"'The raven himself is hoarse that croaks the entrance of Duncan under my battlements.'"Then, tiring of Lady Macbeth, she took up Juliet, Portia, and Ophelia; each with appropriate costumes, studying with tireless avidity, and frightening Aunt Wess' with her declaration that "she might go on the stage after all." She even entertained the notion of having Sheldon Corthell paint her portrait as Lady Macbeth.
As often as the thought of the artist presented itself to her she fought to put it from her.Yes, yes, he came to see her often, very often.Perhaps he loved her yet.Well, suppose he did? He had always loved her.It was not wrong to have him love her, to have him with her.Without his company, great heavens, her life would be lonely beyond words and beyond endurance Besides, was it to be thought, for an instant, that she, she, Laura Jadwin, in her pitch of pride, with all her beauty, with her quick, keen mind, was to pine, to droop to fade in oblivion and neglect? Was she to blame? Let those who neglected her look to it.Her youth was all with her yet, and all her power to attract, to compel admiration.
When Corthell came to see her on the Wednesday evening in question, Laura said to him, after a few moments, conversation in the drawing-room:
"Oh, you remember the picture you taught me to appreciate--the picture of the little pool in the art gallery, the one you called 'Despair'?" I have hung it in my own particular room upstairs--my sitting-room--so as to have it where I can see it always.I love it now.But," she added, "I am not sure about the light.
I think it could be hung to better advantage." She hesitated a moment, then, with a sudden, impulsive movement, she turned to him.
"Won't you come up with me, and tell me where to hang it?"They took the little elevator to the floor above, and Laura led the artist to the room in question--her "sitting-room," a wide, airy place, the polished floor covered with deep skins, the walls wainscotted half way to the ceiling, in dull woods.Shelves of books were everywhere, together with potted plants and tall brass lamps.A long "Madeira" chair stood at the window which overlooked the park and lake, and near to it a great round table of San Domingo mahogany, with tea things and almost diaphanous china.
"What a beautiful room," murmured Corthell, as she touched the button in the wall that opened the current, "and how much you have impressed your individuality upon it.I should have known that you lived here.If you were thousands of miles away and I had entered here, I should have known it was yours--and loved it for such.""Here is the picture," she said, indicating where it hung."Doesn't it seem to you that the light is bad?"But he explained to her that it was not so, and that she had but to incline the canvas a little more from the wall to get a good effect.
"Of course, of course," she assented, as he held the picture in place."Of course.I shall have it hung over again to-morrow."For some moments they remained standing in the centre of the room, looking at the picture and talking of it.
And then, without remembering just how it had happened, Laura found herself leaning back in the Madeira chair, Corthell seated near at hand by the round table.
"I am glad you like my room," she said."It is here that I spend most of my time.Often lately I have had my dinner here.Page goes out a great deal now, and so I am left alone occasionally.Last night I sat here in the dark for a long time.The house was so still, everybody was out--even some of the servants.It was so warm, I raised the windows and I sat here for hours looking out over the lake.I could hear it lapping and washing against the shore--almost like a sea.And it was so still, so still; and I was thinking of the time when I was a little girl back at Barrington, years and years ago, picking whortle-berries down in the 'water lot,' and how I got lost once in the corn--the stalks were away above my head--and how happy I was when my father would take me up on the hay wagon.Ah, I was happy in those days--just a freckled, black-haired slip of a little girl, with my frock torn and my hands all scratched with the berry bushes."She had begun by dramatising, but by now she was acting--acting with all her histrionic power at fullest stretch, acting the part of a woman unhappy amid luxuries, who looked back with regret and with longing towards a joyous, ****** childhood.She was sincere and she was not sincere.Part of her--one of those two Laura Jadwins who at different times, but with equal right called themselves "I," knew just what effect her words, her pose, would have upon a man who sympathised with her, who loved her.But the other Laura Jadwin would have resented as petty, as even wrong, the insinuation that she was not wholly, thoroughly sincere.All that she was saying was true.No one, so she believed, ever was placed before as she was placed now.No one had ever spoken as now she spoke.Her chin upon one slender finger, she went on, her eyes growing wide:
"If I had only known then that those days were to be, the happiest of my life....This great house, all the beauty of it, and all this wealth, what does it amount to?" Her voice was the voice of Phedre, and the gesture of lassitude with which she let her arms fall into her lap was precisely that which only the day before she had used to accompany Portia's plaint of--my little body is a-weary of this great world.
Yet, at the same time, Laura knew that her heart was genuinely aching with real sadness, and that the tears which stood in her eyes were as sincere as any she had ever shed.
