December Love

te the clamour of voices about her, and the necessity for showing incessantly that, although she had never bothered to paint cubist pictures or to write minor po

thought it was his absolute duty to protect her from the possible dangers lurking between Regent Street and Berkeley Square. But as time went on, despite the sallies of Dick Garstin, the bloodless cynicisms of Enid Blunt, who counted insolence as the chief of the virtues, the amorous sentimentalities of the Turkish refugee from Smyrna, whose moral ruin had been brought about by a few lines o

ge. For she, Beryl Van Tuyn, was at least th

never directed against herself. She possessed a supply of self-assurance such as Lady Sellingworth had never had, though for many years she had had the appearance of it. Having this inordinate belief and this strong self-assurance, having also youth and beauty, and remembering certain little things which seemed to her proof positive that Cra

ellingworth had d

ke-up." She had called Lady Sellingworth a book of wisdom. She was also much influenced by distinction and personal prestige. About the distinction of her friend there could be no doubt; and the prestige of a once-famous woman of the world, and of a formerl

to dismiss it as too absurd for consideration. And yet Craven

worth had made him g

to Regent Street, that she had a theory of the changelessness of character. Or perhaps she had really meant of temperament. She had even said that she believed that the Lady Sellingworth of to-day was to all intents and purposes the Lady Sellingwor

ve had many experiences of which he never talked. Miss Van Tuyn was subtle enough to know that he was subtle too. She had made up her mind to explore his subtlety. And now someone else was exploring it in Berkeley Square. The line reappeared in her low white forehead, and her cult for Lady Sellingworth, like flannel steeped in water, underwent a

ity dawned with the midnight upon many of the faces around the narrow tables. They looked at the same time bloodless and hard. Eyes full of languor, or feverish with apparent expectation of some impending adventure, s

ity of painting the portraits of women of the demi-monde, of women who drank, or took drugs, who were morphia maniacs, or were victims of other unhealthy and objectionable crazes. Nothing wholly sane, nothing entirely normal, nothing that suggested cold water, fresh air or sunshine, made any appeal to him. A daisy in the grass bored him; a gardenia emitting its strangely unreal perfume on a dung heap brought all his powers into play. He was an eccentric of genius, and in his strangeness was really true to himself, although normal people were apt to assert that his unlikeness to them was a pose. Simplicity, healthy goodness, the radia

sure instinct in probing to the bottom of psychological mysteries, a cruelly sure hand in tearing away the veils which the victims hoped would shroud their weaknesses and sins. These gifts made her brain respect him, and

her elbow on the marble table in front of her, and bending tow

ed in them. He lifted his large, coarse and capable painter's hand to his lips, put his cigar stump between

ld I have? I hat

inverted snob. But she wanted something from him, so she pursued her conversational way, and inflicted upon him a rapid description of Lady Sellingworth, as sh

elancholy attention, keeping the two pin-

sked. "Did you ever know of a woman clinging to her youth, and then

not choose, to answer her questio

ke any of it back. She hadn't the toupet. But"-he flung a large hand stained with pigments out in an ugly, insolent gesture-"any one of these fleurs du mal would have jumped bac

itting next to Dick Garstin and smoking an enormou

gutter is full of it

augh at her for it. But Cora, for instance-" He pointed to a table a little way off, at which a woman was sitting alone. "Do you suppose Cora cares one single damn what you, or I, or anyone else thinks of her? She knows we all know exactly what she is, and it makes not a particle of difference to her. She'll tell you,

looked hungry, observant and desperate. The steadiness of their miserable gaze was like that of an animal. She was dressed in a perfectly cut coat and skirt with a neat collar and a black tie. Both her elbows were on the table, and her sharp white chin was supp

rinks in an almost stupefying way, as few men can w

e observed, lighting another o

ther morals nor manners, denied the existence of God, and wished to pull the whole fabric of European civilization to pieces. Her small brain was obsessed by a desire for anarchy. She hated all laws and was really a calmly ferocious little animal. But she looked like a creature of the fields, and had something of the shepherdess in her round grey eyes. Thapoulos, a Levantine, who had once been a courier in Athens, but who was now a rich banker with a taste for Bohemia, kept one thin yellow hand on her shoulder as he appeared to listen, with her, to the sonnet. Smith, wit

, in answer to Garstin's exclamation about C

on. Somehow things seemed to be go

near enough to the g

with almost fierce attention. "There isn't a line about you except now and then

g your art into a strait waistcoat only to paint Cafe Royal type

d a spacious, quiet, and dimly lit room, very calm, very elegant, faintly scented with flowers; she continually visualized two figures near together, talking

out Lady Sellingworth," she con

shifted

boredom. "An old society woman! What's the good of that to me? W

f you would only listen occasi

bend down a little more. Why

wil

and bent her lovel

it. But classical stuff is no good to me. You ought to have been paint

eared above the bridge of Mi

cademician!" she exclai

loved to play cat and mouse with a woman, continued t

for your portrait," he continued gravely. "I think we shall

a thin voice, with high notes which came surprisingly throu

paint Beryl

anyone as Ceres!" said Miss

ghton. But he's been trans

e substance out of her,

shall be Orpen! Then she

recovering herself. "But I would rather be on the clothes-line

for, m

g morphinomanes and chloral drinkers. That sort of thing was done to death in France in the youth of Degas. It may be

who had been indulging an undisturbed process of steady thought, and who now a

gly loud or piercingly shrill. The little Bolshevik, suddenly losing her round faced calm and the shepherdess look in her eyes, burst forth in a voluble outcry in praise of the beauty of anarchy, expressing herself in broken English, spoken with a cockney accent, in broken French and liquid Russian. Enid Blunt, increasingly guttural, and mingling German words with her Bedford Park English, refuted, or strove to refute, Jennings's ecstatic praise of French verse, citing rapidly poems composed by members of the Sitwell group, songs of Siegfried Sassoon, and even lyrics by Lady Margaret Sackville and Miss Victoria Sackville West. Jennings, who

red her mental balance. Her native irony was roused from its sleep. She was once more the cool,

my benefit," was her comfortable thought

gh his adherents stood round catching his vocife

s," was Miss Van Tuyn's mental comment. "Painters, poets, composers, novelists! All these peopl

she felt some of the very common conceit of the rich dilettante, who tastes but

re not here, if the world contained no such products as Beryl Van Tuyn and her like, fem

udge, but she and her like judged, spent much of their lives in eagerly judging. And the poor creators, whatever they migh

en geniuses must be driven forth from the electric light to

Jennings. Garstin slipped into a yellow and brown ulster, and jammed a soft hat on to his head with its t

where Miss Van Tuyn was standing between Jennings and Thapou

k with me to the Hyde Park Hote

o her. She's out for life, hunks of life. She's after life like a hungry dog after t

iteness which was corpse-like. Instead she was almost startled by the sight of a skin which suggested to her one of her own precious bronzes in Paris. It was certainly less deep in colour, but its smooth and equal, unvarying tint of brown somehow recalled to her those treasures which she genuinely loved and assiduously collected. And he was marvellously handsome as some of her bronzes were handsome, with strong, manly, finely cut features-audacious features, she thought. His mouth specially st

refuge in irony. But in her irony she had been quite alone. And to be quite alone in anything is apt to be dull. Craven had let her down. Lady Sellingworth had not played the g

, stared, trusting to her own beauty. And as she stared she tried to sum up the stranger, and failed. She guessed h

on,

Christian name, though he had done it ever since they had first made friends-if they were friends-in Par

ng to walk b

ish good looking, but he ough

ic

in the midst of the squash of people going out of the cafe took her genuinely aback. And then he

ir way out, followed by the Georgians and their attendant

cab home an

ather endure your abo

up the left corner

stop talking if they once begin good-bying. Like sheep they don't know how to

. For a brief instant she was in contact with a man. She felt his side, the bone of one of his hips. It was the man who had looked at her in the cafe. She saw in the night the

t's get across and

y we

side. Now on their left were the tall railings that divided them from the

ties, and seemed never to care what anyone thought of him and his ways. "Go ahead. Let me hav

ember that

ourse

anything-let any

ow. Well, w

Sellingworth which has puzzled me and a fri

l! Oh,

ou are a snob in your pretende

our society d

can! You're wor

ss in the night. As she glanced at it she could not help thinking of New

re lis

told him about the theft of Lady Sellingworth's jewels, her neglect of all endeavour to recover them,

f it?" she asked, w

e of

es

tle mind find

who loses fifty thousand pounds' worth

were stolen

thi

that Martin, R.A., c

len at the Gare du Nord. Now

Gare du Nord loo

utterly ri

pon it they were stolen by some man she'd been mixed up with, and she knew

you are

rse I a

hat fact would always be to the stranger's credit. She wondered very much who he was. His good looks had almost startled her. She began also to wonder what Garstin had thought of him. Garstin seldom painted men. But he did so now and then. Two of his finest portraits were of men: one a Breton fisherman who looked like an apache of the sea,

" she said

m!" interjected Garstin. "I thought your old d

e, Dick, that I don't care in t

because you are a thoroughly independ

't you p

ortally afraid they'll make an acade

hink him a wo

es

ant to paint someo

him or her to come a

ou know th

cour

to paint

up and then introduce him to you. I

r seen him be

aw him la

e first

es

e Cafe

es

you thi

successful b

ss Van Tuyn felt outraged

by living always among the scum of London, and by studying and painting only the scum. It r

os of all this?

phia maniac, the drunkard, the co

ckma

ive in a sort of bad dream, Dick. You paint in a bad dream. If

want me to pick up and then introduce

know anythi

tely no

about him is absurd a

t a supp

is it

alize, my girl, that

rse, I realize that you couldn't

on with a fellow like myself your discrimination

O

oss over.

e side of the road

lives by making those who are indiscreetly susceptible to beauty pay heavy tribute, in hard cash or its eq

tep of the hotel and tra