Few people, in an outburst of enthusiasm, would select the King's
Road, Chelsea, as an ideal locality to reside in. It is an important
thoroughfare, no doubt, but it lacks nobility and distinction. There are
isolated, quiet spots in it, with houses lying back from the road; and
from the upper windows of favoured residences one can obtain a view over
Yeitch's or Bull's extensive hothouses, and catch dim shadows of great
tropical palms and a mellowed dash of brilliant red and yellow. There
are others which look over Portman Square or St. Luke's Churchyard.
But on the other hand, there are long stretches of dreary shops and
factories, grit and general uncomeliness. Without being squalid, it has
a careworn, untidy appearance, as if it was far too much harassed with
the petty worries and strain of workaday life to think of cheerful
adornment. Few people, except errand boys whose sense either of
aesthetics or duty is usually undeveloped, saunter casually along the
King's Road. A stranger tries to get out of it as fast as he can; a
frequenter has his business to attend to. Fashion does not pass along
it, except on tearing drags bound for Hurlingham. It is essentially a
small bourgeois part of London, with all the small bourgeois unpretence
and honest, if somewhat dismal, solidity.
It was in the middle of such a dreary stretch of the road, some half
mile west of Sloane Square, that Clytie found a lodging. The fact that
a green-grocer's shop, owned by the landlord of the house, occupied the
ground floor was compensated, in a measure, by the existence of a small
studio at the back, on the first floor, originally constructed by a
struggling photographer, who had since worked his way upwards into
a more fashionably perfumed atmosphere. One of Clytie's favourite
fellow-students, Winifred Marchpane, who lived in Lower Sloane Street,
and whose family obtained their potatoes and salads from Mr. Gurkins,
had recommended the establishment, and offered to share with her the
expenses of the studio. The cheapness of the rooms suited Clytie's
modest purse, and the prospect of pleasant companionship in the studio
was an additional attraction. It is true that the acrid smell of the
potatoes, when the side door from the shop on to the private entrance
lobby was left open, ascended the stairs, together with a vague odour of
cooking, bearing upwards, as it were, on savoury breath the disputes
of Mrs. Gurkins with the shopboy and the cries of her apparently
ever-youthful progeny. The incessant rumble, too, of omnibuses, drays,
and furniture vans, and the peculiarly aggressive rattle of tradesmen's
carts, shook the floor and the windows and shivered the lustres of
the chandelier. There were many drawbacks to elegant life, but Clytie,
borrowing some philosophy from a talk with Mrs. Farquharson, proceeded
to disregard those she could not eliminate. The sitting-room, when the
door was shut and the curtains drawn of an evening, was cosy enough. The
pictures, nicknacks, hangings, and other minor accessories of furnished
apartments Clytie had returned to Mrs. Gurkins' keeping, on the plea
that she scarcely had room for her own--which was true; and, by some
miraculous art of persuasion, she had induced Mr. Gurkins to remove the
nerve-shattering chandelier, on the ground that she could not work by
gaslight--which was not true. She hung thick curtains over the door
to keep out noise and odour, broke up the rigidity of the furniture by
screens, small tables, and plants, and painted a long panel for the old
cottage piano that made it look fresh and companionable. When all the
arrangements were completed the room appeared dainty and homelike,
bearing, however, here and there, in bold notes of colour, folds of
drapery, and odd bits of semi-impressionist painting, a peculiar impress
of its tenant's personality.
She was living at last the life she had so passionately longed
for. There was not a human being to control her actions, not a
conventionality to check the utterance of her thoughts. During her
early days here she almost felt tempted to hang up her latchkey over the
mantelpiece as a glorious symbol of liberty. It seemed not only to serve
to give her entrance to her own modest home, but to be the power that
would unlock the heart of the great London that lay before her.
From the first she had little difficulty in finding work. Dealers
bought small pictures and gave her orders. She also pleased a firm
of publishers to whom she had gone with letters of introduction and
specimens of her draughtsmanship, and obtained work in the way of book
and magazine illustrating. Her earnings were not large, but there was
the promise of success to come. At the end of two years her income was
large enough to have enabled her to move from the King's Road into a
more refined locality; but she had grown accustomed to its noise and
rattle, and to the hurried, joyless stream of life that flowed along it
day by day. And Mrs. Gurkins understood her tastes and habits, a quality
in a landlady appreciated by women as well as men. So she stayed on.
She read widely during these years, learned much. Between the ages of
twenty-two and twenty-four a woman is capable of vast assimilation of
ideas. They can flow into the freshly opened, unpolluted channels of her
being, as yet unclogged by the refuse of sorrows and wearinesses. Her
rejection of the old formulas, and the paramount necessity of gaining
knowledge wherewith to provide herself substitutes, checked in her
any impulse towards moral or artistic idealism. She read deeply,
instinctively seeking after the roots of life, the elemental passions
that shake our nature, be its superstructure never so delicately
complex. The dawning knowledge half frightened, half attracted her.
The barbaric feminine in her struggled to escape into solitude. With
fluttering eyelids downcast it recoiled from the idea of passion as yet
unawakened responsively within her. But the higher needs of modernity
constrained her to a just, resolute system of inquiry. She learned that
there are deeper laws regulating our being than those which could
be enunciated at Durdleham tea-tables, where the ingrained habit of
non-recognition of them restricted life within narrowest limits, and
put, as it were, a prohibition tax upon exoteric sympathy.
At four-and-twenty Clytie was a woman--emotional, impulsive, eager
to taste of any new experience. The old rebellious habit of mind had
developed into a frank independence. Her step was elastic, her bearing
confident. Her life was full and happy.
“I am glad I am a woman now,” she said to Mrs. Farquharson. “I seem to
have all the advantages of both sexes.”
“Wait till you're married, my dear,” replied her friend.
Mrs. Farquharson was fond of the use of affectionate irritants. They are
often valuable preservatives of friendship.
Clytie laughed.
“I suppose I shall marry some day. I don't want to end up by leading
half a life; but I want to have two or three years more of this. I must
play at being a man a little longer.”
“A pretty sort of man!” said Mrs. Farquharson, resting her chin on
her hand and looking at Clytie with amused eyes. “You are the most
deliciously feminine young woman I know. Look at your frock and your
hair.”
Judging by outward appearances Mrs. Farquharson's criticism was correct.
Clytie had the artistic sense in dress. It was like most of her other
artistic impulses, with the personal note dominant--soft textures,
falling easily into folds, quiet in tone, dark grays, subdued half
shades of yellows, suddenly brightened by a small, daring flash of
colour at throat or bosom. Lace, with its creamy, clinging softness
delighted her, and she wore it defiantly, with a certain sense of
triumph that she was perhaps the only girl in England who could wear it
with faultless taste.
She was of medium height, but her slender, fully formed figure and its
erect carriage gave her an air of tallness. Her head set well on her
shoulders, and a habit of holding it back, with the chin pointing
upwards, free of the throat, added to the impression of young, fearless
womanhood. Her eyes were dark blue, wide apart, yet sunk in finely
moulded orbits. A light of humour playing in their depths, together
with a soft modelling of the nose contours beneath them, atoned for an
impression of hardness and sensuousness that would have been given by
the ripe, full lips with their little curl of disdain. Her face was
rounded delicately--that much she inherited from the Davenants--but a
faint flush of colour showed the buoyant young blood within, just as her
deep red hair, with a thousand lights dancing in it, attested the
rich, vigorous strain that had asserted itself in her. She was proud,
womanlike, of this hair, and had a way of dressing it in bewildering
confusion.
Her Slade School friend, Winifred Marchpane, continued to share the
studio with her. At first she had been a little afraid of Clytie, whose
bold judgments and fearless expression of opinion were not qualified
always to attract a timorous, shrinking nature. But gradually the
stronger personality had overpowered the weaker and bound it to itself
by unbreakable bonds. A great friendship had thus arisen between the
girls, based on Winifred's side on enthusiastic admiration, almost
worship, and on Clytie's on a tender feeling of love and protection.
Winifred was one of a large family, her father, a retired officer in the
army with limited income. Two of her sisters were governesses, earning
their livelihood miles away from home. Another one took charge of the
smaller members of the household. Winifred, who had a dainty talent for
the painting of still life, supported herself, living at home and paying
her share of the household expenses. She was a little, gentle creature,
with dark hair, and with a rich colour showing beneath a brown
cheek. Her deep brown eyes had a doglike trustfulness in them, and a
steadfastness withal such as makes the heroine. A girl of few moods, few
caprices. Her work was always beautifully, conscientiously finished. She
always loved it, always found in it the same quiet charm. There was no
element of passion in it to set jarring the strings of futile endeavour.
A fine sense of colour and gradation and subtle curve, a supreme
delicacy of touch--that was her sole artistic stock in trade, and she
never sought to stray beyond the limits imposed. She had had a little
picture accepted at the Academy, hung in a far, far corner--a bunch of
Maréchal Niel roses, full-blown, in a Venetian glass vase of exquisitely
veined transparencies--a perfect little picture, sweet and pure, like
herself.
It was a cold March day. The sun shone cheerfully through the drawn
white blinds of the studio skylight, but an east wind blowing outside
came in through the cracks and defied the blaze of the fire in the
stove.
“You are quite blue with cold,” said Winifred, laying down mahl-stick
and palette. “Here, put on this wrap. Why don't you take more care of
yourself?”
“I never thought of it,” said Clytie, shivering a little and accepting
contentedly the wrap and a caress. “I was sketching out quite a history
of that boy who has just left.”
Winifred drew a stool to Clytie's chair near the fire and took up her
position upon it--a favourite one with her, as she could have both the
moral solace of sitting at Clytie's feet, and the physical comfort of
resting her head in Clytie's lap.
“I hope he won't bring all kinds of horrible people into the
house--burglars, you know, like Oliver Twist,” she added vaguely.
“I suppose it is rather rash picking up a model out of the streets. But
he is just the boy I wanted to give character to the group. I was going
to paint in one out of my own head.”
“I don't know how you get all those street types out of your head,
Clytie. I wish I could do it.”
“I would like to see you try, you silly child,” said Clytie, laughing.
“Your street arabs would look like stray Cupids hastily huddled up in
old clothes by a shocked and modest policeman!”
“I did not mean that; you know I didn't. What I meant was--I wish I
could paint without models. I don't think I could paint a common flat
leaf without having it before me. As for painting that”--and she pointed
to a basket standing by her easel, overflowing with anemones,
snowdrops, and violets obtained that morning by Mr. Gurkins from Covent
Garden--“without a copy, I might just as soon think of flying.”
“You are an artist, Winnie, and love your art for its own sake. I am not
quite so sure that I do, now. To have to finish all the thousand little
convolutions of those bells would drive me raving mad. I should like to
have a ghost as sculptors do, only mine would do the finishing and put
in all the nuisance of detail. That's why I can get on without models.
It saves time. I can bring home a face with me from the streets, and I
can paint it in rapidly, and then I am done. I suppose I oughtn't to be,
but Burrowes seems satisfied. He says he has got quite a 'line' in my
pictures--the correct ones--and is thinking of raising the price. I am
sure that man has been a linen-draper.”
“If you could remember the boy's face why do you bring him here?” asked
Winifred. “I only want to know why you want him so particularly, dear,”
she added, raising her chin and looking upwards at Clytie.
The boy had been ragged and uncared-for, not exactly a street urchin,
but on a vague borderland of respectability, between the newspaper arab
and the errand boy.--a hybrid with the vices of many strains.
“Do you really want to know, Winnie?” said Clytie. “Perhaps you'll be
shocked. However, you'll have to know sooner or later: I am going
to make a picture of him on my own account, just a little bit more
fantastic than he is, and call him a--an--oh, dear! what shall I call
him?”
“An elf?”
“Good gracious, no. What have I to do with elves and fairies and that
sort of thing? He is the son of Cophetua--supposing the king had not
married the beggar maid.”
“Then why not the son of any other king?”
“Why not, indeed?” said Clytie drily. “Or of any other beggar maid?”
“Oh!” said Winifred, looking into the fire.
And then after a pause:
“What makes you think that?”
“Did you see his mother? I did. Such a stupid-looking, red-faced woman. I
think she said she was a charwoman by profession. There are generations
of drudgery in her face, whereas in Jack's there is vigour and
intelligence--something so different; he must have some better strain
of blood in him than she and a husband of her class can have given him.
Don't you think so, dear?”
“He's a very pretty boy,” replied Winifred, “but, oh, he is so dirty
and”--with a shudder--“so animal.”
“Well, he fascinates me,” said Clytie meditatively. “I am going to paint
one of my wildest pictures--all for my own self--and a bit for you if
you like, Winnie.” Winnie accepted this tribute of affection with a
little flush of pleasure, although Clytie's “own” pictures seldom gave
her unqualified æsthetic delight, and turned her face towards Clytie,
who laughed in her frank way.
“Don't look at me with those great eyes of yours, child! You make me
angry for you. They are just the sort of eyes that make women miserable.
You must not trust in people like that, believe me.”
“I trust them when they are good like you, dear.”
“Oh, but you mustn't. Don't you know I am the wickedest girl
going--always thinking of the most dreadful things? Look at the wall.
How can you love anybody that can do these silly things?”
She pointed to a series of grotesque charcoal caricatures on the studio
wall. She had been dissatisfied a day or two back with a picture she had
been engaged on for a month, and in a fit of wilfulness had daubed it
out and then proceeded to make a cruel, fantastic travesty of it on the
wall.
“You wanted your tea, dear, just as you do now,” replied Winifred.
This tea hour was Winifred's great delight. At home, on account of the
children, they had to sit round the dining table and butter their own
thick slices of bread and drink out of substantial breakfast cups.
In the studio the girls had provided a dainty little afternoon tea
equipage, and Mrs. Gurkins always cut thin bread and butter from a
fancy loaf. Generally it was Winifred who poured out the tea, but to-day
Clytie busied herself with the cups, thus making some slight amends,
perhaps, for having shocked Winifred. Women are full of these odd
feminine impulses, and other women understand them. Men don't.
They sat talking, as they usually did, over their tea, and long
afterwards, until it was time for Winifred to go home. As they were
taking leave of each other on the landing a man sprang up the stairs,
checked himself, and raised a slouch hat as he passed them and vanished
up the next flight. He was a fresh-faced man, with a brown and tawny
beard; tawny ends, too, to his moustaches; bright gray eyes flashing
humourously as he passed the girls. His dress was careless, loose and
unfashionable, yet it was marked with a certain individuality.
“Who is that?” Winifred whispered when the last foot of the ascending
figure had disappeared.
“That's another protest,” said Clytie--“a better one. He has the courage
of his convictions.”
“What do you mean, Clytie?”
“Well, can't you recognise a protest when you see one?”
“Oh, Clytie, don't tease and puzzle me,” cried Winifred, giving her
friend's arm a little shake. “Do you know him?”
“Of course not. How should I? But Mrs. Gurkins was telling me about him
only this morning. His name is Kent. He seems to frighten the life out
of her, and therefore I say he is a protest. Now you know, so run away
home.”
When Winifred had reached the street door Clytie leaned over the
banisters and called after her.
“Winnie! I must have been in a sweet temper this afternoon.”
“Of course, dear. Why do you say so?”
“Because you have left your basket of anemones for me to take care of!”