John Kent, antiquarian, scientist, Bohemian, and assistant curator
in the British Museum, dwelt in the attics, far above the limit of the
stair carpet. By the time you had reached them you had lost all sound of
the thoroughfare below, and even when you looked out of the windows
all sense of locality was lost. Nothing could be seen but roofs and
chimney-pots, except on very clear days, when, through an accidental
vista of streets, the tops of the trees in Chelsea Hospital were dimly
visible. But in Kent's rooms no one cared to look out of window. In
the first place, it was difficult of access, and in the second, the
extraordinary appearance of the apartment riveted one's attention
entirely to things within.
On the floor was neither carpet nor rug. The place of a fender was
supplied by three large iron tripods, waifs from some dismantled
chemical laboratory, which, when they were not otherwise engaged as
footstools, served to support a kettle, a saucepan, and a glue-pot. All
around the walls, with just one space for the door, ran a broad deal
dresser that did duty for several tables, and below it, here and there,
were cunningly contrived cupboards. Above, every inch of wall was
covered: one side completely with books, the others with pictures,
mostly old engravings, little masters such as Cranach and Behm, a frame
of perfect little Aldegravers, a Prince Rupert mezzo, two Woolmers with
their exquisite wavy lines, Bewicks, and a magnificent modern Jacquemart
etching of a Sèvres vase. The intermediate spaces were filled up with a
heterogeneous assortment of curios. The dresser-table was likewise
laden with books, coin cases, scientific specimens, strange weapons, old
axe-heads, Japanese sword hilts cunningly carved, newspapers, journals,
pamphlets, and papers innumerable. There were only two fairly clear
spaces around the whole extent: one where Kent worked, and another where
he took such meals as he had in his lodgings. Save for one solitary
leather writing-chair, the centre of the large room was absolutely
empty; but in a corner, on the floor, were piled up a set of canvas
deck-chairs which Kent brought out and opened whenever he had visitors.
All the fixtures in the room he had made with his own hands. Manual
labour was a delight to him. He also cooked his own food and cleaned out
the room. The latter operation consisted in raking out the ashes
from his grate and laying the fire afresh. No peace-destroying woman
disturbed the precincts with broom and duster. When the dust grew so
thick that it interfered with his breathing and clouded the lens of his
microscope he went round with an old towel flicking and flapping
with great energy, and then he watered the floor out of an old
bronchitis-kettle.
Kent was a happy man. He had convictions, enthusiasms; manifold
interests in life for his lighter moments, one great absorbing work for
his serious hours. His slender income sufficed amply for all his wants,
and there was always a margin over for the purchase of an occasional
rare edition or print or curio. Whenever his salary was increased that
margin was greater. His mode of life never changed, for the simple
reason that he considered it to be the most delightful one possible.
Purple, fine linen, and sumptuous fare had no charms for him. It was
always with much groaning of spirit that he put on dress clothes when
he went out into the world. He cared not for the high places in the
synagogues. Provided he had not to wait outside the doors, the pit of a
theatre was a place as desirable as the stalls.
In his friends too he was happy--a few men different from himself and
from each other--and to these he clung loyally. But the conditions of
his life removed him from feminine influences. Beyond those girls in
his immediate family circle, whom he called by their Christian names and
treated with an old-fashioned, brotherly protection, scolding them when
they did foolish things, such as wearing light shoes in wet weather,
performing little services for them when they behaved themselves nicely,
he never troubled his head about womankind.
On the night when Clytie's curtains caught fire he had been on his way
to visit a coterie of three bachelor friends who shared a house in South
Kensington. They were accustomed to his nocturnal appearances, and
the worse the night and the later it grew the more likely was Kent to
present himself at the sitting-room door, a dripping, ruddy apparition,
his cheeks and beard glistening with raindrops. And then he would throw
off his mackintosh, call for slippers, and join the circle round the
fire. The thoughts of the dreary tramp home between two and three never
seemed to dismay him. Cheerlessness of environment in no way affected
his happiness.
They formed the chief part of his social life, these three friends,
tried by the changes in fibre, tastes, affinities, that over half
a score of years effect. There was Fairfax, the doctor, ruddy,
full-blooded, magnetic with health and vitality, whose brass plate shone
huge on the front door, inviting confidence; Greene, the solicitor,
shrewd, hard-headed, a speaker of few words; and Wither, the civil
servant, the little gnomelike man, full of strange sayings, whimsical,
non-moral, a man of boyish, elfin beauty, trusted by men, petted by
women. Of the three Kent loved Wither best. Wither saw deeper into the
world's mysteries than he, but his own sturdy honest sense had kept the
other from many an abyss.
After bidding Clytie good-night, Kent stood irresolute on the landing.
Should he wrap the remains of his waterproof around him, and still go
whither his truest happiness had hitherto always led him? Considerations
of the chill, sleeting night and the throbbing pain in his hand went
for nothing in his decision. The girl who had tended the burn had
almost besought him not to go out. To disregard her would be an act
of discourtesy. Thus thought honest Kent as he turned on his heel and
slowly mounted the stair. But his evening had been spoiled, he told
his briarwood pipe, with a consoling sense of martyrdom, and the cause
thereof was feminine.
“It is just the silly sort of thing that Agatha would do,” he said to
himself.
Agatha was his sister, whom he pitied intensely for being a woman. He
thought of Clytie's pictures, the signs of virility in them, and he
began to pity Clytie too. Yet there was a difference of kind in
his sentiments. He pitied his sister for being constrained to
ambitionless-ness and futility; he was sorry for the handicap of sex to
Clytie's ambitions.
In some such attitude of mind towards her he knocked at the studio
door the following afternoon. It is true that a warning throb of the
bourgeois in him, that still sometimes mutely guided the Bohemian along
certain tracks, had made him consider for a vague moment the correctness
of calling so immediately upon Clytie; but the directness and simplicity
of his nature disregarded it. It was only natural that Clytie should
like to know how his burned hand was faring.
He found the girls busily painting, Winifred at the side, with her
basket of flowers near her, Clytie standing at her easel, in the middle
of the room, her back to the door, her face turned half round to see who
would enter in response to her call.
On the floor by the fireside sprawled Jack, the model, eating an
orange. His face was still dirty, his curly hair matted. Winifred had
pathetically besought Clytie to have him washed. Why should his poor
little face be all over dirt?
“Because it could not exist without it,” Clytie had answered. “It was so
before he was born.”
Winifred had given her one of her appealing looks from swimming brown
eyes, and Clytie, remorseful, had run impulsively up and caressed and
kissed her. But she had not washed Jack's face. He scrambled to his feet
and looked defiantly, like a young animal, at Kent when he entered.
The ground-glass roof, the white walls scored over with Clytie's
fantasies, and the bright red curtain at the back behind the stove gave
a singular setting to the picture.
Clytie's eyes brightened. She threw a cloth over the picture she was
engaged on.
“How good of you to come--and the hand?”
“A trifle. It will be quite well in a few days; I thought you would
not mind my coming to tell you how your doctoring had succeeded. I am
keeping it in a sling--so; otherwise I should be always trying to use
it. You are none the worse, Miss Davenant?”
“I? Why should I?”
“Oh, nerves, shock, headache--and all that. My mother, I know, would
have been upset for a week.”
Clytie laughed; a gay little laugh. She pierced through the words to the
simplicity that lay behind them.
“I have never cultivated nerves, Mr. Kent. They sadly interfere with
practical life. How do you think Miss Marchpane and I would get on with
this sort of thing”--and she nodded towards Jack--“if we had nerves?
Winifred, this is Mr. Kent, who put out my fire last night. Miss
Marchpane and I share the studio together, you know.”
“You work on very different lines,” said Kent after a while, leaning
back in his chair so as to catch a glimpse of Winifred's tiny canvas.
“What a strange thing temperament is! I suppose neither of you does
landscape.”
“Oh, yes, Winifred. Dainty little bits of meadow and stream. I can't;
I always want to put legs and arms to my trees, and make the branches
twist and writhe about, like Gustave Doré in the 'Wandering Jew.'”
“You scarcely look like a painter of the weird,” said Kent.
“You think I have not enough strength of imagination?”
“You have too much strength of mind,” returned Kent judiciously. “You
hanker too much after the real. I can only judge,” he hastily added by
way of explanation, “by what I can see of your work around me.”
“You will get into difficulties,” said Clytie, laughing. “One moment you
accuse me of nerves, and the next of strong-mindedness. Which is right,
Winnie?”
“I should be telling too much or too little if I were to say,” replied
Winifred. “Mr. Kent will have to judge for himself. We had better show
him something to go by.”
They turned to an exhibition of Clytie's paintings; small stacks of
canvases were ranged on the floor, along the walls; here and there one
hanging or standing on a table or on an easel. Clytie stood by in
her nonchalant, professional way, giving a word or two of necessary
explanation as Winifred placed them one by one upon an easel for Kent's
inspection. Painters, sculptors, musicians and actors have a moral
advantage over poets and novelists, in that they are not ashamed of
their work. An artist shows you his picture frankly and hopes you will
like it; if a poet reads you a sonnet, he has an all-devouring dread
lest you may deem him a prig. And the strange part of it is that you do;
whereas you think the painter rather a good fellow. A little problem in
sociological aesthetics.
As Kent looked at the pictures he lost his sense of Clytie's Agatha-like
behaviour of the previous evening. He forgot even to pity her. He
expressed genuine admiration for her work, interspersing his remarks
with outspoken criticism which Clytie recognised as deeper than that of
the mere virtuoso. It was qualified, too, by the supreme attribute of
simple common sense. He judged the pictures on their merits; he judged
Clytie as a woman of genius, strong mind, out of the ordinary run of
women. The inner promptings and cravings that had thus found artistic
expression it was beyond his philosophy to suspect. Nor did Clytie think
of enlightening him.
“I like your realism,” he said. “It is straightforward. There's always a
great danger of this sort of thing degenerating into morbidness. But if
you can keep it true, it's healthy; it means sober, honest work, and not
an intermittent fever. I see you work off your superfluous energy on the
walls.”
“Oh, I forgot them,” cried Clytie somewhat shamefacedly. “You must not
look at them, please. They are not part of the show. Miss Marchpane gets
tired of flowers and peach-bloom, and sometimes----”
“Clytie!” cried Winifred reproachfully.
Clytie laughed; and Kent with her. The light jest brought them nearer
together.
“No; I do that when I feel wicked,” said Clytie. “I paint a nice,
correct little picture for the nice, correct people who are going to buy
it, and then I grow angry with them and feel I should like to shock
them, take the stiffening out of them, reduce them to elemental bits of
humanity. Look at this group of street urchins. I am doing that on order
for my dealer. Here is Jack--look at him now staring into the stove with
the unreasoning content of a young dog. Doesn't he seem nice and
conventional in the picture? You can hear the young lady of the
house saying to the curate, 'Aren't these little street children too
delightful?' Now if they were shown the real Jack, it would give them to
think, as the French say--and they hate doing that. This is _my_ idea of
the real Jack.”
She whisked the cloth off the easel and showed Kent the charcoal
_ébauche_ of her own particular study of the urchin.
She had worked rapidly that day, with the feverishness that Kent
deprecated. Whether she would convert the sketch into a finished picture
she did not know. She had desired to fix the haunting impression of
Jack's possible history.
Kent was somewhat startled by the suddenness of the presentation. There
was the boy, refined, delicate in feature, great-eyed, curly-haired, but
repulsive with cruelty and animalism; in a degraded attitude, head bent
forward, knees bent, lips parted in a sneer.
“He does not look like that now,” said Kent, comparing the original with
the copy.
“Wait,” said Clytie. Then imperiously to the urchin: “Jack, what are you
thinking of?”
He turned, looked up at her shiftingly.
“Dunno.”
“Weren't you thinking of the nice little story of the cat you told me
this morning?”
No answer.
“It's about a stray cat that came into his mother's house half dead, you
know, and this boy was so kind to it--like a dear little girl----”
“Yer lie!” cried the boy, starting to his feet. “Oi told yer Oi
killed 'er. I lammed her bloomin' 'ed open with a chopper. I 'ates cats!”
“_Voilà!_” said Clytie. “That's the real Jack. That's the Jack I'd like
to startle Peckham Rye with.”
And then turning to the boy:
“That will do for to-day, Jack. Here's your shilling; give it to your
mother.”
“Shan't,” said Jack.
“Oh, but you must,” said Winifred; “look how hard your poor mother has
to work to keep you, Jack.”
“She's bloomin' well got ter,” said Jack. “I aint going to give 'er no
money. She never gives me none.”
“But your mother will beat you,” said Clytie.
“Wot do I care?”
“And your father, you sweet boy?” asked Kent.
“Aint got none.”
“Never had one?” continued Kent.
“No; mother aint that sort. Blamed glad.”
“Here, you'd better run away,” said Clytie hurriedly. “Keep your
shilling and make yourself as ill as you like with it. Come the day
after to-morrow--Friday. Can you remember? It's unnecessary to request
you not to wash between then and now. Go on. Good-bye. Out you get.”
The boy took up the remains of his cap and went, with an air of relief,
out of the room.
“What a little brute!” said Kent. “Why don't you try to reform him--make
him human?”
“He is human,” cried Clytie with some warmth. “That's why I cultivate
him. Delightfully human! Refreshing! As for reforming him”--with a shrug
of her shoulders--“I am not a Sunday-school teacher. I have nothing to
do with the submerged tenth; let the good respectable folks who have
submerged them raise them with their polite and respectable hands. I
am an artist--a student of life--what you will. Each one to his trade.
Perhaps when I have got what I want out of Jack it may amuse me to show
him the desirability of not 'lamming cats' bloomin' 'eds open with
a chopper.' I don't know--I'm not altogether devoid of moral sense.
Winifred's tender heart may be touched, and between the two of us we may
turn him out a mild-eyed journeyman carpenter, a member of the Y. M. C.
A., a model of all the virtues. But I very much doubt it. He has vice in
his blood. But perhaps I am wounding some of your susceptibilities, Mr.
Kent? You may be a social reformer, and keener than I on these matters.
If so, pardon me. We artists are privileged, you know, to view life from
our own standpoint.”
Kent threw up his hand and dropped it--a little gesture of deprecation.
He, too, had large views on humanity and its needs. He was even then
sacrificing comfort, fame, ease, such as other men understand them, so
as to serve it. But it was according to his own capabilities. It was a
darling scientific work, that on the most modest computation would
take him twenty years to complete--an unthankful task; his name to be
remembered with reverential gratitude by some half dozen workers, to
perish unheard of by the remaining millions of mankind. But these half
dozen would use the result of his life's energies to the advancement of
human prosperity, and that thought glowed within Kent's heart. Still a
man has not time for all things. He honestly disclaimed pretensions to
being a social reformer. He was also artistically sympathetic enough to
appreciate Clytie's attitude as regards Jack. He was nearer to her in
spirit than Winifred, who was pained at Clytie's speech. She would have
cried out with the sharpness of the pain had it not been for Kent's
presence. And she would have been revolted at the cynical callousness
had it not been for the blind adoration with which she bowed before
Clytie. Whatever Clytie did was right, she told herself, and she was a
poor little body who could not understand these things. But her heart
bled for Jack, and she wondered why Clytie's did not bleed also.
“I spoke idly,” said Kent. “I am sorry. If all artists set about
reforming their models, their hands would be too full for art. But he
is a little brute all the same, and, as you say, Peckham Rye would be
startled by him. But why do you want to shock Philistia?”
“Would _you_ like to live in it, be of it, and worship at comfortably
timed intervals in its correctly appointed temple of Dagon?”
“No,” laughed Kent. “They wouldn't have me in it. I think they could
stand less of me than I of them. They are God's creatures after all, you
know. If you prick them, they bleed--and so forth. If they admire your
little pictures, which I too admire vastly, there must be some saving
grace in the Philistines.”
Clytie shrugged her shoulders.
“But why should I be obliged to paint in their way, and not in my way?
That is what irritates me.”
“Have you tried them with your way, as you call it?”
Even Winifred could scarcely forbear flashing at Clytie a little smile
of tender malice.
“God bless my soul!” she whispered softly, and the two broke into
unconstrained laughter.
“Winifred is quoting, Mr. Kent. It was an elderly gentleman, stout,
florid, lots of watch-chain--one of my patrons. He had bought one of my
pictures at the dealer's, and came for another. Burrowes showed him one
of my own own things. Winifred and I happened to be at the back of the
shop at the time. The old gentleman put on his spectacles, looked at the
picture, gave such a jump, held it in the light, and then gasped out:
'God bless my soul, Burrowes, has the young woman taken to drink?'”
“What did you do?”
“I don't know what I should have done if Winnie had not held me back.”
As it was, Burrowes whispered to him that the artist was overhearing the
conversation.
“'Well, it will do her good,' says the old gentleman, and he went out
storming. Then Burrowes came to me and complained that I had lost him a
customer. He has the soul of a pork-butcher, that man!”
Then turning to Kent, her cheeks still flushed with anecdotal animation:
“That's how it is, you see!”
“Well,” said Kent, “perhaps you have reason to owe Philistia a grudge.
I haven't. If it shuts its respectable doors on me, I shrug my shoulders
and set up my wigwam outside, where I can smoke my pipe in peace. It is
better not to care for the world--or anything, for that matter, if one
has work to do. One's keenness on life ought to leave one no time for
hating one's fellow-creatures.”
Winifred looked at Clytie, expecting to see her resent the implied
rebuke. But Clytie only laughed softly to herself, leaning back in her
chair, looking at her finger tips.
“You are by way of being a tonic, Mr. Kent,” she said, without looking
at him.
Kent was disconcerted, could not find a reply. He stroked his tawny
beard and moustache with his free hand, and looked at her somewhat
puzzled. He had uttered his own robust faith, and she had seized a
personal reference with which she appeared not displeased.
At last he said:
“I don't mean to imply that you are cynical, Miss Davenant. But you
are a little vindictive. I, too, often think of that passage in 'Sartor
Resartus' where Carlyle strips the clothes off the courtiers at St.
James's and leaves them bare, with their bowings and scrapings--do you
remember? Well, it would be a very good thing for them. You would come
down to pure humanity and find it really a very lovable, great-hearted
thing after all.”
“Then, for goodness' sake, let us begin to strip the clothes off them at
once!” cried Clytie, changing her attitude, with her usual suddenness.
“That's what I want to do. I want real men, real women; that's why I
take human nature in the rough”--making a comprehensive sweep with her
hand round the studio--“The clothes these things wear don't matter; you
can see the passions working through the rents and tears.”
“Umph!” said Kent. “You may see something that will frighten you one of
these days. There's plenty of good in humanity, but there's plenty of
bad. You had better get hold of what is good first. It will give you a
foundation.”
Shortly afterwards Kent took his leave. He had paid a longer visit than
he had anticipated. He found himself pitying Clytie again upon new, less
definable grounds. He was much struck by her work, her frankness, her
independence. She was a novelty to him, different from the few other
women he knew. She seemed to have everything calculated to make a woman
happy and her life full, and yet he was sorry for her. Why, he could not
tell.
He went up to his attics, and prepared to spend his usual working
evening. Afterwards, towards half-past eleven, he might walk across
to South Kensington. He took from one of the cupboards beneath the
dresser-table plates, knife and fork, a half-finished tin of sardines,
bread and butter. This, together with a bottle of beer, formed his
frugal evening meal. His midday dinner he took at an Italian restaurant
near the Museum. He ate standing, walking about his room between the
mouthfuls, selecting the books he would require for his work, and
pausing now and then over an idly opened volume. His meal finished, he
collected the soiled utensils and stacked them on the landing outside
his door for Mrs. Gurkins to remove, wash, and return to the same place
in the morning. Then he lit his pipe, and settled down to his long
evening's work.
Thoughts of burned hand, new-found friends, occupied him not. The crisp
whisk of the leaves of his reference-books, the rapid whirr of his quill
pen, the occasional bubble of his green-shaded reading-lamp, were the
only signs of external life of which he was conscious. The rest of the
bare-floored room, with its oddly covered walls, was deep in shadow. But
the light shone in a circle upon the pile of books and papers on which
he was engaged, and lit up strongly his honest, resolute face, with its
intent gray eyes and its kindly mouth half hidden in the moustache and
beard. Kent was happy. The darling work, that served him as mistress,
religion, ambition--over which he had never known a heartache--held him
in its enchantment. And the wet slips grew in number around him.