Her brother glanced round at her in wonder; it was as if Helen had spoken. She had turned her head now, so that the fire-light shone on her face. She and Theo were looking at each other silently, with a long look, troubled, searching, and unsatisfied; the look of those who see into deep chasms and who are afraid.
Theo began to play; very softly, his eyes still on the girl's face. After a while he drifted unconsciously into improvisation, pausing now and then with lifted bow and filling in the spaces with low, rhythmic speech. The violin, with its faint wailing, its dim, inadequate murmur; the flicker of the fire; the shabby, dingy, lodging-house room; all lost their separate characters, merged into a common background of dreams. To listeners and artist alike, the glittering spears of visionary warriors, the sight and sound of a great army marching, were an actual presence, living and immense.
Silence followed, and Theo sat with bent head, trembling a little, the violin still in his hand. Molly was again in shadow, motionless as if asleep with open eyes. It was Jack who spoke first, rising to light the lamp.
"Old man," he said, "there's one thing you might try to remember now and then."
"Yes?" Theo murmured vaguely. He had still not come back to earth.
"Only that ordinary mortals are your fellow creatures, after all, and can sometimes
see when you guide their eyes, even though they're not crowned kings by right divine."
Molly made a sudden passionate movement, as though he had hurt her. Theo started up, a sort of horror in his face.
" 'Kings by...' Jack, how can you! Just because I can see things in my head! Do you think I wouldn't give it all — fiddle and everything — to do things and be things like you? What's nearer to being king by right divine — to see God's warrior flowers, or to be as they are? What am I but a fiddle?"
He turned away, his voice quivering with bitter discouragement, as with suppressed tears. Molly raised her head slowly and looked at her brother. His face was solemn, even to sternness; but the next instant he caught sight of his own image in the looking-glass, and burst out laughing, like a schoolboy seized by a humorous idea. It struck upon her with a sudden sense of tragedy, that she had never heard him laugh that way when they were children.
"What do you think of that, Moll, for an artist's imagination? I look like a crocus, don't I, with this mug! Theo, put the kettle on, my son; it's tea-time; and don't be an unmitigated ass, if you can help it. Why, what's become of the butter? And there are no biscuits either. Have you eaten them all?"
He was rummaging in the cupboard.
"Not quite all. The landlady's cat had some. We held a feast here while I waited for you. It was the cat that strewed crumbs all over the floor; I was too hungry to waste them that way; I've had nothing to eat since breakfast in Paris this morning."
"Why didn't you get lunch on the boat?"
"I had no money; only my cab-fare and two-pence over. I wanted to ask the waiter for a penny roll, but he looked so superior."
Jack turned round with an accusing face.
"What did you do with Hauptmann's last cheque?"
"Oh, I... don't know."
"I do," said Jack grimly. "Next time a deserving applicant comes to you with a pathetic story, hand him over to me, and I'll see he leaves you a little to go on with. You mean well, Theo, but you're a born fool, and oughtn't to be trusted with a cheque-book. There, sit still, and I'll get you something to eat. You'll have to put up here for to-night; and wire to Hauptmann for more money to-morrow."
He went out, leaving Theo and Molly silent by the fire. The deadly embarrassment of an hour ago had taken hold upon them again.
"You know my brother better than I do," she said suddenly, looking up with serious eyes. "I didn't understand what you meant just now."
He smiled; then grew suddenly grave.
"And I can't explain, though you'll realise it yourself when you know him better. I think what I meant is that he's so... unconscious."
"Unconscious?"
"Yes; like a thing that works by the laws of its own nature, not by anybody's ethical codes. Don't you see? For instance... well, take justice; in him it's not a virtue to be cultivated; it's what music is to me, an inborn passion eternally unsatisfied. That's why he seems to me the saddest phenomenon I know. He'll go on wanting justice all his life, and there's no such thing to be had."
He hesitated for a moment, looking away from her; then asked under his breath:
"And all your gates are shut?"
She rose, putting her hands up as if to stop him; then let them fall again and turned away, with a broad and mournful recklessness.
"Yes, all; and there is no one that has the key."
She crossed to the window, and stood with her back to him, looking out. Jack, coming in with his paper packages, found her so, and sighed under his breath as he put the eggs on to boil. He had come so near to having a sister; and now Theo had scared her in the moment of her shy unfolding, and she had shrunk again into her shell, like any snail. She would go back to Porthcarrick a stranger, as she had come; and he would lose the friend he needed, because of the friend who needed him.
CHAPTER XII
During the months which he spentin Vienna, Jack heard almost nothing of his sister. He had parted from her at Padding-ton Station with a lingering hope that the friendship born during her visit to London would live and grow; but from the moment of her return to Porthcarrick she had slipped back into the old, stiff relationship. Her letters, rare and short, seemed to have been written by a school-girl, with the governess looking over her shoulder. After some time they stopped altogether.
The bitterness of his disappointment was all the keener for the short bright month of mutual confidence. He had seen enough of the girl's inner self to have no doubt that she was wasting fine powers in the cramped Porthcarrick life, and that she herself was conscious of its narrowness, its petty, jarring hypocrisy. The look on her face was alone enough to show that she was restless and unhappy; and he had more evidence than that. Perhaps, but for Theo, he might have been able to help her, to win her away from the stultifying influences of the Vicarage, or at least to support her in her unequal struggle for a little personal freedom, for a wider, more useful, more self-respecting life. But poor Theo, the gentlest, sunniest-natured thing alive, had innocently ruined all. He seemed to have aroused in her some shrinking, fierce antipathy; Theo, who made friends with every stray dog in the street; who surely had never before, in all his careless, beautiful life, been disliked by anything that breathed.
When Jack left Vienna he went to Edinburgh to take his degree. This accomplished, creditably, but without special honours, he returned to London and applied for hospital work, which he at once obtained. There was, indeed, not much fear of his lacking employment; several professors who had known him as a student had promised to recommend him in case of his applying for a vacancy. He was offered the choice of two posts, and chose the one with the smaller salary, as it gave him better opportunities for study, and had the further advantage of being non-resident.
He settled down in shabby Bloomsbury lodgings, and worked like a cart-horse, trying to fill up every moment with vehement effort or deadening fatigue, that he might not feel the dread and blankness of his isolation. He was as one who enters from black passages into a lighted room, and shuts the door in haste because of the outer darkness whose ragged fringes would trail in behind him. Helen had saved him from the domination of fear; and in her healing presence he had forgotten to be accurst; but now that she had left him alone, the horror of his childhood stretched out chill finger-tips of memories and dreams to touch him unaware. While at work he was never afraid; but he still dared not face leisure and loneliness together.