An hour later Frank Armstrong was sitting opposite Craddock eating
lunch with the steadfast and business-like air of a man who was not
only hungry now, but knew from long experience that it was prudent to
eat whenever edibles could be had for nothing. Some minutes before
Craddock had suggested a slice of cold meat to give solidity to the
very light repast that was so suitable to the heat of the day, and
since then Armstrong had been consuming ham and firm pieces of bread
without pause or speech. But nobody was less greedy than he; only,
for years of his life he had been among the habitually hungry. In
appearance he was rugged and potentially fierce: a great shock of black
hair crowned a forehead that projected like a pent-house over deep-set
angry eyes, and it might be guessed that he was a person both easy
and awkward to quarrel with, for his expression was suspicious and
resentful, as of some wild beast, accustomed to ill-usage, but whom
ill-usage had altogether failed in taming. But though this ugliness
of expression was certainly the predominant characteristic of that
strong distrustful face, a less casual observer might easily form the
conclusion that there were better things below, a certain eagerness, a
certain patience, a certain sensibility.
He looked up at Craddock after a while, with a queer crooked smile on
his large mouth, not without charm.
"I will now cease being a pig," he said. "But when one is really hungry
one can't think about anything else. It is no more hoggish, really,
than the longing for sleep if you haven't slept for nights, or for
water when one is thirsty. I had no breakfast this morning. Now what
have you got to talk to me about?"
Craddock was a strong believer in the emollient effects of food, and
had determined to talk no business till his client was at ease in a
chair with tobacco and quiescent influences.
"Ah, no breakfast!" he said. "I myself find that I work best before I
eat."
Frank Armstrong laughed.
"I don't," he said. "I work best after a large meal. No: I did not have
breakfast, because it would have been highly inconvenient to pay for
it. There are such people, you know. I have often been one of them."
Arthur Craddock found this peremptory young savage slightly alarming.
For himself he demanded that social intercourse should be conducted
in a sort of atmosphere of politeness, of manners. Just as in
landscape-painting you had to have atmosphere, else the effect was of
cast-iron, so in dealings with your fellow-men. There should be no such
things as edges, particularly raw ones. He thought he had seldom seen
anybody so unatmospheric.
"My dear fellow," he said. "Do you mean that you have been actually in
want of money to pay for food? Why did you not tell me? You knew what
an interest I took in you and your work."
Frank looked at him quite unatmospherically.
"But why should my having breakfast matter to you?" he said. "You
wanted my work, if you thought it good: if not, I was no more to you
than all the rest of the brutes who go without breakfast. Now about the
play. At least, I don't suppose you asked me to lunch in order to talk
about breakfast. I quite expect you to tell me it's twaddle, indeed, I
know it is. But does it by any chance seem to you remunerative twaddle?"
Craddock really suffered in this want of atmosphere. He gasped,
mentally speaking, like an unaccustomed aeronaut in rarefied air.
"Ah, I can't agree with you that it is twaddle," he said. "The plot
no doubt is slender, but the dialogue is excellent, and you show
considerable precision and fineness of line in the character-drawing."
"But what characters?" said the candid author. "The curate, the
housemaid, the churchwarden. Lord, what people, without a shred of
life or force in them. But it answered your description of what
theatre-goers liked. I wrote it last year, in a reaction after the
'Lane without a Turning.'"
"Ah, was that it?" said Craddock. "It puzzled me to know how a boy like
you--you are a boy, my dear fellow--could possibly write anything so
bitter and hopeless as that, and something so quietly genial as 'Easter
Eggs.'"
"Easily enough. I myself wrote the one: it was me, and as I found
out, nobody liked it. 'Easter Eggs' is merely my observation of a
quantity of blameless chattering people. I lived in Surbiton when I
was quite a boy. They were rather like that: there were teaparties
and sewing-societies to relieve distress among the poor. Packets of
cross-overs used to be sent to Cancer Hospitals. Let's get back to the
subject. Remunerative or not?"
"Without doubt remunerative," agreed Craddock again gasping.
"But I have given three of our leading actors the opportunity of
remunerating themselves and me, and they won't touch it. Are their
souls above remuneration, and do they only want topping high art?"
Arthur Craddock did not see his way to telling Armstrong that he had
sent his play to exactly those managers who would be quite certain to
refuse it, because that was information which he had excellent reason,
if he was to conclude an advantageous bargain, for keeping to himself.
"Nevertheless, I am right about your play," he said, "and Tranby and
Akroyd are wrong."
Frank shrugged his shoulders.
"So you tell me," he observed.
"Yes, and I am willing to back my opinion. I will here and now buy this
play from you and pay for it at a figure which you will not consider
ungenerous, considering it is a pure speculation on my part. But there
are certain conditions."
Frank Armstrong pulled his chair up closer to the table, and put his
elbows on it. Craddock could see that his fingers were trembling.
"Name your conditions, if you will be so good," he said. "Perhaps you
would also tell me more about the not ungenerous figure."
Craddock held up a white plump hand of deprecation. He positively could
not get on without manners and life's little insincerities. As this
young man seemed to have none of them, he had to supply sufficient for
two. He was glad to observe that signal of nervousness on Armstrong's
part: it argued well for the acceptance of his bargain.
"You are so direct, my dear fellow," he said. "You demand a 'yes' or a
'no' like a cross-examining counsel. You must permit me to explain the
situation. I take a great interest in your work and in you, and I am
willing to run a considerable risk in order to give your work a chance
of being fairly judged and appreciated. Now there is nothing more
difficult to gauge than the likings of the public, and while I tell you
that your play will be without doubt remunerative, I may be hopelessly
in error. But I see in it certain qualities which I think will attract,
though in your previous play, which, frankly, I think a finer piece of
work than this, the public was merely repelled. But here----"
Armstrong's elbow gave a jerk that was quite involuntary.
"Shall we come to the point?" he said. "Of course this is all very
gratifying, but we can talk about the play's merits afterwards. How
much do you offer me for 'Easter Eggs' and on what conditions?"
Craddock drummed with his plump fingers on the table. Looking across at
the strong rough face opposite him he could see suspense and anxiety
very clearly written there. He felt a rather nasty pleasure in that:
it was like poking up some fierce animal with a stick, where there are
bars between which prevent its retaliating violence. But perhaps it
would be kinder to put it out of its suspense, for Armstrong wanted to
know this more than he had wanted lunch even.
"I offer you £500 down for all rights of your play," he said, "on
conditions that you let me have three more of your plays within the
next three years at the same price, should I choose to buy them."
Armstrong did not take his eyes off him, nor did the stringency of
their gaze relax.
"Did you say £500?" he asked in an odd squeaky little voice.
"I did."
Then the tension relaxed. The young man got up and rubbed the backs of
his hands across his eyes.
"If I'm asleep," he said, "I hope I shan't wake for a long time. It's
deuced pleasant. I don't quite know what five hundred pounds mean--I
can't see to the end of them. I thought perhaps you were going to offer
me £50. I should certainly have accepted it. Why didn't you?"
This was a good opportunity for Craddock.
"Because I do not happen to be a sweater," he said, "and because like
an honest man I prefer paying a fair price for good work."
Armstrong gave a great shout of laughter.
"And because there isn't much difference to you between fifty pounds
and five hundred," he said.
He paused.
"I beg your pardon," he said. "I had no business to say that. But I
don't understand your offer. By the way, of course I accept it."
Craddock had tried to look hurt when this rather ruthless suggestion as
to the reason for his generosity was made, but he did not feel within
himself that his attempt was very successful, and was glad to look
benign again when Frank Armstrong apologised.
The tremulousness of his hands had ceased, and he looked straight at
his benefactor with his distrustful gaze. Then once more the crooked
rather charming smile came on his mouth.
"Personally, I am sure you rather detest me," he said, "so I suppose it
seems to you worth while financially to run this risk with your money.
So, though I'm bewildered, I tell you frankly, with the prospect of
five hundred pounds, I'm not grateful to you. I wish I was. Of course,
if 'Easter Eggs' makes anything of a hit, you will do pretty well, and
I shall be a popular playwright----"
He broke off a moment, and pushed back his hair.
"Ah, I see: that's where you come in," he said. "You have an option to
buy three more plays by a popular playwright at the same price. Again
if any of the three new ones makes a success, you won't do very badly."
Craddock went on the whisker-hunt for a moment.
"And if 'Easter Eggs' is put on, and fails, as your other play did,"
he observed, "shall I not be considerably out of pocket? And another
failure would not encourage me to exercise my option over any future
work of yours. However, let it be me this time who asks you to come to
the point. Do you accept my offer or not? I may mention that I shall
not renew it. I cannot waste my time over arrangements that come to
nothing."
Armstrong nodded at him with comparative friendliness.
"Good Lord, yes. I accept it," he said. "I told you I should have
accepted £50."
Craddock got up.
"Then if you have finished your lunch, we might draw up an agreement
over our cigarettes."
"Certainly. I daresay you will let me have a cigar, too. And when I've
signed, or whatever I have to do, will you give me a cheque straight
off? I shall have a banking account, I suppose, and I shan't be hungry
again for ever, as far as I can see. By George, I ought to be grateful
to you. But I think the sort of experience I've been through don't give
a fellow much practice in gratitude. Gratitude is an acquired virtue.
It is the prosperous who mainly acquire it."
Craddock patted him on the shoulder.
"My dear fellow, you may leave the cynicism of the Lane that had no
Turning behind you," he said.
Armstrong suddenly drew up his shirt-cuff and showed a long scar healed
years ago which ran nearly up to his elbow.
"That's where my father threw a knife at me once," he said. "It was a
bad shot, for he threw it at my head. It's healed, you might think: it
looks healed. It bleeds inside, though."
This was a savage young beast, it seemed, that Craddock had got hold
of, one who had been set in slippery places, that sloped hell-wards.
Craddock had known some who had learned patience from their sojournings
in such resorts, he had known others who had simply been broken by
it, others again, and of those possibly the joyful and attractive
Charles Lathom was one, who seemed to have taken no colour from
their surroundings, but emerged with their serenity and sweetness
undisturbed. But never yet had he seen anyone who came out of dark
places with mere anger and resentment against his sufferings, and yet
with strength quite unimpaired. Armstrong seemed to him like that: the
flames apparently had but hardened and annealed him. He had suffered
under the lash of circumstance, not stout-heartedly nor with any loss
of spirit, and now when for the first time he saw daylight, ahead, he
was in no wise grateful for the dispersal of the darkness. He did not
hail the sun or melt to the benignancy of its beams: he came out iron,
remembering the hunger of the years that had starved his body and his
soul, without subduing either, for physically he was hard and muscular,
morally he was cynical, expecting from others little except such
emotions as he himself shared, the instinct of self-defence, and the
stoical bearing of such blows as he could not ward off. He was not in
himself kind or unselfish or loving, and up till now he had practically
never come across such qualities in others, and there was really no
reason why he should believe in their existence. Hitherto, nobody as
far as he remembered, had done him a good turn, unless thereby he
reaped a personal benefit, and indeed Armstrong saw little reason why
anybody should; for the world as he had known it, was not run on lines
of altruistic philanthropy. The strong spoiled the weak, and the weak
looked for opportunities of preying on the weaker. The rich paid as
little as they could for the service of the poor, which was obviously
the course that common-sense indicated, while the poor, the workers,
combined so far as was possible, to make the rich pay more. There was
no reason for either side to act otherwise, and thus he was puzzled to
know why Craddock had offered him more than was necessary in order to
get this play from him, and the ensuing contract.
As a matter of fact, Craddock had done so for exactly the same reasons
as that which prompted him to give Charles Lathom sixty pounds for
his sketch: he wanted to earn a sort of blind unreasoning gratitude
from his new client, since clients possessed of this convenient spirit
were far easier to manage and to deal with. But he had failed, and
knew it: this new client, though he looked forward to finding him very
remunerative indeed, could not possibly be considered to be blind with
gratitude. But after all the main point was that he should sign the
contract that embodied Craddock's proposals, which he was perfectly
willing to do, and Craddock's butler, coming in with coffee, witnessed
the transaction. A leaf from Craddock's cheque-book completed it.
* * * * *
All the appliances of refrigeration, in the way of electric fans and
outside blinds, were not more than sufficient to keep Craddock's flat
at an agreeable temperature and when, that evening, about six o'clock
Mrs. Lathom put away her typewriter, and the neat piles of manuscript
and transcription which had occupied her all day the heat in the little
sunbaked sitting room in Sidney Street, which at meal times did duty
also as dining-room, was almost overpowering. But she expected the
younger of her two handsome boys to arrive from his holiday on the
Thames with Charles in time for supper, and tired as she was and worn
out with her daily work in this little furnace of a room, her fatigue
forgot itself in thought of and preparation for his home-coming.
Reggie had, on a picture postcard that showed Thorley Weir, advertised
her of the hour of his train's arrival, and before she need busy
herself over the gas-stove that stood in the corner of the passage
outside the sitting-room, and had to be fed with pennies to keep its
flame burning, she found there was a quarter of an hour left her to
rest herself, and if possible to get a few minutes' doze to clear
the heat and heaviness from her eyes. This evening in spite of the
home-coming of one of her darlings, she was conscious of an unusual
despondency, which, quite rightly, she told herself was only physical,
and did not touch her spirits or her essential self. But this utter
fatigue of body apparently reached down to her mind, and she could not
help, since dozing proved an impossible feat, receding backwards into
the ashes and desolation of the past. Yet, when she allowed herself to
do so something stronger than any sense of desolation met her, love and
her womanhood and her motherhood, and the blessing of her boys. And the
tired eyes grew brighter again.
Strawberries had been very cheap that morning, and she had bought a
basket of them which she had laid out on a newspaper on her bed, each
separate, so that they should not bruise each other. She could give
Reggie some toasted cheese as well, and tea and bread and butter. It
was not such a feast as she had planned for him on the evening of his
return, before he went back to his work again at Thistleton's Gallery
next morning, but she had sent the boys a sovereign only the day
before, in order to let them have a plethora of boat-hire and general
jubilance, and until she took the completed copy of the manuscript back
to the office next day, there was nothing more in the way of cash that
could be expended. Womanlike, with all the direct and tender instincts
of womanhood alert, she loved to treat her males to the material
comforts of life. Her love had to express itself not only in affection
but in the edible transcription of it, and while she would not have
denied that Mary had chosen the good part, she had a strong sympathy
with Martha, who showed her love in a fashion less purely spiritual
perhaps, but none the less authentic. To serve, even if the only
monument of service was unbruised strawberries, and the preparation of
toasted cheese, cooked over a smelling gas-stove in the heat of this
broiling evening, did not seem to her an inferior lot. She knew she
had the Mary-love for her boys, but, though she did not reason about
the point, nor even was conscious of it, she believed Martha had not
chosen a bad part, when she put on her apron, so to speak, and got
uncomfortably warm over the kitchen fire.
There were still a few minutes left before she need stir. Reggie's
train was just about arriving now, and it would take him a good
half-hour to walk home. In twenty minutes she could do her best by his
supper, and have the toast and cheese hot and crisp for him, and she
had already put the kettle on: tea would be ready simultaneously. She
knew the chronology of these simple suppers very well.
She sat in a frayed arm-chair. The room looked west, and at this
hour it was not possible to place it entirely out of the sun, and
since there was a little wind blowing in she drew up the blind of the
window, admitting both. It was her hands and her eyes that were so
tired; for a couple of months now it had been something of a strain
to read small writing, and to-day even the clear-cut letters of her
typewriter were hard to focus. Very probably she was in need of
glasses, but an oculist's fee, when expenses so nearly met income, was
not a disbursement to be incurred lightly, and certainly her eyesight
was not always so bad as it had been to-day. The strain of continual
focussing had ruled two vertical lines between her eyebrows, as she had
seen when she went to wash her hands after putting away her machine and
before cooking Reggie's supper. She had seen them there before, but
more faintly. To-day they were deeply carved.
Mrs. Lathom was but a year or two over forty, and she was aware
that wrinkles such as these had no right as yet to set up so firm
a dwelling-house on her face. But they only troubled her as a sign
of eye-strain, a direction-post to the oculist's, and as symbols of
approaching age they concerned her not at all, except in so far that
approaching age might prove a drag on her energies and her work. Yet
it was easy to see that as a girl she must have been beautiful, and
women who have been beautiful as girls are not usually so careless over
the signs of their lost youth. But the moment's glance sufficient to
disentangle from her face the loveliness of its youth, would have been,
except to the most superficial observers, enough to make him desist
from his disentangling, and stand charmed and almost awed at the gifts
the advance of years had brought her which so vastly out-valued the
mere smoothness of line and brightness of colour that they had taken
away. They with the losses and griefs that had visited her had taken
so little in comparison with the love and the patience and the proved
unconquerable serenity which they had brought her. Nor, except that for
the moment, when heat and physical fatigue lay like a mist over her
face, dimming the inward brightness of it, had they robbed her of the
lighter gifts of the spirit, humour and the appreciation of the kindly
merriment that to cheerful souls runs through the web of life like some
gold thread in the windings of a labyrinth. High moral courage and
simple faith are without doubt essential to noble living on whatever
scale, but it is only the puritanically minded who would discount
the piquancy that an appreciation of the comical aspects of a world,
possibly tragic, gives to the business of life. And a certain sparkle
in Mrs. Lathom's grey eyes, a certain twist in her mouth clearly
betokened that she was quite capable of laughing at those she loved
when they behaved in a ridiculous manner. In the end without doubt a
deeper-abiding tenderness would overscore her amusement, but she would
never commit the error of blindly spoiling her idols.
But her ten minutes' rest was over, and she got out of her cupboard
the materials for supper, and went out onto the landing where stood
the gas-stove that browsed on inserted pennies. Mercifully it stood
near the window that looked out on to Sidney Street at the top of
this shabby genteel house, and the generous fumes grafted on to the
faint odour of oil-cloth and a more pronounced smell of other culinary
operations on some lower storey did not hang in stagnation on the
landing. Outside on the pavements and roadway shadowed by the houses,
children, not quite gutter-snipes, but markedly a little lower than
the angels, played about with the eked-out contrivances of childhood,
a pair of ill-running skates shared between two, a small box on wheels
which would hold a baby, and cabalistically labelled squares drawn on
the paving-stones. Opposite there were no houses, for a stiff church
stood in an acre of disused graveyard. Rather sad and spiritless
marriages used sometimes to be officiated there, and on Sunday a great
clamour of four bells brought together a sparser congregation than so
much noise seemed to deserve. Over all lay a grey heat-hazed sky.
Somehow the gas-stove with its accompanying odour of oil-cloth and
another supper below, in which it was now clear that fish was an
ingredient, was more encouraging than those symbols of worship and
mortality. The gas-stove promised supper anyhow, and supper is a
symbol that life not only is not extinct, but that it demands to be
maintained, and Mrs. Lathom turned to the kettle from which steam was
beginning to spurt, and put her saucepan on the bars of the top of the
range. Simultaneously a motor-car hooted outside, and appeared to draw
up, still throbbing, at the house. Then there came an impatient roulade
on the bell, and the moment after the leap of active ascending feet on
the staircase. It was impossible to mistake that tread: nobody in the
house but Reggie came upstairs like a charging brigade, and yet how
should Reggie have taken a motor from Paddington? It could scarcely
be that Charles was ill, that there had been some accident, for then
surely he would have telegraphed: nor did these flying feet sound like
the bearer of ill news. But she left her gas-stove and went to the head
of the stairs, not exactly expecting ill-news, but wanting to know.
Reggie flung himself upon her in his usual tornado of welcome.
"Oh, Mother, things have happened," he said, "and Charles hasn't
decided whether Berkeley Square or Grosvenor Square is the nicest, and
so he'll leave it to you. Yes, quite right: I'm mad, and I've kept the
taxi because Charles orders you to drive out with me and have supper
somewhere. It's his treat. To come to the point, he has sold his
picture right off the easel for sixty pounds--I said pounds--and it
seems that's only the beginning."
"Oh, my dear!" said Mrs. Lathom.
"I know I am, so put on your hat. Goodness, how hot the house is, and
oil-cloth and fish and cheese don't smell as good as Thorley Weir."
Berkeley Square and a ticking waiting taxi and a supper at a
restaurant, while the root of the matter, the fountain head of all
this glory was just sixty pounds, made up an admirable example of
the Charles-Reginald attitude towards money. Both of them seemed to
regard it, the moment that there was any immediate superfluity of it,
as a thing to be got rid of as soon as possible. This Mrs. Lathom
continuously and earnestly and not very successfully tried to combat: a
future rainy day, in the opinion of her sons, was not worth a moment's
thought if the present day was a fine one. But at this moment Mrs.
Lathom also gloriously desired the swift rush through the air, the
sense of shaded lights and tinkle of ice, for she was not in any way
immune from the temptations of these sub-celestial pleasures. And it
was with not any very great firmness that she resisted.
"It's too dear of Charles to have ordered all these nice things," she
said, "but my darling it's out of proportion even to such a fortune as
sixty pounds, for us to go to a restaurant. Send the taxi away, like a
good boy: I was just beginning to cook your supper."
Reggie shook his head.
"Can't be done," he said. "Charles' orders and my promise to obey them
are binding. And the taxi is a-ticking out the sweet little twopences."
Mrs. Lathom made one more effort.
"But it's ridiculous," she said, "and supper will be ready in two
minutes, and oh, Reggie, I am longing to hear all about the sixty
pounds. And there are strawberries: I separated them, so that they
should not spoil each other."
"We will eat them when we come back," said the inexorable Reggie.
"I shan't tell you a word about the sixty pounds unless you come. I
promised Charles. I heard another twopence go then."
A little puff of air came upstairs laden and flavoured with oil-cloth
and fish which would not positively improve if kept, and the curious
"poor" smell that dwells in houses where in winter the windows are not
very often opened for fear of losing the warmth so expensively procured
when coals are high. Mrs. Lathom's resolution wavered.
"One of us has to give way," she said. "Please let it be you, Reggie."
"Can't be done. The taxi is working awful quick, mother."
All opposition collapsed.
"Oh, I will get my hat, you monster," cried she. "It's exceedingly
wrong of me to come, and for that very reason I am going to enjoy it
all the more. How I long to hear about the sixty pounds! Put out that
dreadful gas-stove, darling: we will stop all the tickings."
* * * * *
Charles duly arrived next morning with the picture, not yet quite
dry, on the seat opposite him propped up by a melon which he had felt
compelled to buy for his mother. Reggie had already gone off to his
desk at Thistleton's Gallery when he arrived, and she was at work with
her typewriter, and had not heard his step above the clacking of the
busy keys. She turned as the door opened, with surprise and welcome
on her face, and rose, pushing herself up with a hand on the arm of
her chair. A hundred times and more when he came home of an evening
had Charles seen her in exactly that attitude, with all that love and
welcome beaming in her face, but to-day she took his eye in a way she
had never done before. The artist in him, not the affectionate son
only, perceived her. He paused in the doorway without advancing.
"Oh, you picture!" he cried. "How is it I never saw you before. You
are my next model please. Mother, darling, here I am! The melon, yes,
that's for you, and the picture, that's for Mr. Craddock, and me, well,
I'm for both of you."
Charles deposited these agreeable properties.
"And Reggie has told you all there is to be told, I expect," he said,
"but unless I'm mistaken there'll be much more to tell when I've seen
Mr. Craddock to-morrow morning. He's coming to my studio at ten, and
I'm sure things are going to happen. What I don't know. A commission to
copy a Reynolds perhaps, other things perhaps, who knows? But my next
picture is going to be you: you with your typewriter, just getting up
as you did this moment, because Reggie or I came in. Lord, how often
have I seen you do that, and yet I saw it for the first time to-day.
Now I must go and put my studio in order in preparation for to-morrow,
but I shall stop and talk to you for ten minutes first. Yes: that's
Reggie just going to take a header into the Weir. Dappled like a horse,
and spotted like a frog, he says, but if you won't tell anybody,
there's some devilish good work in it. I happen to know because I put
it there. Clever handling in the modelling of the 'Nood,' as Bonnart
used to call it when he talked English, and as for the light and shadow
on his blessed shoulders, I call it a wonder. And if I'm not deceived
it'll be Thorley Weir he's just going to dip into. Oh, mother, I've
grown silly with happiness."
They sat down together on the shabby shiny American cloth sofa, which
Reggie said was guaranteed to slide from under the securest sitter in
ten minutes.
"It's a new world," he went on, "just because somebody who, I am sure,
knows, tells me I can paint, and has already shown himself willing to
back his opinion. You don't know what a nightmare it has been to me all
this year, to be earning nothing while you and Reggie were supporting
me."
She laid her thin white hand on his brown one.
"Ah, my dear, do you think I haven't known all along?" she said.
"Couldn't I see you struggling to keep your heart above water, so
to speak? All this year, my darling, you haven't chattered, as you
chattered just now."
"I suppose not. But I mustn't chatter any more. I've got to get my
studio arranged, and all my bits of things stuck out for Mr. Craddock
to see. I wonder what he wants to come down to see everything for. If
it had been about this Reynolds' copy only he could have asked me to
bring a couple of bits of work up to him. Mother, he is such a good
sort: he was so friendly over it, and considerate and understanding. I
shall come back as soon as I've dusted and cleared up. It won't take
long."
She glanced at the sheets on her desk.
"I think I shall come and help you," she said, "and when we've put
things to rights, I will go on with my work in your studio, dear, if I
shan't be in the way. It gets so baking hot here in the afternoon."
"Hurrah! And while you work I shall begin the world-famed picture of
the artist's mother."
"I think you owe yourself a holiday, dear, after finishing that other
picture."
"Pooh! Who wants holidays when he's happy? We'll bring the melon and
the typewriter and the picture along, and have a jubilation."
Charles' studio was but a few hundred yards away down a side street
leading off the Brompton Road, and had not it been called a studio
it might not have been misnamed an attic. Four flights of dark and
carpetless stairs led to it, and its garniture was of the most
rudimentary kind. Carpet and curtains it had none: a dishevelled screen
and torn blind shut the light, when so desired, from its southern
facing window, but in the opposite wall was a big casement giving the
rayless illumination from the north. In one corner the skeleton which
had been arranged in an attitude of dejected thought by Reggie on his
last visit here, had a straw hat tilted back on its skull, on a shelf
by it were casts of a skinless man with flayed muscles, and three or
four reproductions from Greek antiques, an easel, a rough square table
and three or four cane-backed chairs in various stages of disrepair
completed the furniture. In one corner a cupboard let into the wall
was masked by a ragged curtain which bulged suspiciously. Thither
Mrs. Lathom's housewife eyes were led, and she drew it aside with a
contumelious finger.
Horror was revealed: she had scarce believed that any cupboard
could contain so appalling a catalogue of evidence to prove the
utter incapability of a man to live, when left to himself, in a way
consistent with self-respect or tidiness or cleanliness. She had not
been to his studio for a month past, and to-day she would cheerfully
have sworn that for all these weeks Charles had never touched the
cupboard except to stow away in it some new and disgraceful object.
Crockery and knives and forks, some clean, some dirty, were lodged
there, there were twisted and empty tubes that had contained colour,
there was a hat without a brim and a jug without a handle, irregular
shapes done up in newspaper, bottles of medium, tin tacks, sheets of
paper with embryonic sketches, painting rags, half-used sticks of
charcoal, remains of food, remains of everything that should have been
cast into the dust-bin.
It was a withering face she turned on Charles.
"I should not have survived it if Mr. Craddock had seen in what a
pig-sty you choose to live, Charles," she said. "I should have died
of shame. It's little work I shall do this morning in the way of
typewriting. Water and dusters and a scrubbing-brush, please."
Charles twitched the curtain over the cupboard again. Something fell
behind it as he did so, and his mother groaned.
"It's little work you shall do in the way of cleaning up my messes,"
he said. "There's a charwoman about who brushes and scrubs and makes
everything resplendent for half-a-crown per resplendency. On my word
of honour she shall dust and clean. But you might help me to dust my
sketches and put them out, mother. I got her to tidy-up once, and she
wiped off a complete oil-sketch which was still wet."
Mrs. Lathom looked round.
"Of course I will," she said, "but oh, Charles, what squalor! A
torn blind, and a broken screen, and three chairs all of which want
reseating. And to think of Reggie and me last night stuffing ourselves
at a restaurant with your money."
"Where shall we sup to-night?" asked Charles, bringing out a pile of
canvasses.
"At twenty-three Sidney Street. Give me a duster. My dear, what a
quantity of paintings."
An hour was sufficient to make Charles' private view presentable,
and to display all his sketches, finished and unfinished, round the
wainscot of his walls. Then without pause he put a new canvas on his
easel, and bribed by his promise not to spend more than five shillings
on their supper to-night, Mrs. Lathom consented to abandon her own work
for an hour and sit for him. He put her typewriter on the table, and
made her rehearse.
"It's like an instantaneous photograph," he said, "at least that is
what the picture is going to be like. Oh, do attend, mother, and not
look at the skeleton. Reggie stuck it there with a straw hat on it:
it doesn't matter. You may dust it afterwards. Now! Tinkle with your
typewriter, and then all of a sudden Reggie or I come in here to your
right, and you put your hand on the arm of your chair, and get up
saying, 'Gosh, what a surprise and how nice!' Does your poor mind take
that in at all? It's rather important."
Mrs. Lathom sat down in obedience to this peremptory son. She clacked
her machine, and turned woodenly round, with a smile as wooden as her
gesture.
"No, not at all like that," said Charles. He had set his easel up,
and was waiting with poised charcoal. "Can't you manage to get up,
as you did when I came in this morning? Exercise your imagination.
Look surprised! Will you try again? You are working hard with your
typewriter: is that clear? You are thinking that there is a debt of
sixty pounds to clear off, and that Reggie is very ill. Then on a
sudden the door opens, here to your right, and Reggie comes in, quite
well, bursting with health, and a stack of sovereigns. Do attend, think
of what I tell you to think of. Then you get up, and say 'Darling
Reggie!' I shall say, 'One, two, three,' and then do it, and then stop
just in the position I have told you. Never mind about your face."
Charles took up his charcoal again, and stood with hand poised.
"One, two, three," he said.
She got up, and the seconds added themselves into minutes. There was
no sound at all except the dry grating of the charcoal on the canvas.
Otherwise the austere stillness of the actual creation of art filled
the room. Once again, as on the morning of yesterday, Charles knew his
hand was attuned to his eye, and his eye attuned to the vision that lay
behind it. Rapidly and unerringly the bold strokes grated across the
canvas. Then they ceased altogether.
"You beautiful woman," said Charles. "I've got you. You can't escape me
now."
Then his face which had been grave and frowning lit into smiles.
"Mother darling," he said. "I'm going to make such a queen of you with
your shabby old dress and your eyes of love. Now for a treat you may
dust the skeleton for ten minutes, and then you must give me your face
again. I see it: I see it all."
He rummaged behind the terrible curtain, and found a palette and a
couple of brushes. He squirted onto it worm casts of colour, and filled
his tin with turpentine.
It was a medium-sized canvas he had chosen, about three feet six by
three feet, and with big brushfuls of colour very thinly laid on,
he splashed in the dull neutrality of greys and browns to frame his
figure, making notes rather than painting. A blot of black indicated
the typewriter, and then with greater care he filled in the black of
her dress, and smeared in the white of the apron she wore with body
colour. This took but ten minutes for his bold brush, and then standing
a little back from it, he half-closed his eyes and looked a long time
at it to see whether the value of background to figure, and figure to
background, were as he meant them to be. He did not want the figure to
jump out from its place, for even as she rose to greet the incomer with
that face of loving welcome, her left hand still hovered with fingers
outstretched over her typewriter. It had to be felt that the greeting
over, her work must occupy her again. She had not detached herself
from it, for all the leaping-forth of her heart in shining eyes and
smiling mouth. As yet the figure was a little too near the spectator, a
little too far off from its background, and while he puzzled over this
the solution struck him. A little more emphasis given to the chair, the
arm of which she grasped gave him what he wanted: she belonged to the
chair and it anchored her in her place.
Charles suddenly threw back his head and laughed.
"Oh, jolly good!" he exclaimed, "and I don't care if nobody else agrees
with me. Mother, leave that silly skeleton, please, and get back to
your place. You may sit down, but turn your face towards me, and
remember that Reggie is just coming in, and you've thought he was ill
and----"
Charles' voice suddenly ceased, and he stared at his mother as she
obeyed these instructions with eyes as of some inspired seer. Very
slowly his hand moved to his brush which he had laid down, very slowly
and quietly as if afraid of startling away the vision which he saw, he
mixed his paint, and laid on the first brushful in planes of colour
bold and firm and defined. Between the strokes he paused a long while,
but the actual application was but the work of a second. But it was in
these pauses when he stood with drooping mouth, head thrust forward,
and eyes that seemed as if they burned their way into that beloved face
that his work was done. To record what he saw was far less an effort
than to see. The insight was what demanded all the fire and effort and
imagination which possessed him. He had set himself to divine and to
show what motherhood meant.
For half an hour he worked thus, he, too absorbed for speech, she wise
enough not to risk an interruption. Then from mere fatigue of brain and
eye with this sustained white-heat effort, he felt his power of vision
slipping from him, and laid his palette down.
"Come and look at it," he said to his mother.
The face was but roughly put in as yet, but the spirit of the face was
there.
"Oh, Charles, dear," she said. "That is just how I love Reggie and you.
How did you guess?"
He took her face in his hands and kissed her.
"Guess? I didn't guess," he said. "You told me: your face told me."
* * * * *
Charles was not to be induced to leave his picture while daylight
lasted, but he wheeled it round with its face to the wall, before he
shut up his studio for the night. He was not sure whether he wished
Craddock to see it in its present stage: somehow, it seemed to him
private, not for everybody, until it had been clothed, so to speak,
in paint. He felt shy, though at the same time he told himself he was
merely fantastical at exhibiting so crude a confidence ... and while he
was in two minds about it next morning, he heard his visitor's footstep
on the bare and creaky staircase outside. The last flight of steps as
he knew well was a mere trap to the ignorant, with the darkness of it,
and its angles and corners, and he set his door wide to give light to
his visitor. Then, just before Craddock came in, he told himself he
was ridiculous in imagining that there could be privacy in a portrait,
and wheeled the easel round so that it stood just opposite the door.
Craddock, large and white and gently perspiring, emerged from the
stairs with outstretched hand, and--
"Good morning, my dear fellow," he said. "It is very well for Art to
sequester herself and live alone, but four flights of break-neck stairs
are really an exaggerated precaution against intrusion. However, here I
am----"
Suddenly he caught sight of the portrait and he dropped Charles' hand
without another word, and stared at it. The silent seconds grew into
a minute, and more than a minute passed without a sound. Hard and
commercial and self-seeking as Craddock was he had the saving grace of
true reverence for genius, and there was not the smallest question in
his mind that it was a master's work that stood before him. There was
no need to ask who was this tired and beautiful woman, for no one but
her son could have painted a woman so, and have divined that unique
inimitable love that no woman ever felt even for husband or lover, but
only for those who have been born of her body and her soul. It was that
tenderness and love, no other, that Charles had seen, and for none but
a son could it have glowed in that worn and lovely face.
Craddock was immensely touched. He had expected a good deal from this
visit to Charles' studio, but he had never dreamed of so noble, and
simple a triumph, as that unfinished portrait presented. And when at
length he turned to Charles, his eyes were moist, and he spoke with a
simplicity that was quite unusual to him.
"That is very true and beautiful," he said. "You are fortunate to have
a mother to love you like that."
Charles gave an exultant laugh.
"Then I have shown that?" he asked, his shyness entirely vanishing
before this penetrating person Where was the point of being shy when a
man understood like that?
"Indeed you have," said Craddock. "And you have shown it very tenderly
and very truly. It required a son to show it."
He looked again at the eager welcoming face on the canvas, and from it
to the face of the boy beside him, and asked himself, impatiently, what
was this mysterious feeling of perception that underlay and transcended
all technique. Here was a portrait with perhaps two days' work only
(it happened to be less than that) expended on it, and even now it had
arrived at a level to which mere technique could never lift it. Love
and the inspiration that love gave it caught it up, gave it wings,
caused it to soar.... Yet how, why? There were hundreds and hundreds
of artists, who as far as mere technique went, could paint with the
same precision and delicacy: why should not any of them have put on the
brushful just so? Yet even in the most famous of all portraits of the
artist's mother, there was not such a glow of motherhood.
Then he turned from it abruptly. He had not come here merely to admire,
though he hoped that he should admire. He had come on a business
proposal, which should satisfy both himself and the young man to whom
it was made, and he began examining the smaller canvases which Charles
and his mother had displayed round the room. Here were a couple of
studies of Thorley Weir, here half a dozen sketches of Reggie prepared
to take his plunge, with details thereof, a raised arm, a bent knee,
the toes of a foot pressed heavily in the act of springing. There were
copies of casts, there were portraits and numerous transcriptions of
leg-bones, arm-bones, ribs, with muscles, without muscles, and all
betokened the same indomitable resolve to draw. Then there were the
copies or bits of copies from masterpieces in the National Gallery:
half a dozen heads of Lady Hamilton as a Bacchante, and in particular
Philip IV. of Spain, quantities of Philip IV.--his head sometimes,
sometimes a dozen of his left eyebrow with the eye beneath: his right
hand, a finger of his right hand, the thumb of his right hand: could
they have been put together like the dry bones of Ezekiel's vision,
there would be a great army of Philip IV. And in none was there any
sign of impatience: the Argus of eyes was drawn for a purpose; and
till that purpose was achieved, it was evident that the artist was
prepared to go on copying eyes until his own were dim. Admirable also
was the determination to achieve the result by the same process as
that employed by the master: to get the general effect was clearly not
sufficient, else there would not have been so copious a repetition.
An examination of a quarter of these delicate copies was sufficient for
Craddock's purpose in looking at them. His only doubt was whether it
was not mere waste of time to give this youth more copying work to do.
But the study of a picture so admirable as Wroughton's Reynolds could
hardly be waste of time for anybody. Also, he was not sure whether his
involuntary tribute to the unfinished portrait had not been too strong:
he did not wish Charles to think of himself as one with the world at
his feet.
"I see you have got a sense of the importance of copying method," he
said, "and I feel sure you will be able to produce an adequate copy of
the Reynolds I have in mind. Now you will see why I told you to leave
your camp at Thorley Weir unbroken, for the picture in question is at
the house a little lower down the river, the Mill House. Probably you
know it: the lawn comes down to the water's edge."
Certainly Charles knew it. Involuntarily there sounded in his brain a
song he knew also, "See the Chariot at Hand." Decidedly he knew it.
But an infantine caution possessed him, and he raised and wrinkled his
eyebrows.
"I think I do," he said. "Is there a big tree on the lawn? And are
there usually some dogs about?"
"Yes, and a charming young lady who looks after them. Now I can't offer
you very much for the work, but if £50 tempts you at all, I can go as
far as that. I should not recommend you to do it at all, if I did not
think it would be good for you. What do you say?"
Charles drew a long breath.
"I--I say 'yes,'" he remarked.
"Let us consider that settled then. I will telegraph for the exact
size of the picture, and you can take your canvas down. I should start
to-morrow, if I were you. Ah, and talking of £50, here is another
specimen of £50 which I already owe you. I advanced you ten, did I not?
I will take my picture away with me if I may."
The crisp crinkling notes were counted out, and Charles took them up
and stood irresolute. Then by an effort the words came.
"You can't know," he said, "what you've done for me, and I feel I must
tell you----"
The notes trembled and rustled in his hand.
"You've given me hope and life," he said. "I--I don't think I could
have gone on much longer, with the others working and earning, and me
not bringing a penny back. You've done all that. You've put me on my
feet."
Craddock felt for his whisker in silence a moment. To do him justice
there was a little struggle in his mind, as to whether he should put
the proposal he had come here to make, or do what his better self,
the self that reverenced the unfinished portrait, prompted him to do.
Yet for a year now this boy had been toiling and struggling unaided
and undiscovered. None of all those who must have seen him copying
in the National Gallery had seen what those eyes of Philip IV., those
repeated fingers and thumbs implied: none had ever suspected the fire
and indomitable patience of those admirable sketches. It was but just
that he, who had recognised at once what Charles already was and might
easily become, should reap the fruits of his perspicuous vision. And
the offer he was about to make would seem wildly generous too to his
beneficiary.
"My dear Lathom," he said. "I hope to put you much more erect on your
feet. I haven't said anything of what I came to say. Now let me put my
whole proposal before you."
He paused a moment.
"It is quite impossible for you to continue in your studio here," he
said. "You are a painter of portraits, and what sitter will come up
those stairs? Your admirable portrait of your mother will certainly
be seen next year, at some big exhibition, and certainly people will
enquire for the artist. But it is mere folly for you to live here: You
must be more accessible, more civilised. Some fine lady wants to be
painted by you, but will she survive, or will her laces survive these
stairs? Will she sit on a chair like this for an hour together, and
look at a torn blind? I know what you will say: quite sensibly you will
say that you can afford nothing better. But I can afford it for you. I
will start you in a proper studio, well furnished and comfortable, and
as it should be. Why, even a dentist has a comfortable chair for his
sitter, and a waiting-room with papers, and a servant who opens the
door."
Again Craddock paused, for he had caught sight of the unfinished
portrait again, and felt desperately mean. But the pause was very short.
"I will start you decently and properly," he said, "and I will not
charge you a penny. But I want a return, and you can make me that
return by your paintings. I propose then that you should promise to let
me have a picture of yours every year for the next three years at the
price of £100. Do you understand? In a year's time or before, I can
say to you, pointing to a picture, 'I will take this for this year.' I
can say the same next year: I can say the same the year after. You get
your studio and all appurtenances free: you also get a hundred a year
for certain, provided you only go on painting as well as you paint now.
I shall get three pictures by you at a price which I honestly believe
will be cheap in three years' time. I tell you that plainly. I think
your pictures will fetch more than that then."
Craddock caressed the side of his face a moment.
"I shall also," he said, "have had the pleasure and the privilege of
helping a young fellow like yourself, who I believe has a future in
front of him, to get a footing in that arena, where attention is paid
to artistic work. I have a certain command of the press. It shall
assuredly be exercised on your behalf. You have heard of struggling
geniuses. I do not say you have genius, but you have great talent, and
I shall have enabled you to work without the cramp and constriction of
poverty as you paint. Now, you need not tell me now what you decide.
Think it over: talk it over with that beautiful mother, whom I hope I
may see some day. It is just a business proposal. On the other hand, if
you feel no doubt as to your answer, if you are going to tell me to go
to the deuce for certain----"
Charles took two quick steps towards him.
"I accept," he said, "how gladly and thankfully I can't tell you. But
you might guess ... I think you understand so well ..."
Craddock, laid his hand on the boy's shoulder.
"Then there's our little private bargain," he said. "Tell your mother
and that bathing boy, of course. But we'll not talk about it otherwise.
Our little agreement, yours and mine. I don't think we shall either of
us repent it."
"It won't be me who starts repenting," said Charles joyously.