Clementina Wing

“ Etta Concannon thought she could, and thence-forward came to tea unheralded, and, eventually such were her powers of seduction that she enticed Clementina to her own little den in her father’s house in Cheyne Walk—a fairy den all water-colour and gossamer very much like herself, in which Clementina gave the impression of an ogress who had blundered in by mistake. It was on the first visit that Clementina repudiated the name of Miss Wing. ”

“ But when he gravely prescribed a large bath powder-puff for his uncle she upbraided him for making a jest of solemn things and dismissed him from her counsels. Her painting suffered from these inroads on her time and thoughts; but Clementina cared not. The happiness of the trustful men around her was of more consequence than the successful application of paint to canvas. Sometimes, sitting at the head of her table she would feel herself a mother to them all, and her lips would twist themselves into a new smile.
Her happiest hours were those which she spent alone with Sheila and Quixtus. ”

“ Vandermeer looked after them for a moment, then stuck on his hat and punched the left-hand palm with the right-hand fist with the air of a man to whom has occurred an inspiration. Miss Clementina Wing also lived in Romney Place. That must be the child, Quixtus’s ward, of whom Huckaby had spoken. It would be much better to take his story to Clementina Wing, now so intimately associated with Quixtus. Women, he argued, are much more easily inveigled into intrigue than men, and they don’t kick you out of the house in a manner to cause bodily pain. ”

“ But when you made allowances for her gruffness and eccentricities, you found that she was a good sort—and, there was no doubt about it, she could paint.
Of course, Clementina might have made herself look much younger and more prepossessing, and thereby have pleased the fancy of Tommy Burgrave. As a matter of fact she was only thirty-five. Many a woman with more years and even less foundation of beauty than Clementina flaunts about the world breaking men’s hearts, obfuscating their common sense, and exerting all the bewildering influences of a seductive sex. ”

“ Clementina enjoyed a little triumph, the flush of which mounted to her dark face. With the flush, and in the setting she had prepared for herself, she looked radiant. Her late entrance had produced a dramatic effect; the immediate concentration of every one on her work, added to the commonplace of her reputation, had at once established her as the central figure in the room; and she sat as hostess at the foot of the table a symphony in ambergris, gold and black. Woman, in the use of woman’s weapons, has evolved no laws of fence. ”

“ For all her cynical depreciation of her art, she was a portrait-painter of high rank, possessing the portrait-painter’s magical gift of getting at essentials, of splashing the very soul, miserable or noble, of the subject upon the canvas. She had a rough, brilliant method, direct and uncompromising as her speech. To see her at work was at once Tommy Burgrave’s delight and his despair. Had she been a young and pretty woman, his masculine vanity might have smarted. But Clementina, with her ugliness, gruffness, and untidiness, scarcely ranked as a woman in his disingenuous mind. ”

“ Clementina staggered into the little garden; her brain reeling. She, who thought she had fathomed the depths of life, and, scornful of her knowledge thereof, rode serene on the surface, knew nothing. Nothing of the wolf instinct of man when hunger drives. Nothing of the degradation of a man when the drink fiend clutches at his throat. Lord! How sweet the air, even in this ridiculous little London garden, after the awful atmosphere of that beast of prey!
Quixtus! ”

“ To have Sheila all to herself, without let or hindrance from her impossible co-trustee! She was staggered by the sudden, swift temptation which struck at the roots of her unfulfilled womanhood. For a while she dallied with it deliciously.
“If it’s agreeable to you, I’ll decline to act,” said Quixtus, after the spell of silence.
Clementina strangled the serpent in a flash and cast it from her. To purchase happiness at the price of human infirmity? No. She would play squarely with life. Feminine instinct told her that the care of the child was needful for this weary man’s salvation. ”

“ A simple man, not given to introspection or analysis of motive, new sensations, new realisations came to him as they come to a child and caused development. And among other impressions that deepened on his mind—and his was the mind of a scholar and dreamer, sweet and clean—was that of Clementina (now appearing to the world as God Almighty intended her to appear) as a physically fine and splendid creature.
And, during all the summer idyll in the Manor House at Moleham-on-Thames, Clementina, in her uncompromising way, maintained the new phœnix’s plumage preened and shiny. ”

“ The impulse driving them to nunnery, Whitechapel, or Caxton Hall has always been merely a reaction of sex; and the duration of the period of reaction is proportionate to the degree of brokenness of the heart. As soon as the heart is mended, sex has her triumphant way again and leaps in response to the eternal foolishness that the maiden blushes to read in the eyes of a comely creature in trousers. This Clementina knew, as all those—and only those—whose youth is behind them know it; and so, when Etta with an air of cold finality said that she had made up her mind, Clementina sighed. ”

“ The visitor in revolt against the sight and smell of the ragamuffin, could get up and depart. It was a matter of no concern to Clementina. Eventually folks recognised Clementina’s eccentricity, classed it in the established order of things, ceased to regard it—just as dwellers by a cataract lose the sound of the thunder, and as a human wife ceases to be conscious of the wart on her husband’s nose. To this enviable height of freedom had Clementina risen. ”

“ It was during this visit of Clementina to the fairy bower in Cheyne Walk that Etta informed her of her intention of becoming a hospital nurse.
“Lord have mercy upon us!” cried Clementina.
“I don’t see why I shouldn’t,” said Etta.
“The idea is preposterous,” replied Clementina. “What need have you to work for your living?”
“I want to do something useful in the world.”
“You’ll do much better by remaining ornamental,” said Clementina. “It’s only when a woman is as ugly as sin and as poor as charity that she need be useful; that’s to say while she’s unmarried. ”

“ There was silence for some moments. Then Clementina’s heart smote her. All this elaborate wheel to break a butterfly—a very naughty, sordid, frayed and empty little butterfly—but still a butterfly!
“My dear,” she said, at last very gently. “I know how hard life is on a lone and defenceless woman. I know you have many reasons to hate me for preventing you from making that life softer and sweeter. But perhaps, one of these days, you mayn’t hate me so much. I’m every infernal thing you like to call me, and when I’m interfered with I’m a devil. But at heart I’m a woman and a good sort. ”

“ The indiscreet jesting of a friend, a tragedy causing both to come hard against the bed-rock facts of life, may shatter the guileless shell of their love. I know of two young things who came by the knowledge through bumping their heads together beneath a table while searching for a fallen penny. A shock, a jar is all that is needed. But with Tommy and Etta nothing yet had happened. They walked along together sweetly imagining themselves to be fancy-free. If the truth were known it would be found that the main subject of their conversation was Clementina. ”

“ Then he thought of Clementina.
“The very best, but the most enigmatic woman in the world,” said he.
Which was a very sweeping statement for a man of his scientific accuracy.
Entirely ignorant of the word of the enigma, he went back to the spotless flower of insulted womanhood, who took him off to lunch with her French friends. She welcomed his undivided homage. That fishfag of a creature, as she characterised Clementina in conversation with Lady Louisa, made her feel uncomfortable. Even now that she had gone, the problem of Quixtus’s removal from her sphere of influence remained. ”

“ Whether ultimate bliss will be achieved is another matter. But to marry him out of hand is as easy as lying. It did not need Clementina’s acute intelligence for her to be fully aware of this. And another temptation crept over her pillow to her ear, peculiarly insidious. The boy would be free to pursue his beloved art without sordid cares. There would be no struggle and starvation and fringed hems to his trousers. A woman who really loves a man would sooner her heart were frayed than his trouser-hems. ”

“ He had many human possibilities. After all, there must be something sound in a man who had treasured in his mind the memory of her picture. Sheila and herself, between them, would transform him into a gaunt angel. She fell asleep smiling at the thought.
Clementina did not suffer fools gladly. That was why, thinking Quixtus a fool, she had not been able to abide him for so many years. And that was why she could not abide the fat Chinese nurse, who showed herself to be a mass of smiling incompetence. “The way she washes the child makes me sick,” she declared. ”

“ Sheila’s sweet ways with Tommy and Etta caused her ever so little a pang of jealousy. Her increasing fondness for Quixtus made Clementina thrill with pleasure. You may say that Clementina, essentially just, was scrupulous not to encroach upon Quixtus’s legal half-share in the child’s esteem. But a sense of justice is not an emotion. ”

“ Etta knelt bolt upright and offered a lighted match. Now when a lissom-figured girl kneels bolt upright, with a shapely head thrown ever so little back, and stretches out her arm, there are few things more adorable in this world of beauty. Clementina looked at her for full ten seconds with the eyes of a Moses on Mount Nebo—supposing (a bewildering hypothesis) that Moses had been an artist and a woman—and then, disregarding cigarette and lighted match, she laid her hands on the girl’s shoulders and shook her gently so that she sank back on her heels, and the match went out. ”

“ Griffiths, irritated by her non-intelligence, transferred the lecture to his other neighbour as soon as an opportunity occurred. Lena Fontaine awaited her chance with Lord Radfield. But Clementina held him amused and interested, and soon drew General Barnes into the talk. With the slough of her old outer trappings Clementina had cast off the slough of her abrupt and unconventional speech. She was a woman of acute intellect, wide reading and wide observation. ”

“ It would be a divine adventure.”
“She’s not worth two penn’orth of paint,” said Tommy disparagingly—now Clementina has told me that this was a singularly beautiful girl—such are other women than his Dulcinea in the eyes of the true lover—“she isn’t even doll-pretty. But suppose she were, for the sake of argument—it might be a divine adventure for the fool who fell in love with her and never told her; but for the penniless cad who went up and told her—and got her love in return—it would be a crime.” ”

“ The grim setting of Clementina’s lips relaxed.
“I think you’re becoming more human. And, talking of humanity—there’s a question that must be cleared up between us, before we settle down to this partnership. Are you intending to keep up your diabolical attitude towards Tommy Burgrave?”
The question had been burning her tongue for over twenty-four hours; from the moment that he had appeared in the vestibule the day before, after his sleep, and seemed to have recovered from the extraordinary nervous collapse which had aroused her pity. ”

“ Clementina rose from her chair by the writing-table and followed him.
“What was between you and Will Hammersley?”
For an instant he had an impulse to tell her, she looked so strong, so honest. But he checked it. Confidence was impossible. The shame of the dead must be buried with the dead. ”

“ CHAPTER XII While Clementina, in her own fashion, was shattering an idyll to pieces, Quixtus under the tutelage of Billiter pursued the most distasteful occupation in which he had ever engaged. Had some Rhadamanthine Arbiter of his Destiny compelled him, under penalty of death, to choose between horse-racing and laborious practice as a solicitor, he would unhesitatingly have chosen the latter. Course and stand and paddock and ring, the whole machinery of the sport, wearied him to exasperation. ”

“ CHAPTER XI Clementina motored to Lyons by herself; dined in gaunt and lonely splendour at the Grand Hotel, and met Etta Concannon’s train very early the next morning. Etta, dewy fresh after her all night train journey, threw her arms round her neck and kissed her effusively. She was a heaven-born darling, a priceless angel, and various other hyperbolical things. Yes, she had had a comfortable journey; no trouble at all; all sorts of nice men had come to her aid at the various stages. ”

“ I’m by way of being an artist, you know, so it will be all right.”
“Could any one doubt it?” said Quixtus. “I am very much indebted to you, Clementina.”
“A woman comes in useful now and then. I’ve never done a hand’s turn for you and it’s time I began. You’ll want a hostess, won’t you?”
“Dear me,” said Quixtus, somewhat taken aback. “I suppose I shall. I never thought of it.”
“I’ll be hostess,” said Clementina. “I’m a kind of aunt to Tommy and Etta for whom you’re giving the party. I’m a kind of connection of yours—and you and I are kind of father and mother to Sheila. ”