XLIX

She had guessed happily in saying to him that to offer to paint Gabriel

Nash would be the way to get rid of that visitant. It was with no such

invidious purpose indeed that our young man proposed to his intermittent

friend to sit; rather, as August was dusty in the London streets, he had

too little hope that Nash would remain in town at such a time to oblige

him. Nick had no wish to get rid of his private philosopher; he liked

his philosophy, and though of course premeditated paradox was the light

to read him by he yet had frequently and incidentally an inspired

unexpectedness. He remained in Rosedale Road the man who most produced

by his presence the effect of company. All the other men of Nick's

acquaintance, all his political friends, represented, often very

communicatively, their own affairs, their own affairs alone; which when

they did it well was the most their host could ask of them. But Nash had

the rare distinction that he seemed somehow to figure _his_ affairs, the

said host's, and to show an interest in them unaffected by the ordinary

social limitations of capacity. This relegated him to the class of high

luxuries, and Nick was well aware that we hold our luxuries by a fitful

and precarious tenure. If a friend without personal eagerness was one of

the greatest of these it would be evident to the simplest mind that by

the law of distribution of earthly boons such a convenience should be

expected to forfeit in duration what it displayed in intensity. He had

never been without a suspicion that Nash was too good to last, though

for that matter nothing had yet confirmed a vague apprehension that his

particular manner of breaking up or breaking down would be by his

wishing to put so fresh a recruit in relation with other disciples.

That would practically amount to a catastrophe, Nick felt; for it was

odd that one could both have a great kindness for him and not in the

least, when it came to the point, yearn for a view of his personal

extensions. His originality had always been that he appeared to have

none; and if in the first instance he had introduced his bright, young,

political prodigy to Miriam and her mother, that was an exception for

which Peter Sherringham's interference had been mainly responsible. All

the same, however, it was some time before Nick ceased to view it as

perhaps on the awkward books that, to complete his education as it were,

Gabriel would wish him to converse a little with spirits formed by a

like tonic discipline. Nick had an instinct, in which there was no

consciousness of detriment to Nash, that the pupils, possibly even the

imitators, of such a genius would be, as he mentally phrased it,

something awful. He could be sure, even Gabriel himself could be sure,

of his own reservations, but how could either of them be sure of those

of others? Imitation is a fortunate homage only in proportion as it

rests on measurements, and there was an indefinable something in Nash's

doctrine that would have been discredited by exaggeration or by zeal.

Providence happily appeared to have spared it this ordeal; so that Nick

had after months still to remind himself how his friend had never

pressed on his attention the least little group of fellow-mystics, never

offered to produce them for his edification. It scarcely mattered now

that he was just the man to whom the superficial would attribute that

sort of tail: it would probably have been hard, for example, to persuade

Lady Agnes or Julia Dallow or Peter Sherringham that he was not most at

home in some dusky, untidy, dimly-imagined suburb of "culture," a region

peopled by unpleasant phrasemongers who thought him a gentleman and who

had no human use but to be held up in the comic press--which was,

moreover, probably restrained by decorum from touching upon the worst of

their aberrations.

Nick at any rate never ran his academy to earth nor so much as skirted

the suburb in question; never caught from the impenetrable background of

his life the least reverberation of flitting or of flirting, the

fainting esthetic ululation. There had been moments when he was even

moved to anxiety by the silence that poor Gabriel's own faculty of sound

made all about him--when at least it reduced to plainer elements (the

mere bald terms of lonely singleness and thrift, of the lean philosophic

life) the mystery he could never wholly dissociate from him, the air as

of the transient and occasional, the likeness to curling vapour or

murmuring wind or shifting light. It was, for instance, a symbol of this

unclassified state, the lack of all position as a name in cited lists,

that Nick in point of fact had no idea where he lived, would not have

known how to go and see him or send him a doctor if he had heard he was

ill. He had never walked with him to any door of Gabriel's own, even to

pause at the threshold, though indeed Nash had a club, the Anonymous, in

some improbable square, of which he might be suspected of being the only

member--one had never heard of another--where it was vaguely understood

letters would some day or other find him. Fortunately he pressed with

no sharpness the spring of pity--his whole "form" was so easy a grasp

of the helm of consciousness, which he would never let go. He would

never consent to any deformity, but would steer his course straight

through the eventual narrow pass and simply go down over the horizon.

He in any case turned up Rosedale Road one day after Miriam had left

London; he had just come back from a fortnight in Brittany, where he had

drawn refreshment from the tragic sweetness of--well, of everything. He

was on his way somewhere else--was going abroad for the autumn but was

not particular what he did, professing that he had come back just to get

Nick utterly off his mind. "It's very nice, it's very nice; yes, yes, I

see," he remarked, giving a little, general, assenting sigh as his eyes

wandered over the simple scene--a sigh which for a suspicious ear would

have testified to an insidious reaction.

Nick's ear, as we know, was already suspicious; a fact accounting for

the expectant smile--it indicated the pleasant apprehension of a theory

confirmed--with which he returned: "Do you mean my pictures are nice?"

"Yes, yes, your pictures and the whole thing."

"The whole thing?"

"Your existence in this little, remote, independent corner of the great

city. The disinterestedness of your attitude, the persistence of your

effort, the piety, the beauty, in short the edification, of the whole

spectacle."

Nick laughed a little ruefully. "How near to having had enough of me you

must be when you speak of me as edifying!" Nash changed colour slightly

at this; it was the first time in his friend's remembrance that he had

given a sign of embarrassment. "_Vous allez me lacher_, I see it coming;

and who can blame you?--for I've ceased to be in the least spectacular.

I had my little hour; it was a great deal, for some people don't even

have that. I've given you your curious case and I've been generous; I

made the drama last for you as long as I could. You'll 'slope,' my dear

fellow--you'll quietly slope; and it will be all right and inevitable,

though I shall miss you greatly at first. Who knows whether without you

I shouldn't still have been 'representing' Harsh, heaven help me? You

rescued me; you converted me from a representative into an

example--that's a shade better. But don't I know where you must be when

you're reduced to praising my piety?"

"Don't turn me away," said Nash plaintively; "give me a cigarette."

"I shall never dream of turning you away; I shall cherish you till the

latest possible hour. I'm only trying to keep myself in tune with the

logic of things. The proof of how I cling is that precisely I want you

to sit to me."

"To sit to you?" With which Nick could fancy his visitor a little blank.

"Certainly, for after all it isn't much to ask. Here we are and the

hour's peculiarly propitious--long light days with no one coming near

me, so that I've plenty of time. I had a hope I should have some orders:

my younger sister, whom you know and who's a great optimist, plied me

with that vision. In fact we invented together a charming little sordid

theory that there might be rather a 'run' on me from the chatter (such

as it was) produced by my taking up this line. My sister struck out the

idea that a good many of the pretty ladies would think me interesting

and would want to be done. Perhaps they do, but they've controlled

themselves, for I can't say the run has commenced. They haven't even

come to look, but I daresay they don't yet quite take it in. Of course

it's a bad time--with every one out of town; though you know they might

send for me to come and do them at home. Perhaps they will when they

settle down. A portrait-tour of a dozen country-houses for the autumn

and winter--what do you say to that for the ardent life? I know I

excruciate you," Nick added, "but don't you see how it's in my interest

to try how much you'll still stand?"

Gabriel puffed his cigarette with a serenity so perfect that it might

have been assumed to falsify these words. "Mrs. Dallow will send for

you--_vous allez voir ca_," he said in a moment, brushing aside all

vagueness.

"She'll send for me?"

"To paint her portrait; she'll recapture you on that basis. She'll get

you down to one of the country-houses, and it will all go off as

charmingly--with sketching in the morning, on days you can't hunt, and

anything you like in the afternoon, and fifteen courses in the evening;

there'll be bishops and ambassadors staying--as if you were a

'well-known,' awfully clever amateur. Take care, take care, for, fickle

as you may think me, I can read the future: don't imagine you've come to

the end of me yet. Mrs. Dallow and your sister, of both of whom I speak

with the greatest respect, are capable of hatching together the most

conscientious, delightful plan for you. Your differences with the

beautiful lady will be patched up and you'll each come round a little

and meet the other halfway. The beautiful lady will swallow your

profession if you'll swallow hers. She'll put up with the palette if

you'll put up with the country-house. It will be a very unusual one in

which you won't find a good north room where you can paint. You'll go

about with her and do all her friends, all the bishops and ambassadors,

and you'll eat your cake and have it, and every one, beginning with your

wife, will forget there's anything queer about you, and everything will

be for the best in the best of worlds; so that, together--you and

she--you'll become a great social institution and every one will think

she has a delightful husband; to say nothing of course of your having a

delightful wife. Ah my dear fellow, you turn pale, and with reason!"

Nash went lucidly on: "that's to pay you for having tried to make me let

you have it. You have it then there! I may be a bore"--the emphasis of

this, though a mere shade, testified to the first personal resentment

Nick had ever heard his visitor express--"I may be a bore, but once in a

while I strike a light, I make things out. Then I venture to repeat,

'Take care, take care.' If, as I say, I respect _ces dames_ infinitely

it's because they will be acting according to the highest wisdom of

their sex. That's the sort of thing women do for a man--the sort of

thing they invent when they're exceptionally good and clever. When

they're not they don't do so well; but it's not for want of trying.

There's only one thing in the world better than their incomparable

charm: it's their abysmal conscience. Deep calleth unto deep--the one's

indeed a part of the other. And when they club together, when they

earnestly consider, as in the case we're supposing," Nash continued,

"then the whole thing takes a lift; for it's no longer the virtue of the

individual, it's that of the wondrous sex."

"You're so remarkable that, more than ever, I must paint you," Nick

returned, "though I'm so agitated by your prophetic words that my hand

trembles and I shall doubtless scarcely be able to hold my brush. Look

how I rattle my easel trying to put it into position. I see it all there

just as you show it. Yes, it will be a droll day, and more modern than

anything yet, when the conscience of women makes out good reasons for

men's not being in love with them. You talk of their goodness and

cleverness, and it's certainly much to the point. I don't know what else

they themselves might do with those graces, but I don't see what man can

do with them but be fond of them where he finds them."

"Oh you'll do it--you'll do it!" cried Nash, brightly jubilant.

"What is it I shall do?"

"Exactly what I just said; if not next year then the year after, or the

year after that. You'll go halfway to meet her and she'll drag you about

and pass you off. You'll paint the bishops and become a social

institution. That is, you'll do it if you don't take great care."

"I shall, no doubt, and that's why I cling to you. You must still look

after me," Nick went on. "Don't melt away into a mere improbable

reminiscence, a delightful, symbolic fable--don't if you can possibly

help it. The trouble is, you see, that you can't really keep hold very

tight, because at bottom it will amuse you much more to see me in

another pickle than to find me simply jogging down the vista of the

years on the straight course. Let me at any rate have some sort of

sketch of you as a kind of feather from the angel's wing or a photograph

of the ghost--to prove to me in the future that you were once a solid

sociable fact, that I didn't invent you, didn't launch you as a deadly

hoax. Of course I shall be able to say to myself that you can't have

been a fable--otherwise you'd have a moral; but that won't be enough,

because I'm not sure you won't have had one. Some day you'll peep in

here languidly and find me in such an attitude of piety--presenting my

bent back to you as I niggle over some interminable botch--that I shall

give cruelly on your nerves and you'll just draw away, closing the door

softly. You'll be gentle and considerate about it and spare me, you

won't even make me look round. You'll steal off on tiptoe, never, never

to return."

Gabriel consented to sit; he professed he should enjoy it and be glad to

give up for it his immediate foreign commerce, so vague to Nick, so

definite apparently to himself; and he came back three times for the

purpose. Nick promised himself a deal of interest from this experiment,

for with the first hour of it he began to feel that really as yet, given

the conditions under which he now studied him, he had never at all

thoroughly explored his friend. His impression had been that Nash had a

head quite fine enough to be a challenge, and that as he sat there day

by day all sorts of pleasant and paintable things would come out in his

face. This impression was not gainsaid, but the whole tangle grew

denser. It struck our young man that he had never _seen_ his subject

before, and yet somehow this revelation was not produced by the sense of

actually seeing it. What was revealed was the difficulty--what he saw

was not the measurable mask but the ambiguous meaning. He had taken

things for granted which literally were not there, and he found things

there--except that he couldn't catch them--which he had not hitherto

counted in or presumed to handle. This baffling effect, eminently in the

line of the mystifying, so familiar to Nash, might have been the result

of his whimsical volition, had it not appeared to our artist, after a

few hours of the job, that his sitter was not the one who enjoyed it

most. He was uncomfortable, at first vaguely and then definitely

so--silent, restless, gloomy, dim, as if on the test the homage of a

directer attention than he had ever had gave him less pleasure than he

would have supposed. He had been willing to judge of this in good

faith; but frankly he rather suffered. He wasn't cross, but was clearly

unhappy, and Nick had never before felt him contract instead of

expanding.

It was all accordingly as if a trap had been laid for him, and our young

man asked himself if it were really fair. At the same time there was

something richly rare in such a relation between the subject and the

artist, and Nick was disposed to go on till he should have to stop for

pity or for shame. He caught eventually a glimmer of the truth

underlying the strangeness, guessed that what upset his friend was

simply the reversal, in such a combination, of his usual terms of

intercourse. He was so accustomed to living upon irony and the

interpretation of things that it was new to him to be himself

interpreted and--as a gentleman who sits for his portrait is always

liable to be--interpreted all ironically. From being outside of the

universe he was suddenly brought into it, and from the position of a

free commentator and critic, an easy amateurish editor of the whole

affair, reduced to that of humble ingredient and contributor. It

occurred afterwards to Nick that he had perhaps brought on a catastrophe

by having happened to throw off as they gossiped or languished, and not

alone without a cruel intention, but with an impulse of genuine

solicitude: "But, my dear fellow, what will you do when you're old?"

"Old? What do you call old?" Nash had replied bravely enough, but with

another perceptible tinge of irritation. "Must I really remind you at

this time of day that that term has no application to such a condition

as mine? It only belongs to you wretched people who have the incurable

superstition of 'doing'; it's the ignoble collapse you prepare for

yourselves when you cease to be able to do. For me there'll be no

collapse, no transition, no clumsy readjustment of attitude; for I

shall only _be_, more and more, with all the accumulations of

experience, the longer I live."

"Oh I'm not particular about the term," said Nick. "If you don't call it

old, the ultimate state, call it weary--call it final. The accumulations

of experience are practically accumulations of fatigue."

"I don't know anything about weariness. I live freshly--it doesn't

fatigue me."

"Then you need never die," Nick declared.

"Certainly; I daresay I'm indestructible, immortal."

Nick laughed out at this--it would be such fine news to some people. But

it was uttered with perfect gravity, and it might very well have been in

the spirit of that gravity that Nash failed to observe his agreement to

sit again the next day. The next and the next and the next passed, but

he never came back.

True enough, punctuality was not important for a man who felt that he

had the command of all time. Nevertheless his disappearance "without a

trace," that of a personage in a fairy-tale or a melodrama, made a

considerable impression on his friend as the months went on; so that,

though he had never before had the least difficulty about entering into

the play of Gabriel's humour, Nick now recalled with a certain fanciful

awe the special accent with which he had ranked himself among

imperishable things. He wondered a little if he hadn't at last,

balancing always on the stretched tight-rope of his wit, fallen over on

the wrong side. He had never before, of a truth, been so nearly witless,

and would have to have gone mad in short to become so singularly simple.

Perhaps indeed he was acting only more than usual in his customary

spirit--thoughtfully contributing, for Nick's enlivenment, a purple rim

of mystery to an horizon now so dreadfully let down. The mystery at any

rate remained; another shade of purple in fact was virtually added to

it. Nick had the prospect, for the future, of waiting to see, all

curiously, when Nash would turn up, if ever, and the further

diversion--it almost consoled him for the annoyance of being left with a

second unfinished thing on his hands--of imagining in the portrait he

had begun an odd tendency to fade gradually from the canvas. He couldn't

catch it in the act, but he could have ever a suspicion on glancing at

it that the hand of time was rubbing it away little by little--for all

the world as in some delicate Hawthorne tale--and making the surface

indistinct and bare of all resemblance to the model. Of course the moral

of the Hawthorne tale would be that his personage would come back in

quaint confidence on the day his last projected shadow should have

vanished.

L

One day toward the end of March of the following year, in other words

more than six months after Mr. Nash's disappearance, Bridget Dormer came

into her brother's studio and greeted him with the effusion that

accompanies a return from an absence. She had been staying at

Broadwood--she had been staying at Harsh. She had various things to tell

him about these episodes, about his mother, about Grace, about her small

subterraneous self, and about Percy's having come, just before, over to

Broadwood for two days; the longest visit with which, almost since they

could remember, the head of the family had honoured their common parent.

Nick noted indeed that this demonstration had apparently been taken as a

great favour, and Biddy loyally testified to the fact that her elder

brother was awfully jolly and that his presence had been a pretext for

tremendous fun. Nick accordingly asked her what had passed about his

marriage--what their mother had said to him.

"Oh nothing," she replied; and Percy had said nothing to Lady Agnes and

not a word to herself. This partly explained, for his junior, the

consequent beatitude--none but cheerful topics had been produced; but he

questioned the girl further--to a point which led her to say: "Oh I

daresay that before long she'll write to her."

"Who'll write to whom?"

"Mamma'll write to Percy's wife. I'm sure he'd like it. Of course we

shall end by going to see her. He was awfully disappointed at what he

found in Spain--he didn't find anything."

Biddy spoke of his disappointment almost with commiseration, for she was

evidently inclined this morning to a fresh and kindly view of things.

Nick could share her feeling but so far as was permitted by a

recognition merely general of what his brother must have looked for. It

might have been snipe and it might have been bristling boars. Biddy was

indeed brief at first about everything, in spite of all the weeks that

had gone since their last meeting; for he quickly enough saw she had

something behind--something that made her gay and that she wanted to

come to quickly. He was vaguely vexed at her being, fresh from

Broadwood, so gay as that; for--it was impossible to shut one's eyes to

the fact--what had practically come to pass in regard to that rural

retreat was exactly what he had desired to avert. All winter, while it

had been taken for granted his mother and sisters were doing what he

wished, they had been doing precisely what he hated. He held Biddy

perhaps least responsible, and there was no one he could exclusively

blame. He washed his hands of the matter and succeeded fairly well, for

the most part, in forgetting he was not pleased. Julia herself in truth

appeared to have been the most active member of the little group united

to make light of his decencies. There had been a formal restitution of

Broadwood, but the three ladies were there more than ever, with the

slight difference that they were mainly there with its mistress. Mahomet

had declined to go any more to the mountain, so the mountain had

virtually come to Mahomet.

After their long visit in the autumn Lady Agnes and her girls had come

back to town; but they had gone down again for Christmas and Julia had

taken this occasion to write to Nick that she hoped very much he

wouldn't refuse them all his own company for just a little scrap of the

supremely sociable time. Nick, after reflexion, judged it best not to

refuse, so that he passed, in the event, four days under his cousin's

roof. The "all" proved a great many people, for she had taken care to

fill the house. She took the largest view of hospitality and Nick had

never seen her so splendid, so free-handed, so gracefully active. She

was a perfect mistress of the revels; she had arranged some ancient

bravery for every day and for every night. The Dormers were so much in

it, as the phrase was, that after all their discomfiture their fortune

seemed in an hour to have come back. There had been a moment when, in

extemporised charades, Lady Agnes, an elderly figure being required,

appeared on the point of undertaking the part of the housekeeper at a

castle, who, dropping her _h_'s, showed sheeplike tourists about; but

she waived the opportunity in favour of her daughter Grace. Even Grace

had a great success; Grace dropped her _h_'s as with the crash of

empires. Nick of course was in the charades and in everything, but Julia

was not; she only invented, directed, led the applause. When nothing

else was forward Nick "sketched" the whole company: they followed him

about, they waylaid him on staircases, clamouring to be allowed to sit.

He obliged them so far as he could, all save Julia, who didn't clamour;

and, growing rather red, he thought of Gabriel Nash while he bent over

the paper. Early in the new year he went abroad for six weeks, but only

as far as Paris. It was a new Paris for him then; a Paris of the Rue

Bonaparte and three or four professional friends--he had more of these

there than in London; a Paris of studios and studies and models, of

researches and revelations, comparisons and contrasts, of strong

impressions and long discussions and rather uncomfortable economies,

small cafes, bad fires and the general sense of being twenty again.

While he was away his mother and sisters--Lady Agnes now sometimes wrote

to him--returned to London for a month, and before he was again

established in Rosedale Road they went back for a third course of

Broadwood. After they had been there five days--and this was the salt of

the whole feast--Julia took herself off to Harsh, leaving them in

undisturbed possession. They had remained so--they wouldn't come up to

town till after Easter. The trick was played, and Biddy, as I have

mentioned, was now very content. Her brother presently learned, however,

that the reason of this was not wholly the success of the trick; unless

indeed her further ground were only a continuation of it. She was not in

London as a forerunner of her mother; she was not even as yet in

Calcutta Gardens. She had come to spend a week with Florry Tressilian,

who had lately taken the dearest little flat in a charming new place,

just put up, on the other side of the Park, with all kinds of lifts and

tubes and electricities. Florry had been awfully nice to her--had been

with them ever so long at Broadwood while the flat was being painted and

prepared--and mamma had then let her, let Biddy, promise to come to her,

when everything was ready, so that they might have a happy old maids'

(for they _were_, old maids now!) house-warming together. If Florry

could by this time do without a chaperon--she had two latchkeys and went

alone on the top of omnibuses, and her name was in the Red Book--she was

enough of a duenna for another girl. Biddy referred with sweet cynical

eyes to the fine happy stride she had thus taken in the direction of

enlightened spinsterhood; and Nick hung his head, immensely abashed and

humiliated, for, modern as he had fatuously supposed himself, there were

evidently currents more modern yet.

It so happened that on this particular morning he had drawn out of a

corner his interrupted study of Gabriel Nash; on no further

curiosity--he had only been looking round the room in a rummaging

spirit--than to see how much or how little of it remained. It had become

to his view so dim an adumbration--he was sure of this, and it pressed

some spring of melancholy mirth--that it didn't seem worth putting away,

and he left it leaning against a table as if it had been a blank canvas

or a "preparation" to be painted over. In this posture it attracted

Biddy's attention, for on a second glance it showed distinguishable

features. She had not seen it before and now asked whom it might

represent, remarking also that she could almost guess, yet not quite:

she had known the original but couldn't name him.

"Six months ago, for a few days, it represented Gabriel Nash," Nick

replied. "But it isn't anybody or anything now."

"Six months ago? What's the matter with it and why don't you go on?"

"What's the matter with it is more than I can tell you. But I can't go

on because I've lost my model."