?"
"Yes," she answered from the shadow of the screen. "But not often. You can look at a dicotyledonous flower every day, and be the happier for it; but I'm afraid of the spear-leaved things that grow in threes; they're like the angel with the flaming sword, and all my gates are shut."