THE SIX ARTISTS OF THE COURTYARD
That same afternoon the five other male occupants of the studios
dropped in to tea with Barnabas. They frequently did. They liked the
cakes he bought at a shop in the Fulham Road, and, incidentally, they
appreciated Barnabas himself. They had one and all announced their
intention previously.
"Meaning me to buy cakes," said Barnabas. And he had sent his man to
the Fulham Road to make the purchases.
Barnabas poured out the tea, which was drunk out of cream-coloured cups
with festoons of flowers on them. There were not enough chairs, but a
couple of packing-cases had been pressed into service, and they sat
round an oak table--gate-legged. Barnabas had picked it up for a mere
song at a filthy little shop in a back street. He was very proud of the
bargain.
The six men were curiously dissimilar in appearance and in character.
One took in the outlines of that, as one took in their appearance at
the first glance.
Next to Barnabas was Dan Oldfield, huge, red-haired, and
untidy-looking. He was one of a large family, and had begun his
artistic career at a suburban art school, where he had risen to the
post of pupil teacher, and later to that of assistant master. At
twenty-two he had been left three hundred a year by an uncle, and
had come to London to study at the Slade Schools. He was now thirty,
and had never lost the idea of minute finish inculcated in him at
the art school. It found expression in his tiny pictures of almost
miniature-like work, pictures which the palm of one of his huge hands
would have covered.
Beside Dan was Jasper Merton, sallow, clean-shaven, discontented in
expression, his previous history unknown to the six studios. He painted
altar pieces at low rates for high churches in poor districts, which
paintings were usually the gift of benevolent and religiously-minded
spinster ladies. He looked--as Barnabas had once said--as if he were
wearing a hair shirt for the good of his soul, and as if the shirt were
an extra-prickly one.
Beyond him was Alan Farley, who, like David of old, was "fair and of a
ruddy countenance." Nature had intended him for a cheerful soul, but
art of the ultra-mystic type had taken him prisoner. He painted shadowy
figures with silver stars on their brows, non-petalled roses, and
purple chalices; he read Swinburne and the poems of Fiona Macleod, and
talked about creative genius.
"Creative genius!" Barnabas had said to him one day. "Man, you don't
understand the first principles of it. Your painting is pure slither.
Do you think creation is slither? It's travail, it's agonizing. What
does your work cost you? Nothing. An airy fancy, half an hour's mental
indigestion, and there's a canvas covered with purples, greys, and
greens. The colour's all right, but what on earth is the thing worth?
I'm not talking monetary jargon. You say that purple mass in the corner
is a veiled woman, and she's talking through opal mists to a silver
star. Who on earth's going to find that out unless you go round like
a kind of animated catalogue to your own pictures. Get hold of form,
man. Study it. Draw--draw--draw--till you can express ideas tangibly.
Leave poetry alone for a bit till you're honoured with the power of
understanding it. You're being mentally sensual and don't know it. You
talk of passion! Great Scot! You don't understand the meaning of the
word, nor the A B C of nature."
And Alan had listened and taken the harangue meekly, though it had had,
apparently, little effect.
Next to Alan was Paul Treherne, seated on a packing-case. He was a man
well above the medium height, and with a lean-limbed look about him. He
had grey eyes, sad--like his mouth, which was partly hidden by a small
moustache. Fate had started him in an office, which he hated. Later
she had taken him abroad, where he had lived in a tent and under the
open sky, where he had experienced hardships few men of his class have
known, and where he had three times been face to face with death. He
had looked at sunsets across open plains, and seen mountains bathed in
gold and purple, and the crimson fire of tropical evenings. He had seen
the blue shadows of palm trees on yellow sand; he had seen the scarlet
of pomegranate flowers, the gold of oranges against azure skies, till
his whole being was saturated in colour. And lastly he had returned to
England at the age of twenty-seven to find in the soft greys and lilacs
of smoky London an even more wonderful charm. He had then an income
of eight hundred a year, four of which he gave to his widowed mother,
who lived in a little house in Hampshire. He was at last able to turn
to art, which he had always loved passionately, and from his knowledge
of character gained through much experience of men and women, and
with his wonderful sense of colour, he took to portrait painting. He
now, besides his invested income, earned, at the age of thirty-seven,
about six hundred a year by his brush. He sang in an untrained mellow
baritone in a way that brought tears to one's eyes.
Between Paul and Barnabas was Michael Chester, a small man, one
shoulder higher than the other, and with one leg shrunken and twisted.
He had had a pencil in his hand since babyhood. In illustration and
line work he excelled, though his choice of subjects was morbid. His
paintings of the river and grey London streets were beautiful. There
was something almost Whistler-ish about them. He had the heart of a
true poet, and the tongue of a cynic, and he played the violin like
a god. An ultra-morbidity regarding his own appearance had lost him
to the world as a public violinist. Nothing would have induced him to
mount a platform or enter a crowded drawing-room. The studios alone
were given the benefit of his talent.
And finally, master of the ceremonies, seated on another packing-case
was Barnabas--tall, brown-haired, green-eyed, and sunny hearted,
outwardly indolent, and beloved of his fellow-men. He followed in the
footsteps of Paul as a portrait painter, though he was apt to say it
was "the devil of a way behind."
The conversation during tea had somehow centred round a certain
unconscious old lady, who was at that moment cleaning oil paints from a
large mahogany palette, and looking with humorous disgust at a canvas
on which were large and unsteady blobs of pink paint above a smear of
green and gold. They were intended to represent pink roses in a Sèvres
bowl, but had failed horribly in the intention.
The conversation had begun airily enough, five of the men taking part
in it, Barnabas alone being silent. After about ten minutes it began to
be slightly strained, and three of the men had more or less dropped
out of it. Dan had, however, continued to express his views somewhat
clearly and with a certain amount of gruffness. Jasper was being
annoyingly Christian-like in his attitude.
"I intend to call on the lady, at all events," he said at last, with
exasperating decision. "After what you two fellows said yesterday I
felt that I at least----"
"Not you only, my child," interrupted Barnabas good-humouredly,
speaking for the first time. "We're all going. We begin on Sunday."
"Won't the lady be a trifle overwhelmed?" asked Paul.
"I didn't mean all at the same time, or on the same day," explained
Barnabas. "I intended that we should go in detachments. I thought Dan
and I could begin--take the initial step, so to speak."
"And who next?" asked Paul, smiling.
"Jasper and Alan, as Jasper's so keen about it," said Barnabas. "Then
you and Michael."
Michael looked at the tip of his cigarette through half-closed eyes.
"You can leave me out of the little programme," he said. "I don't pay
calls."
"And I'm calling on my great aunt's stepmother on Sunday," said Dan.
"Sorry, Barnabas, but it's a prior engagement."
"You can send a wire to that purely fictitious person--if you know her
address--and put her off," replied Barnabas.
"I'll be damned----" began Dan.
Jasper got up from his chair. "I will leave you five to make your own
arrangements," he said. "I shall call upon Miss Mason at five o'clock
on Monday afternoon. If Alan comes with me I shall be pleased. I've got
an engagement now. Good-bye."
He left the studio. There was a very slight and almost unconscious
movement of relief among the remaining men.
"Your language jarred on his nervous susceptibilities, Dan," said
Michael. "And he thinks our attitude altogether unchristian."
"Wish he'd get himself fixed up in one of the panels of his own
altarpieces, and carried off to the highest church in London," said
Dan. "It would be much the best place for him."
"I'll not call with him," said Alan firmly. "If I do make a martyr of
myself it will be by myself or with one of you others."
There was a silence. Then quite suddenly Barnabas told them of Miss
Mason's little speech to Sally. Somehow he had been unable to mention
it in Jasper's presence.
Again there was a pause. Then Dan laughed.
"You're confoundedly sentimental, Barnabas, my son. I suppose I'll have
to send that wire."
Michael smiled, a queer twisted smile.
"Barnabas has a curious faculty for keeping silence till the crucial
moment," he said. "He then makes some little trivial remark which
invariably manages to upset all our preconceived notions."
"He is," said Paul, "as Dan says, a pure sentimentalist."
The atmosphere had lightened. Jasper's departure and Barnabas' little
speech had had a curious effect upon it. A mental fog had previously
crept into the studio. It often found its way into the rooms Jasper
entered. Sometimes he seemed to leave it behind, but it generally came
to find him, creeping thin and ghostlike through the keyhole, through
the cracks in the doors, through the chinks in the windows, settling
thickly round him, and casting its gloom over the room and the other
occupants.
And the gods of Joy and Laughter, who cannot breathe in such an
atmosphere, would silently depart. Now, however, they had found their
way back, slipping easily and gladly into the place they loved.
When, half an hour later, Michael limped down the garden path with
Paul, he nodded in the direction of studio number seven.
"Shall we say Tuesday afternoon for our call?" he asked carelessly.
Paul had a momentary feeling of surprise. He did not show it.
"Right," he replied equally carelessly.
And the little faun laughed to hear them, and piped a madder dance
still to the rose-petals which had whirled below his pedestal at
intervals throughout the day.