"I'm tired; done up. Lord! What fools there are in the world! No more

portraits for you, my boy; at least, not this side of thirty. Ten

years good solid work ahead of you."

He laughed.

"I told Cluny he must hurry up or you would slide off into

portrait-painting. Dealers hate the mere sound of the word. He is

going to hurry up. I've played you for all I am worth, and Cluny is in

my pocket. Oh! I'm a man of destiny, I am."

A snort and a giggle came from Oliver. Logan sat up.

"Leave the room!" he said.

"Shan't."

"Leave the room. I want to talk to Kühler."

"Talk away then. I shan't listen."

Logan walked over to her, seized her by the arms, and pushed her into

the bedroom and locked the door. It was done very quickly and

dexterously, as though it were a practised manoeuvre.

"I'm finding out how to treat her," he said. "Quiet firmness does the

trick."

He met Mendel's eyes fixed on him in horrified inquiry and turned

sharply away.

"It isn't as bad as it looks," he said. "The fact is, women aren't fit

for liberty and an artist ought to have nothing to do with them. But

what can a man do? . . . What were we talking about?"

"Cluny."

"Oh yes! He wants the exhibition to be the first fortnight in

November. Can you be ready by then? It must be a turning-point in art,

the beginning of big things. I know myself enough to realize that it

is doubtful if I shall ever be a great creative artist, but I shall be

the Napoleon of the new movement--the soldier and the organizer of the

revolution in art. And it won't be confined to art; it will spread

through everything. Art will be the central international republic

from which the commonwealths which will take the place of the present

vulgar capitalistic nations will be inspired. What do you think of

that for an idea?"

"Stick to art," said Mendel. "I know nothing about the rest."

"Do you remember my saying that the music-hall was all that was left

of old England? I did not know how true it was. England has become one

vast music-hall, with everybody with any talent or brains scrambling

to top the bill. It runs through everything--art, politics, the press,

literature, social reform, women's suffrage, local government; and the

people who top the bill can't be dislodged, just like the poor old

crocks on the halls, who come on and give the same show they were

giving twenty years ago, and get applause instead of rotten eggs

because the British public is so rotten with sentiment and so stupid

that it can't tell when a man has lost his talent. Please one

generation in England and its grandchildren will applaud you, though

everything about you is changed except your name. The result is, of

course, that no talent is ever properly developed. A man reaches the

point where he can please enough people to make a living, and he

sticks there. Now, I ask you, is that a state of things which a

self-respecting artist can accept?"

"No," said Mendel. "No."

"Well. It has to be altered. And who is to alter it if not the

painters, who are less in contact with the general public than any

other artists? Painters had a comfortable time last century, living on

the North-country municipal councils, but that is all over and we are

reduced to poops like Tysoe. There are any number of them, if one only

took the trouble to dig them up, but they're no good. I've lived on

them for the last ten years, and they're no good. You might as well

squeeze your paints into the sink and turn on the tap for all the

flicker of appreciation you get out of them. Then there are the snobs,

the semi-demimondaines of the political set; but they are a seedy lot,

with the minds and the interests of chorus-girls. You might whip up a

little excitement at Oxford and Cambridge, but it would only vanish as

soon as the young idiots came in contact with London and fell in love.

. . . No. Behind the scenes of the music-hall is no good. We must make

a direct onslaught on the general public. They must be taught that

there is such a thing as art and that there are men devoted to the

disinterested development of their talents--men who have no desire to

top the bill or to make five hundred a week; men who recognize that

art is European, universal, the invisible fabric in which human life

is contained, and are content, like simple workmen, to keep it in

repair."

"I don't know," said Mendel, "if my brother-in-law Moscowitsch is

typical, but he regards art which does not make money as a waste of

time."

"Oh! He is a Jew and uneducated. That's where Tolstoi went so wrong.

He confused the simplicity of art with the simplicity of the peasant,

the dignity of the unsophisticated with the dignity that is achieved

through sophistication. It may seem absurd to talk of bringing about

anything so big through little Cluny, but it is not only possible, it

is inevitable. The staleness of London cannot go on, and Paris seemed

just the same to me. Stagnation is intolerable. There must come a

movement towards freedom and a grander gesture, and the only free

people are the painters. They are the only people whose work has not

become servile and vulgarized. Through them lies the natural outlet.

. . . Oh! I have been thinking and thinking, and I thank God we met

before you had been spoiled by success or I had been ruined by my

rotten swindling life--though that has had its advantages too, and I

can meet the dealers on their own ground, and if necessary advertise

as impudently as any of the music-hall artists."

Oliver began to hammer on the door. He went and unlocked it and let

her in.

"You can talk as much as you like now," he said. "I've said my say."

"I heard you," she replied, "talking to Kühler as if he was a crowd in

Hyde Park."

Mendel was lost in thought. He was baffled by this association of art

with things like politics and music-halls, which he had always

accepted as part of the world's constitution but essentially

unimportant. He had no organized mental life. His ideas came direct

from his instincts to his mind, and were either used for immediate

purposes or dropped back again to return when wanted. However, he

recognized the passionate nervous energy that made Logan's words full

and round, and he was glad to have him so accessible and so eager and

purposeful. On the whole, it did not matter to him why Logan thought

his work so important. No one else thought it so, and certainly no one

else had taken so much trouble to help it to find recognition. Logan

seemed to promise him public fame, and that would delight and reassure

his father and mother more than anything else. They treasured every

mention of his name in the newspapers, pasted the cuttings in a book,

and produced it for every visitor to the house.

Struggling for ideas with which to match Logan's, he became

instinctively aware that his friend's enthusiasm was deliberate, not

in itself faked, but artificially heated. Behind it lay a deeper

passion, from which he was endeavouring to divert the energy it

claimed.

Sitting between Logan and Oliver, Mendel could almost intercept the

current of feeling that ran between them. It offended him as an

indecency that they should have so little control over themselves as

to reveal their condition of mutual obsession. . . . It reminded him

of his impression of the police-court, where the secret sores of

society were exposed nakedly, and queer, helpless, shameless,

unrestrained creatures were dealt with almost like parcels in a shop.

And again he had the sensation of being bound to them, of being

confined with them in that little room, of a dead pressure being upon

him, until he must scream or go mad.

He looked at them. Did they not feel it too? Logan was lying back with

his hands beneath his head and his lips pressed together and a scowl

on his face, looking as though his thoughts and his destiny were

almost, but, of course, not quite too much for him. Oliver was looking

out of the window with her hands on her hips, humming. She laughed and

said:--

"I'd sooner live with an undertaker than an artist. He would be up to

a bit of fun sometimes, and he'd do his work without making such a

fuss about it."

"There's an undertaker at the corner of the next street. You'd better

ask him to take you on."

"As a corpse?" asked Mendel, exploding and spluttering at what seemed

to him a very good joke. The others turned and looked at him solemnly,

but neither of them laughed, and gradually his amusement subsided and

he said lamely:--

"I thought it was very funny."

"Oh! for goodness' sake let's go and have something to eat," said

Oliver. "You're turning the place into a tomb with your silence. One'd

think you were going to be crowned King of England instead of just

holding a potty little exhibition."

"He is going to be crowned King of Artists," said Mendel, making

another attempt at a joke.

"By God!" said Logan, "they'd kill me if they knew what I was like

inside. Do you ever feel like that, Kühler, that all the birds in the

cage would peck you to death for having got outside it? I do. I never

see a policeman without feeling he is going to arrest me."

"I used to feel like that sometimes," replied Mendel, "until I was

arrested and realized that policemen are just people like anybody

else. The man who arrested me was a very nice man."

"Oh! I'm sick of your feelings," cried Oliver, "and I want my dinner."

"All right," said Logan, reaching for his hat; "we'll go to the

Pot-au-Feu and afterwards to the Paris Café and fish for critics. I

shall nobble one or two swells through Tysoe. We'll pick up the more

crapulous and lecherous at the café, and Oliver shall be the bait. So

look your prettiest, my dear. . . . Let's have a look at you."

He lit the gas and made her stand beneath it.

"You'll do," he said, patting her cheek. "Come along."

He put his arm through hers. She gave a wriggle of pleasure and

pressed close to him.

Mendel followed them downstairs with an omen at his heart. He felt

sure that something violent would happen.

* * * * *

But nothing violent did happen. The evening was extraordinarily

light-hearted and pleasant. Logan was his old self again, cracking

jokes, mimicking people almost to their faces, giving absurd

descriptions of his interviews with dealers and buyers, and concocting

a burlesque history of his life. Mendel had never laughed so much

since he was at the Detmold. His sides ached, and he was hard put to

it to keep his countenance when at the café Logan caught two critics

and told them that they must make no mistake this time: their

reputations were at stake, nay, the reputation of art criticism was at

the cross-roads, and art was on the threshold of its greatest period,

and criticism should be its herald, not its camp-follower.

"You fellows," said Logan, "use your brains, you are articulate. We

are apt to get lost in paint, in coloured dreams of to-morrow and the

spaces of the night. We lose touch with the world, with life. We are

dependent on you--even the greatest genius is dependent on you. You

are the real patrons of art. The herd follows you. Criticism must not

shirk its duty. The kind of thing that happened with Manet, with

Whistler, ought not to happen again."

The two critics were unused to such treatment from painters. Oliver

used her eyes upon them, detached one of them into a flirtation and

left the other to Logan's mercies. Logan's blood was up. Here was a

game he dearly loved, talking, bullying, hypnotizing another man out

of his individuality. He invented monstrously, outrageously--concocted

a whole new technique of painting, the discovery of which he ascribed

to Mendel's genius, and ended up by saying that painting should be to

England what music had been to Germany, a national and at the same

time a universal art.

The critic had drunk enough to take it all seriously, and he promised

to call and see the work of both painters. His colleague, on the other

hand, made arrangements to take Oliver out to tea and won her promise

to come and see him at his flat.

"That's all right," said Logan, as they left the café at closing time.

"They will remember our names. They will forget how they came to know

them and they will write about us."

III

SUCCESS

IT was all very well for Logan to talk about modern England being a

music-hall, but his methods were almost identical with those of the

publicists whom he decried. The greater part of his energy went to

find a market for his wares, leaving very little for the production of

the wares themselves. Because he was excited and busy and full of

enthusiasm, he took it for granted that he was in a vigorous condition

and that his vision of the future of art would be expressed in art. He

talked volubly of what he was doing and what he intended to do, even

while he worked, and his nerves were so overwrought that he contracted

a horror of being alone. Though Oliver jeered at him as he worked he

would not let her go out, and when once or twice she insisted, he

could not work, and went round to see Mendel and prevented his working

either.

Mendel knew nothing of markets and dealers and the relation of art to

the world and its habits and institutions. He was carried off his feet

by his friend's torrential energy, believed what he said, wore his

thoughts as he would have worn his hat, and lived entirely for the

exhibition which was to do such wonders for him. Twelve exhibits were

required of him. He would have had forty-eight ready if he had been

asked for them. When he missed the delight and the pure joy he had had

in working, he told himself that these emotions were childish and

unworthy of a man, and a nuisance, because they would have prevented

him from knowing clearly what he wanted to do. He dashed at his canvas

with a fair imitation of Logan's manner, slung the paint on to it with

bold strokes, saying to himself: "There! That will astonish them! That

will make them see what painting is!"

And every now and then he would remember that he was in love. He must

paint love as it had never been painted before.

For his subject he chose Ruth in the cornfield, but very soon tired of

painting ears of corn, so he left it looking like a square yellow

block, and painted it up until it resembled a slice of Dutch cheese.

Only when he came to Ruth's face and tried to make it express all the

love with which his heart was overflowing did he paint with the old

fastidious care, but even that could not keep him for long, and he

returned to his corn, the shape of which had begun to fascinate him,

and he wanted somehow to get it into relation with the hill on which

it was set. But he could do nothing with it, and had to go back to

Ruth and love.

The effect was certainly startling and novel, and Logan was

enthusiastic.

"That's it," he said. "The nearest approach to modern art is the

poster, which is not art, of course, because it is not designed by

artists. But it does convey something to the modern mind, it does jog

it out of its routine and habitual rut. Now, your picture wouldn't do

for a poster. It is too good, but it has the same kind of effect.

Stop! Look! Listen! Wake up, and see that there are beautiful women in

the world and blue skies, and love radiant over all! This woman has

nothing to do with what you felt for your wife when you proposed to

her, or with what the parson said when the baby died: she is the woman

the dream of whom lives always in your heart, although you have long

forgotten it. She is the beauty you have passed by for the sake of

peace and quiet and a balance at your bank."

"Do you think it is a good picture?" asked Mendel.

"I think it is a good beginning. Two or three more like that and there

will be a sensation. There will have to be policemen to regulate the

crowd."

Mendel caught his mood of driving excitement and really was convinced

that he had broken through to a style of his own, and to the beginning

of something that might be called modern art.

He was a little dashed when, after Logan had gone, he fetched his

mother over to see it, and all she could find to say was:--

"You used not to paint like that."

"No, of course not," he said impatiently. "The old way was limited,

too limited. It was all very well for painting the life down here,

just what I saw in front of me. This picture is for an exhibition, all

by myself with one other man."

"Logan?" asked Golda dubiously.

"Yes. It is a great honour to give a private exhibition like that at

my age. It is most unusual. This is the beginning of a new style. I'm

beginning a new life."

"You are not going away?" said Golda in a sudden panic that he was to

be snatched away from her.

"I should never go away until you gave your permission," he said. "I

am not so very different from Harry that I want to go away and leave

my people."

"I never know what will come of that painting of yours."

"Success!" he said jestingly. "And fame and money, and beautiful

ladies in furs and diamonds, and carriages and motor-cars, and fine

clothes and rings on everybody's fingers."

"I would rather have you seated quietly in my kitchen than all the

gold of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba," said Golda.

"Then please like my picture."

"I don't like it."

"Then _say_ you like it."

"I don't like it."

"I shall wipe it out then."

"Your new friends will like it."

"_I_ like it," he said. "I don't think it is a very good picture, but

it means something to me."

And he longed for Morrison to come and see it, for it was the first

picture that had directly to do with her. The portrait of her was

hardly more than a drawing. What he called an "art student" might have

done it, but this Ruth, he felt, was the beginning of his work as an

artist, and he thought fantastically that when Morrison saw it she

would see that he was to be treated with respect and would fall in by

his side, and they would live happily, or at least solidly, ever

after.

"Solid" was his great word, and he used it in many senses. It conveyed

to his mind the quality of which he could most thoroughly approve. If

a thing, or a person, or an action, or an emotion were what he called

"solid," then it was a matter of indifference to him whether it was in

the ordinary sense good or bad. He was perfectly convinced that if

Morrison could only be brought to reason, then his life would solidify

and he would be able to go on working in peace.

Meanwhile he was anything but solid. His work, his life, his ideas,

his ambition had all melted under Logan's warm touch and were pouring

towards the crucial exhibition. Mendel looked forward to it

feverishly, because it was to put an end to his present condition, in

which he was like a wax candle, luminous, but fast sinking into

nothingness. If only he could reach the exhibition in time, the wind

of fame would blow out the flame that was reducing him and he would be

able to start afresh . . . But all the time as he worked words of

Logan's rolled in his mind, and had no meaning whatever, except that

they made him think of music-halls and motor-buses and women's legs in

tights and newspapers and electric sky-signs spelling out words letter

by letter. Out of this hotch-potch pictures, works of art, were to

emerge. They were to take their place in it and, according to Logan,

reduce it to order. But how was it possible? . . . In the quiet,

ordered, patriarchal world of the Jews a rare nature might arise, but

in that extraordinary confusion nothing rare could survive. Beauty

could never compete on equal terms with women's legs in tights and

electric sky-signs; it could never produce an impression on minds

obsessed and crammed to overflowing with the multitudinous excitements

of the metropolis.

Mendel was convinced that Logan was right, that beauty must emerge to

establish authority, and he thought of himself as engaged in a combat

with a huge, terrible monster. Every stroke of his brush was a wound

upon its flanks and an abomination the less. Yet he loved all the

things against which he was fighting, because they made the world gay

and stimulating and wonderful. He could see no reason why he should

change the world. It was full enough of change already. Why, in his

own time, the electric railways and the motor-buses had brought an

amazing transformation in the life of the East End. No one now worked

for such little wages as his father had done at the stick-making, and

the life of the streets had lost its terrors and dangers. The young

men had better things to do than to fight each other or to pelt old

Jews with mud, and there was no reason to suppose that such changes

would stop where they were.

However, he had Logan's word for it, and Logan had given art a new

importance in his eyes. He could not think it out himself without

getting hopelessly confused, and there was nothing for it but to go on

with his work.

Other relief he had none. He had written three ardent letters to

Morrison, telling her, absolutely without restraint, of his love and

his need for her, and she had not replied. He was too much hurt to

write again, and as he worked he began to hate love, being in love,

and the idea of it. He persuaded himself that it was a weakness, and

he had ample reason for thinking so, when he compared his loose

condition with his old clear singleness of purpose. What chiefly

exasperated him in this indefinite unsuccessful love of his was that

it exposed him to the passion, every day growing more furious, between

Logan and Oliver. It made his own emotions seem fantastic, with the

most vital current of his being pouring out in a direction far removed

from the rest of his life, apparently ignoring the solid virtues of

his Jewish surroundings and the elated vigour of his career among the

artists.

"It will not do!" he told himself. "I will not have it! What is this

love? Just nonsense invented by people who are afraid of their

passions. A lady indeed? _Is_ she? A lady is only a woman dressed up.

She must learn that she is a woman, or I will have nothing to do with

her."

And sometimes he could persuade himself that he had driven Morrison

from his thoughts. He finished the portrait of her from memory and was

convinced that it was the end of her. It was a good picture and pretty

enough to find a buyer, and there it ended. He had got what he wanted

of her and could pluck her out of his thoughts.

Logan said it was a very fine picture, a real piece of creation.

"And if that doesn't make them see how damned awful their Public

School system is in its effect on women, I'll eat my hat. You've had

your revenge, my boy. You have shown her up. Why don't you call it

_The Foolish Virgin_? Of all the mischievous twaddle that is talked in

this mischievous twaddling country the notion of love is the worst.

You can't love a woman unless you live with her, and a woman is

incapable of loving a man unless he lives with her. By Jove! We'll

hang it and my portrait of Oliver side by side in the exhibition, and

I'll call mine _The Woman who Did._"

"I won't have them side by side," said Mendel. "I want our pictures

kept separate. I don't want it said that we are working together."

"But we _are_ working together."

"Yes. But along our own lines. We're only together really in our

independence. You said yourself that we didn't want to found a

school."

"That's true," replied Logan, "but I don't see why we shouldn't have

our little joke."

"I don't joke with art," said Mendel grimly, and that settled the

matter.

It was the first time he had set his will against his friend's, and he

was surprised to find how soft Logan was. Surely, then, it was he who

was the leader, he who was blazing the new trail for art. . . . He had

to bow to the fact that Logan had a programme while he had none.

However, having once asserted his will, he became critical, and was

not again the docile little disciple he had been.

Logan wanted to draw up a manifesto for the catalogue, to enunciate

the first principles of modern art, namely, that a picture must have

(_a_) not merely a subject, but a conception based on but not bounded

by its subject; (_b_) form, meaning the form dictated by the logic of

the conception, which must of necessity be different from the logic

dictated by the subject, which would lead either to the preconceptions

and prejudices of the schools or to irrelevant and non-pictorial

considerations. All this was set out at some length, and appended were

a number of maxims, such as:--

"In art the important thing is art.

"Abstraction precedes selection.

"Art exists to keep in circulation those spiritual forces, such as

æsthetic emotion, which are denied in ordinary human communications.

"Photography has released art from its ancient burden of

representation," etc., etc.

With the spirit of this manifesto Mendel was in agreement, though he

could make but little of its letter. He refused to agree to it because

so much talk seemed to him unnecessary.

"If we can say what we mean to say in paint, then we need not talk. If

we cannot say it in paint, then we have no right to talk."

"You'd soon bring the world to a standstill," said Logan, "if you

limited talk to the people who have a right to it. It is just those

people who never open their mouths. I think it is criminal of them,

just out of shyness and disgust, to give the buffoons and knaves an

open field."

"All the same," grunted Mendel, "I am not going to agree to the

manifesto. People will read it and laugh at it, and never look at the

pictures. You seem to think of everything but them. I wonder you don't

set up as a dealer."

"You're overworking," said Logan, "that's what you are doing. And

directly the exhibition is open I shall pack you off to Brighton."

* * * * *

Already a week before the opening they began to feel that the eyes of

London were upon them. They crept about the streets half-shamefacedly

like conspirators, relaxed and wary, waiting for the moment when their

triumph should send their shoulders back and their heads up, and they

would march together through a London which owed its salvation to

them. Not since his portrait had appeared in the Yiddish paper had

Mendel been so defiant and so morosely arrogant.

He was ill with excitement and could not do a stroke of work. Every

minute of the day he spent with Logan and Oliver, to whom Tysoe was

often added. He dined with them at the Pot-au-Feu, took them all out

to lunch and tea at places like Richmond and Kew, had them to his

house, and was squeezed by the approaching success to buy Logan's two

largest pictures before the public could have access to them.

"They are masterpieces!" he cried, swinging his long hands, "absolute

masterpieces! You don't know how much good it does me to be with you

two. Absolutely sincere, you are! That's what I like about you.

Sincere! One looks for sincerity in vain everywhere else. Sincerity

has vanished from the theatre, the novel, music, poetry. I suppose it

is democracy--letting the public in behind the scenes, so that they

see through all the tricks."

"An artist isn't a conjurer!" said Mendel.

"That is just what artists have been," cried Logan, "and they can't

bluff it out any more."

"Exactly!" gurgled Tysoe, who when he was roused from his habitual

weak lethargy lost control of his voice, so that it wobbled between a

shrill treble and a husky bass. "Exactly! That's what I like about you

two. No bluff, no tricks. You do what you want to do and damn the

consequences. Ha! ha!"

So ill was Mendel just before the exhibition that Logan refused to

allow him anywhere near it, and insisted that they should both go to

Brighton, leaving Oliver to go to the private view and spy out the

land.

Oliver protested. She wanted to go to Brighton.

"You shall have a new dress and a new hat," said Logan. "You must go

to the private view like a real lady. Cluny doesn't know you, and you

must go up to him every now and then and ask him in a loud voice what

the prices are. You might even pretend to be a little deaf and make

him speak clearly and distinctly."

The idea tickled Mendel so that he began to laugh, could not stop

himself, and was soon almost hysterical.

"What's the matter with you?" asked Oliver, shaking him.

He gasped:--

"I--I was laughing at the idea of your being a real lady. Ha! ha! ha!"

She gave him a clout over the head that sobered him. Logan pounced on

her like a tiger.

"You devil!" he said. "You she-devil! Don't you see the poor boy's

ill?"

"What's that to me?" she screamed, with her head wobbling backwards

and forwards horribly as he shook her. "It's n-nothing t-to m-me!"

She caught Logan by the wrist and sent him spinning, for she was

nearly as strong as he.

"Go to Brighton!" she shouted. "I don't care. I'll be glad to be rid

of you both. You won't find me here when you come back, that's all,

you and your little hurdy-gurdy boy! You only need a monkey and an

organ to make you complete. Why don't you try it? You'd do better at

that than out of pictures."

Logan could not contain himself. His rage burst out of him in a howl

like that of a wind in a chimney, a dismal, empty moan. He stood up,

and the veins on his neck swelled and his mouth opened and shut

foolishly, for he could find nothing to say.

"You slut, you squeezed-out dishclout, you sponge!" he roared at last.

"Clear out, you drab! Clear out into the streets, you trull! Draggle

your skirts in the mud, you filth, you octopus! Sell the carcase that

you don't know how to give, you marble!"

She flung up her hands and sank on to her knees, and let down her hair

and moaned:--

"O God! O God! O God!"

Logan's fury snapped.

"For God's sake! For God's sake!" he said. "What has come over us? Oh,

God help us! What are we doing? What are we coming to? Nell! Nell! I

didn't know what I was saying!"

He went down on his knees beside her, and Mendel, who had been numbed

but inwardly elated by the storm, could not endure the craven

surrender, the cowardly reconciliation, and he left them.

Out in the street he stood tottering on the curb, and spat into the

gutter, with extreme precision, between the bars of a grating.

* * * * *

At Brighton, whither they went next day, Logan explained himself.

"It is extraordinary how near love is to hate, and how rotten love

becomes if hate is suppressed--stale and tasteless and vapid."

"Are you talking about yourself and Oliver?" asked Mendel.

"Yes."

"Then please don't. I don't mind what happens between you and her so

long as it doesn't happen in front of me."

"I'm sorry," said Logan; "but it can't always be prevented. I don't

see the use of pretence."

"Neither do I. But some things are your own affair, and it is indecent

to let other people see them."

"Oh, a row's a row!" said Logan cheerfully. "And one is all the better

for it."

"But if a woman treated me like that I should never speak to her

again."

"Love's too deep for that. You can't stand on your dignity in love."

"I should make her understand once and for all that I would not have

it."

"Then she would deceive you. If you played the tyrant over a girl like

Oliver she would deceive you."

Mendel stared and his jaw dropped. Had Logan forgotten the night in

Paris? Was he such a fool as to pretend he did not know, could not see

that the whole liberation of frenzy in Oliver dated from that night?

. . . Oh, well! It was no affair of his.

To change the subject he said:--

"We ought to get the press-cuttings to-morrow. I wonder if we shall

sell the lot? It's a good beginning, having tickets on your two."

"I bet we sell the lot in a week. Oliver has two of the critics in her

pocket. What do you say to giving a party in honour of the event? We

can afford to forgive our enemies now, and there's a social side to

the movement which we ought not to neglect."

Mendel made no reply. They were sitting on the front. The smooth,

glassy sea, reflecting the stars and the lights of the pier, soothed

and comforted him. Brighton was to him like a part of London, and he

sank drowsily into the happy fantasy that he was being thrust out of

the streets towards the stars and the vast power that lay beyond them.

He was weary of the streets and the clamour, and he wanted peace and

serenity, rest from his own turbulence, the peace which has no

dwelling upon earth and lives only in eternity.

"How good it would be," he said suddenly, "if one could just paint

without a thought of what became of one's pictures."

"That's no good," replied Logan. "One must live."

* * * * *

The first batch of cuttings arrived in the morning. They were brief,

for the most part, quite respectful and appreciative. Mendel learned,

to his astonishment, that he was influenced by Logan, and one critic

lamented that a promising young painter, who could so simply render

the life of his race, should have been infected with modern heresies.

There was no uproar, neither of them was hailed as a master, and Logan

in more than one instance was dismissed as an imitator of Calthrop.

"Calthrop!" said Logan, gulping down his disappointment and disgust.

"Calthrop! Oh well, it is good enough for a beginning. It would have

been very different if you had let me print the manifesto. The swine

need to be told, you know. They want a lead. . . . We'll wait for the

Sunday papers."

* * * * *

London was curiously unchanged when they returned. Mendel was half

afraid he would be recognized as they came out of Charing Cross

Station, but no one looked at him. The convulsion through which he had

lived had left people going about their business, and he supposed that

if an earthquake happened in Trafalgar Square people would still be

going about their business in the Strand.

They were eager for Oliver's account of the private view, and took a

taxi-cab to Camden Town. She was wearing her new dress and was quite

the lady: shook hands with Mendel and asked him haughtily in a mincing

tone how he was. From all these signs he judged that the exhibition

had been a success.

"Quite a lot of people came," she said. "Real swells. There were two

motor-cars outside."

"Yes," said Logan. "Tysoe agreed to leave his car outside for a couple

of hours to encourage people to go in."

"Kühler's picture of the girl with short hair sold at once," she said.

His pleasure in this news was swallowed up in his dislike of hearing

Morrison spoken of by her.

"All your drawings but one are gone, Logan. I listened to what people

said. They wanted to know who you were, and Cluny said you had a great

reputation in the North. People laughed out loud at Kühler's _Ruth_,

and I heard one man say it was only to be expected. He said the Jews

can never produce art. They can only produce infant prodigies."

IV

REACTION

LOGAN made nearly two hundred pounds out of the exhibition and Mendel

over a hundred. His family rejoiced in his triumph. A hundred pounds

was a good year's income to them. They rejoiced, but it was an

oppression to him to go back to them and to talk in Yiddish, in which

there were no words for all that he cared for most. Impossible to

explain to them about art, for they had neither words nor mental

conceptions. Art was to them only a wonderful way of making money, a

kind of magic that went on in the West End, where, once a man was

established, he had only to open his pockets for money to fall into

them.

Up to a point he could share their elation, for in his bitter moments

he too was predatory. If the Christian world would not admit him on

equal terms he had no compunction about despoiling it.

The words "infant prodigy" stuck in his throat, and with his family it

seemed indeed impossible that the Jews could produce art. How could

they, when they had no care for it? And how had he managed to find his

way to it? . . . Going back over his career step by step it seemed

miraculous, and as though there were a special providence governing

his life--Mr. Kuit, the Scotch traveller, Mitchell, Logan, all were as

though they had been pushed forward at the critical moment. And for

what? Merely to exploit an infant prodigy with a skilful trick? . . .

He could not, he would not believe it. The pressure that had driven

him along, the pressure within himself, had been too great for that,

just to squeeze him out into the open and to fill his pockets with

money. There was more meaning in it all than that, more shape, more

design.

Yet when he considered his work he was lacerated with doubt. It ended

so palpably in the portrait of his father and mother, and he knew that

he could never go back to that again. An art that was limited to Jewry

was no art. Among the Jews no light could live. They would not have

it. They would snuff it out, for it was their will to dwell in dark

places and to wait upon the illumination that never came, as of course

it never would until they looked within themselves.

Within himself he knew there was a most vivid light glowing, a spark

which only needed a breath of air upon it to burst into flame. He was

increasingly conscious of it, and it made him feel transparent, as

though nothing could be hidden from those who looked his way. What was

there to hide? If there was evil, it lived but a little while and was

soon spent, while that which was of worth endured and grew under

recognition.

Thence came his devotion to Logan, who simply ignored everything that

apparently gave offence to others and saluted the rare, rich activity.

It was nothing to Logan that he was a Jew and poor and uneducated: he

was educated in art, and what more did he want? Logan was a friend

indeed, and had proved it over and over again. He would take his

doubts to Logan and they would be healed, but first he must go to the

exhibition, the thought of which made him unhappy and uneasy.

Cluny received him with open arms:--

"A most successful exhibition. A great success. I hope you will let me

have some of your work by me. A most charming exhibition. There was

only one mistake, if I may say so: the _Ruth._"

Mendel walked miserably through the rooms. All Logan's pictures were

in the best light: his own were half in shadow.

"Mr. Logan has the making of a great reputation," said Cluny, "a very

great reputation."

"Oh, very clever!" said Mendel, suddenly exasperated more by Logan's

pictures than by the dealer.

Indeed, "very clever" was the right description for Logan's work. It

attracted and charmed and tickled, but it did not satisfy. The

pictures gave Mendel the same odd sense of familiarity as the picture

in Camden Town had done, and turning suddenly, his eye fell on his own

unhappy _Ruth_. The figure was shockingly bad. He acknowledged the

simpering sentimentality of the face. And he had been trying to paint

love! But in spite of the figure, the picture held him. It was to him

the matrix of the whole exhibition. Wiping out of consideration his

own early drawings, it explained and accounted for every other piece

of work. The least dexterous of them all, it had freshness and

vitality and a certain thrust of simplification which everything else

lacked. It was "solid," and worth all Logan's pictures put together.

"Very good prices," said the dealer. "Very good indeed."

Mendel paid no attention to him. He wanted to study his _Ruth_, to

find out its precise meaning for him, and, if possible, in what

mysterious part of his talent it had originated.

It had made him feel happy again and had restored his confidence. He

was serenely sure of himself, without arrogance. He was almost humble,

yet tantalized because he could not think of a whole picture in the

terms of that one piece of paint. He remembered the strange excitement

in which he had conceived it, the almost nonchalance with which he had

executed it. And to think that not a soul had seen it! The fools! The

fools!

He was ashamed to be seen looking so intently at his own work. The

next day he was back again and told Cluny that it was not for sale.

"I don't think it's a seller, Mr. Kühler," said Cluny.

"It's not for sale," repeated Mendel.

He went every day and had no other thought. He wandered about in a

dream, not seeing people in the streets, not hearing when he was

spoken to.

On the fifth day as he entered Cluny's he began to tremble, and he

fell against a man who was coming out. The blood rushed to his heart

and beat at his temples. He knew why it was. The air seemed full of an

enchantment that settled upon him and drew him towards the gallery. He

knew he was going to see her, and she was there with Clowes, standing

in front of his _Ruth._ Clowes was laughing at it, but Morrison, with

brows knit, obviously angry, was trying to explain it.

"I'm trying to explain the cornfield to Clowes," she said. "Do come

and help me."

"I can't explain it myself," he said, marvelling at the ease of the

meeting. At once he and she were together and Clowes was out of it,

like a dweller in another world.

"I don't think you ought to do things you can't explain," said Clowes.

"Then you are wiping out Michael Angelo, and El Greco, and Blake, and

Piero."

"Yes," said Mendel. "You are wiping out inspiration altogether."

"Oh! if you think you are inspired I have nothing more to say,"

replied Clowes rather tartly. She had felt instinctively that Mendel

and Morrison would meet at the gallery, and was annoyed all the same

that it had happened. She knew how they were regarded, and she herself

did not approve. Morrison knew how impossible it was, and Clowes

thought she ought not to allow it to go on.

Clowes also recognized how completely she was out of it, and she made

excuses and left them.

"You are the only one who likes it," he said.

"I don't like it, but I know that it isn't bad. It isn't good either,

but it is real and it is you."

"I want no more than that," he said, "from you."

In his mind he had prepared all sorts of reproaches for his meeting

with her, but they fell away from his lips. He could only accept that

it was good and sweet and natural to be with her.

He told her quite simply how he had come to paint the picture, and how

he had tried to paint his love for her. She smiled and shook away her

smile.

"I'm glad it isn't anything like that really," she said.

"I tried to tell you what it was like when I wrote to you."

"Yes."

That was all she could say. She had been very unhappy, often

desperately wretched, because her instinct fought so furiously against

the idea of love with him whom she loved.

"The picture has made me very happy," she added. "It means that what I

have been wanting to happen to you has happened. You _are_ different,

you know. I can talk to you so much more easily."

He suggested that they should walk in the Park and spend the day

together, and she consented, glad that all the reproaches and storms

she had dreaded should be so lightly brushed away.

* * * * *

Happy, happy lovers, for whom nothing can defile the heavenly beauty

of this earth; happy, from whom Time streams away, bearing with it all

the foolish, restless activity of men; happy, for whom the pomps and

vanities of the world are as though they had never been! Thrice happy

two, who in your united spirit bear so easily all the beauty, all the

suffering, all the sorrow in the world, and bring it forth in joy, the

flower of life that cometh up as a vision, fades, and sheds its seed

upon the rich, warm soil of humanity. Emblem of immortality for ever

shining in the union of spirits, in the enchantment of two who are

together and in love.

* * * * *

So happy were they that they wandered for the most part in silence

through the avenues and over the grassy spaces of the Park.

Of the two, she had the better brain, and, indeed, the stronger

character. She had been toughened in the struggle to break out of the

web of hypocrisy and meaningless tradition of gentility in which her

family was enmeshed, and the freedom she had won was very precious to

her. She kept it as a touchstone by which to measure her acquaintance

and her experience, and, using it now, she realized that there were

two distinct delights in being with Mendel on this tender autumn day;

one tempted her with its promise of furious joys and wild, baffling

emotions. It seduced her with its suggestion that this way lay

kindness, the gift to him of his desire, peace, and satisfaction. But

behind the suggestion of kindness lay a menace to her freedom, which,

being so much more precious than herself, she longed for him to share,

as in the keen happiness of that day he had done. That was the other

delight, more serene and more rare, infinitely more powerful, and she

would not have it sacrificed to the less. The gift of herself to which

she was tempted must mean the blending of her freedom with his, for

without that there would be no true gift, only a surrender.

She could not think it out or make it clear to herself, but she knew

that it was surrender he was asking, and she knew that if she

surrendered she would be no more to him in a little while than the

other women of passage with whom his life was darkened.

Ought she not then to tell him, to keep him from living in false

hopes? She persuaded herself that she ought, but she did not wish to

spoil this delicious day. It was such torture to her when he blazed

out at her and he became ugly with egoism.

"Of course," he said, "the _Ruth_ makes all the difference. I can't

let you go now, because you are the only one who has really understood

my work. I am almost frightened of it myself, and it makes me feel

desperately lonely when I think of all I shall have to go through to

get at what it really means."

"No. If you want me like that I don't want you to let me go," she

said, "for it is so important."

"Yes," he said. "It may mean an entirely new kind of picture, for I

don't know anybody's work that has quite what is hammering away in my

head to get out. It must be because you love me that you can feel it

when no one else can. Even to Logan it is only like a superior

poster."

How adorable he was in this mood of simplicity and humility! She could

relax her vigilance, and sway unreservedly to his mood and give him

all that he required of her, her clearness, her sensitive purity.

"You are like no other woman in the world to me," he went on. "You

fill me with the most wonderful joy, like a Cranach or a Dürer

drawing. I can forget almost that you are a woman, so that it is a

most wonderful surprise that you are one after all. You are the only

person in the world whom I can place side by side with my mother."

"You don't know what it is to me," she said, "to have a friend so

strong and frank as you are."

He put out his hand and laid it on her arm wonderingly, as if to

satisfy himself that she was really there, much as on his first visit

to Hampstead he had touched the grass.

"I think I shall live to be very old," he said, "and you will be just

the same to me then as you are now."

"Oh, Mendel!"

"Say that again!" he said, but she could not speak. Her eyes were

brimming with tears and she hung her head. She longed to take him to

her arms and to fondle him, to make him young, to charm away the

pitiful old weary helplessness that he had. Reacting from this mood in

her, which he did not understand and took for the first symptoms of

surrender, he became wild and boastful, and clowned like a silly boy

to attract her attention.

Her will set against him. She could not endure the sudden swoop from

the highest sympathy to the gallantry of the streets, and when he was

weary of his tricks she tried to bring him to his senses by asking him

suddenly:--

"Is Logan a nice man?"

"He is my best friend. He has wonderful ideas and energy like a

steam-engine, and he has suffered too. He is not like the art students

who expect painting pictures to be as easy as knitting. He could have

been almost anything, but he believes that art is the most important

thing of all. He has made a great difference to me, by teaching me to

be independent. . . . I will take you to see him one day."

"I should like to meet him, because he has made a great difference in

you."

"He steals."

That gave Morrison a shock, for Mendel seemed to be stating the fact

as a recommendation.

"Yes. When he has no money he steals. I went with him once and we

stole some reproductions."

She was sorry she had mentioned Logan. Mendel was a different creature

at once. Their glamourous happiness was gone. Logan seemed to have

stalked in between them and the purity of their delight withered away.

He felt it as strongly as she, but thought she was deliberately

escaping from him, that she was fickle and could not stay out the

day's happiness. Women, he knew, were like that. They gave out just as

the best was still to come.

It was dusk and they were in a lonely glade. He pounced on her and

drew her to him:--

"I want you to kiss me."

"No--no!"

"Yes--yes--yes! I say you shall. I will not have you let it all slip

away."

"Don't! Don't!" she said, in a passion of resentment. He was spoiling

it all. How could he be so crude and insensible after this matchless

day?

At last he was convinced of her anger.

"I don't understand you," he said. "Don't you want anything like

that?"

"It has spoiled the day for me," she answered, "or almost, for nothing

could really spoil it."

She walked on and he stood still for a moment. Then he ran after her.

"Did you . . . did you hate me then?"

"No, I didn't hate you. I hated myself more because I can't say what I

feel."

"If you don't love me like that," he said, "I love you all the same. I

must see you often--always. I can't live, I can't work, if you don't

let me see you. . . . No. That isn't true. I shall work whatever

happens."

How she loved his honesty! He was making no attempt to creep behind

her defences. They had baffled him, and he counted his wounds

cheerfully.

"If you don't love me like that," he went on excitedly, "it doesn't

make any difference. You are my love all the same. You are in all my

thoughts, in every drop of my blood, and you can do with me as you

will. If you don't love me like that I will never touch you. I can

understand your not wanting to touch me, because I am dirty. I am

dirty in my soul. I will never touch you. I promise that I will never

touch you, and what you do not like in me you shall never see. . . ."

She broke down, and burst into an unrestrained fit of weeping. Why

could she not make clear to him, to herself, what she felt so clearly?

. . . Oh! She knew she ought to tell him to go, to spare him all the

suffering that he must endure, but also she knew by the measure of her

need for him how sorely he must need her. Their need of each other was

too profound, too strong, too passionate, easily to find its way to

surface life, nor could it be satisfied with sweets too easily

attained. . . . She must wait. To leave him or to surrender to him

would be a betrayal of that high mystery wherein they had their

spiritual meeting.

"I shall win," she said to herself, "I shall win. I know I shall win."

And she amazed him with her sudden lightness of heart. She laughed and

told him how solemnly Clowes was taking it all, and how the

loose-tongued busybodies were talking. . . . As if it mattered what

they said! He mattered more than all of them, because they took easily

what was next to hand and grew fat on it, while he fought his way

upward step by step and was never satisfied, and would fight his way

always step by step with bloody pains and suffering.

"Oh, Mendel!" she cried; "I'm so proud--so proud of you."

She was too swift for him. He came lumbering after her, puzzled,

amazed, confounded at finding in this girl something that was so much

more than woman, something that could actually live on the high level

of his creative thought, something as necessary to his thought as dew

to the grass and the ripening corn.

V

LOGAN GIVES A PARTY

THE impulse to take his doubts to Logan endured, and was aggravated by

the wretchedness into which Mendel was plunged by Morrison's return

and her powerful effect upon his life. He raged against himself as an

idiot and a fool for taking her seriously and for believing that she

could realize his work when as yet he understood it so little himself.

If it was love, then have the love-making and get it over. If she

refused, then let her go! What did she mean by slipping away just when

the day's happiness began to demand utterance, closeness, intimacy,

the promise of the dearest and most comfortable joys?

He knew that he was deceiving himself, that she could do just as she

liked and it would make no difference, but he also knew that he

mistrusted her. In his heart he suspected her of being one of those

who like to pretend that life can be all roses and honey, that there

can be summer without winter, day without night. . . . Just a pretty

English girl, he called her, and, in his most bitter moods, he

regarded himself as caught; and in that there was a certain sardonic

satisfaction. It seemed appropriate that, having known many women

without a particle of love for them, he should be in love with a woman

who did not wish to have anything to do with him.

When he told Logan about it, that experienced individual smoked three

cigarettes and was silent for ten minutes by the clock.

"It won't do," he said; "give it up. You're in love with her. Oh yes!

You were bound to have your taste of it, being so young. But, for

God's sake, keep it clear of your work. I know it is very delightful

and all that, and like the first blush of spring, and that she seems

to understand everything. First love is always the same. She seems to

understand, but so do the violets in the woods, and the apple-blossom

in an orchard, and the singing birds on a spring morning. They all

seem to understand everything. Life is solved: there are no more

problems, and the rarest flower of all is the human heart. Yet the

violets and the apple-blossoms fade and the birds sing no more: the

spring passes and the summer is infernally hot and stale, and winter

comes at last. So it is with love and women. Nothing endures but art,

and that they are physically incapable of understanding. My God! Don't

I know it? A picture of mine means no more to Oliver than my boot

does--rather less, because my boot is warmed with the warmth of my

body. That's all _she_ understands."

He looked down at the boots and fidgeted with his hands.

"Yes. That's all _she_ understands," he repeated.

He was very haggard, and he looked up at Mendel as though he were

trying to say something more than he could get into words; but Mendel

was preoccupied with his own perplexities, and Logan's appealing

glance was lost upon him.

"I'm older than you," Logan continued, "and of course it is difficult

for me to say anything that will be of any use to you, but a man like

you ought not to let life get in his way. It isn't worth it. Life is

only valuable to you as a condition of working. Nothing in it ought to

be valuable for its own sake. Do you hear? You ought never to have

anything in your life that you couldn't sacrifice--couldn't do

without."

He seemed to be rather thinking aloud than talking, and something

indescribably solemn in his voice made Mendel shiver. He had hardly

heard what Logan was saying and, thinking he must be in a draught, he

looked towards the window.

Logan went on:--

"She'll be back in a moment. We don't often get the opportunity to

talk like this. She has begun to read books, and thinks she knows

about pictures now. She won't leave us alone. That damned critic has

been stuffing her up and she reads all his articles."

He made a grimace of weary disgust.

"I care about you, Kühler, almost more than I do about myself, which

is saying a good deal. Don't let this love business get mixed up with

your work, especially if, as you say, it is Platonic--that is the

worst poison of all--almost, almost. . . . Still, I'd like to see the

girl. Bring her to the party. We might join up and make a

quartette--if she can stand Oliver. Women can't, as a rule. They don't

like full-blooded people of their own sex."

"She wants to know you," replied Mendel half-heartedly. "I'm always

talking to her about you."

"All right," said Logan. "Bring her to the party."

Downstairs the front door slammed and Logan gave a nervous start. His

whole aspect changed. He lost the drooping solemnity that had come

come over him and was stiff, quick, and alert, and prepared to be

droll, as he was when it was a question of humbugging Tysoe and Cluny.

Oliver came in with a bottle of wine under each arm. She was in very

good spirits and looking remarkably handsome.

"Hello, Kühler!" she cried. "How do you like being a success? We're

full of beans. We're going to take a house. Did Logan tell you?"

"No," said Mendel. "I hadn't heard of it."

"Well, it's true. We've done with the slums and being poor and all

that. We're going to have a house and I'm going to have a servant, and

I shall have nothing to do all day but eat chocolates and read novels

and have people to tea."

"So you're going to be a real lady."

"Yes. I'm going to wear a wedding-ring, and we're going to give out

that we're married, so that Mrs. Tysoe can call on me."

"You're not going to do anything of the kind," snapped Logan.

"I am. I don't see why I should have a beastly time just because you

won't marry me, setting yourself up against the world and saying you

don't believe in marriage."

"I don't want to be more tied to you than I am," said Logan,

endeavouring to adopt a reasonable tone.

He was curiously subdued, and never took his eyes off her. Mendel had

the impression that they must recently have had a quarrel. Logan was

endeavouring to placate her, but she was constantly aggressive. She

seemed to have gained in personality and to be possessed of a definite

will. She was no longer shrouded in the mists of sensuality, but stood

out clearly, a figure of such vitality that Mendel could no longer

keep his lazy contempt for her. Almost admirable she was, yet he found

her detestable. He thought she should be thanking her lucky stars for

having found such a man as Logan; she should be taking gratefully what

he chose to give her, instead of setting herself up and putting

forward her own vulgar needs. If a woman threw in her lot with an

artist, she ought to revel in her freedom from the petty interests and

insignificant courtesies that made the lives of ordinary women so

humiliating.

What was she up to? He knew that there was a deeper purpose in her,

something very definite, for which she had been able to summon up her

raw vitality. He could understand Logan being fascinated. If he had

been in love with the woman he would have been the same, and his mind

would have been swamped by sensual curiosity.

Before, he had always been rather mystified to know what Logan saw in

the woman, but now the infatuation was comprehensible to him. His mind

played about it with a strange delight, and he was even envious of

Logan to be consumed in the heart of that mystery upon whose fringes

he himself was held. And he thought that if he brought Morrison to see

them he would be able to understand her better, and might even be able

to place his finger on the weak place in her armour.

"You two do give me the pip," said Oliver. "You sit there as glum and

silent as though you were in church. Taking yourselves too seriously,

I call it."

Still in his forbearing tone Logan said:--

"We talk of things which are very hard to understand."

"Oh, give it up!" she said. "Leave all that to folk with brains and

education. Why can't you just paint without talking about it? You'd

get twice as much work done."

"Because, don't you see, unless you're a blasted amateur, you can't

paint without rousing all sorts of questions in your mind--questions

that don't seem to have anything to do with painting; but unless you

attempt to answer them there's no satisfaction in working."

"Oh, cheese it!" she said; "I know what the critics look for, and it

has nothing to do with brains. It is like being in love."

"Who told you that?" asked Logan with sudden heat; but before she

could answer him Mendel had exploded:--

"It is nothing at all like being in love. That is what all the beastly

Christians think of--being in love. And they want art always, always

to remind them of that--how they have been, are, or will be in love,

as they call it. And what they call being in love is nothing but a

filthy lecherous longing, which is a thousand miles beneath love, and

twenty thousand miles beneath art, which is so rare, so noble, so

beautiful a mystery that only those whom God has chosen can understand

it at all; for while you are in this state of longing you can

understand, you can feel nothing at all except a hungry delight in

yourself and your own sticky sensations. What can women know of art?

It needs strength and will, and women have neither; they have only

obstinate fancies."

When he had done he was so astonished at himself that he gasped for

breath. Logan and Oliver, gaping at him, seemed ridiculous and little.

Talking to them was a waste of breath, because when she was there

Logan was not himself, but only a kind of excrescence upon her

monstrous vitality. The room seemed to stink. It was airless and

reeking with sex. He must get out and away, under the sky, among the

trees, upon his beloved Hampstead. . . . Without another word he

stalked away.

"Well! I never!" exclaimed Oliver. "Is Kühler in love?"

"Oh! shut up!" said Logan wearily.

* * * * *

For the party the room was cleared and a pianola was hired. The guests

were invited to bring their own glasses and drink, and also any

friends they liked. The result was that half the habitués of the Paris

Café turned up, including Jessie Petrie, Mitchell, and Thompson, who

was over for a short time from Paris, very important and mysterious

because he had something to do with a forthcoming exhibition of Modern

French Art which was to knock London silly. And there was a rumour

that Calthrop himself was coming.

Oliver wore a new evening dress, which she had insisted on buying

because she was very proud of her bust and arms. The dress was of

emerald green silk and she looked very lovely in it--"Like a water

nymph," said Logan, and he went out and bought her a string of red

corals to give the finishing touch.

"You won't have much of this kind of thing when we move," he said. "It

is to be farewell to Bohemia. I'm going to settle down to work. I've

taught Kühler a thing or two, but he has taught me how to work."

"Damn Kühler! I hate him," said Oliver.

"You can hate him as much as you choose. It won't hurt him or me. I'm

not a Hercules, and my work and you are about as much as I can

manage."

"You're a nice one to be giving a party. You talk as though you would

be in your grave next week."

"It is a farewell party."

"'Farewell to the Piano,'" laughed Oliver. "That was the last piece I

learned when I had music lessons."

Mitchell was among the first to arrive. He had been ill, and looked

washed-out and unwholesome. There was very little of the Public School

boy left in him.

"Is Kühler coming?" he asked nervously.

"I expect so," answered Logan. "Do you know how to manage a pianola?"

"Yes. We've got one at home."

"You might play it then, to keep things going until they liven up."

Mitchell was placed at the pianola, and was still there when Mendel

arrived with Morrison.

"I'm very glad to meet you," said Logan. "Kühler has talked about you

so often."

"Yes," said Morrison.

"I hope you don't mind a Bohemian party. They are a mixed lot."

"No," said Morrison.

"Good God!" thought Logan. "Not a word to say for herself!"

Mendel introduced her to Oliver, who looked her up and down

superciliously--this little schoolgirl in her brown tweed coat and

skirt.

"I'm sorry I didn't dress," said Morrison. "I didn't know."

She shrank from the big, fleshy woman, who made her feel very unhappy.

Yet she wanted to be fair. She had heard Mendel storm and rage against

Oliver and she hated to be prejudiced. It distressed her not to like

anybody, for she found most people likeable. She tried to be

amiable:--

"I'm so glad the exhibition was such a success. Everybody is talking

about it."

"Oh! yes, yes," said Oliver vacantly. Obviously she was not listening.

She had eyes only for the men, and she bridled with pleasure when she

attracted their attention.

Morrison was glad to escape to a corner, where she could watch the

strange people and be amused by them, their attitudes and gestures and

queer, conceited efforts deliberately to charm each other.

She blushed when she saw Mitchell at the pianola, and thought she had

been rather foolish and weak to allow Mendel to bully her into

dismissing him from her acquaintance, and she was relieved when she

saw Mendel take in the situation and go up to Mitchell and tap him on

the shoulder and enter into eager discussion of the pianola. She was

less happy when she saw Mendel take Mitchell's place, and Mitchell

make a bee-line for herself.

An astonishing change came over the music, which got into Mendel's

blood. It was maddening, it was glorious to feel that he had all that

wealth of sound in his hands. He knew nothing of music, and it was

almost pure rhythm to him, and he wished to beat it out, to accentuate

it as much as possible. The machine confounded him every now and then

by running too fast or too slow, but he soon learned to pedal less

violently, and then he was gloriously happy and drunk with excitement.

Astonishing, too, was the change in the company. Everybody began to

talk and to laugh, and space was cleared in the middle of the room,

and Clowes and a young man from the Detmold began to dance. Jessie

Petrie and Weldon joined them, and soon the room was full of whirling,

gliding couples.

Said Mitchell to Morrison:--

"I didn't expect to find you here. Are you going to dance?"

"No. I like watching."

He sat on the floor by her side, and, hanging his head, he said

woefully:--

"So Kühler's won! Gawd! He always gets what he wants. There's no

resisting him."

"Don't be absurd," said Morrison. "I hear you've been ill."

"Yes. I've been going to the dogs, absolutely to the dogs. I had to

pull up. . . . I didn't know you knew Logan; but, of course, as he's

so thick with Kühler----!"

"I met him for the first time to-night. What do you think of his

work?"

"Flashy!" said Mitchell. "Very flashy. . . . Will you let me come and

see you again?"

"I'd rather not, if you don't mind."

"Why do you dislike me so much?"

"I don't dislike you. I can't trust you not to be silly."

"Gawd! I bet I'm not half so silly as Kühler!"

"He is never silly!"

"Ah! Now you're offended!"

She turned away from him and refused to speak again. His

half-flirtatious, half-patronizing manner offended her deeply, and was

far more of an affront to her than Logan's almost open scorn of her as

a little bread-and-butter miss. She wished Mendel would leave the

pianola, but he was enthralled and could not tear himself away. He

played the same tune over and over again, or went straight from one to

another, swaying to and fro, beating time with his hands, swinging his

head up and down.

Mitchell went very red in the face and slipped away. Presently she saw

him dancing with Oliver.

After a few moments she found Logan by her side, and he said kindly:--

"I'm afraid you are not enjoying yourself much."

"Oh yes!" she gasped, in a frightened voice.

"I was thinking you were not used to this kind of thing."

"Oh yes! I often go to parties in people's studios."

"I remember, I saw you at the Merlin's Cave one night."

"Yes, I remember. I didn't enjoy that a bit. It all seemed such a

sham."

"So it was," said Logan. "So is most of this. These people aren't

really wicked, though they like to pretend they are. I don't dance

myself. I'm too clumsy. Clog-dancing I can do, but not dancing with

anybody else. . . . But perhaps I am keeping you----?"

"Oh no! I'm very happy looking on."

"Kühler's worth watching, isn't he?"

This was said with such insolent meaning that Morrison wilted like a

sensitive plant. She managed to gasp out "Yes," and went on asking

wild, pointless questions, with her thoughts whirling far removed from

her words.

Why were all these people so impertinent, with their trick of plunging

into intimate life without waiting for intimacy? She felt that in a

moment Logan would be telling her all about himself and Oliver by way

of luring her on to discuss Mendel. That she had no intention of

doing, with him or with any one else.

"She's just a shy little fool," thought Logan, "and hopelessly,

hopelessly young."

"I'm unhappy!" thought Morrison, and it seemed to her foolish and mean

to be so. Her loyalty resented her weakness. She owed it to Mendel to

enjoy herself and to share as far as she could his friends. But there

was in the atmosphere of that gathering something that repelled her

and roused the fighting quality in her, something indecent, something

that hurt her as the picture of the flayed man in the anatomy book

hurt her.

Mendel was playing a wild rag-time tune.

"I think I'd like to dance to this tune. You must dance with me. I

don't think you ought to be out of your own party," she said to Logan,

who caught her up in a great bear's hug, trod on her toes, knocked her

knees, pressed his fingers so tight into her back that she could

hardly bear it, and at last, as the music ceased, deposited her by

Mendel's side.

"It is a marvellous thing, this machine," he said. "I should like to

go on at it all night. Have you been dancing? You look hot. You said

you weren't going to dance."

"I made Logan dance. He nearly killed me!"

"How did you get on?"

"Not--not very well."

"You don't like him?"

Jessie Petrie came running up: "Kühler, Kühler!" she cried. "Do, do

dance with me!"

He was very angry with Morrison for daring not to like Logan, for

making up her mind in two minutes that she did not like him. He gave

her a furious glance as Weldon took his place and started a waltz, put

his arms round Jessie's waist, and swung into the dance.

"Oh, Kühler!" said Jessie in her pretty birdlike voice, "I heard the

most awful story about you the other day."

"Do be quiet!" he grunted. "Dance!"

But he was out of temper, out of tune, and the music he had been

crashing out on the pianola was thudding in his head, so that he could

not respond either to the music of the waltz or to Jessie's eagerness.

"Isn't it funny Thompson being back in London? I don't like him a bit

now. You have spoiled me for everybody else. Do you want me to come on

Friday as usual?"

"Do be quiet."

"What's the matter? You aren't dancing at all nicely and you haven't

looked at me once this evening."

"No; don't come on Friday."

"Not----?"

Her voice was shrill with pain.

"No. That's all over."

She hung limp in his arms and her face was a ghastly yellow. She

muttered:--

"Take me out. . . . I think I'm going to faint."

He half-carried her into the passage, where she sat on the stairs and

began to cry. Neither of them noticed Clowes and the young man from

the Detmold sitting above them.

"Don't cry!" he said roughly; "what have you got to cry about?"

"I never thought you only wanted me for that."

"You came to me. I didn't ask you to come."

"But I do love you so. I only want you to love me a little."

"I don't know how to love a little. When I love it is with the whole

of me, and it is for always."

"But can't we be pals, just pals? We've been such pals."

"I'm sick to death of it all," he said violently, "sick to death.

You're the best girl in London, Jessie, but it's no good--it's no

good."

Clowes and the young man ostentatiously and with a great clatter went

higher up the stairs, but neither Jessie nor Mendel heard them. The

pain and the shame they were suffering absorbed them.

"I never thought," said Jessie, "it was near the end. I've always

known when it was near the end before. It is like being struck by

lightning."

Mendel was silent. He could do nothing. There was nothing to be said.

Jessie had consoled him, comforted him, but she had only made his

suffering worse. By the side of Morrison she simply did not exist, and

it had been a lie to pretend that she did. That lie must be cut out.

"I never thought you only wanted me for that," she repeated, and began

to move slowly down the stairs. At the bend she stopped and looked up

at him, gave a little muffled cry, and moved slowly down into the dim

lobby of the house.

Mendel gripped the banisters with both hands and shook them until they

cracked.

"How horrible!" he muttered to himself; "how horrible!"

Upstairs, Clowes was boiling with rage. She lost all interest in her

young man, and as soon as Mendel had returned to the room she raced

downstairs, almost sobbing, and saying to herself:--

"That settles you, Master Kühler! That settles you!"

She darted across to Morrison, who had taken refuge in a corner,

seized her by the hand and whispered:--

"Greta! Greta! I've just heard the most frightful thing. I couldn't

help overhearing it and I ought not to tell anybody, but you ought to

know. Kühler and Petrie! It must have been going on for months. He

broke with her in the most cold-blooded way. It was heart-rending. I

can't bear it. Oh! these men, these men!"

Morrison clenched her fists and her eyes blazed.

"Don't tell me any more!" she said. "Don't tell me any more!"

"I want to go home," whispered Clowes. "It is a dreadful party. That

awful green woman spoils everything. It is like a nightmare to me now.

"It wouldn't be fair to go without telling him," said Morrison. "It

wouldn't be fair."

"But you can't think of him after that," protested Clowes. "Oh! good

gracious! There's Calthrop coming in. It is getting worse and worse."

Calthrop swung into the room with his magnificent stride. As usual,

his entrance created a dramatic sensation. Logan, who had always

decried his work, leaped to meet him and Mendel stood shyly waiting

for his nod. . . . Whom would the great man speak to? That was the

question. . . . He fixed his eyes on Oliver and strode up to her.

"You're the best-looking woman in the room," he said. "Do you like

cinemas?"

"I adore them," said Oliver, with an excited giggle.

"Now, now's the chance!" whispered Clowes. "We can slip away now,

before they begin drinking."

"I must tell him," replied Morrison, and, summoning up all her

courage, she went up to Mendel and asked if she could speak to him. He

went out with her, trembling in every limb.

"I am going," she said. "I have just heard something. Clowes overheard

you and Jessie Petrie. She ought not to have told me. I don't know

what I feel about it. Very wretched, chiefly. Please don't try to see

me."

"I have told you what I am again and again," he said.

"Yes. You are very honest, but it is hard for a girl to imagine these

things. Please, please see how hard it is and let me be."

"Very well," he answered, feeling that the whole world had come to an

end. "Very well."

She called Clowes, who had stayed just inside the door, and together,

like little frightened children, they crept downstairs.

"Good-bye love!" said Mendel. "My God, what rubbish, what folly, what

nonsense! Love and a Christian girl! That's over. That's finished. I

am outside it all--outside, outside, outside. Oh! Dark and vile and

bitter, and no sweetness anywhere but in my own thoughts!"

Inside the room someone began to sing:--

I want to be, I want to be,

I want to be down home in Dixie. . . .

Oh! the mad folly of these Christians, with their childish songs,

their idiotic pleasures, their preposterous belief in happiness. . . .

Happiness! They ruin the world to satisfy their childish longing, and

all their happiness lies in words and foolish songs. . . . The rhythm

of the pianola tunes began to beat in his head, and another deeper

rhythm came up from the depths of his soul and tried to break through

them. It was the same rhythm that always came up when he had reached

the lowest depths of misery. It came gushing forth like water from the

rock of Moses, and crept through his being like ice, up, up into his

thoughts, bringing him to an intolerable agony.

In the room glasses clinked. He turned towards the light and plunged

into the carouse.

VI

REVELATION

THREE weeks later the exhibition of Modern French Art was opened in an

important gallery in the West End. It roused indignation, laughter,

scorn, and made such a stir in the papers that public interest was

excited and the exhibition was an unparalleled success. People from

the suburbs, people who had never been to a picture gallery in their

lives, flocked to see the show, and most of them, when they left,

said: "Well, at any rate we've had a good laugh."

Mendel never read the papers and knew nothing at all about it. These

three weeks had been a time of blank misery for him. He could not

work. His people set his teeth on edge. He could not bear to see a

soul, for he could not talk. When he met friends and acquaintances,

not a word could he find to say to them. There was nothing to say.

They were living in a world from which he had been expelled. More than

once he was on the point of going to his father and asking to be taken

into the workshop, since the only possible, the only bearable life was

one of hard manual labour, which left no room for spiritual activity,

none for happiness, and very little for unhappiness.

He found some consolation in going to the synagogue. His mother was

delighted, but the religion was no comfort to him. What pleased him

was to see the old Jews in their shawls and the women in their beaded

gowns, praying each in their separate parts of the building--praying

until they wept, and abasing themselves before the Lord. What woe,

what misery they expressed! All the year round was this dismal

wailing, and there was only happiness on the day that Haman was

hanged. . . . It seemed good and decent to him that the sexes should

be separate before the Lord, as they should be separate before the

holy spirit that was in them. They should meet in holiness, hover for

a moment above life, then sink back into it again to gather new

strength. So love would be in its place. It could be gathered up and

distilled. It would not be allowed to spread like a flood of muddy

water over life, which had other passions, other delights, other

glorious flowerings.

It had been a great day for him when, in a little shop near his home,

he had come on a pair of wooden figures rudely carved by

savages--African, the shopman said they were. Rudely carved, they were

not at all realistic, but admirably simplified, the man and the woman

sitting side by side, naked. The man was wearing a little round bowler

hat, while the woman was uncovered. They had the spirit and the idea

that he most loved--the idea of man and woman sitting side by side,

bound in love, unfathomably deep and unimaginably high, until one

should follow the other to the grave.

He showed them to Golda, and told her they were she and his father.

"What next will you be up to?" she said. "Why, they are blackamoors."

"They are you and my father," he said, caressing the figures lovingly.

"I wish you would put the thought of that girl out of your head," she

said tenderly. "It is making you so ill and so thin, and I dare not

think what your father will say when he knows you are drinking again."

"Mother," he said, "when did you begin to love me?"

"When you were born," she said.

"Yes, yes. I know, as a cow loves its calf. But I mean _love_, for you

do not love the others the same as me."

"You were not so very old when it came to me that you were different."

"But it is more now that I am a man?"

"Of course."

That settled his mind on the point that had been bothering him.

Everywhere among the Christians love--the love that he knew and

honoured--seemed to be lost in a soft, spongy worship of the mother's

love for her child. The woman seemed to be wiped out of account

altogether except as a mother. It seemed that she was not expected to

love, and she was left by herself with the child, with the man looking

rather foolish all by himself, seeing his strong, beautiful masculine

love absorbed and given to the senseless little lump of flesh in the

woman's arms. It was like discarding the flower for the seed, like

denying the wonder of spring for the autumn fruit.

"If that is your Christian love," he said to himself, "I will have

none of it."

He studied the Madonnas in the National Gallery, and they confirmed

his impression of the weakness of Christian love, that left out the

strong, vital love of a man for a woman, of a woman for a man. He

characterized it as womanish, and could not see that the ideal had

served to save women from male tyranny. Moreover, most of the pictures

struck him as shockingly bad, which confirmed his notion that the

ideal that inspired them was rotten.

He could not test his ideas by his experience with Morrison, for he

dared not think of her at all. When his mother spoke of her, it had

been like a sharp knife through his heart. . . . Yes. _That_ was love,

and it could not be bothered with the idea of children. If they came,

it would make room for them, but it was not going to be robbed by

them. Its object was the woman, and it detested any idea that got

between it and her. . . . Yet when this love for Morrison stood

between himself and his love for art, he hated her almost as

violently. Sometimes he thought that he would kill her, because she

stood there smiling. She was always smiling. She could be happy; she

could so easily be happy. . . .

* * * * *

Logan came to fetch him to go to the exhibition.

"I don't want to go to the exhibition. I don't want to see other

people's pictures. I want to paint my own."

"What are you working at?"

"Nothing."

"What's the matter?"

"Sex."

"Oh! That's always the matter with everybody."

"But I've thought of something."

"What?"

"Women don't love their children."

Logan roared with laughter, and he went on laughing because he enjoyed

it. It was long since he had laughed so easily.

"Most of them do," he said. "Even if they've hated having them."

"They don't," said Mendel. "It's instinct just to gloat over them,

just as one gloats over a picture one has just finished, however bad

it may be. It has cost you something, and there is something to show

for it. It is quite blind and stupid, like an animal. It is like lust.

It is neither true nor false. It just _is_, chaotic and half-created.

Love is a human thing. Love is the most human thing there is. When a

clerk marries a girl because he wants a woman, I don't call that love.

He is only making himself comfortable. There is a little more dirt in

the world, that is all."

Logan laughed uncomfortably.

"Please listen," said Mendel. "I have been nearly mad this last

fortnight, ever since the party. All my life seems to have broken its

way into my mind, and I don't know when I shall be able to get it out

again. It is very important that I should talk, and I have no one

really to talk to except you. I am very lonely because I am a Jew and

people do not understand me, or rather they think they understand me

because I am a Jew. They think all Jews are the same. It is very

rarely that I feel I am accepted as a man with thoughts, feelings,

tears, laughter, tastes, bowels, senses like any other man."

"I know," said Logan sympathetically.

"How can you know? You have only to live in a world that is ready-made

for you. I have to make mine as I go, step by step."

"That isn't because you are a Jew, but because you are an artist. It

is the same for all of us."

"It can't be the same, for the ordinary world is not utterly foreign

to you. You do not find that which you were brought up to believe, the

wisdom you sucked in with your mother's milk, completely denied. . . .

I tell you, love is all wrong, and because love is all wrong, art is

all wrong, everything is wrong, and so is everybody. Everybody is

living with only a part of himself, so that the cleverest people are

the worst and most mischievous fools. I tell you, there are times in

your West End when I can hardly breathe because people are such fools.

If you are successful, they smile at you. If you are not successful,

they look the other way. . . . Oh! I know it does not matter, but it

makes success a paltry thing, and when you have lived for it and

hungered for it, what then? What are you to do when it is like sand

trickling through your fingers?"

"You can't stop it," said Logan. "You can't throw it away. You can

only go on working, come what may."

"Yes," replied Mendel dubiously, and grievously disappointed. He had

so hoped to squeeze out his twisted, tortured feelings into words, but

at a certain point Logan failed him and seemed to shy at his thought.

To a certain quality of passion in himself Logan was insensible. Where

his own passion began to gain in clear force and momentum, swinging

from the depths of life to the highest imagination, only gaining in

strength as the ascent grew more arduous, Logan's remained in an

exasperated intensity.

"I'm sorry," said Mendel. "Talking is no use. I've found my way out of

as bad times as this, and shall again. It is no good talking. I will

sit as silent as the little figures there, and in time I shall know

what I must do."

"You want taking out of yourself," muttered Logan irritably. "Come and

see Thompson's show."

* * * * *

As successful artists they entered the gallery self-consciously and

rather contemptuously. That did not last long. There were many people

sniggering at the Van Goghs and the Picassos, but Mendel's thoughts

flew back to a still-life he had painted of a blue enamel teapot and a

yellow matchbox years ago. He had painted them as he had seen them, in

raw, crude colour, but the picture had been so derided, and he had

been so scornfully reminded that there were no brilliant colours in

nature, that he had painted the same subject over again with a very

careful rendering of what was called "atmosphere."

Here were crude colours indeed--almost, in many cases, as they came

from the tubes, and as for drawing, there was hardly a trace of it,

yet in the majority of the pictures there was a riotous freedom which

rushed like a cleansing wind through Mendel's mind, and it seemed to

him that here was the answer to many of his doubts--not a clear vision

of art, but a roughly indicated road to it. It was absurd to sit

cramping over rules and difficult technicalities when the

starting-point of art lay so far beyond them. There was much rubbish

in the show, but the works of Cézanne and Picasso were undeniably

pictures. They were not flooded with a clear loveliness, like the

pictures of Botticelli or Uccello, but they had beauty, and lured the

mind on to seek another more mysterious beauty beyond them.

The two friends went through the exhibition in silence. As they left,

Mendel asked:--

"Well! what did you think of it?"

"We're snuffed out," replied Logan despondently.

"Not I!" cried Mendel. "I'm only just beginning."

"I don't understand it yet. It has made my eyes and my head ache. At

first it seemed to me too cerebral to be art at all, but there's no

denying it, and it has to be digested. In a way it is what I have

always been talking about. It has to do with the life we are living,

which may not be much of a life, but it is ours and we find it good.

It has not been a plunge into another world, like a visit to the

National Gallery, but into some reality a little beyond this

extraordinary jumble and hotch-potch of metropolitan life."

"It is painting," said Mendel. "That is enough for me. And they are

not afraid of colour. Why should they be? The colours are there: why

not use them? I'm going to."

And he went home and dashed off a savage mother with a green face

thrusting a straw-coloured breast into the gaping red lips of a child.

So much for maternity and the Madonnas! He knew how a man loved his

mother, and it was not in that milky way, setting her above nature,

she who was tied and bound to natural, instinctive, animal life. If a

man loved his mother, it was because with her it was the easiest thing

in the world to be intimate and frank and honest and without pretence

of any kind.

His mother was marvellous to him because she was his dearest friend,

not because she had given him suck. That was a fact like any other,

and facts were not marvellous until more and more light was thrown on

them from the mind, for in the murk and muddle of human life they were

distorted.

For Mendel this was the wildest and rarest adventure yet. It was a

flinging of his cap over the windmills, and with it he had the sense

of losing all his troubles, all his perplexities. Nothing for the time

being seemed to matter very much. He had always been denied colour,

and here he had the right to use it because it had been used by other

men rightly. In the world of art, or rather of artists, he had always

been a sort of Ishmael, ever since he had outgrown being a prodigy,

and here was a new world of art where he could be free. . . . True, he

had seen the same things in Paris and had not thought much of them,

but so much had happened since then, and he had passed through the

greatest crisis of his life.

Always after his crises he expected to find himself, and now he

thought he had surely done so. He would be entirely free, completely

independent.

For three weeks he lived between his studio and the gallery, studying

these strange new vibrant pictures and experimenting with their

manners as now this, now that painter influenced him. Picasso baffled

him altogether. These queer, violent, angular patterns actually hurt

him, and he was repelled by their intellectual intensity. Gauguin he

found too easy, Van Gogh too incoherent. It was when he came to

Cézanne that he was bowled out and reduced to impotence and all the

egoistic excitement oozed out of him.

He was not so free then. Here was an art before which he must be

humbled and subdued if he was to understand it at all. He abandoned

his experiments and made no attempt to work at all, but bought a

reproduction of Cézanne's portrait of his wife and spent many days

poring over it. It held him and fascinated him, and yet it looked

almost like the unfinished work of an amateur who could not draw. Of

psychological interest the picture was bare. It was just a portrait of

a woman at peace, with her hands folded in her lap, bathed in a

serenity beyond mortal understanding, though not beyond mortal

perception, since a man had rendered it in paint. It released directly

the swift, soaring emotion which, though it was roused in him by many

pictures and by some poetry--passages in the Bible, for instance--was

quickly entangled in sensual pleasure and never properly set free.

Here, the more he gazed the more that emotion, pure, disinterested,

unearthly, rushed through him, exploring all the caverns in his

imagination and delivering from them new powers of perception. He

felt, as he told Logan afterwards, like a tree putting out its leaves

in the spring.

And yet he could not tell how this miracle was accomplished. No words

could explain it--abstraction, composition, design, none of these

words helped at all. It was not so much the doing of the thing, the

art of the painter, as the setting out of the woman on the canvas

without reference to anything in heaven or earth, or any idea, or any

emotion or desire. It was enough that she was a woman, not especially

beautiful, not particularly remarkable. So perfect a vision had no

need to be tender or affectionate or sensual, or to call in aid any of

the emotions of life. It needed no force but the rare religious

ecstasy which has no need of ideas or common human feelings, and this

vision of a woman gave Mendel a new appreciation of life and love and

art. It gave human beings a new value. It was enough that they were

alive and upon the earth with all that they contained of good and

evil. They were in themselves wonderful, and there was no need to

worry about whence they came or whither they were going, or what was

their relation to God and the universe. In each man, each woman was

enough of God and of the universe to keep them poised for their little

hour.

What, then, was love? What but the sense of being poised, of being

borne up by God, an intimation that could only be won through contact

with life at its purest. And beyond that again lay a further degree of

purity which could only find expression in art, since life, even at

its rarest, was too gross.

Often Mendel kissed his reproduction reverently and hugged it to his

bosom, thinking childishly that some of its spirit could enter into

him by contact. He whispered to it:--

"I love you. You are my truth and my joy rising up through life, even

from its very depths, and shaking free of it at last into pure, serene

beauty. You weigh neither upon my senses nor upon my thoughts, but,

following you, they are joined together to become a high sense which

can know deliverance."

Followed days of a supreme delight. He wandered through the streets

seeing all men and all women and all things as wonderful, since

through them all flowed this lovely spirit which in the few men here

and there could find its freedom and its expression in form.

Through Thompson he met a journalist who was writing a book about the

new painting, and from him he learned the little that was known about

Cézanne: how he worked away experimenting unsuccessfully until he was

middle-aged, and then withdrew from the world of artists in Paris, to

live the life of a simple country bourgeois and to paint the vision

which he had begun to divine: and how he painted out in the fields,

leaving his canvases in the hedges and by the wayside, because not the

painting but the expression of his spirit and the solution of his

problem mattered to him: and how he never sold a single picture, never

attempted to sell them.

Such, thought Mendel, should the life of an artist be. But how was it

possible if life would not let him alone, but was perpetually dragging

him down into the mud? What mud, what filth he had had to flounder

through to get even so far as he had!

And already he began to feel that he was slipping back. He could not

accept that knowledge of the spirit vicariously, but must fight for

his own knowledge of it in direct contact with life. To endeavour to

escape from life was to isolate himself, to lose the driving force of

life from darkness into the light, to dwell in the twilight of

solitude armed only with his puny egoism and the paltry tricks of

professional painting. He felt that at last he knew his desire, but in

no wise how to attain it. Cézanne had had a wife: that had settled one

of the torments of life. He had had ample means: that had absolved him

from the ever-present difficulty of money.

These considerations relieved Mendel from another weighty puzzle.

Perhaps if Cézanne had had to please other people and not only his own

spirit, he would have cared more for his craft and for the quality of

his paint. . . . All the same, it was good to have pictures reduced to

their bare essentials, relieved of ornament and trickery, and yet

retaining their full pictorial quality.

* * * * *

Shortly after the party Logan and Oliver had moved to a little cottage

on Hampstead Heath, just below Jack Straw's Castle. Mendel went to see

them there and met Logan on the Spaniard's Road. He was in a

deplorable condition. His right eye was blackened, his nose was bloody

and scratched, the lobe of his ear was torn and his forehead was

purple with bruises.

"What on earth have you been doing to yourself!" asked Mendel.

"I've had a fight," said Logan glibly. "The other night on the Heath I

came on a man beating a girl. I went for him. He was a huge lout of a

man. We had a terrific tussle, and just as I was getting him down the

girl went for me and scratched my face."

"If you lived where I do," said Mendel, "you would know better than to

interfere."

"Oh! I enjoyed it," said Logan. "I couldn't stand by and see it done."

They ran down the grassy slope to the cottage, where they found Oliver

entertaining Thompson and her critic. She had a slight bruise over her

right eye, and Mendel thought:--

"Why does he lie? Why should he lie to me? I should think no worse of

him for beating her. If I could not shake her off I should kill her."

He was filled with a sudden disgust at the household, which in his

eyes had become an obscene profanation.

The talk was excited, and formerly he would have found it interesting.

Thompson was full of the triumph of the exhibition and its success in

forcing art upon the public. He spoke glibly of abstraction and

cubing, and it was clear that they only delighted him as new tricks.

Oliver took part in the conversation. She had picked up the jargon of

painters and made great play with the names of the new masters. To

hear her talking glibly of Cézanne and saying how he had shown the

object of pictorial art to be pattern filled Mendel's soul with

loathing. He could not protest. What was the good of protesting to

such people? . . . If only Logan had not been among them! He wanted to

talk to Logan, to tell him what this new thing meant, to make him see

that he must give up all thought of turning art back upon life,

because life did not matter so very much. It could look after itself,

while the integrity of art must at all costs be maintained.

However, when Thompson said that the artist was now free to make up a

picture out of any shapes he liked, Mendel could not contain himself,

and said:--

"The artist is no more free than ever he was. He does not become free

by burking representation. He is not free merely to work by caprice

and fantasy. He is rather more strictly bound than ever, because he is

working through his imagination and cannot get out of it merely by

using his eyes and imitating charming things. If he tries to get out

of it by impudent invention, then pictures will be just as dull and

degraded as before."

"'I am Sir Oracle,'" said the critic, "'and when I ope my lips let no

dog bark.'"

"You can bark away," cried Mendel, "but you must not complain if a man

loses patience with you and kicks you back into your kennel."

"Just listen to the boy!" cried Oliver. "Success has turned his pretty

little head. Just listen to him teaching the critics their business!"

Mendel gave her a furious look of contempt and left the room and the

house. Logan came running after him.

"I say, old man," he said, "you mustn't mind what she says. Those damn

fools have stuffed her head up with their nonsense and she hasn't the

brains of a louse."

"If it was my house, I would kick them out."

"They are good fellows enough."

"Good fellows! When they make her more idiotic and blatant than she

is!"

"I can't think what made you so angry. There was nothing to flare up

about. You are so touchy."

Mendel was walking at a furious pace. Logan was out of condition and

had to beg him to go more slowly.

"I'm all to bits," said Logan. "That row----"

"Why do you tell lies? It was she who mauled you. Why do you tell lies

to me? I have never told lies to you about anything. You have always

jeered at women and said they can know nothing about art, and yet you

let her talk. . . . Why don't you leave her?"

"We're very fond of each other," replied Logan. "It has gone too deep.

We hate each other like poison sometimes, but that only makes it--the

real thing--go deeper."

"I can't bear it," said Mendel; "I can't bear it. It was bad enough

when she kept quiet, but now that she gives herself airs and talks, I

can't stand it. I hate her so that I feel as if the top of my head

would blow off. . . . Perhaps there was nothing much in what she said.

Perhaps it was only a slow growing detestation coming to a head. But

there it is. It is final. I have tried to like her, to be decent to

her, to make allowances for her, but it is impossible."

"You don't mean you are not going to come to see us again?"

"Yes. That is what I do mean. She doesn't exist for me any longer. If

I met her in a café or in the streets she would be all right. She

would be in her place. There would be some truth in her. In connection

with you she is a festering lie."

"She can't settle down to it," replied Logan lamely, ashamed of his

inability to defend Oliver from this onslaught. Defence would be quite

useless, for he knew that Mendel would detect his untruth. If only

Mendel were a little older, if only he could have grown out of youth's

dreadful inability to compromise.

"She can't settle down," Logan continued. "She is a creature of

enormous vitality and she has no life outside herself, no imagination.

Can't you see that her vitality has no outlet? I don't know, but it

seems to me appalling to think of these modern women with their

independence, and nothing at all to do with it. They won't admit the

authority of the male, and they have broken out of the home. A lot of

them refuse to have children. I feel sorry for them."

"Don't go on talking round and round the subject," cried Mendel

wrathfully. He was really alarmed and pained as he saw himself being

carried nearer and nearer to a breach with his friend. "I can't feel

sorry for her and I don't. She is ruining you. You never laugh

nowadays. You are always more dead than alive, and I cannot bear to

see you with her. I cannot bear even to think of you with her."

"For God's sake, don't talk like that!" muttered Logan, quickening his

pace to keep up, for Mendel was flying along.

"You must either give her up or me," said Mendel.

"Don't say that!" pleaded Logan; "don't say that! I can't get on

without you. I don't see how I can get on without you. All the

happiness I have ever had has come through you. Every hope I have is

centred in you. If you go, life will become nothing but work, work,

work, with nobody to understand. Nobody. . . . And I have been so full

of hope. All this new business has made such a stir and has brought

such life into painting that I had begun to feel that anything was

possible. There might be even a stirring of the spirit to stem the

tide of commercialism. You know what my life has been--one long

struggle to find a way out of the pressure of vulgarity and sordid

money-making, out of sentimentality and pretty lying fantasy, out of

the corruption that from top to bottom is eating up the life of the

country. You know that when I met you I had almost given up the

struggle in despair. One man alone could not do it. But two men

could--two men who trusted and believed in each other. . . . You were

very young when I first met you, but you have come on wonderfully. It

has been thrilling for me to watch the growth of your mind and the

strengthening of your character. You are the only man I ever met who

could really stand by himself. . . . It isn't easy for me to say all

this, but I must tell you what your friendship has meant to me."

The more Logan talked, the more he divulged his feelings, his very

real affection, the more Mendel's mind was concentrated on the one

purpose, to get him away from Oliver.

"You must give her up," he said.

"I can't," gasped Logan.

They stood facing each other, Mendel staring into his friend's eyes

that looked piteously, wearily, miserably out of his haggard, battered

face. He could not endure it, and he could not yield to the entreaty

in Logan's eyes.

He turned quickly and ran to a bus which had stopped a few yards in

front. He rushed up the steps and was whirled away. Unable to resist

turning round, he saw Logan standing where he had left him, with his

head bowed, his shoulders hunched up, a figure of shameful misery.

After some minutes of numbness, of trying to gather up the threads

snapped off by his astonishment at the quickness of the affair, Mendel

began to tremble. His hands and his knees shook, and he could not

control them. It was only gradually that he began to realize how

strong his feelings had been, and how great the horror and the shock

of knowing through and through, without blinking a single fact, the

terrible relationship that bound Logan and Oliver--tied together in an

insatiable sensuality, locked in a deadly embrace, like beasts of prey

fighting over carrion: a furious, evil conflict over a dead lust.

. . . At the same time he knew that he was bound with them, that in

their life together he had his share, and that it was dragging him

down, down from the ecstatic exaltation he had perceived in his new

friend, Cézanne, a friend who could never fail, a friend upon whom no

devastation could alight, a friend through whom he could never be

clawed back into life.

By the time he reached home he was completely exhausted, and begged

his mother to make him a cup of strong tea.

"What is it now?" Golda asked. "What is the trouble? There is always

something new, and I think you will never be a man. For a man expects

trouble and does not make himself ill over it."

"I have quarrelled with Logan," said Mendel, dropping with relief into

Yiddish as a barrier against the outer world, in which terrible things

were always happening.

"A good job too!" said Golda; "a good job too! He was no good to you.

He only made you do the work that nobody likes. Now you can go back to

the old way, and Mr. Froitzheim and Mr. Birnbaum will be pleased with

you again. . . . You had better give up your friends. You are like a

woman, the way you must always be in love with your friends. . . . But

it is no good. Men will always fall in love, and then it is over with

friendship. . . . Friends are only for moments. They come and

disappear and come again. It is foolish to think you can keep them.

. . . Is your head bad?"

"Pretty bad."

"You have not been drinking again?"

"No. I've been leading a decent life. I expect it doesn't suit me."

"Rubbish. . . . Rosa says the Christian girl has been to see you."

He leaped to his feet.

"Didn't she stay? Didn't you make her stay? What did she say? How did

she look? Did she leave no message?"

Golda smiled at him.

"You had better go and see," she said.

He darted from the room and across to his studio panting with

excitement, persuading himself at every step that she was there,

waiting for him, perhaps hiding to tease him, for she was a terrible

tease.

By the time he reached his studio he was so convinced that she was

there that he hardly dared open the door. He pushed it open very

gently and peered in. The room was empty, but he felt sure that she

was there. He peeped round the corner into his bedroom. She was not

there. He had to believe it, and came dejectedly back into the studio.

On his painting-table were autumn flowers daintily arranged in the old

jug he used for a vase. He buried his face in them. She was there! She

was there in the sweetness and fragrance of the flowers.

VII

CONFLICT

MORRISON had fought bravely through her storms and difficulties. She

frightened Clowes with the violence of her efforts and the terrible

strain she inflicted on her vitality. There were times when she

thought the simplest way would be to cut adrift from all her old

associations and to throw in her lot with Mendel, to give him his

desire and so save him from the terrible life he was leading. But that

was too drastic, too simple. She could only have done it on a great

impulse, but always her deepest feelings shrank from it, and without

her deepest feelings she could not go to him, for they were engaged

most of all. . . . She felt cramped and confined, as though her love

were a cord wound round and round her limbs, and she could not, she

would not go to him bound. He must release her; she must compel him to

release her. If it took half her lifetime she would so compel him. Her

will was concentrated upon him. She would not have their love droop

from the high sympathy it had known, nor should it be torn from it by

his savage strength and the adorable violence of his passion. Neither,

on the other hand, would she turn back from him. That would be to deny

her freedom which she had bought so dearly. She had thought her

freedom would give her the easy joy of flowers and clouds and birds,

and she still believed in that easy joy, but it lay beyond the tangled

web of this love for the strange, dark, faunlike creature whom she had

found in the woods. If she turned back, if she denied the urgent

emotions that drove her on, she had nothing to turn to but the old

captivity, the life where all difficulties were arranged for, where

all roads led to marriage, where men could only talk to women in a

half-patronizing, half-flirtatious way that led to a ridiculous

meeting of the senses, then to an engagement, and so to church. To

that she would never, never return. She had fought her way out of it.

She had learned to live by herself, within herself, to wrestle with

her thoughts and emotions and to get them into shape. (It had been at

a great cost to her external tidiness and orderliness, but that too

she hoped to tackle in time.) She had won all this, and she had found

a glorious outlet in work. So far as she had gone she had been

successful, and she was ambitious, terribly ambitious, to show that a

woman could do good work.

And then there was the dark side of Mendel's life--Logan, Oliver,

Jessie Petrie. At the thought of it she shuddered, but her honesty

made her confess that it made no difference to her central feeling. It

had shocked her, outraged her, roused her to a fury of jealousy, but

that she would not have. She fought it down inch by inch until she had

it so well in control that, whenever it reared its head, she could

crush it down.

Many a tear had it cost her, but she insisted that she must

understand.

When she cut her hair short, she found, to her horror, that it was

taken by many men as a sign that she was open to their advances, and

all sorts and conditions of men had found to their astonishment that,

although she was an artist and lived an independent life, she was

immovable, and when it came to argument she was more than a match for

them.

Again, she had had the confidence of more than one of the models, and

she knew how they courted their own disasters. If there was to be any

question of blame, the women must share it with the men.

She had no thought of blaming Mendel, but she hated to have that

underworld in contact with the world which it was her whole desire to

keep beautiful. It was no good pretending that the underworld was not

there, but if she could have her way she would keep a tight control

over it, and suppress it as she suppressed her jealousy, that other

source of ugliness. If she could only, somehow, find an entrance to

Mendel's life, not only to his rare moments, but to the life that went

on from day to day, she would suppress it, she would cut it out and

throw it away. She thought of it almost as a surgical operation, or as

cutting a bruise out of an apple, for all her thoughts of life were as

simple as herself, and life too was simple in her eyes. Anything that

threatened to complicate it she expunged.

After a time she discovered that it was no good hoping to understand

so long as she regarded the dark aspect of Mendel from outside his

life. She must find her way inside it and see how it looked there.

That was hard.

Clowes could not help her at all. To Clowes it was simply

unintelligible that men could do these things. They bewildered her,

and her only way out of it was to suppose that men were like that, and

the less said about it the better. She was really very annoyed with

Morrison for worrying over it, and she was disappointed. She had hoped

that the unfortunate adventure would be over and that Morrison would

wait tranquilly for her affections to be engaged by someone who

was--presentable. . . . Still, there was no accounting for this

strange, impulsive creature, though it was a pity she should throw

away her growing popularity with people who were, after all,

important, both in themselves and by their position; for Morrison's

frank charm carried her to places where Clowes would have given her

eyes to be seen. Clowes was baffled by her friend, but she would not

abandon her. She was often bored with her, often exasperated, and more

than once she said:--