CHAPTER EIGHT

Next day, while Diana was at breakfast, Sidney called.

"Wonders will never cease," exclaimed Diana; "you up at half past eight in the morning! What's afoot?"

"I have it in mind to come round every day until further notice at nine o'clock, if your chief will agree to your arriving an hour later at the office. It all depends upon you."

He spoke quietly, but with a note of firmness in his voice, and with a sprightliness of mien she was surprised to find in a man of his lackadaisical disposition.

"Can it be that you are in love, and want to have me teach you Serbian or Turkish because your lady understands no other tongue?"

"May I light up, or is it too early?" he asked, striking a match. He did not sit in his usual way with his legs higher than his head, but, rather, as rider. Both his feet were firmly planted on the floor, he narrowed his eyes as if he were about to take pencil in hand and start drawing. Then he said:

"Didn't you and father always harbour a wish that I should do modelling?"

"And do you want to model me?"

He made no answer. Diana rose and went towards the window, drummed upon the pane, tapped her toe gently on the floor, and then stood silent for a while. Suddenly she turned about, folded her arms, looked steadily at her brother who had not moved from his earlier position and had kept his eyes fixed upon her, and at length asked composedly:

"Sidney, have you a commission to do this? Sit still, don't lose your temper at once like that. You have no commission for the work? Honour bright?"

She went up to him with the gait of a young man and held out her hand. He shook, but his expression remained somewhat rueful, his lips pouting, and his eyebrows raised. Diana took a deep breath, and said:

"That's all right. I'll gladly be your model, and I'll take you at your word. You'll come here every morning from eight to ten."

He smiled. Seductive lines formed themselves in the beautiful oval of his rather weak face, as he said, softly and beseechingly:

"I said nine."

Diana laughed gaily. She took him round the neck and kissed him. But he seized her vehemently and drew her towards him, so that Diana's heart seemed to cease beating for a second. Her spirit darkened. She closed her eyes against her brother's soft cheek. Then she pulled herself free.

"You really mean that we shall work? The place will have to be very adequately warmed. There is rather a draught from the bay window."

"Why not in your bedroom?"

Again her heart seemed to stop beating. After a moment's hesitation she acquiesced.

"And when do you wish to begin?"

"Tomorrow."

"Are you going to do some sketches first?"

"No, I'll start straight away with the clay."

"Good." After a pause, and with slight emphasis, she added: "Of course the work will belong to me."

"If it is a success," he answered unsteadily.

"That won't do. I must have it in any case."

"Agreed!" he laughed.

When he had gone, she stood deep in thought. It seemed to her that her limbs were made of lead, for her body readily responded to her mood. He had vowed he was not commissioned to do the work. Yet she felt uneasy.

Sidney set himself to his task with feverish haste. He had been wont to do his drawing hesitantly, in an undisciplined way, by fits and starts. Now his whole manner was changed. Next morning, on the stroke of eight, he was knocking at Diana's door. He was elegantly dressed, as if paying a courtesy call. Diana was ready for him, waiting in a well heated room which she had had transformed from a bedroom into a workroom. The carpet had been covered with a dust-sheet. She stood on a wooden pedestal, clad like Atalanta in short, clinging draperies, almost naked. The quiver lay ready to sling over her shoulder. Sidney was baffled. He smiled, kneaded his clay, and hardly gave her a glance. Now he wished to start the work, took his measurements, then flung all aside and looked earnestly at her, saying:

"No, Diana. That won't do. I want--I would like--to model you in action."

She hesitated. Her thoughts seemed to drop from her head to her heart, and her feelings seemed to rise from her heart to her head and overwhelm her. For years, Diana had been endeavouring to cajole her brother to take his work seriously. Vainly had she tried to wean him from his lethargy, for she felt that it held nothing but danger for his future development. He had never mentioned any of his friends to her, and she was not at all sure that she wished to know anything about them. Occasionally, Scherer had given her news of him and his doings, but he had done so with caution, and she had not been encouraged to ask further.

Sidney's sudden decision to model her led Diana to believe that he was going through a crisis. She was reluctant to hamper him in any way, for she felt that her reappearance on the stage of his life had aroused more than his artistic appreciation. As his sister, she had been somewhat alarmed at the warmth of his embrace. But she was too courageous in face of danger and too proud to go back upon her resolutions. Besides she felt a maternal tenderness for Sidney which added to her determination to do all in her power to bring him back into the path of artistic accomplishment.

His half-commanding and half-imploring manner, the compelling gaze of his cat-like eyes, told her she must obey if she was to succeed in doing what she had set herself to do. Without a word, quite simply, she let the draperies fall from her shoulders. Now she stood before him, very still, her arms hanging by her side, her thoughts turned inward upon herself.

Swiftly and silently he gripped the moistened clay. Morning after morning for five consecutive days he toiled to reproduce what he saw before him. As soon as the two hours were up, he took his departure, silently, leaving the work wrapped in wet cloths. Thus he came, and thus he went. He had got her to stand in profile, as if striding along, her right arm slightly raised. He hardly spoke a word, and never came to see her at other times.

She had not looked closer at the work, nor even from where she stood did she seem to discover what he was doing.

On the fifth morning, as he was stopping work for the day, Diana flung her bath wrap over her shoulders and, drawing it closely round her, stepped up to the clay model which was about a quarter life size. Sidney stood behind her. She was looking at something that was certainly not a portrait of herself.

The clay showed her the figure of a girl of fifteen, remotely similar to herself; the breasts were small and undeveloped, the legs thin and boylike. The head resembled hers so little that it might have been modelled on a younger brother, one not even as like her as Sidney. The strange statue seemed to her the work of an amateur, of a man endowed with talent, but entirely self-taught. It set her guessing as to Sidney's fantastic and erotic life; she thought of his dreams....

She turned towards him and as she did so he looked away and began gathering his tools together. He did so precipitately and absent-mindedly. She hesitated to say a word of praise. It seemed to her that he wished to avoid any physical contact.

"Are you not going to work any more today?"

"It's all nonsense," he muttered. "Nothing doing. No use trying to blind oneself to the truth. Break it up. Thanks, all the same. Good-bye."

He made his exit in a state of agitation, leaving the fragment behind. No sooner was he gone than Diana began to study the work more closely. Her thoughts were confused, now flitting to him, now back upon herself, now concentrated upon this dream child. Mary came in to help her.

"Mr. Sidney went away at nine today?"

"Yes, Mary. Give me my coat and skirt, the black one, please."

"But the sun is shining today and it is sure to be warm."

"No matter."

While helping Diana to dress, the old servant glanced at the statue.

"Is that Mr. Sidney's work," she asked dryly.

"Do you like it?"

"What's it supposed to be?"

"Can't you recognize it?"

"No, I do not know the child."

Mary's opinion was important to Diana, for if this old nurse failed to recognize her youthful charge, the resemblance must indeed be difficult to trace.

"Why did Mr. Sidney want to do his modelling here?"

"There's no central heating where he lives."

"Ah, I see," answered Mary, paying little heed to the inconclusiveness of her mistress's explanation. She loved Sidney, but was sad at heart concerning him, and often wished that the lad's father would exercise a little parental control.

Diana lifted the statuette in her arms and carried it into the sitting-room. She set it up in the bay window.

Towards evening that same day Prince Eduard called. He did not notice the new statuette, for the bay window where Diana had placed it was not lighted. Since the evening of the charity fete he had come but once to see her, and had been told she was out. Today, a week later, he came without giving notice. His first words on entering were:

"It's an eternity, or as my old tutor would have said, a decade, since I last saw you. Our, or rather, your, evenings a trois seem to be things of the past.... Besides so many 'seasonable' events came to interfere.... And ever since the recent martyrdom I have not once looked up the committee ladies to present them with roses in token of my gratitude--though I should have done so seeing that I am the only male on the committee. The press has been obliging enough to do the job for me, but I don't suppose you have read the papers."

"I read nothing but the competitions," put in Diana as she paced to and fro. "Also the news items under the captions 'accidents,' 'agriculture,' 'weather forecast.' Herr Scherer tells me that the clerical press insists that in those days the huntresses were fully clad."

"The funeral orations concerning you were worse, for they were written with genuine feeling. One depicted the dream you had given him, although he can't possibly have had time to dream his dream and get it into next morning's paper. His soul..."

"Don't let's talk about the soul when the subject in hand is the body! It makes me think of the missionaries who corrupt the negroes by turning the poor creatures' thoughts away from work to contemplate the so-called soul."

"Psychology is a pitfall!"

"No," said Diana, whose critical faculty seemed to have become more acute since that morning's experience, "all that is wrong with psychology is that it should have escaped from the hands of the poets and brain specialists and strayed into the dubious hands of women and journalists. Dancers should not meddle with the science, and diplomatists would be well advised to give it closer study."

"At times they all begin to take an interest in it, and in the end this works productively."

"You mean to imply that the latter are led to embark upon bold undertakings, while the former set about concocting sly intrigues?"

"I meant that both are led to create racy offspring--and that handsome women petrify into pretty images, since they are too proud to become dancers and too dangerous to be allowed to dabble in diplomacy."

"Would either exist at all if there were no onlookers, do you think?"

"The way is free," laughed the prince waving his hand towards the stretch of carpet and stepping aside. "I, at least, will disappear behind the curtains."

She laughed, but as he entered the bay window he said:

"I seem to have fallen in with a very young girl."

He drew the curtain back, and Diana switched on a light which instantly flooded the statue. The prince became very still and very silent. Time passed by unheeded. He wanted to know who had stood as model and who could be the author. Gradually it dawned on him that Sidney might have done it, for the young man's sketches were familiar to him, and he had come to appreciate the work of this queer brother of Diana's. He did not venture, however, to mention any names, merely commenting:

"Good, quite good. Almost perverse. Pardon me, but who has fashioned this child?"

He deliberately chose the word "child" in order to exclude any thought that the statue resembled Diana. She put out the light, turned, and went back into the room, saying nonchalantly:

"A study by my brother."

"I did not know he modelled in clay."

"He's having a try at it now."

"What a waste of talent! He really ought to go to some art school or other and study."

"Do you see him sometimes?"

"Very seldom."

"Is he gambling still?"

"I--hardly know. Perhaps, a trifle, occasionally, as we all do."

Diana noticed the prince's embarrassment, and the old sensation of anguish seized upon her heart as it always did when she felt her own personal freedom was being invaded by other people's destinies. She must rid herself of the tension that had oppressed her since early morning. Her eye fell on the piano. Stepping up to it, she opened it and asked the prince to play.

Eduard, sensitively aware of her uneasiness, sat down and began to play, although in reality he was a violinist rather than a pianist. Diana sat at the other end of the room as far away from him as possible. She was wearing a golden brown frock, and lay back in an arm-chair, letting her thoughts run free. Not until he had played several bars did she recognize the piece.

It was Debussy's romantic idyl of the faun, upon whose strains she had built up her tableau of Atalanta. The tender and joyous strains flowed over her sad heart, and she was grateful to the prince for his gentle homage. Her limbs lost their leaden weariness, she slowly rose to her feet, and, hardly conscious that it might be the prince's former reference to the free path along the carpet and his gesture which invited her to dance, she began to move rhythmically to and fro in the room like a living statue, He scarcely looked at her, so anxious was he not to disturb her mood. But she knew very well that she owed him a debt of gratitude for having through his music broken the spell upon her limbs, and after a while she ceased her strange dance. He concluded the piece somewhat abruptly, but the picture had been engraved upon his memory. When, without any witticism or sardonic joke he took leave of her a moment later, he realized just as she did that a bond of feeling had been set up between them.