There was a certain truth in Hardy's description of Ted Haviland. Ted
had all a baby's fascination, a baby's irresponsibility, and a baby's
rigid tenacity of purpose. There perhaps the likeness ended. At any
rate, Ted had contrived to plan a career for himself at the age of
seven, had said nothing about it for ten years, and then quietly carried
it through in spite of circumstances and the influential members of his
family. These powers had been against him from the first. His mother had
died in giving him birth; and as his father chose to hold him directly
responsible for the tragedy, his early years were passed somewhat under
a cloud. Katherine was his only comfort and stay. The girl had five
years the start of him, which gave her an enormous advantage in dealing
with the uncertain details of life. Her method was simplicity itself. It
was summed up in the golden rule: Take your own way first, and then let
other people take theirs. It was in this spirit that, mounted on a
table, she painted the great battle-piece that covered the north wall of
the nursery; and with equal heroism she met the unrighteous Nemesis that
waits upon mortal success, and skipped off to bed at three o'clock in
the afternoon as if to a tea-party. Ted worshipped his sister, because
of her courage and resource, because of her fuzzy black hair cut short
like a boy's, for the strength of her long limbs, and for a hundred
other reasons. And Katherine loved Ted with a passion all the more
intense because he was the only creature she knew that would let itself
be loved comfortably; for "Papa" was an abstraction, and "Nurse" erred
on the opposite extreme, being a terribly concrete reality, with a great
many acute angles about her, which was a drawback to demonstrations of
affection.
One day Katherine mixed some colours for Ted and taught him how to
manage a pencil and paint-brush. That was just before she went to
school, and then Ted said to himself, "I too will paint battle-pieces";
and he painted them in season and out of season, and was obliged to hide
them away in drawers and cupboards and places, for there was no one to
care for them now that Kathy was gone. As for that headstrong young
person, her method was so far successful that when she was eighteen it
began to be rumoured in the family that Katherine would do great things,
but that Ted was an idle young beggar. The boy had shown no talent for
anything in particular, and nobody had thought of his future: not
Katherine--she was too busy with her own--and certainly not his father,
who at the best of times lived piously in the past with the memory of
his dead wife, and was day by day loosening his hold upon the present.
For Ted "Papa" became more and more an abstraction, until a higher Power
withdrew him altogether from earthly affairs.
Mr. Haviland had lived in a melancholy gentility on a pension which died
with him, and at his death the children were left with nothing but the
pittance they inherited from their mother. When the family met in solemn
conclave to decide the fate of Katherine and Ted, it learned that
Katherine, true to her old principles, had taken the decision into her
own hands. She meant to live for art and by art, and Uncle James was
much mistaken if he thought that an expensive training was to be flung
away upon a "niggling amateur." At any rate, she had taken a studio in
Pimlico and furnished it, and as she had come of age yesterday, there
was really no more to be said. Ted, of course, would live with her, and
choose his own profession. But Ted's profession was not so easily
chosen. The boy had brought a perfectly open mind to the subject, and
discussed the reasons for and against the Church, the Bar, the Bank, and
a trade, with admirable clearness and impartiality; but when invited to
make a selection from among the four, he betrayed no enthusiasm. Finally
he was asked if he had any objection to the medical profession, and
replied that he had none, having, indeed, never thought about it. On the
whole, he considered that the idea was not a bad one, and he would try
it. He tried it for a year and a half, but not altogether with success.
He had been advised to take up surgery, for a great man had noticed his
long sensitive fingers, and told him that he had the hands of a born
surgeon. He managed to get through the hours in the dissecting-room,
standing on his head from time to time as a precaution against
faintness; but his heroism gave way before the horrors of the theatre.
Soon, with indignation naturally mingled with pleasure at this
fulfilment of its own predictions, the family heard that Ted had flung
up the medical profession. That the boy had the hands of a born surgeon
was considered to be an aggravation of his offence; it constituted it
flying in the face of Providence. When Ted drew attention to the fact
that he had passed first in Comparative Anatomy, his uncle James told
him that stupidity was excusable, and that his abilities only proved him
a lazy good-for-nothing fellow. He then offered him a berth in his
office, with board and lodging in his own house; and as Ted was in low
water, there was nothing for it but to accept. Mr. James Pigott remained
master of the situation, without a suspicion of its pathetic irony. Ted,
whose intellect was incapable of adding two and two together, had to sit
on a high stool and work endless sums in arithmetic. Ted, whose soul was
married _sub rosa_ to ideal beauty, had to live in a house where every
object had the same unwinking self-complacent ugliness, and where the
cook was the only artist whose genius was appreciated. Ted was a little
bit of a Stoic, and he could have borne the long impressive dinners and
the unstudied malice of the furniture, if only his uncle would have let
him alone. But Mr. Pigott was nothing if not conscientious; and now that
he had him under his thumb, he made superhuman efforts to understand his
nephew's character and to win his confidence. The poor gentleman might
just as well have tried to understand the character of an asymptote, or
to win the confidence of a Will-o'-the-wisp; and nothing but misery can
come of it when a middle-aged city merchant, born without even a
rudimentary sense of humour, suddenly determines to cultivate that gift
for the benefit of a boy who can detect humour in the wording of an
invoice.
Well, he never knew how it happened--his mind might have been running on
an illustrated edition of the cash accounts of Messrs. Pigott & Co.--but
at last Ted made an arithmetical blunder so unprecedented, so
astounding, that a commercial career was closed to him for ever.
"Stupidity is excusable," said Uncle James. "If you had been stupid, I
would have forgiven you; but you have ability enough, sir, and it
follows that you are careless--criminally careless--and I wash my hands
of you." And, like Pilate, he suited the action to the word.
So it happened that as Katherine was putting the last touches to her
great picture "The Witch of Atlas," and to her sketch of an elaborate
future, Fate stepped in and altered all her arrangements. She called it
Fate, for she never could bring herself to say it was Ted. For months
she had been living in a dream, in which she was no longer a poor artist
toiling in a London garret: she was on the highest peak of Atlas, in the
land where, as you know, dreams last forever, where the light comes down
unfiltered through the transcendental air, and where, owing to the
unmelting ice and snow, the shadows are always colours. To live for art
and by art--she had not yet realised the incompatibility of these two
aims; for Katherine was as uncompromising in this as in everything else,
and refused to work in a liberal and enlightened spirit. She believed
that beauty is the only right or possible or conceivable aim of the
artist, and she was ready to sacrifice a great deal for this belief. For
this she slept and worked in one room, which she left bare of all but
necessary furniture--under which head, in defiance of all laws of
political economy, she included a small Pantheon of plaster deities: for
this she stinted herself in everything except air and exercise, which
were cheap; and for this she refused to join housekeeping with her
cousin Nettie, thereby giving lasting offence to an influential branch
of the family. At the end of three years she had begun to hope, and to
feel the quickening of new powers; and as her nature expanded, her art
took on a subtler quality, a subdued and delicate sensuousness, which,
it must be owned, had very little in common with the flesh and blood of
ordinary humanity.
She was painting steadily, in a pallid fervour of concentrated
excitement, the ease of her pliant hands contrasting with her firm lips
and knitted brows, when Ted burst into the studio, with a thin Gladstone
bag in one hand and a fat portfolio in the other. His face told her of a
crisis in his history; it was humorous, pathetic, deprecating, and
determined, all at once,--not the face of a boy dropping in casually at
tea-time. When asked if anything had gone wrong at the office, he
replied, "Probably--by this time. They lost their brightest ornament
this morning. You see they said--among other things--that it wasn't the
least use my stopping, as I hadn't any head for figures,--which was odd,
considering that it's just with figures I've been most successful." But
Katherine was to judge for herself. He sat down leisurely and began
untying his portfolio. Then he caught sight of "The Witch of Atlas."
"That's going to be a stunning picture, Kathy," said he. He stood before
the canvas for a moment, and then turned abruptly away. When he looked
at Katherine again, his face was set and a little flushed. He seemed to
be making a calculation--a thing he had always some difficulty in doing.
"You've been at it practically all your life; but it took
you--one--two--three--five years' real hard work, didn't it, before you
could paint like that?"
"Yes, Ted, five years' hard labour, with costs."
"It'll take me four. Thank heaven, I've learnt anatomy!"
Katherine said nothing: she had opened the portfolio and spread out the
drawings, and was hanging over them in amazement. How, when, and where
the boy had done the things, she could not imagine. There were finished
studies in anatomy, of heads and limbs in every conceivable attitude.
There were shilling drawing-books crammed with illustrations of most
possible subjects and some impossible ones; loose sketches done on the
backs of envelopes, the fly-leaves of books, and (fearful revelation of
artistic depravity!) the ruled pages of ledgers. And in every one of
them there was power and wild exuberant vitality. It was genius, rampant
and undisciplined, but unmistakable; and she told him so. Her first
feeling sent the blood to her cheeks for pure joy; her second drove it
back to her heart again. Katherine was one of those people who can see a
thing instantly, in all its possible bearings; and at the present moment
she saw clearly, not only that Ted was a genius, but that his genius had
everything to learn, and that it would take the whole of his tiny income
to teach it, while the necessities of his board and lodging in the
meanwhile would more than double her own expenses. She saw herself
doomed to the production of an unbroken succession of pot-boilers, and
for the next few years at least Ted's career was only possible at the
sacrifice of her own. "Yes," she said at last, sitting down and tying
the strings of the portfolio tenderly, "you'll have to work hard for
four or five years or so; and then you'll have to wait. Art is long, you
know, and high art's the longest of all." And when she told him that it
would be a great help to her if they clubbed together, Ted actually
believed her, so unaware was he of the complexities of life.
Katherine understood why Ted had gone to Guy's Hospital; but when she
asked him--idiot!--why he had wasted a year at his uncle Pigott's
office, he said that he wanted to prove to his uncle Pigott's limited
capacity that he was utterly incapable of managing anybody's business
but his own. Katherine asked no more questions, for she was trying to
think. Then when she had done thinking, she took the Witch and turned
her with her face to the wall. And when she looked at Ted again it was
with a choking sensation, and for the first time for three years she was
aware that she had a heart beating under the blue overall. She had come
down from Atlas faster than she had gone up. After all, the climate
there is frightfully cold, and there are passes on that lonely mountain
which overhang the bottomless pit, where some have perished very
miserably. Katherine had escaped the abyss, and left behind her the
dreams and the golden mists and the starry peaks of ice. It was dark in
the studio, and a voice was heard inquiring whether the young gentleman
was going to stay for supper, "_Because_, if a bysin of hoatmeal
porridge yn't enuff for one----"
Mrs. Rogers was great in the argument _a fortiori_.