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_An Engagement
of Convenience_
_A Novel_
_By_
_Louis Zangwill_
_Author of "The World and a Man,"
"One's Womenkind," &c., &c._
_London
Brown, Langham & Co., Ltd.
78 New Bond Street, W.
1908_
"In tragic life, God wot,
No villain need be!"
GEORGE MEREDITH.
An
Engagement of Convenience
I
Miss Robinson had first seen Wyndham and fallen in love with him on the
day that he appeared in the road as a neighbour and set up his studio
there. But that was years before, and she had never made his
acquaintance. He was the Prince Charming of the romances, handsome, of
knightly bearing, with a winning smile on his frank face. From her magic
window in the big corner house where the road branched off into two, she
had narrowly observed his goings and comings, had watched eagerly all
that was visible of his romantic, mysterious profession--the picturesque
Italian models that pulled his bell, the great canvasses and frames
that, during the earlier years at least, were borne in through his door,
to reappear in due course as finished pictures on their way to the
exhibitions--and it was sometimes possible to catch glimpses of stately
figure-paintings and fascinating scenes and landscapes.
Then, too, there was the suggestion of his belonging to a brilliant
social world: she had indeed felt that at her first sight of him. Smart
broughams and victorias in which nestled stylish people not unfrequently
drew up at his studio about tea-time, and in the season he could be seen
going off every night in garb of ceremony; not to speak of his
occasional departures--to important country-houses, no doubt--with
portmanteaus and dressing-bags stacked on the roof of his hansom.
And not less eagerly had Miss Robinson followed his work, scanning the
magazines for his drawings, and haunting the galleries in the search for
his paintings. No one guessed how much he was the interest of her life:
her parents had no suspicion at all, though they knew of their unusual
neighbour, and spoke of him occasionally at table. But Alice Robinson
was the humblest of womankind. Her youth lay already in the past: she
accounted herself the plainest of the plain. So she idealised and
worshipped her hero at a distance, feeling immeasurably farther from him
than the hundred yards of respectable Hampstead pavement that separated
their lives.
One morning at breakfast her father read out from his paper the news of
a sensational bankruptcy. A world-famous house of solicitors had
fallen, and some of the first families in England were losers. Immense
trust funds had gone for building speculations, and amongst the
fashionable creditors who had been hit the worst were Mr. Walter Lloyd
Wyndham, the artist, of Hampstead, and Miss Mary Wyndham, his sister. It
seemed a curious little fact to Mr. Robinson that this affair should
vibrate so near to them, and a mild and not unpleasant stimulation was
thereby imparted to the breakfast-table. But Miss Robinson was hard put
to it to dissimulate her deeper interest in the announcement. Her
agitation was profound, shattering: she was glad to escape, and sit
alone with her secret. It seemed a sacrilege that earthly vicissitude
should touch this brilliant existence. And thereafter she watched her
hero more narrowly than ever, reading in his bearing a stern defiance of
adversity.
At first indeed there was little difference visible in Wyndham's outward
seemings, and Miss Robinson was thankful that the calamity had ruffled
him so imperceptibly. Yet, as the year went by, it began to dawn upon
her that things nevertheless were changing. She had learnt to read with
consummate skill all the little activities that beat around the studio,
and it did not escape her attention that he was going into society
rarely, that smart visitors were fewer, and that pictures were being
returned to him after astonishingly brief intervals. And gradually, as
if in corroboration of her own conclusions, she found his work missing
from the exhibitions, and knew with a sinking of her heart that his
brilliant days were waning.
And as time further passed, and one year merged into another, she
realised definitely that his vogue had ended. She could not even find
anything of his in the magazines, though she purchased them prodigally,
and searched them through with a hope that was desperation, and a fear
that was well-nigh frenzy.
The last year or two a dead unnatural calm had settled over the studio.
Pictures were neither despatched nor returned: if models rang the bell,
it was only to turn away the next minute with disappointed faces. Of
fashionable visitors there was never a sign now: not even a comrade or
fellow-artist came to look him up. But only a tall, sad-faced girl, who
somehow resembled him, called there at long intervals, and Miss Robinson
envied this sister the sympathy she could bring him.
He did not leave London now. All through the summer he kept in town,
lying low, as Miss Robinson could well see from the pallor of his face
on her return from her own conventional holiday at the seaside. She
could cherish no delusions--he was a beaten man!
Time and again she brushed close to him, passing him by chance in the
street, and observed the languor of his step, the growing sadness of his
features. Other details did not escape her. There was no one to attend
on him; no one to care for him. Even a charwoman was a rarity at last,
and Wyndham could be seen shopping almost furtively in the adjoining
streets, and bearing back his own provisions to the studio. Miss
Robinson divined, under their wrappings, the tin of sardines, the potted
tongue, the loaf of bread. She knew that he never took a meal out now,
and that, if he left the studio in the daytime, it was only to escape
from the misery of solitude and hopelessness.
She alone observed him so minutely. Her mother had in some degree shared
her interest in his work, and had sometimes accompanied her to the
galleries; but the common interest of the family in their neighbour was
casual and fitful. Miss Robinson hardly dared mention his name now: it
seemed to her that to draw attention to his poverty was to humiliate
him. Besides, she feared to reveal her own emotion.
One day Miss Robinson's own life caught her with a breathless upheaval.
An honoured and intimate friend of her father's, successful, opulent,
came forward with an avowal of esteem for her; deferentially desired her
association with him in his second essay in matrimony! Mr. Shanner
seemed to spring it on her with untempered abruptness; though the
attentive courtesies that had preceded the crisis might have glimmered
some little warning. But Mr. Shanner's footing in the house was as
old-established as the rest of his appertainings; and Miss Robinson's
spirit was ever at the nadir of diffidence. Men as a rule shunned her:
women cared as little to talk to her. That anybody might ever wish to
marry her had seemed impossible, inconceivable. Mr. Shanner had many
pretensions to style, yet, to her spoiled eye, he seemed merely of clay
indifferent.
She strung herself to the ordeal of refusing him, though her real
strength knew no faltering. For he proved insistent; wooed
her--soberly--decorously--as became the dignity of five decades
completed; wooed her with reasons of urgency, and implications of
sentiment. He was to depart on a mission to the New World; wished to
bear her promise with him. He would treasure it; would think of the new
light to shine in his household. But within her lay an unfailing
inspiration, and her innermost soul stood like a tower impregnable;
though she was all wounds and distress, and quivered with the hurt. Was
not her heart with her Prince Charming? her one dream in life the
privilege of helping him?
Mr. Shanner had to sail away disconsolate!
But, though Miss Robinson's mind was occupied day and night with this
problem of Wyndham's salvation, she could arrive at no plausible
solution. For how should she ever dare to give him a sign? She who would
have yielded her life for him could only watch him drifting downwards
with an agonised sense of her helplessness.
And he all the while unsuspecting of this obscure, loving historian of
his existence; of the warm heart that beat for him in these evil days on
which he had fallen!