There were some slight eruptions in the domestic circle at Waring Park
before it was decided what form the wedding was to take. As might be
expected, Mr. and Mrs. Waring in no way interfered, but kept themselves
carefully aloof from the whole concern. But not so Dacre.
On hearing of the engagement, he swooped down on the paternal abode, all
agog to have his say in the arrangements. He was now a budding warrior,
full of himself and his profession, and horribly cocksure on all
subjects in heaven and on earth, a good honest affectionate creature of
conventions, but with “a coarse thumb” which he wielded in a promiscuous
style, and often planted sheer on the quick.
Dacre wanted a wedding that would have astonished the neighbours, and
that would more than probably have been the death of the two rarified
beings who had borne him, but Gwen, backed by Mr. and Mrs. Fellowes,
arranged things quite her own way.
The wedding was to be as quiet as a wedding can be. Neither Strange nor
Gwen were rich in relations, which simplified matters. Lady Mary must
come, of course, and the old Waring uncle, and one or two creatures of
an unobservant and fossilized type, not worth mentioning, besides a few
of Strange’s belongings.
As for friends, when Gwen began to cast about in her mind on that
subject, she found that for her, putting aside Mr. and Mrs. Fellowes,
none existed. Of the girl friends who usually flock in the wake of a
bride, Gwen hadn’t a vestige.
She had gone to her room to straighten her thoughts after a hot
encounter with Dacre, whose carnal mind still hankered after a proper
full-blown wedding, and had been making itself objectionable in a
bumptious youthful style. She had lost her cool scornful calm at last,
and had given him such a glance from her big eyes as had quelled the
British lion in him, and had accompanied it with a lash of her able
tongue.
“Oh, you are anxious to amuse yourself by importing the world and the
flesh down here—here! that they may sneer at two people who, if they
have brought children into the world for pure purposes of investigation,
are at any rate too good to make sport for your friends. You can get
your world and your flesh elsewhere, not here at my expense.”
“I never saw anyone just going to be married like you before!” said
Dacre, with a dash of his old astonished terror at her.
“Probably not, your experience not being wide.”
“Strange is a million times too good for you!”
To his astonishment he got no immediate retort.
Gwen stood up, getting rather white, and went to the door. She stopped
in the shadow of the threshold, and a gray shade fell on her face and
made it whiter, but a sunbeam caught her hair and turned it to the
orange-gold that Dacre hated.
“Fools speak the truth a great deal oftener than they have any notion
of,” she said, “it is a pity that being thick-headed themselves they
can’t know how it hurts.”
Now she was in her room reflecting gloomily on things in general.
“I never thought,” she said, “I never thought that by any process of
reasoning I should be ashamed of the fact of having no girl friends—I
used rather to pique myself on it, but upon my word I am ashamed, I am
degradingly, abjectly ashamed of it, it is one of the symptoms of my
disease.”
She went to the glass, and crossing her arms on a little table near, she
looked at herself, laughing.
“Would anyone think it to look at me? I look so very sound and complete,
and yet I am rotten at the core, a sort of Dead Sea apple. What a
hackneyed order of fruit to belong to, I am not even original—ugh! I am
inclined to think if I were a downright bad woman, who had sinned,
sinned solidly, and all for love—I wish to Heaven I could get the
feelings of one of them just for five minutes, to understand this
temptation which to me is so utterly incomprehensible—Well, I really
think that Humphrey would do better to marry a woman of this sort than
me. It has come to a pretty pass when I—I, Gwen Waring, have taken to
envying that sort of person!”
She raised her head, got to her feet, and went down and played for an
hour, then she went out and walked, walked, walked, till she hadn’t a
leg to stand on, and could no more think than she could fly.
About a week before his marriage, Strange ran up to London for a couple
of days, but even to Gwen he did not specify the nature of his business,
which altogether concerned Brydon’s launching in life.
When he reached the studio, he found things looking pretty bad. Like
many a better man, if his Art didn’t drive him Brydon couldn’t drive his
Art; besides, his health was below par, there were days and days when he
couldn’t so much as paint a potboiler, then he starved.
He was learning Italian just now, to solace himself. Strange perceived,
however, that the soft vowels hardly appealed to an empty stomach.
Brydon was a haggard and distressful object, sitting with Dante on the
table before him, smoking cheap tobacco, and with the ghastly beginning
of a sketch crying shame on him from every corner.
“Goodness, how outrageously jolly you look! Is it engagement or ten
thousand a year?”
“Oh, I’m all right, which is more than you look! Taken to shag, I
see—well, I can stomach a lot, but not that. Would you mind chucking
that pipe somewhere where it won’t smell, and try some of my stuff, just
to oblige me? Overheated Arab and shag are the two stinks I draw the
line at. Hallo!” he remarked, looking at one of the sketches.
“I am taking a holiday.”
He was going on to lie a little—but with a shrug he changed his course.
“I have to, as a matter of fact. I can’t paint, I’ve lost the way—do you
ever forget the way to write?” he asked.
“Do I? The deuce I do! We all do at times, then we feel like
throat-cutting or ‘Rough on Rats.’ However, I came on business. I have
some spare cash and I want to invest it, and on looking round I have
come to the conclusion you would be rather a good thing to put some of
it into.”
“I?”
“Yes, even your beastliest daubs have something in them that saves their
souls. One has to look more than once at everything you do, even if it
is only to swear at it. You have capacity somewhere about you, wherever
you hide it—as for drawing, you don’t know the beginnings of it! But
what’s that? You can learn, it’s a mere question of swatting. If I had
any doubt of your success, I wouldn’t be here to-day. I never on
principle put a penny into a rotten concern, and I am here to make you a
definite distinct offer, as binding on you as on me. I will defray your
expenses in Paris for three years, I will give you enough to learn under
the best men, and to live decently, not a farthing more,—don’t speak
yet!—”
Brydon had jumped up rather wildly.
“Wait till you hear all about it—your conditions are pretty hard. In
case you should die during your apprenticeship—the best of us are liable
to that contingency—I shall insist on you insuring your life for an
amount equivalent to that I lay out on you. If you live (the best thing
you can do under the circumstances), you shall pay me back principal and
interest in a given term of years, say fifteen, after you begin to
sell.”
Brydon threw himself down into his chair and buried his head in his
hands, a limited diet of bread and mustard had taken the starch out of
him. He was soft, and his eyes were brimful of tears, he was young too,
and nearly burst in his efforts to bolt them, then he lifted his head
from his hands and began precipitately,
“You have given me the chance of a career, you put the world within
reach of me, you trust me down to the ground, all in one breath. Look
here!”
For one minute he was about to throw back the salvation waiting under
his nose with most laudable self-respect, but he looked at Strange and
his heart got soft again.
“I’d black your boots for you, why shouldn’t I be dependent on you? I’ll
take your offer, and—and—and—”
“I told you the conditions, I shall stick to them, we don’t thank one
another or get emotional in these transactions, I mean to have my money
back, principal and interest, my full pound of flesh. I’m doing a trade
with you—take it or leave it, as you like.”
“Do you know I’d die for you?” cried Brydon, in a burst of low-diet
mawkishness.
“Die, before you’ve paid in a penny of your premium! If we can come to
terms off-hand, I should like to finish up the matter at once, and start
for my lawyer’s.”
Brydon got up without a word, and began to make himself decent with
shaking hands. At last he found safety in a wild burst of gaiety and by
the time he had his best coat on, he was bubbling over with a nervous
gentle sort of fun peculiar to his kind.
When they were going downstairs he stopped, and remarked in a soft
deprecatory sort of way,
“I say! I believe my heart’s next to gone. Three goes of rheumatic fever
leaves that part of a fellow not worth mentioning. Won’t that make the
premium pretty stiff?”
“Probably, I never thought of that. However, it’s you will have to pay
the piper, not I.”
“You’re an artist in conferring favours—”
“Oh, for Heaven’s sake, stow that!”
“I wouldn’t take your offer, by Jove! I wouldn’t, but that I mean to
repay you.”
“But I’ve already taken good care of that!”
“The money isn’t everything,” said Brydon impatiently, “there is such a
thing as being proud of a fellow you’ve made, of valuing your own
creation—”
“All that comes in the contract, the sense of moral elevation it gives
one to run a successful concern, even if it’s only an artist, pleases
the carnal mind. There was only the choice between you and a patent
medicine, I’d have gone for that but that I heard at the last moment
that peppermint was the active principle in its manufacture—I draw the
line at peppermint—and you were the only alternative. And look here, old
man—But, good Lord! See that child there? Which is more human, the
child’s face or the monkey’s on the organ? Upon my word, the imp scores
off the beast only in the matter of cheek pouch. Gru! how it hangs!”
Brydon shuddered.
“You always see the beastliest details! Couldn’t you keep them to
yourself! I shall dream of that child for a week.”
“And yet you devour Zola? I had begun something, what was it? Oh,—if I
were you I should walk gingerly as soon as you strike Paris pavement;
there is something in it that drives fellows mad. London is a fool to
it! It’s a bad investment for any man, but it would spoil your work for
a twelvemonth, if it didn’t give me my premium sooner than I want it.
That weak heart of yours, Charlie, if you work the thing properly,
should be as good as a family chaplain to you, and it isn’t every man
that can boast of as much.”
“Talk of utilitarianism,” sighed Brydon, “it is to be a struggle, then,
between my natural instincts and my game heart. I wonder which will
win?”