If he had been any ordinary man of her acquaintance she would have been still angry with herself for her helplessness, and her anger would have reflected itself on him. But now she put the question to herself more through curiosity than irritation. There was a simplicity about the man that attracted her. His words had been blunt, almost rude sometimes, but his voice had been kind, his manner protective, straightforward. She had signally marked her approbation for him by asking him to visit her studio, a privilege she only accorded to a few tried and very sympathetic men friends. Kent interested her, and yet she had not the slightest desire to transfer her impression of him to canvas.
The next morning she gave Winifred an account of the last evening's incidents, confessing her own impressions in her wilful, half-cynical way. Her friend listened meekly, wondering at her earnestness. The curtains had caught fire, a gentleman had come opportunely to her aid, had burned his hand, which she had tended in common courtesy. It was all so very natural. As for feeling humiliated at being helped by a man, what are women put in the world for except to yield and give way before men?
But Winifred did not say this to Clytie.
CHAPTER V.
John Kent, antiquarian, scientist, Bohemian, and assistant curator in the British Museum, dwelt in the attics, far above the limit of the stair carpet. By the time you had reached them you had lost all sound of the thoroughfare below, and even when you looked out of the windows all sense of locality was lost. Nothing could be seen but roofs and chimney-pots, except on very clear days, when, through an accidental vista of streets, the tops of the trees in Chelsea Hospital were dimly visible. But in Kent's rooms no one cared to look out of window. In the first place, it was difficult of access, and in the second, the extraordinary appearance of the apartment riveted one's attention entirely to things within.
On the floor was neither carpet nor rug. The place of a fender was supplied by three large iron tripods, waifs from some dismantled chemical laboratory, which, when they were not otherwise engaged as footstools, served to support a kettle, a saucepan, and a glue-pot. All around the walls, with just one space for the door, ran a broad deal dresser that did duty for several tables, and below it, here and there, were cunningly contrived cupboards. Above, every inch of wall was covered: one side completely with books, the others with pictures, mostly old engravings, little masters such as Cranach and Behm, a frame of perfect little Aldegravers, a Prince Rupert mezzo, two Woolmers with their exquisite wavy lines, Bewicks, and a magnificent modern Jacquemart etching of a Sèvres vase. The intermediate spaces were filled up with a heterogeneous assortment of curios. The dresser-table was likewise laden with books, coin cases, scientific specimens, strange weapons, old axe-heads, Japanese sword hilts cunningly carved, newspapers, journals, pamphlets, and papers innumerable. There were only two fairly clear spaces around the whole extent: one where Kent worked, and another where he took such meals as he had in his lodgings. Save for one solitary leather writing-chair, the centre of the large room was absolutely empty; but in a corner, on the floor, were piled up a set of canvas deck-chairs which Kent brought out and opened whenever he had visitors.
All the fixtures in the room he had made with his own hands. Manual labour was a delight to him. He also cooked his own food and cleaned out the room. The latter operation consisted in raking out the ashes from his grate and laying the fire afresh. No peace-destroying woman disturbed the precincts with broom and duster. When the dust grew so thick that it interfered with his breathing and clouded the lens of his microscope he went round with an old towel flicking and flapping with great energy, and then he watered the floor out of an old bronchitis-kettle.
Kent was a happy man. He had convictions, enthusiasms; manifold interests in life for his lighter moments, one great absorbing work for his serious hours. His slender income sufficed amply for all his wants, and there was always a margin over for the purchase of an occasional rare edition or print or curio. Whenever his salary was increased that margin was greater. His mode of life never changed, for the simple reason that he considered it to be the most delightful one possible. Purple, fine linen, and sumptuous fare had no charms for him. It was always with much groaning of spirit that he put on dress clothes when he went out into the world. He cared not for the high places in the synagogues. Provided he had not to wait outside the doors, the pit of a theatre was a place as desirable as the stalls.
In his friends too he was happy—a few men different from himself and from each other—and to these he clung loyally. But the conditions of his life removed him from feminine influences. Beyond those girls in his immediate family circle, whom he called by their Christian names and treated with an old-fashioned, brotherly protection, scolding them when they did foolish things, such as wearing light shoes in wet weather, performing little services for them when they behaved themselves nicely, he never troubled his head about womankind.
On the night when Clytie's curtains caught fire he had been on his way to visit a coterie of three bachelor friends who shared a house in South Kensington. They were accustomed to his nocturnal appearances, and the worse the night and the later it grew the more likely was Kent to present himself at the sitting-room door, a dripping, ruddy apparition, his cheeks and beard glistening with raindrops. And then he would throw off his mackintosh, call for slippers, and join the circle round the fire. The thoughts of the dreary tramp home between two and three never seemed to dismay him. Cheerlessness of environment in no way affected his happiness.
They formed the chief part of his social life, these three friends, tried by the changes in fibre, tastes, affinities, that over half a score of years effect. There was Fairfax, the doctor, ruddy, full-blooded, magnetic with health and vitality, whose brass plate shone huge on the front door, inviting confidence; Greene, the solicitor, shrewd, hard-headed, a speaker of few words; and Wither, the civil servant, the little gnomelike man, full of strange sayings, whimsical, non-moral, a man of boyish, elfin beauty, trusted by men, petted by women. Of the three Kent loved Wither best. Wither saw deeper into the world's mysteries than he, but his own sturdy honest sense had kept the other from many an abyss.
After bidding Clytie good-night, Kent stood irresolute on the landing. Should he wrap the remains of his waterproof around him, and still go whither his truest happiness had hitherto always led him? Considerations of the chill, sleeting night and the throbbing pain in his hand went for nothing in his decision. The girl who had tended the burn had almost besought him not to go out. To disregard her would be an act of discourtesy. Thus thought honest Kent as he turned on his heel and slowly mounted the stair. But his evening had been spoiled, he told his briarwood pipe, with a consoling sense of martyrdom, and the cause thereof was feminine.
“It is just the silly sort of thing that Agatha would do,” he said to himself.
Agatha was his sister, whom he pitied intensely for being a woman. He thought of Clytie's pictures, the signs of virility in them, and he began to pity Clytie too. Yet there was a difference of kind in his sentiments. He pitied his sister for being constrained to ambitionless-ness and futility; he was sorry for the handicap of sex to Clytie's ambitions.
In some such attitude of mind towards her he knocked at the studio door the following afternoon. It is true that a warning throb of the bourgeois in him, that still sometimes mutely guided the Bohemian along certain tracks, had made him consider for a vague moment the correctness of calling so immediately upon Clytie; but the directness and simplicity of his nature disregarded it. It was only natural that Clytie should like to know how his burned hand was faring.
He found the girls busily painting, Winifred at the side, with her basket of flowers near her, Clytie standing at her easel, in the middle of the room, her back to the door, her face turned half round to see who would enter in response to her call.
On the floor by the fireside sprawled Jack, the model, eating an orange. His face was still dirty, his curly hair matted. Winifred had pathetically besought Clytie to have him washed. Why should