VII

The next morning early Wyndham jumped out of bed with a bewildered sense

of some change in his life, and it was an instant or two before his

faculties cleared and he remembered his adventure of the previous

evening. His next thought was one of pleasure that he had at last

carried out his resolution of rising early. The autumn had developed

with unusual severity, but the morning was intensely clear, and the

studio full of a strong light. He pushed aside the hanging, and looked

down from the gallery on the familiar scene below. Ordinarily, on

rising, the sight had filled him with disgust and apathy, but now a

freshness and vigour pervaded him, a new imperious desire, not merely in

his mind but in all his limbs and muscles, to enter again on the contest

with men. As his thought ran back through the past intolerable year or

two, his inaction and sloth seemed almost incredible. He saw himself

rising at midday, suffering moral tortures before the work he was

powerless to begin, letting the barren hours drift away into the deep,

then regretting them passionately. Was it not all a nightmare from which

he had been curiously released?

He dressed, and, whilst his little kettle was boiling, took careful

stock of his professional materials. Colours, brushes, varnishes--all

needed renewing; there seemed nothing but impracticable odds and ends,

mere bits of wreckage from his disastrous life's venture. Then, too, the

filth and disorder all around him struck him brusquely, stung him to

annoyance. On every surface where dust might accumulate it lay in serene

possession. Wherever spiders could spin, there the webs hung thick,

amazing and complicated citadels, prodigious masses and networks.

He felt he could not endure it a day longer. There must be a thorough

physical cleansing at once. And he must return to the luxury of a daily

bed-maker. This preoccupation with household things took off the keenest

edge of one's first energy and enthusiasm; he must reserve himself

jealously for his high calling.

As he sipped his coffee he mused over the little financial difficulties

that immediately beset him. Now that at last he had a valid ground for

appealing to Mary, he felt reluctant; anxious to bring her only the

sense of his success without alloy. He might explain the situation to

Mr. Robinson, and ask for money in advance; but that seemed as impolitic

as it was repugnant in this new rapture of fine upstanding dignity.

Payment of the quarter's rent that was already due could be easily

deferred--for the bare humiliation of making the request. But he needed

something for equipment, and must face the sacrifice of some of the

older pictures to which he had clung so long, accepting any sum in

exchange, if only shillings.

He still felt no disposition to invest the accident that had turned the

tide for him with any touch of superstition or romance. He regarded the

whole matter in the same dry light as at his first acceptance of it the

evening before. He had sat waiting for clients, and at last they had

turned up. But he did not at all dislike the Robinsons: they were very

much better than the great run of their class--they had evidently

ideals, and aspired to a higher degree of refinement than they as yet

possessed, or, perhaps, were capable of possessing. They were neither

smug nor self-satisfied, and, in giving him this work, they had avoided

indulging in any semblance of bourgeois patronage, whereas other people

of their class, even if well meaning, might easily have been gross and

intolerable.

He had studied his sitter pretty closely. The profile, as is not

unfrequently the case with "plain" women, had a curious individual

interest. He felt it offered scope for "construction," and he could

import subtly into the drawing a certain distinguished sentiment that

was not really in the original, though somehow it might easily have been

there, and, in moments of enthusiasm on the part of the observer, might

even be conceived to be there. Yes, the profile was undoubtedly the

thing: that way, too, the great coil of hair could be handled the more

effectively. Indeed, it seemed to him that, taking into consideration

her dark eye with its soft lashes, and the long shapely arms, and the

exquisite ivory tones of the old lace dress, the scheme should really

turn out, as he had so promptly put it to Miss Robinson herself, "a most

distinguished piece of portraiture." He was shrewd enough to understand

the essential shyness of her disposition, and he felt he might well

invest her expression with some suggestion of this, though it should

come out as a sort of gentle spiritual modesty.

And now his imagination returned to the contemplation of his own

fortunes, and went soaring skywards. His luck having once changed, who

could say what might not turn up next? Another sitter might appear, one

of your great heroines, stately and brilliant--a sort of Lady Betty, in

fact: he might as well admit he _had_ Lady Betty in mind! Such a

portrait, appropriately conceived, would form a remarkable pendant to

this one. Then, too, he might make another dash at his masterpiece! Such

a display of versatility in the next year's exhibitions must place his

name on everybody's lips, must surely pave the way to his reputation not

only as a great decorative portrait painter, but also as a modern of the

moderns, touched to inspiration by all the stress and striving of his

age!

This roseate flight was abruptly disturbed by the advent of the postman.

The rat-tat, one of the double sort, imperiously summoned him to the

door. Had the "something else" already turned up? He rather prided

himself on the coolness with which he rose to meet it. The postman

handed him a packet and a letter. But at a glance he saw that the packet

was a rejected drawing and the letter Mary's, and he went straight down

into the depths again. He, however, affected a cheerful good morning to

the postman; then, no sooner alone, tore open the letter, with the

bitter taste of yesterday's scene with his sister full in his throat. To

his astonishment, he pulled out two five-pound Bank of England notes,

and only a few words accompanied them. "DEAREST," she wrote,--

"Since you left me to-day I have suffered beyond endurance. That you

will ever forgive me for my harshness I cannot hope. I am the only soul

you have to turn to, and yet I struck at you as with a whip. Your face

as you turned away will haunt me for the rest of my life. I have been

sobbing and sobbing, feeling my heart must break. I ask you to be good

to me now, and take this little money. Darling, don't punish me by

sending it back. Better times are coming presently, and, if God is good,

this little help now may bring you the best of fortune.--Your loving

sister, MARY."

Wyndham was unnerved; realising to the full the torture her gentle,

sympathetic nature was inflicting on her. What it must have cost her to

gather up her strength for that critical interview he could only

remotely surmise. Yet it had failed her after all!

However touched he was by her sweetness, however much he was moved to

respond to this prostration and surrender, he yet saw only too clearly

that at bottom it _was_ a failure of strength. The idea of using the

money was singularly distasteful; even though he told himself he would

have his hand cut off rather than doubt her perfect goodness and

sincerity in sending it.

This necessity of a difficult decision disturbed the nice cool balance

with which he had started out to face the day. There was nothing for it

but to put aside the letter for the present in the hope that counsel

would come to him later. And in the meanwhile he went on with his

programme. He tidied his papers, went to hunt out his old charwoman,

and, ultimately leaving her in possession of the studio, he ran into

town to get his new materials, and look up the various accessories for

the scheme of the picture.

His first visit was to a shop in Oxford Street, where he had dealt ever

since his student days, and where he could order what he needed without

immediate payment. A burly man in a Norfolk jacket and knickerbockers

was making purchases at one of the counters, and his back seemed not

unfamiliar. Wyndham brought out his list and was going through the

various items with one of the assistants when a heavy hand was placed on

his shoulder, and, turning, he beheld the big powerful head and pointed

beard of one of the old gang of his Latin Quarter days.

"Sadler!" he exclaimed.

The big head was convulsed with laughter, and Wyndham's hand wrung in a

mighty grip.

"How jolly! I was coming to look you up! I've just ferreted out your

address; you're still fixed out there at Hampstead?"

"Oh, do come--I shall be delighted," said Wyndham genially. "Have you

been in London long?"

"Three weeks. After knocking about for five years--what do you think of

that, my boy? First went all over Spain--made scores of studies. Gee!

First-rate! Cheapest place in Europe--exchange thirty-five to the

sovereign--and lots of good eating. Went to see a bit of Velasquez down

at Madrid. Gee-rusalem! And the Titans, stuck up in a funny little

room! You never see anything so fine in your life."

"Oh, I've been there," smiled Wyndham.

The vigour and enthusiasm of his old friend, the nasalities of the deep

voice, had almost a complete freshness for him, after the long interval

since their last meeting. He was pleased at the encounter--it brought

him whiffs of old days of happy comradeship. He felt the stirring of the

war-horse.

"Then I put in a nice couple of years at Munich; saw some Boecklin. Gee!

He's great!"

"I once saw some wretched things of his, though," said Wyndham. "I

remember--at a modern exhibition at Venice."

"I grant there are one or two rotten ones," conceded Sadler; "but

they're interesting, if you take them in the right way--experiments that

failed, though they were fine as he had them in him. Well--then I did a

bit of a tour all over the shop--came along through Holland--made

cart-loads of sketches; and then I came right along here. Been getting

lots of fun in London; been round with the boys, and had a rattling good

time. Taking the opportunity, too, of getting some nice suits of

clothes." And here Sadler turned abruptly from art, and plunged into

sartorial details. His interest in such matters was astonishing, almost

touching. He revelled in fancy waistcoats and rioted in tweeds and

broadcloths. London was the only place in the world where you could get

the rakish cut. He, Sadler, had never suspected what a lovely figure he

had, till this latest cutter had revealed him to himself!

He paused at last for breath.

"Anything particular on with you?" he was presently impelled to ask,

observing that Wyndham was exercising a marked fastidiousness in the

choice of his canvas.

"A portrait," said Wyndham. "Not a bad little commission."

"Good!" ejaculated Sadler, his face shining enthusiastically. "A lady?"

"Yes," answered Wyndham, "and I've rather a charming scheme."

"Good!" roared Sadler again. "I heard you hadn't been doing much of

late. They were running your work down--some of the boys, and I said

they were talking rot. We nearly came to blows about it. I think I

fairly shut them up."

Wyndham had at first winced a little. Then he felt like shrugging his

shoulders. After all, the past had to be lived down. Besides, Sadler's

championship was genuine and influential.

"That was very kind of you. You always did stick up for me."

"Don't you mind 'em a bit, my boy. You just go ahead, and you'll come

out at the top of the tree."

"I'll do my best," said Wyndham, smiling.

"That'll be good enough, I guess," said Sadler. "Perhaps this portrait

will open up other things for you."

"How so?" inquired Wyndham.

"It all depends on the crowd you strike--I heard you came a bit of a

cropper, and I daresay you're not too well off now to despise a job or

two--you can always put decent work into them. Now there's Jim

Harley--he struck a rich middle-class lot ten years ago, rotten

out-and-out Philistines, twenty guineas apiece--and they've been keeping

him going ever since. Does fifty of 'em a year."

"The prospect hardly tempts me. After all, the main thing is to get back

to big work."

Sadler smiled. "I guess I should be the first to drag you back

again--after a while. But Jimmy married young. A boy and girl affair.

His wife's family weren't satisfied with his financial position, and

there was a mighty row at the time. Of course the girl had only her

pretty eyes."

"Ah, you don't approve of idealistic love affairs."

"Not of that kind. I'm forty, and I've seen something in my time."

Wyndham had finished his purchases, and was telling the assistant to

send the parcel to his studio. As they left the shop presently, Sadler

pressed Wyndham very hard to lunch with him at a particular restaurant

he mentioned, and Wyndham could not do otherwise than accept the

invitation, though he confessed the place was unknown to him. Whereat

Sadler expressed great astonishment. It was one of the very few places

in London where the food was fit to eat! Why, the cooking was even

better than at Lavenue's in the Quarter, and that was saying a great

deal. He, Sadler, could not endure any other place during his

sojournings in London. Wyndham let the dear fellow gallop on to his

heart's content. Sadler was a fine painter, and in the old days Wyndham

as the junior had sat at his feet, and in the matter of technique had

been greatly indebted to him. But he had observed with covert amusement

at a very early stage in the acquaintanceship that Sadler, like so many

others in the hard-working, hand-to-mouth world of the arts, had an

amiable weakness for "being in the know" anent the good things of life,

and affected a lavishness in public that was off-set by a sharp economy

in the less visible phases of his existence.

At the restaurant Sadler scrutinised the carte with the confident eye of

a man about town, grumbled a little, held a fussy colloquy with the

waiter, and finally ordered oysters and chablis to begin upon, the while

a chateaubriand was being prepared for them.

Over the meal Sadler talked a great deal of old times. He seemed to have

kept himself well in touch with scores of men they had known in common,

despite scatterings and vicissitudes. His mind kept leaping across the

world, beating them all out of their lairs for Wyndham's enlightenment.

Did he remember Pycherley--the biggest duffer of them all? Well, he had

married an heiress on the strength of his genius, and was painting awful

stuff out in California; and Snyders, who had shared his studio, had

built himself a Moorish house high up on a mountain-side overlooking the

Gulf of Salerno; a third had settled down to "black-and-white" in a

queer little creeper-clad house in St. John's Wood; a fourth was

decorating a municipal building at Toronto. Marlowe was still in the

avenue du Maine, where the fascinating American actress he had wed had

since borne him a sheaf of daughters: and the beautiful Mrs. Smith they

had known at Fontainebleau, the summer they had spent there together,

had long ago divorced her husband, and married the Italian sculptor, in

whose studio she had made such sensational progress. She now exhibited

regularly, and had already received a gold medal of the second class.

And so the conversation continued--for the most part about men who were

now pretty well getting on into middle life, whose destinies had found

definite declaration and were visible to all Wyndham expressed his

pleasure that his own future, on the contrary, still lay wrapped in

mystery; that, though the curtain was full up, the interest of the drama

was by no means played out.

"You can afford to talk like that, Wyndham," shouted Sadler. "What are

you? You're only a boy! But I'm forty, and I tell you I'd give up the

interest of the drama for a safe income, and think it a damned good

bargain. I get along, I sell my stuff, but I tell you I sweat and

groan."

"I admit I should like my old income back again," said Wyndham; "not for

itself, but for the sake of the splendid freedom to work."

"That's just my point," shouted Sadler. "What the hell do I care about

money for itself? And I tell you what, my boy, the right thing for an

artist is to marry a woman with money." He struck the table hard with

his big fist, making the whole restaurant rattle.

Wyndham almost jumped. "Good gracious! So that's what you were driving

at! The idea to me is perfectly loathsome."

"That's just what I used to think," exclaimed Sadler. "But you can't go

on for ever with your head in the clouds."

"The thing's so awfully brutal and sordid," insisted Wyndham, shuddering

visibly. "It makes my blood run cold."

"You make me tired," snapped Sadler pettishly. "Where's the sordidness?

I don't say a man ought to run after a fortune--but enough to steady

things. Taking it all round, we artists have less chance of making money

for ourselves than other men of the same worth; and since most of us do

marry some time or other, we ought to look to marriage to help our work,

and not to drag it down."

Wyndham was unconvinced. "If you take away the poetry out of life, the

rest of it is too hideous to bother about. If a man marries to make

himself comfortable, he's no better than a contented pig wallowing in

muck. Rather than surrender the ideal, I'd give up marriage altogether,

stand by my guns, and die fighting."

"We artists are a damned sentimental lot," shouted Sadler. He lifted a

juicy morsel to his mouth. "This chateau's jolly good, isn't it?"

"Excellent," admitted Wyndham.

"Now you see I wasn't exaggerating when I said it's as good here as at

Lavenue's." Sadler swallowed his mouthful. "We all begin with your

idyllic ideas--Rossetti, Meredith, and all the rest of it. But I tell

you it's hell! You dig the work out of yourself with sweat, with blood!"

The veins began to swell in Sadler's mighty forehead. "And when you're

not one of the lucky ones, what does the world do to help you to work

for it?" He had wrought himself up to a tense excitement, and put the

question with a hoarse shout. "Nothing! It prints your name in the

papers, it talks about you at dinner parties! Painting is

starvation--painting is death! By the time you've worried along till

you're forty, you begin to see a bit straight, my boy. Look around

you--what do you see on all sides? You see the best of us and the

luckiest of us fixing up some pretty little nook here in town or in the

country, and then trying to clear a few hundreds or so by tempting

somebody to buy it for double what it cost. We begin with ideals, and

afterwards we are glad to come down to the level of the common

speculator. Let us have no delusions about it--there's nobody keener for

necessary money than we artists when we begin to feel the years slipping

by. I tell you it's hell!" He gulped down a glass of wine and wiped his

lips.

"I see your point of view," said Wyndham; "but I detest it. Better to

fight to the end, and stand alone."

"You make me tired," snapped Sadler again. "There are plenty of women of

the right sort who'd prefer an artist with a name to some damned bore of

a booby who hasn't an idea in his head. They're not fools, those women,

I tell you. They know there's no money in the profession; they know you

can't get everything in life. Life's a compromise. You've got to give

and take. And when women have money, you'll find they understand these

things better than when they haven't. A romantic boy runs after a

rosy-cheeked, bread-and-butter miss with nothing. The chit gives

herself airs, expects what they call 'an establishment'--the rotten

Philistines!--and then starts out to please herself in every way, places

her whims and caprices first, and the happiness of the household

nowhere. The brute exacts every sacrifice, and if she has to make the

tiniest concession, it rankles in her all her life."

Wyndham dissented. The same things might happen even if the chit were a

millionaire.

Sadler dissented in his turn. He insisted that in woman money and good

sense somehow went together. It was a fact. "Look how much happier

French marriages are; look how the husband and wife are comrades and

stick together. I tell you the French system is the best in the world.

Every girl brings her husband a dowry of some kind, and they both work

together for the common good. When the time comes it is easier to pass

on the money to their own daughter in their turn."

Wyndham contended that these things were all a matter of temperament.

"Even at the best you'd have to keep your mind very elastic as to the

type of person, whereas, for my own part," he declared, with the Lady

Betty type in his mind, "I not only hold on to my poetic standpoint, but

there are certain personal ideals I couldn't possibly surrender."

"If you stick out too much for ideals, you'll never get anywhere at

all," said Sadler.

"There are things one must stick out for," insisted Wyndham. "For

instance, I could never marry a woman who wasn't intelligent, and

certainly never one who wasn't beautiful."

"Intelligent--yes. But what is beauty?" asked Sadler, shrugging his

shoulders. "And if you get a woman too obviously beautiful, you'll have

every man a mile round making love to her, like flies round a honey-pot.

It's a sort of primitive law of the universe, and it'll hold good for

all time, I suppose."

"Oh, I should chance all that," said Wyndham.

"But what is beauty?" insisted Sadler.

"I know when I see it," laughed Wyndham.

"Give me character," said Sadler. "Unselfishness and loyalty are the

chief points, and a sort of sweet reasonableness, of course. If a

woman's features aren't quite classical, it's wonderful what a good

dressmaker can do to set them off. Waiter! Cigarettes!"

When ultimately the waiter brought the bill, Sadler produced a silver

sovereign purse, saw with unconcealed horror that it contained only half

a sovereign, then felt in his pockets for loose silver. "It's rather

awkward," he said, pulling the longest of faces. "I'm afraid I haven't

enough left on me after paying for my colours and materials this

morning. I shall have to ask you to lend me a little."

A flash of surprise, an imperceptible raising of the eyebrows; then

swiftly Wyndham accepted the situation, and threw down one of Mary's

banknotes. "Sorry I've nothing smaller," he said, smiling.

"All right, old fellow," said Sadler. "You pay this time, I'll pay next

time."

By the time the waiter brought Wyndham his change, the conversation had

passed on to the last exhibition of the New English Art Club.

Wyndham arrived home, after completing all his business calls, late in

the afternoon, and found that the charwoman had finished her work, and

was replacing the furniture. A not unpleasant tinge of turpentine

permeated the atmosphere. The oak presses, newly polished with beeswax,

shone and glowed even in the shadow of the afternoon. For the first time

for months the hearth was clear of ashes and cinders, and the stone

scoured and whitened.

When the woman had gone he devoted a few minutes to wandering about his

domain, enjoying this new sensation of spotlessness, appreciating the

professional hand, the skill of which had never before seemed so

legitimate a theme for admiration. Then he sat down and wrote to Mary as

follows:--

"MY DEAR LITTLE MARY,--Your sweet little letter came this morning,

and at a moment to be of the greatest service to me. Fortune has

already smiled on me again. For the immediate present I have a

portrait commission for a couple of hundred guineas! A great

fortune--is it not?--after all these seasons of leanness! You will

guess that I am now ambitious of getting to grips again with the big

picture. I have taken a deep and engrossing look at it again, and I

see how to resolve all its difficulties, I daresay, by the spring. I

know this letter will make you happy, so, for Heaven's sake, don't

give another thought to yesterday afternoon. I have been a great

trial to you for so long, and I want to recognise your goodness and

kindness in the only way I can, and that is by--succeeding. My heart

is in the work, and your belief in me shall find justification.

"I am keeping your money; it will remove my last anxiety and enable

me to work at ease. I want you to come here as soon as I have made

some headway with the new work, as I should like you to carry away

the impression on your next visit of something real that has been

accomplished.

"Your loving brother,

"WALTER."