Clytie

“ Clytie exclaimed, holding her tightly. "I really want you to, so! It's you who have done it all."
Fancy smiled at last, and released herself. "Yes, I've spent my life in straightening out other people's snarls," she said. "Sometime I hope some one will be able to straighten mine. But I've got a date, really."
"Oh, do tell me that you're as happy as I am," Clytie exclaimed. "I've been so selfish, I'm afraid! I don't know who he is, but I'm sure he must be fine, if you care for him. How I wish I could help you, dear!" ”

“ They spoke in enigmas, one's quick intuition answering the other—there were flashes so quick with humor that a smile was inadequate in satisfying its esoteric message. An observer would have seen Clytie, her eyes alight, her pose informed with gracile eagerness, waking from her gentle languor to inspired gesture—Granthope pacing the room, erect, virile, dark, sensitive in every fiber to her presence, flinging a whimsical word at her, or with a burst of abandon pouring himself out to her to her delight. ”

“ She went there and called repeatedly; but, when silence was the only reply, a presentiment of misfortune darted through her mind. She hurried back to Clytie’s chamber, searched it, found the papyrus note on the pillow, and read its contents with breathless haste.
“Merciful Gods!” she exclaimed, clasping her hands. “Gone—fled in the night!... Clytie, Clytie, how could you cause me such sorrow? Make our house the scorn of envious neighbors—What will your father say? He will rage and curse you....” ”

“ Large, deep-bosomed, superb in arm and shoulder, as should be the woman growing from flesh into flower through a godlike agony, from fairness of body to fullness of flower, large-leaved and broad of blossom, splendid and sad—yearning with all the life of her lips and breasts after the receding light and the removing love—this is the Clytie indeed whom sculptors and poets have loved for her love of the Sun their God. ”

“ In all brave and healthful natures there is a natural ardour of travel. Anticipation of the unusual waved, even if but for the moment, its wizard wand. The Rockies loomed largely in the conversation at dinner, while George and Mary clamoured loudly to go, too. Clytie's eyes followed her husband as if light dwelt in his presence. She couldn't have told that the idea of being sent away from him made her feel foolishly frightened, like a child being pushed off into the dark. But of course you would forget all that when you saw the Rockies. ”

“ During the few months of her last illness she depended entirely upon Clytie for care and tenderness. It was a new, strange experience for the girl. She learned to love the faded elderly lady who bore her sufferings so calmly, so cheerfully. Both Mrs. Blather and Janet offered to come and nurse her, but Miss Davenant would have none but Clytie. If this period of selflessness and sacrifice had lasted, who knows what sweet effacement of individuality might have resulted? Who knows into what channels of pity and sublime endeavours of mercy the girl's full, ardent nature might have been directed? ”

“ Finally, Clytie loquitur:—
“M’liss has been missing since the fire!”
“Missing?” echoed the master in his natural tone.
Clytie bit her lip with vexation. “Yes, she’s always running away. She’ll be back again. But you look interested. Do you know,” she continued with exceeding archness, “I sometimes think, Mr. Gray, if M’liss were a little older”—
“Well?”
“Well, putting this and that together, you know!”
“Well?”
“People will talk, you know,” continued Clytie, with that excessive fondness weak people exhibit in enveloping in mystery the commonest affairs of life. ”

“ But whether the vision was of Clytie walking by his side through the gaslit streets, or of Clytie's glorious head strained back to view the effect of brush strokes he had suggested, or of Clytie sitting by the table as he worked, the lamp between them, it ended always with the warm touch of Clytie's lips beneath his, and the low, clear voice, “I love you.”
This exaltation is common to most men when a strong love comes to them. But to Kent it was all the intenser through the peculiarities of his nature. He had lived without the sphere of women. ”

“ Clytie smiled encouragingly. "I'll divide mine with you, too, if you like."
"You're a gentleman! I'd much rather sit with you, Miss Payson; thank you!" Then she looked at Clytie fondly. "I thought I was right about you! You are a thoroughbred, aren't you?"
"We're educating Mr. Cayley, my dear." Clytie gave him a bright smile. "He has a few things yet to learn about women."
"I plead guilty," said Cayley, watching the two with curiosity.
"Miss Gray and I are disciples of the same school. She gave me the password." Clytie was fairly superb—she even outshone Fancy—she was regal. ”

“ The sooner the struggle began and the fiercer it was fought the sooner would come success. It behoved Clytie, therefore, to enter upon it with him at once. Before she could realise herself as mistress of a large house, as cut off from the old habits that had invested London with earnest charm, as sundered from Kent and Winifred, as deprived of her art and her dreams and ambition, she found herself caught up in the whirl of London society, bidden to cultivate its conventions, flatter its weaknesses, intrigue, gossip, dance, drive, rush, without a moment's pause to think. ”

“ Her Slade School friend, Winifred Marchpane, continued to share the studio with her. At first she had been a little afraid of Clytie, whose bold judgments and fearless expression of opinion were not qualified always to attract a timorous, shrinking nature. But gradually the stronger personality had overpowered the weaker and bound it to itself by unbreakable bonds. A great friendship had thus arisen between the girls, based on Winifred's side on enthusiastic admiration, almost worship, and on Clytie's on a tender feeling of love and protection. ”

“ Clytie did not reply, but turned her face towards the open window, looking with knitted brow into the patch of blue heaven that was just visible over the tops of the opposite houses. A great, great longing possessed her, an infinite tenderness towards the man who could speak and act so selflessly. ”

“ From the comedy of misery, the tragedy of sex, the never ending drama of vice and crime, the one draws groans, the other tears. Each has his place in the cosmos. Thus Clytie, artist and woman, walked through the abomination of desolation and opened the eyes of the world to the glimmering spiritual rays that shot across it. ”

“ In the foreground ran the highroad skirted with new red-brick cottages, a touch of sordidness added by man to the ungenerous dreariness of nature. Once this had affected Clytie with a sense of the unutterable melancholy of things. The young are prone to be so affected. They are rather proud when they realise it; it is a kind of youthful vanity. But Clytie, like the wiser among us, sought brightness as she grew older, and although she could not consider the landscape cheerful, looked at it only through the memories of five years. ”

“ Had Clytie tried eating apples? They were said to be very strengthening. Langshaw dropped the letter before he got to the end.
"Poor Mother!" he said, with a little grimace; "she always thinks that if she really wants to do a thing it must be wrong."
"Oh, she always sacrifices you to that selfish Ella," said Clytie, with sudden fierceness. After all Joe had done for his mother! ”

“ The boy died, and Clytie returned to London with a cheerless sense of loss. Mrs. Burmester, who came to see her after the funeral, whimpered a little, and hoped that Clytie would recommend her to any of her friends who happened to be in need of a charwoman. And then Clytie looked at the mother, thought of the father. After all, if the laws of heredity had anything to do with the controlling of human destinies, were it not better for Jack to be dead? When the woman had gone she went and stood before the replica of her famous picture which she had painted for Kent, and shook her head sadly. ”

“ He judged the pictures on their merits; he judged Clytie as a woman of genius, strong mind, out of the ordinary run of women. The inner promptings and cravings that had thus found artistic expression it was beyond his philosophy to suspect. Nor did Clytie think of enlightening him.
“I like your realism,” he said. “It is straightforward. There's always a great danger of this sort of thing degenerating into morbidness. But if you can keep it true, it's healthy; it means sober, honest work, and not an intermittent fever. I see you work off your superfluous energy on the walls.” ”

“ They are nice children, aren't they, now?”
“You little goose!” cried Clytie, kissing the warm brown cheek. “They are like you, the sweetest little children in the world. When are they coming to tea?”
These teas in the studio were red-letter days for Winifred's brothers and sisters. They worshipped Clytie, who had keen sympathy with the unconventionalities of childhood. She made grotesque caricatures of them, at which they screamed with laughter, or sat on the hearthrug with them and talked the nonsense that bright children love. Their joy was complete if Kent came in. ”

“ And as you in your goodness offer me a resumption of the old friendship, I must say it once and for all. I love you, Clytie, with all the strength of a man who has allowed women to take up very little part in his life. I loved you long before I knew it. It grew up gradually during our intercourse, and only one day when you were at Durdleham a little, little chance circumstance revealed to me that you were not only the grand, sweet friend, but the woman that I passionately loved. And I could not tell you for fear of paining you and destroying our friendship—for what was I to love you? ”

“ To Clytie there was something pathetically humorous in the aspect she presented to her sisters; in finding herself, for the first time in her life, perfect in their eyes; in their changed relations. It was amusing to be the lady of the house, and to make plans for Gracie and Janet's entertainment. She brightened under the sense of it, and though many a misconception on their part caused her a sharp twinge of pain, she allowed them to purr on contentedly, taking a small measure of enjoyment from the comfort thereof. ”

“ They stayed in Paris a couple of days and then continued their journey to the Riviera. It was Clytie's own desire. In the first flush of his passion all places were alike to Thornton, provided she were with him. But she longed to get away from England, to cut herself adrift for a while from all old associations, to surround herself with new conditions, so that nothing should disturb the wonder of this new love. And when, with a lover's hyperbole, he had bidden her choose any spot on the whole terrestrial globe for the passing of their honeymoon, she had selected the Mediterranean. ”

“ Her marriage sometimes appeared to Clytie as a far-away episode, a kind of dream state in which she had been invested with a strange, unrealisable personality. Yet influences had remained, impulses had been awakened, that could not again lie dormant; knowledge had come to her that could not lapse into oblivion, leaving no trace behind. In her daily intercourse with Kent her nature expanded. It lost imperceptibly that vein of hardness which her struggle for self-development had fostered, and the disillusions and repugnances of her marriage had gradually been strengthening. ”

“ It was not therefore surprising to the master to hear that Clytie was coming to school, obviously as a favor to the master and as an example for M’liss and others. For Clytie was quite a young lady. Inheriting her mother’s physical peculiarities, and in obedience to the climatic laws of the Red Mountain region, she was an early bloomer. The youth of Smith’s Pocket, to whom this kind of flower was rare, sighed for her in April and languished in May. Enamored swains haunted the schoolhouse at the hour of dismissal. A few were jealous of the master. ”

“ Of this type, with all his physical charm, his brilliant personality and splendid capacities for action, was Thornton Hammerdyke. The man whose magnetism had drawn Clytie irresistibly, headlong into his arms was only, after all, a representative of this ignoble, commonplace order of men. The love that had flooded Clytie's being with wild surging tumult was only, after all, the commonplace, ignoble passion of his type. There are some things so elementary that analysis quickly comes to an end. ”

“ She was as expensively dressed as Clytie, but without Clytie's taste. Mrs. Page's magnificence was barbaric, untamed to any harmony of color, though effective in its very violence. She had not left her diamonds at home. She blazed in them. Tall, dark, well-formed and deep-breasted, not even the loosely hanging folds of a Chinese costume could hide the luxuriance with which Nature had endowed her figure. ”

“ This perpetual stimulus was necessary to her art, which drooped helpless in the quiet country town. And with the thrill of artistic quickening came the buoyant, vigorous pulsation of youth. Her tread was elastic, her cheeks and eyes animated. She had forgotten her irritation of the morning in the sense of vitality and enjoyment. It was a good thing to be young, with a purpose in life and the freedom and strength to carry it out. Clytie tasted a rare happiness that afternoon, one of which the high gods are very sparing. ”

“ Blather and Janet went back to Durdleham, to raise a flutter of excitement at the Durdleham tea tables over their accounts of Clytie's moral and material prosperity and her husband's manifold perfections. But the old man, Mr. Davenant, shook his head and sighed. Slow to receive fresh impressions, he could not conceive Clytie other than wilful and paradoxical. And he was suspicious of the brilliant soldier of fortune. He would much have preferred his daughter to have married a steady-going country gentleman or professional man. ”