It was a mistake from the very beginning for Lathom and myself to set up
housekeeping together. It happened purely by chance—one of those silly,
unnecessary chances that set one spinning out cheap platitudes about
fatality and the great issues that hang upon an accidental meeting. It
used to be considered highly unphilosophical to indulge in speculations
about coincidence, still more to base any work of art upon it—but that
was in the days when we believed in causality. Now, thanks to the
Quantum theory and the second law of thermo-dynamics, we know better. We
know that the element of randomness is what makes the Universe go round,
and that the writers of sensation novels are wiser in their generation
than the children of sweetness and light.
All the same, there still remains an appearance of causation here and
there, and I persist in attributing some of the blame to the
imbecilities of the public-school system. If Lathom had not worn an old
Wincastrian tie, I should never have spoken to him in the little
restaurant Au Bon Bourgeois in Greek Street. Or, at the most, I should
have asked him to pass the French mustard. As it was, my natural
aversion to my fellow-creatures being broken down by Burgundy, I was
fool enough to say: “Hullo! you come from the old school, I see. Did I
know you?”—and was instantly swamped and carried away in the flood of
Lathom’s expansiveness.
Lathom is an incorrigible extrovert. His thyroids and liver function
with riotous vigour. He beams out enthusiastically upon the world and is
refracted out from everything and everybody he meets in a rainbow of
colour. That is his fatal charm. In the ordinary way I am ill-adapted
for prismatic function. That evening was an unfortunate exception. I
couldn’t keep it up afterwards; that was the trouble.
When Lathom mentioned his name I recognised it at once. He is six years
younger than I am, and was an obnoxious brat in the Upper Third when I
was preparing for Oxford in the Sixth, but he had penetrated to my
Olympian seclusion in virtue of his reputation.
Lathom, of course—Burrage’s celebrated fag, who scrounged
toasting-forks. He was always in trouble with the other prefects for his
apparent inability to distinguish other people’s property from
Burrage’s. If anything was wanted, he took it; if anything had to be
done, he did it, regardless of other people’s convenience, or, indeed,
of his own. He was attached to Burrage, who naturally stood up for him.
In fact, I think we were all jealous of Burrage for having a fag so
ruthlessly competent. Burrage patronised the kid in his large,
appreciative way, and Lathom basked in the rays of Burrage’s approval. I
don’t blame Burrage altogether, but he certainly spoilt Lathom. He
protected him from the consequences of his actions. Perhaps Burrage had
advanced ideas about the non-existence of causation and imparted them to
Lathom. But Burrage was rather an ass, and his reactions were probably
more human and immediate.
Lathom was saved from disaster, partly by Burrage and partly by
Halliday. Halliday was a great man and captain of the First Eleven. He
took things easily and when he said that the kid was just potty we all
accepted the explanation. That was on the day of the picnic, when Lathom
turned up at feeding-time without his overcoat, and said he had thrown
it away because it got in his way. The weather turned to soaking rain
and Lathom got pneumonia and nearly died. We were all rather frightened
and distressed, and when Lathom turned up next term we made allowances
for him. I reminded Lathom that we had called him “Potty,” and he
laughed and said we were perfectly right.
I remembered, too, that in those days Lathom had earned a reputation for
himself by making caricatures of the masters. This fascinating gift had
earned him still more toleration. I was not surprised to hear that he
had become an artist. He said he was looking for a studio, and had seen
just the thing in Bayswater, only he couldn’t afford to take it.
I asked, why Bayswater, of all places? Why not Chelsea or Bloomsbury?
But Lathom said no, the rents were too high, and besides, Chelsea and
Bloomsbury were hopelessly arty and insincere. They lived at second-hand
and had no beliefs. To see life lived in the raw, one ought really to go
to Harringay or Totting, but they were really not central enough.
Bayswater was near enough to be convenient and far enough out to be
healthy suburban.
“The suburbs are the only places left,” said Lathom, “where men and
women will die and persecute for their beliefs. Artists believe in
nothing—not even in art. They live in little cliques and draw the
fashionable outlines in the fashionable colours. They can’t love—they
can only fornicate and talk. I’ve had some. And the aristocracy has lost
the one belief that made it tolerable—its belief in itself. It’s fool
enough to pretend to believe in the people, and what is the good of an
aristocracy playing at being democratic? And the people . . .” He made a
violent gesture. “Cheap scientific text-books—cheap atheism—cheap
sociology—cheap clothes—your blasted educationists have left them no
beliefs at all. They marry, and then the woman comes howling to the
magistrate for a separation order on any pretext, so as to get money for
nothing and go to cheap dance-halls. And the man goes yelping away for a
dole to shuffle all his responsibilities on to the State. But the
blessed people of the suburbs—they do believe in something. They
believe in Respectability. They’ll lie, die, commit murder to keep up
appearances. Look at Crippen. Look at Bywaters. Look at the man who hid
his dead wife in a bath and ate his meals on the lid for fear somebody
should suspect a scandal. My God! Those people are living, living with
all their blood and their bones. That’s reality—in the suburbs—life,
guts—something to chew at, there!”
At the time I was rather struck by this.
It ended, of course, in my consenting to share the maisonnette with
Lathom. An hour earlier, the very word would have put me off, but under
the spell of Lathom’s enthusiasm, and stupefied with food and
public-school spirit, I began to think there was really something raw,
red and life-like about living in a maisonnette with an Old Wincastrian.
And perhaps Lathom was right after all. The trouble is that raw, red
life is possibly better seen at second-hand. A good still-life of a
piece of rump-steak has none of the oozing clamminess of the real thing.
I wish, all the same, that I had tried to play up to Lathom better. It
was irritating, of course, to find that he was still regardless of other
people’s convenience. I did not object to his bagging the best room for
his studio—that was in the bond—but it was tiresome to have him
overflowing into my room all day when I was at work. Lathom is one of
those spasmodic workers who need constant applause and excitement. He
would work like fury for several hours, snarling at me if I came in to
retrieve a garment or lighter that he had borrowed; but, the fit over,
he would wander in to where I was grimly struggling with a knotty piece
of biography and talk. He talks well, but his interests are lop-sided.
He is a real creator—narrow, eager, headlong, and loathing
introspection and compromise. He questions nothing; I question
everything. I am only semi-creative, and that is why I cannot settle and
dismiss questions, as he does, in one burst of inspired insight or
equally inspired contempt. Lathom is all light and dark—a Rembrandt. I
am flat, cold, tentative, uneasily questioning, a labourer in detail. I
caught no fire from Lathom, and I quenched his. It is my disease to
doubt and to modify—to be unable to cry at a tragedy or shout in a
chorus. It was my fault that I did not help Lathom more, for, just
because of my uneasy sensitiveness, I understood him far better than he
ever understood me. It would have suited him better if I had violently
disagreed with him. But I had the fatal knack of seeing his point and
cautiously advancing counter-arguments, and that satisfied neither of
us. I see this now, and, indeed, I saw it then; it is characteristic of
people like me to see a thing and do nothing about it.
This, of course, was where the Harrisons came in. I liked Harrison. If I
had not liked him, I should not be making this statement, which is, I am
afraid, entirely contrary to the public-school tradition. Harrison was a
man of very great sincerity, no imagination and curiously cursed with
nerves. It is all wrong for a man of his type to have nerves—nobody
believes or understands it. In theory, he was extremely broad-minded,
generous and admiringly devoted to his wife; in practice, he was narrow,
jealous and nagging. To hear him speak of her, one would have thought
him the ideal of chivalrous consideration; to hear him speak to her, one
would have thought him a suspicious brute. Her enormous vitality, her
inconsequence, her melodrama (that is the real point, I think), got on
his nerves, and produced an uncontrollable reaction of irritability. He
would have liked her to shine for him and for him only; yet a kind of
interior shyness prompted him to repress her demonstrations and choke
off her confidences. “That will do, my dear”; “Pull yourself together,
my girl,” checked a caress or an enthusiasm; a grunt, a “Can’t you see
I’m busy,” a “Why have you suddenly got these ideas about” music or
astronomy or whatever the latest interest might be. Into the muffling of
his outer manner, her radiance sank and was quenched. Yet to others he
spoke with earnest pride of his wife’s brilliance and many-sided
intelligence.
Harrison’s instinct was to dominate, but by nature and training he was
unfitted to dominate that particular woman. It could have been done in
two ways—by capturing the limelight, or by sheer physical exuberance.
But neither of these things was in his power; he was inexpressive and
sexually unimaginative, as so many decent men are.
He had his means of self-expression: his water-colours and his cookery.
It was his misfortune that in the former he should have been weak,
conventional and sentimental, and bold and free only in the latter. I
believe, indeed, that all the imagination he possessed ran to the
composition of sauces and flavourings. It is surely a matter for
investigation whether cookery is not one of the subtlest and most
severely intellectual of the arts; else, why do its more refined
manifestations appeal to women hardly at all and to men only in their
later and more balanced age? Unlike music or poetry or painting, food
rouses no response in passionate and emotional youth. Only when the
surge of the blood is quieted does gastronomy come into its own with
philosophy and theology and the sterner delights of the mind. If
Harrison could have made a big public splash with anything, she could
have understood that and preened herself happily as the wife of a
notoriety. But she had no eyes for the half-lights.
At first it was amazing to me that Lathom showed so much patience with
Harrison. Lathom is a barbarian about food and magnificently intolerant
of bad painting. Twaddle about Art and Atmosphere got short shrift with
him. Yet he let Harrison bore him to any extent with his prattle and his
picturesque bits. Harrison did, indeed, treat him with a deference
flattering in a man of his age, but under ordinary circumstances that
would merely have infuriated Lathom, who, to do him justice, is no
drawing-room lion. It was not that Harrison provided the response which
I gave so awkwardly. In time I realised that, though I had my selfish
reasons for refusing to see it. Mrs. Harrison was the radiant prism for
Lathom’s brilliance, and Lathom used Harrison in that service as
carelessly as in the old days he had used the prefects’ toasting-forks.
He saw the tool ready to his hand and took it, without shame and without
remorse.
I have put all this down, as I saw it, without consideration for the
feelings of anybody. It is useless to blame people for their
peculiarities of temperament. At the time I did not interfere, because,
to tell the truth, I was working hard and involved in my own concerns,
and did not want to be bothered with Lathom’s affairs. Besides, I rather
prided myself on a cynical detachment in such matters. As it turns out,
I should have done far better to preserve this cheerful selfishness
throughout. That I did not was again due to sentimentality and
public-school spirit, and I am heartily ashamed of it.
I suppose I must say something about Mrs. Harrison. It is difficult,
because I both understood and disliked her. Just because she had no use
for me, I was detached enough to see through her. I have not the superb
and centralised self-confidence that could strike the colours from her
prism. I come back to that image, because it expresses her with more
accuracy than any description. My diffusion left her dead glass. But in
Lathom’s concentration she shone. He gave her the colour and splendour
her dramatic soul craved for. She saw herself robed with all the glowing
radiance that dazzled her half-educated eyes in the passionate pages of
Hichens and de Vere Stacpoole. I hardly think she was wicked—I do not
think she had any moral standards of her own. She would adopt any
attitude that was offered to her, provided it was exciting and colourful
enough. I think she had enjoyed herself at her office; she had radiated
there in the little warmth of popularity which always surrounds people
of abundant physical and emotional vigour, but at home she had only the
devotion of Miss Milsom, with her warped mind and perilous
preoccupations. She visualised herself into the character of a wronged
and slighted woman, because that was the easiest way to evoke clamorous
response from Miss Milsom—and, of course, from Lathom when he came
along.
It is rather surprising, I feel, that Harrison was never jealous of
Lathom, as he was of every other man, including myself. I fancy it was
because he looked on Lathom as his own friend, primarily. Now I come to
think of it, it was of his wife’s personal life that he was jealous—her
office, her interests, the friends she had made for herself—everything
that had not come to her through him. My position was different. He
distrusted me because of my work and opinions. I had written an
unpleasant book and I had no definite moral judgments. From such a man,
nothing but impropriety could be expected. He was wary and uneasy in my
presence. He could talk food with me, and did, but only, I think, in
despair for want of other appreciation. He was fearfully lonely, poor
soul, and I failed him miserably. And he was jockeyed by me into letting
his wife’s picture be shown at the Academy—but only because he thought
I was belittling his wife’s character. His change of mind was a
chivalrous rush to her defence. I was pleased with myself at the time, I
remember; I suppose my light-hearted diplomacy was about as disastrous
as diplomacy usually is. What devilish things we do when we try to be
clever. After all, Harrison probably understood his wife only too well,
but he could not bear that anyone should suspect the clay of his idol.
He destroyed himself rather than let her down. I rather think that
Harrison had something heroic behind his primness and his gold
spectacles.
There was one thing which I ought most certainly to have left severely
alone, and that was the final disaster, in which Miss Milsom was
concerned. For once I was seized with the idiotic whim to play the
martyr and the noble-spirited friend. At the very moment when my
reasonable and deliberate policy of detachment should have come to my
aid, I must choose to take the centre of the stage and indulge in
high-mindedness.
Lathom woke me up. He came and sat on my bed, and I noticed with
irritation that he had been borrowing my dressing-gown again. He always
took things.
“I’m in a mess,” he said.
“Oh?” said I.
He told me what had happened. I have seen Miss Milsom’s account. It is
accurate in all points but one. Far from repulsing Lathom, she had
encouraged him. He had broken from her at the foot of the staircase with
considerable difficulty. He was filled with a righteous disgust, which
struck me as funny under the circumstances.
“Disgusting old woman,” said he.
“True,” said I. “None should have passions but the young and the
beautiful. What are you going to do? Serve with Leah seven years in the
hope of getting Rachel in the end?”
“Don’t be filthy,” said he. “There will be a row about this, I’m
afraid.”
“Very likely,” said I. “But that is your affair.”
“Not altogether,” said Lathom. “You see, she thinks it was you.”
“Me?” I was considerably taken aback.
“Yes. You see, I had your dressing-gown——”
“So I observe.”
“She recognised the feel—the quilting, you know—damn it all, she
rubbed her ugly face in it——”
“Really,” I said, “the kittenish old creature.”
All the same, I was not pleased. Gestures which delight in the right
person are so indecent when performed by the wrong. In fact, it is only
when we contemplate the loves of unpleasant people that we see the
indecency of passion. It is disgusting to think of the amorous
transports of, let us say, Mr. Pecksniff. Grotesque characters only
exist for us from the waist upwards.
“I suppose,” I went on, “it didn’t occur to you to mention that you were
not me?”
“I didn’t say anything. I got away. I didn’t want to make a noise. In
fact . . .”
In fact, he had made use of me cheerfully enough, and was now wondering
whether I should put up with it.
“Look here,” I said, “what do you intend to do? If you want to carry on
an intrigue with Mrs. Harrison, I tell you, frankly, I’m going to get
out and leave you to it. It bores me and I don’t care about these alarms
and excursions. Anyhow, why don’t you leave the woman alone? You’re
doing her no good.”
Then he exploded and started to tramp about. She was the greatest
miracle God had ever made. They were meant for one another. They had got
into each other’s blood and all the rest of it. That, of course.
Equally, of course, if Harrison had been a decent sort of man he would
have sacrificed his own feelings. (As if Lathom had ever thought of
sacrificing anything.) But Harrison was a brute, who did not appreciate
the wonderful woman who had been entrusted to him. Lathom could suffer
himself, but he could not bear to see her suffer. It was all so damned
unjust. The man was not fit to live. He deserved to be murdered for his
rotten paintings, let alone for his cruelty to his wife. And to think
that his revolting hands should have the right . . .
And so on.
It is so very odd that in moments of excitement we should all talk like
characters in a penny novelette. However long one lives, I suppose it
always strikes one with the same shock of surprise.
“That’ll do,” I said at last. “We can take that as read. If Mrs.
Harrison feels as you do about it——”
He interrupted me to assure me at unnecessary length that she did.
“Very well,” I said, “why not do the decent and sensible thing and take
her away? You won’t find this kind of backstairs intrigue permanently
inspiring, you know. Besides, it seems to be the kind of thing you do
very badly.”
“I wish to God,” replied Lathom, “that I could take her away. Heaven and
earth, man, do you think I wouldn’t do it like a shot if I had half a
chance? But she won’t hear of it. She’s got some poisonous idea about
not making a scandal. It’s this damned awful suburban respectability
that’s crushing the beautiful life out of her. When you see what she was
meant to be—free and splendid and ready to proclaim her splendid
passion to the world—and then see what this foul blighter has made of
her——”
“Well, there you are,” said I. “That’s the raw, red life of the suburbs,
as per specification. That’s what you came here for, isn’t it? Look
here, Lathom, buzz off and let me get to sleep, there’s a good chap. You
can blow your feelings off in the morning.”
“Oh, all right.” He got up from the bed and hesitated at the door. “I
only thought I’d warn you,” he added, a little awkwardly, “in case the
old woman says anything to you.”
“Dashed good of you,” I said dryly. “What am I to do? Make love to the
confidante while you make love to the mistress, and go stark mad in
white linen?”
“Oh, you needn’t bother to do that,” said he. “I should just treat the
whole thing as a joke. Or, if she makes a fuss, apologise and say you
were a bit screwed. I’ll back you up.”
I was so infuriated with him for shoving the responsibility on to me in
this light-hearted way that I told him to clear out, which he did.
As a matter of fact, I rather under-estimated the seriousness of the
thing. I mean, I did not realise the lengths to which Miss Milsom’s
resentment might go. I determined merely to avoid the woman in future,
and, in fact, treat the whole episode as if it hadn’t occurred. I
thought Lathom had received a salutary shock and useful lesson on the
difficulties attending suburban love-affairs, and that he might bethink
himself and stop the whole thing before it had gone too far. A good
thing, too. I was clearing out and getting married at Easter, and there,
so far as I was concerned, was an end of it. Lathom could fish it out
for himself after that. My book had made a sudden success, and I was
feeling rather cock-a-hoop with myself.
Consequently, I was quite unprepared for the arrival of Harrison with
his accusation. He was dead-white with fury and intensely quiet. He did
not offer me a single opening by scattering his usual fiery particles of
rage. He put the accusation before me. Such and such things had been
stated—what had I to reply? I tried to dismiss the thing with airy
persiflage. He was not abashed by my assumption of ridicule. He simply
asked whether I denied being on the landing at that time, and, if not,
what I was doing there. When I refused to answer so absurd an
accusation, he told me, without further argument, to leave the house.
His wife must not be subjected to any kind of disagreeable contact. The
mere fact that I could take such an attitude to the matter (and, indeed,
my attitude had nothing dignified about it) showed that I was an
entirely unsuitable person to come into any sort of contact with Mrs.
Harrison. He was there to protect her from persons of my sort. Would I
go quietly or wait to be removed by force?
The deceived husband is usually considered to be a ridiculous figure,
but Harrison was not ridiculous. Sometimes I wonder whether he was
deceived. I thought at the time that he was, but perhaps the light of
faith in his eyes was really the torch of martyrdom. It is fine to die
for a faith, but perhaps it is still finer to die for a thing you do not
believe in. I do not know. He baffled me. If the garrison was disarmed
and beaten behind that impenetrable façade, I was never to know it.
Nobody would ever know it.
It is ironical that Lathom, coming to Suburbia to find raw, red life,
should have failed to recognise it when he saw it. It was there, all
right, in this dry little man, with no imagination beyond beef-steak and
mushrooms, but it did not wear bright colours, and Lathom liked colours.
The thing was farcical. And I believe I was the most farcical fool in
the whole outfit. Even then, the mocking censor which views one’s
personality from the outside sat sniggering in a corner of my brain.
Here was I, a successful novelist, presented with this monstrous
situation—one which was quite in my own line of work, too—and I hadn’t
even had the wits to see it coming. The thing was a gift.
I could see myself tackling it, too, in quite the right modern, cynical
way. No nonsense. No foolish shibboleths about honour and
self-sacrifice. A lucid exposure of the situation—an epigram or so—a
confrontation of Harrison (as representing the old morality) with the
unsentimental frankness of the new.
And the damnable thing was that I didn’t do it. When it came to saying,
“My good man, you are mistaken. My friend Lathom is the man you ought to
be after. He and your wife are carrying on a love-affair, for which you
are largely to blame, if, indeed, any blame attaches to these
unsophisticated manifestations of natural selection”—when it came to
the point, I didn’t say it. Looking at Harrison, I couldn’t say it. I
behaved like a perfect little gentleman, and said nothing whatever.
After that, I can only suppose that I became quite intoxicated by this
new and heroic view of myself. I went straight off to Lathom and told
him about it. I oozed priggishness. I said:
“I have stood by you. I have kept silence. I have agreed to leave the
house at once. But I will only do it if you will promise me to chuck the
whole business—clear out at the same time that I do. Leave these people
alone. You have no right to ruin the life of this decent man and his
wife, who were getting along quite well in their way till you came
along.”
I grew solemn and portentous about it. I enlarged on Harrison’s
sufferings. I painted a vivid picture of the miseries the woman must
needs undergo in the course of a secret love-affair. I called it vulgar.
I called it wicked and selfish. I used expressions which I thought had
perished from the vocabulary since the ’eighties. And I ended by saying:
“If you do not promise me to do the decent thing, you cannot expect me
to stand by you.” Which was mere blackmail.
There must be more of the old inhibitions alive in even the most modern
of us than one would readily credit. Lathom was actually abashed by my
eloquence. He protested at first; then he grew sulky; finally, he was
touched.
“You’re quite right, old man,” he said, “damn it. I’ve been behaving
like a cad. I couldn’t make her happy. I ought to go away. I will go
away. You’ve been damned decent to me.” He wrung my hand. I clapped him
sentimentally on the shoulder. We wallowed in our own high-mindedness.
It must have been a touching sight.
The first disagreeable consequence of this foolish interference with the
course of events arrived in the shape of a letter from my fiancée. Miss
Milsom had felt it her duty to send one of those warnings. I dashed up
to Scotland to put matters right. The greatest compliment I can pay to
the open mind and generous common sense of Elizabeth is to say plainly
that I had no difficulty about doing this. But I was reminded with a
slight shock that Victorian quixotry has a way of landing one in
complications. However, no harm appeared to be done, and later on I
received a letter from Lathom, dated from Paris, in which he informed me
that he was playing the game (the words were proof in themselves of the
condition to which I must have reduced him), and that, after a highly
emotional scene, Mrs. Harrison and he had agreed to part.
* * * * *
I got married soon after that, and forgot all about Lathom and the
Harrisons—the more so as Elizabeth did not encourage me to dwell on the
subject. A natural jealousy, I thought, particularly as she had not
seemed altogether impressed by my quixotic gesture. But women are
unconquerable realists, and nowadays they are not taught to flatter male
delusions as they once were. It is uncomfortable to think that perhaps
our repressed Victorian ancestresses were as clear-sighted as their
franker granddaughters. If so, how they must have laughed, as they made
their meek responses. In this century we do know, more or less, what
they are thinking, and meet them on equal terms—at least, I hope we do.
I was reminded of Lathom by receiving my ticket for the Private View at
the Academy on May 3rd. We had had our honeymoon, and were ready to
return to our place in the world. Almost the first thing I saw, as we
surged through the crowd, was the painted face of Mrs. Harrison, blazing
out from a wall full of civic worthiness and fagged society beauties,
with the loud insistence of a begonia in a bed of cherry-pie. There was
a little knot of people in front of it, and I recognised Marlowe, the
man who paints those knotty nudes, and created a sensation two years ago
with “The Wrestlers.” He was enjoying his usual pastime of being rude to
Garvice, the portrait-painter. His voice bellowed out over the din, and
his black cloak flapped gustily from a flung-out arm. “Of course you
don’t like it,” he boomed lustily, “it kills everything in the place
dead. That’s none of your damned art—that’s painting—a _painting_, I
tell you.” Several pained people, who had been discussing values in low
tones, shrank at the unseemly noise, and dodged waveringly from the
sweep of his hairy fist. “None of you poor pimples,” went on Marlowe,
threateningly “can _see_ colour—or thickness—you’re only fit to colour
Christmas cards at twopence a hundred. There isn’t a painter in the
whole beastly boarding-house crowd of you except this chap.” I will do
Marlowe the justice to say that, except where nudes are concerned, he is
singularly generous to the younger men. He glowered round through his
bush of beard and spectacles, and caught sight of me. “Hullo, Munting!”
he bawled. “Come here. Somebody said you knew this fellow Lathom. Who is
he? Why haven’t you brought him round to see me?”
I explained that I had only just returned from my honeymoon, and
introduced Marlowe to my wife. Marlowe roared approval in his
characteristic way, and added:
“Come along on Friday—same old crowd, you know, and bring this man
Lathom. I want to know him. He can _paint_.”
He spun round to face the picture again, and the crowd retired
precipitately to avoid him.
“Well,” said a man’s voice, almost in my ear, “and how do you think it
looks, now it’s hung?”
I spun round and saw Lathom, and with him, before I could adopt any
suitable attitude to the situation, Mr. and Mrs. Harrison, flung up from
the waves of sightseers like the ball from a Rugby scrum.
Retreat was hopeless, because Marlowe now had me tightly by the
shoulder, while with his other hand he sketched large, thumby gestures
towards the portrait to indicate the modelling and brushwork.
“Hullo, Munting!” said Lathom.
“Hullo, Lathom!” I said, and added nervously, “Hullo-ullo-ullo!” like
something by P. G. Wodehouse.
“Good God!” exploded Marlowe, “is this the man? The man and the model,
by all that’s lucky,” he bellowed on, without waiting for my embarrassed
answer. “I’m Marlowe; and I say you’ve done a good piece of work.”
Lathom came to my rescue by making a suitable acknowledgment of the
great man’s condescension, and I was sliding away with a vague bow and a
muttered remark about an engagement, when I felt a tap on the shoulder.
It was Harrison.
“Excuse me one moment, Mr. Munting,” said he.
A row in the Academy would have its points from the point of view of my
Press agent, but I was not anxious for it. However, I asked Elizabeth to
wait a moment for me, and stepped aside with Harrison.
“I think,” said he, “I am afraid—that is, I feel I owe you an apology,
Mr. Munting.”
“Oh!” I said. “That’s all right. I mean, it doesn’t matter at all.” Then
I pulled myself together. “I’m sorry,” I said, “it’s my fault, really. I
ought not to have come. I might have known you would be here.”
“It’s not that,” he said, determined to face it. “The fact is—I fear I
did you an injustice that—er—that last time we met. Er—the
unfortunate woman who made all the trouble——”
“Miss Milsom?” I asked; not because I didn’t know, but to help him on
with his sentence.
“Yes. She has had to take a rest—in fact, to undergo a course of
treatment—in fact, she is in a kind of nursing-home.”
“Indeed?”
“Yes. There can really be no doubt that the poor creature is—well,
demented is perhaps an unkind way of putting it. Perhaps we had better
say, unbalanced.”