year and I feel pretty sure she gets most of it.”
“Oh, well,” said Stone indifferently, “that doesn’t go far when the
lady wears fifty-guinea hats. Fifty seems to be her price,” and he
laughed loudly.
“Can one really spend fifty guineas on a hat?” I asked.
“If you had seen the hat she was wearing yesterday you would know she
had spent more than fifty on it, and she gets them by the dozen, I
believe.
“I have studied her,” he went on. “She’s a type. She cannot resist a
pretty thing that suits her, whether a piece of lace or a hat or a
pearl; she simply has to have it. It is the colossal vanity of the
woman. She would not only do anything to get it, but if she had to do
without it she would be ill. I remember praising her once for fun as
the loveliest woman in the world and she drank it all in and asked for
more. I have noticed that many pretty women when they are about forty
are like that. Their looks are leaving them; they notice quicker than
anyone that they are not getting more attractive with the years and
they become crazy for adornment. If what you say is true about Ronden’s
income, Mrs. Ronden is crazed with vanity.
“The last time I took her out,” he added, “I told her plainly that
I did not feel inclined to give her any more fifties just for the
asking.” Stone evidently did not think highly of the lady, though he
did not seem to have noticed her Cockney accent.
A little later I met Mrs. Ronden in Sloane Street. Thanks to
Stone’s teaching, I noticed that she was beautifully gowned and
beautifully hatted in a great picture hat of filmy black lace with one
black-and-white ostrich feather.
“A wonderful hat,” I said.
“I am glad you like it,” she laughed delightedly. “I like these big
hats too.”
“I think you would set off any sort of hat,” I replied. “I should like
to see you in a small toque.”
“Would you?” she said, and stopped dead in the street.
“Certainly I would.”
“Really?”
“Really!”
“Wait here a minute,” she said, “and I will be back. I have got a
dressmaker here.”
She went into a quiet little shop in Sloane Street and in a few
minutes came out with a ravishing green toque which set off her henna’d
mane of hair magnificently.
After praising the hat I noticed her dress and at once she became very
cordial to me.
“So few men notice a woman’s dress,” she said, “and it is so important,
don’t you think? I dislike men who are so wrapped up in their own
affairs that they cannot think of anybody else--like that silly husband
of mine.”
“I thought Ronden suited you,” I said. “You look so well together. He
is very good-looking, too, you know, in his dark way, as you are in
your fair beauty.”
“I know,” she said; “his face is good-looking, but I don’t think we
women care for good looks in men much--not nearly as much as men care
for looks in women. Then he’s a cripple. I did not know that or I would
never have married him.”
“A cripple!” I exclaimed in astonishment. “Surely not.”
“He has flat feet,” she went on, “so flat that he cannot walk; he has
to stay in the house all the time; he is a home bird, if you like; can
scarcely walk at all without pain.”
“I did not know,” I said rather dryly, “that walking was a necessary
marital accomplishment.”
“That’s unkind of you,” she answered. “No woman wants a man stuck round
the house all day long. I think those home birds are more jealous and
suspicious than other men. I hate jealousy, don’t you?”
“I don’t really know,” I said. “I don’t think I have ever felt very
jealous.”
“It’s a ’orrid vice,” she said, and the “h” scarcely sounded; quite at
her ease now, the Cockney twang came into her voice.
“I love a bit of fun,” she said, “change and excitement. To stick at
home all day and talk art ain’t living: I’d most as soon be dead! You
men have the best of it: you go out and make up to girls, and if one
don’t please you, another may, while we women have to stick at home and
mend stockings and put on buttons for our husbands. I can’t darn and
won’t; not for my husband; he’s jealous if you like, always nagging at
me. You don’t know how mad he can be.”
Perhaps I looked disbelief, for suddenly she cried: “Look!” and
stripping off her glove she showed me her thumb. “He bent it back that
night we went out with Stone till he almost broke it, the beast”; and
indeed the whole base of the thumb was black and blue. “He is a jealous
brute, and goes mad as those quiet brutes do. I hate such men. I don’t
believe any woman can care for them really.”
I said nothing. The self-revelation was pretty complete.
I wondered vaguely whether matters would drag on in this way or whether
there would be a catastrophe.
“I do not expect you often get hurt,” I remarked; “you are far too
pretty to be hurt much by any man.”
Her appetite for flattery was absolutely limitless; she smiled at once,
perfectly happy, and I think we separated at her own door without an
idea entering her head that I was more sorry for her husband than for
her.
* * * * *
One day I got a note from Ronden from Hampstead asking me to come to
see him. I could not make out why he had suddenly transferred his
household belongings from Knightsbridge to Hampstead. I had not seen
either him or his wife for some time, so I went out to see him gladly.
He had got a little house in Hampstead right up on the Heath, but I
could not help noticing that his hair was all silver above the ears and
he looked ten years older.
“I wanted to see you,” he said, “because I have cut loose.”
“What do you mean?”
“I have got rid of Helena. Her real name was Ellen, but she called
herself Helena,” he added bitterly.
“I am sorry,” I said, not knowing what to say and waiting for him. I
saw he was primed to the muzzle.
“Good God!” he said, “what fools men are. I was trying to make myself a
painter when I met her. She told me that she must have more money for
her boys, and so I did journeyman’s work, as you know, leaving the
artist in me for a more convenient season. I thought she was satisfied
with the three or four thousand pounds a year I gave her; she had all
the dresses--everything she wanted. Yet she took money on all sides,
I am sure, and from all sorts of men. The shame of it! She must have
asked Chesterfield for money.”
“I know nothing about it,” I answered, “though I have been his friend
for years.”
“Englishmen are not good at intrigue,” said Ronden, flaming, “as
Jews are and the other men she gets. Chesterfield sent her two pearl
earrings. She told me they were false, so I thought nothing of her
having bought them. Then I got a letter of his one day; just a note;
I had opened it and looked at it before I realised what it was. He
excused himself, saying that the pearls had cost him eight hundred
pounds, and he could not send her any money at the moment.
“She must have asked him for money shamelessly. And I had given her my
whole life, minted my heart, my blood, my artist faculty--everything,
to give her all she wanted.
“She cares for nothing but herself--not even for her children; she was
quite willing to hand them over to me, give me full care and control
of them. She has no natural affection at all.... She used to cry with
rage, but would stop herself quickly because her eyelids swelled and
got red and remained inflamed a long time in spite of her bathing. I
never saw her cry with sorrow except once when her hair began to come
out in handfuls; then she cried so that I thought she would be ill till
I told her she would only lose more hair by doing that, and then she
stopped quick enough.... She’s all vanity!
“I came away from Knightsbridge; I could not stand the place though
I loved it. I took this house away from everyone. Fancy, suppose I
had met Stone! I know that she has had money from him. He would never
have dared to touch her in public as he did if she hadn’t prostituted
herself. The shame of it! I am afraid to go out for fear of meeting
anyone I know. Everyone I know, I seem to have known through her--and
from all of them I feel sure she has had money. Oh, damn her, the----!”
I was silent for a moment. Then I said: “Look here: why not turn round
now and give yourself to your art, do your real work as you ought to
have done long ago? You are still a young man.”
“You’re right,” he said, his despairing eyes searching mine. “I must do
my work. That is why I wrote to you. I felt you would help me. We all
have to bear some burden, I suppose.”
“Sure!” I broke in; “and the heavier the burden for the artist the more
he is able to reveal afterwards. You remember Shelley’s
‘Our sweetest songs are those
That tell of saddest thought.’
Turn your anguish into soul-beauty. That will be your consolation and
ultimately your reward.”
“That’s it,” he cried; “that’s it. I knew you would help me. I’ll get
to work, though I’m nearly out of my mind with grief and rage and
shame. I loved her,” he said, lifting despairing eyes to me. “God! how
I loved her. Why? Why?” And he fell to graming.
I got away by promising to come again soon, and in a week or so I went
back, hoping he would have at least begun a picture; but no--he was as
wild as ever, or worse.
“I’ve done nothing,” he replied bitterly to my questioning. “She has
ruined me. What do you think of that for a bill?” and he took a bill
and threw it across to me. It was for hats for six months--eight
hundred pounds.
“I have paid a dozen at least of those,” he added. “They must come to
an end soon for I’m bankrupt. Why are such women allowed to live? We
kill snakes that are harmless and let such creatures live----”
There was madness in his eyes. I grew anxious for him.
“Get to work,” I cried, “and stop thinking of the past. You are doing
yourself harm; you must stop resolutely and get to work.” I insisted
and persisted till he got out a canvas and stretched it and promised me
to get to work on it at once--Ruth, a Biblical subject that had been in
his mind for years.
Before I called again to see how Ronden was getting on the
Greek-Turkish war had broken out and I was sent to Turkey by _The
Manchester Guardian_. It was one of the great experiences of my life,
but I must not stop now to draw the moral of it.
When I returned to London some six months later I found two letters
from Ronden: the first written shortly after my departure, thanking me
for my encouragement, telling me how well he was getting on and asking
me to come to see him when my occupation permitted. The second was
months later; in it Ronden just asked me to call. Its reticence puzzled
me; what had happened?
As soon as I had a free afternoon I went up. Ronden received me in the
old friendly way, but now nothing could disguise the change in his
appearance. He was an old man; the hair grey, the smooth skin all lined
and, worst of all, the brown hazel eyes were only half alive; the whole
face had changed, lost colour, brightness, hope.
He received me pleasantly, and I explained my absence and silence; he
had guessed that I had been called away.
“But what have you done meanwhile?” I asked.
“I’ll show you,” he replied quietly; “not very much, I’m afraid”; and
he led the way to the studio. As we passed through the drawing-room I
was startled by a still-life of astonishing beauty: an arum lily in an
apple-green vase with primroses--a glory of colour. “First-rate,” I
cried. “I was sure you’d make good; I’m so glad.”
Ronden nodded his head half sadly and went on; on an easel in the
studio was a portrait of his wife, very frank and straightforward; but
it left one with a doubt of the woman; it was like a head by Titian
for richness of colour and veracity; near it a great picture of _Ruth
in the Alien Corn_, Boaz in the middle distance and far-off hills
framing the scene. What was the matter with it? The Ruth was plainly
a Jewess--black hair and brows, large dark eyes and lips a thread of
scarlet, and yet----
I felt puzzled: the landscape was really good, the corn wonderfully
rendered, the shadows pools of purple on the ground.
What was the matter?
I turned with a question in my face: Ronden without a word drew up
another easel and showed me the head of a well-known star actress: Miss
Jay’s face was unmistakable: yet?----
Suddenly the truth flashed on me. Both portraits had a look of Mrs.
Ronden.
I turned to Ronden just as he gripped me by the arm. “You see it too,”
he exclaimed with savage intensity; “it’s _her_ face, always _her_
damned soul that looks through brown eyes or black, always _hers_----
“Has she cast a spell on me or am I crazy?” he raved on. “I’ve tried
everything. The first figure pictures I did I destroyed; they were
all plainly Helena; damn her! So I got models and copied the models
religiously; all to no use, still _she_ looks out of every canvas at
me--the beast----
“She’s got into my blood,” he whispered, “and I shall never get her
out”--and his face went grey with despair.
“Oh yes, you will,” I cried. “Your landscapes are lovely; that
still-life alone is worth any labour and this _Miss Jay_ has less of
her look than the _Ruth_. Stick at it, man, and you’ll work yourself
free----”
He shook his head. “It’s worse than you think,” he began. “I got a
model a month ago for the figure; the girl was beautifully made, but as
I drew her--thighs, breasts, all her lovely outlines--beside her I saw
more distinctly than the real figure, the lines of Helena; I couldn’t
draw the model, man; all the while I was seduced by the other; her
memory is stronger than reality; I am her slave; yet I loathe her and
her prostitute’s soul. Was there ever such degradation?”
“Stick at it, man,” I cried. “Ten years of passion cannot be wiped out
in six months; but you’ll get free--why, one of these days you’ll be
falling in love with some model and that’ll be a final cure; you’re
young yet, not forty?----”
“Thirty-five,” he replied. “Perhaps you are right; your courage does me
good; I’ll go on. I was nearly giving up----”
“Do some more flower work and vases,” I said. “Set yourself tasks; put
a rumpled damask cloth on the table; throw white roses on it and red
cherries and gold oranges--make it all flame with colour: call on your
real talent all the while; and work, man, work; don’t think; work is
the cure.”
“I knew you’d help me,” he remarked quietly. “I believe you’re right;
I’ll get at it again; I’ll do a flower piece that’ll astonish you. I
promise. I’ll work.”
“I want to live and get free,” he added, “work myself free. Thank you,
thank you!”
I left him on this in good heart, as I thought, and resolved to visit
him again in a week or so; but my own work pulled me, and one day
a month later when I came into my rooms I was surprised to find on
my mantel-shelf a flower piece superbly painted. It was my thought
realised. There was the crumpled tablecloth and a vase and cherries
thrown about and oranges of red-gold and among them a broken nutshell
showing a little dried-up kernel--all marvellously rendered.
“Who sent it?” I had asked my servant before I saw it and remembered.
“When did it come?” I added.
“This morning, sir,” he replied, “a messenger boy brought it, just like
that, so I put it up there.”
I nodded. ’Twas too late to go Hampstead that evening; on the morrow
I’d go.
The morning after when I opened the paper the first thing that struck
me was:
+Death of an Artist: Frank Ronden.
Suicide Suspected.+
And the journalist went on to tell how Ronden’s wife had left him and
how he had grieved for her and tried to get her to return--the usual
rigmarole of romantic lies.
To say I was shocked doesn’t convey an idea of what I felt then and for
weeks afterwards. He had taken, it appeared from the inquest, a whole
handful of trional--taken it purposely; he had paid his servant the
night before and cut up and burnt all his pictures.
If I had gone to see him as I intended, could I have saved him? Who can
tell? We men are so ignorant, so short-sighted, so selfish.
A month later I ran into Stone. “The very man I wanted to see,” he
shouted. “You know Ronden killed himself for that b----[I nodded], but
you don’t know that she’s got hold of Lord Haliburt and he’s adopted
her two sons: she’s Lady Haliburt now--what do you think of that?”
“Never!” I cried.
“It’s true,” he grinned; “she came to me and begged the money for the
wedding dress, and though I only half believed her story, I risked the
fifty--fifty was her figure, you know--and by God she brought it off.
She’s a marvel--that woman!
“I’m glad I don’t like your cold women,” he added: “they must love the
game if I’m to be interested. Lord Haliburt has made a bad bargain.”
I took no interest in the outcome. Poor Ronden’s flower piece will
always be with me, teaching that a too great love is a mortal malady.
AS OTHERS SEE US
AS OTHERS SEE US
This is a story I heard told by the hero of it, if hero he could be
called, Raoul de Reval. When I first met him Raoul was a handsome
and charming man, in the early twenties, of good medium height, with
upwaving golden moustache, noticeably fairer than his brown hair and
hazel brown eyes; he had good teeth and very red lips. He was well
made too, slight, but better looking because of his slightness, and
finished perfectly even to his hands, with their small wrists and long
tapering fingers. Before he got his degree as a lawyer in Paris he had
begun to write, and his stories were curiously like himself: elegant,
sympathetic, attractive, charmingly finished. I used to praise them to
him, and he sought me out time and again, soliciting my praise almost
like a girl.
I could not tell him the truth, that his stories and articles--all he
wrote, in fact--were of light weight. The characters he selected were
French characters of ladies and gentlemen of the better class, and they
were not deeply realised nor their circumstances deeply etched in, yet
the dialogue in his stories was excellently conventional, but true to
the convention. I told him one day in a fit of frankness that if he
ever had a great passion or a soul-searing, tragic experience he might
become a great writer.
I left Paris and did not return to it for many years. After three or
four years of absence I got a letter from Raoul asking me to send him,
if I could spare it, five or six thousand francs, as he was in sore
need. The letter was almost incoherent, pencilled in great haste: the
address given was in the rue Ramey, up in Montmartre somewhere--a
common, out-of-the-way little street. Nothing less like a begging
letter could be imagined. It was even a poorer specimen of the art
than the worst of his stories. I happened to be in funds and sent
him the money, and, strange to say, did not hear from him again,
no acknowledgment even, which seemed to me curious; but as I had
registered the letter I shrugged my shoulders and promised myself if
I ever met him again to find out what had happened--what hole he had
fallen into, for he had always seemed to me to be well off.
Curiously enough, I did not get to Paris to stay for twelve or thirteen
years: my work in London had been engrossing and I only passed through
Paris without stopping long enough to look up any of my old friends.
One day, however, the taxi-cab I was in nearly ran into, in fact did
graze, a splendid limousine. An angry face was thrust out of the window
of the limousine and the owner of it told my taxi-cab driver what he
thought of him in picturesque French. The voice screamed, and it was
from the thinness of the voice that the thought flashed across me
that this was Raoul. I called him by his name, and the next moment
we were shaking hands on the pavement at the corner of the rue de la
Paix--shaking hands and grinning as old friends met by happy accident.
He wanted to know where I was staying--when I could come to see him--a
dozen questions; finally we fixed a rendezvous for the next day at
dinner.
He was living in the Parc Monceau, and he presented me to his wife, who
seemed to me older than Raoul--a good deal older. They had no children,
though they had been married six or seven years.
As I sat at table with them I could not help wondering at the changes
wrought by time. Raoul had got much stouter, his face had lost its
character of handsome elegance. He was still good-looking, but the
flesh about the jaws was sagging into a double chin. There were the
beginnings of gummy bags round the eyes: in fine, he was a man who had
not got better-looking with age, but commoner, coarser.
The apartment was splendid, looking out on the Parc Monceau and
beautifully furnished.
After dinner Madame Raoul had coffee served in her husband’s study and
left us to ourselves rather prettily, saying she knew we would have
lots to talk over: she had heard so much about me from Raoul that she
was sure I would have nothing but a good influence on “Toutou,” as she
called him, the pet name usually given to a little dog in France.
“Well, Toutou,” I said, smiling, “you seem to have landed on your feet.
You never answered my letter from that place in the rue Ramey. It is
seven years ago now.”
“No,” he said, “but your help saved me at a critical moment. I shall be
delighted to send you a cheque in return.”
“Won’t you tell me about it?” I asked. “You were not a wild adventurer
in life,” I added, giving my surprise words.
He hesitated a little while and then began:
“You used to say that I might be a great writer if I had a great
passion. Well, the great passion came. I fell in love with a girl on
the _Bouffes_ (Les Bouffes Parisiennes, a theatre for lightest comedy).
She was pretty, but what took me was her perfect figure: you know I was
always a lover of sculpture rather than of painting; then, too, she was
impudently vivacious, with a curious understanding of life and pert
shameless speech. Talk about _argot_! she was born in the gutter and
really used the language of the _Apache_ with most extraordinary verve.
“Is it our opposites that tempt us so in life, attract us so
desperately? I was _pincé_, by her naked vulgarity!
“I took an apartment for her and put her, as we say, _dans ses
meubles_, and treated her as I would have treated a wife. I wonder now
I didn’t marry her; I was crazy about her. I had a little patrimony
my father had left me, a couple of hundred thousand francs, just
enough for me to live on with my stories, but Augustine was terribly
extravagant (yes, that was her name; it suited the little grig by
contrast). Money slipped through her little claws like water, and at
the end of three or four years I found I had spent everything. I had
not written much in the forty months, so I had to try to get work on a
paper. I had a bitter year: I fell as one might fall through a tree,
clutching branch after branch that broke away with me and let me down
lower, but Augustine stuck to me until our apartment was to be sold
up. Then I discovered that she had been deceiving me for the last six
months or so, and she told me quite coolly she was going to live with
my friend Levallière, who had arranged to take over the furniture and
the apartment and pay the debts.”
At this Raoul got up: “It nearly killed me, you know,” he said. “I had
no idea one could suffer so intensely, and as time went on the ache of
loss seemed to increase. I could not write or work; but I had a dear
student friend who lived in the rue Ramey, and I went there and he took
me in. I had a sort of brain fever, and it was when I had recovered
from the fever and had made up my mind in my weak state to take up life
again and not be beaten by a _gourgandine_ that I wrote you that letter
and you sent me the money, which practically saved me, gave me a chance
anyhow to go home to Brittany and get quite sane again, and there on
the _plage_ I met my wife.
“She was a Mademoiselle Pousset, daughter of the great grocer and rich.
She fell in love with me, and I saw that the sensible thing to do was
to fall in love with her as far as I could and marry her, which I did
promptly. She has many good qualities, my wife, and the Augustines
teach you how valuable goodness is: a little heart is worth a lot of
body--in anyone.
“We went to spend our honeymoon in Switzerland, in Lucerne, and the
honeymoon was extended to three months because my father-in-law and
mother-in-law were arranging our apartment for us.”
I interrupted him by saying: “At any rate, they have treated you very
well in that respect.”
He burst out laughing.
“Oh,” he said carelessly, “this is the price of _The Wingless
Victory_.” He pointed to a statue in the corner, an original from the
Acropolis. “You know my story of that name?” he went on.
I replied politely: “Oh yes, I have heard of it.”
“You have not read it, then?”
I replied: “No, I have had so much to do in England.”