FAME and fortune were coming at last. There was no doubt of it in
Jimmie's optimistic mind. For years they had lagged with desperately
heavy feet, but now they were in sight, slowly approaching, hand in
hand. Jimmie made fantastic preparations to welcome them, and wore his
most radiant smile. In vain did Aline, with her practical young woman's
view of things, point to the exiguity of the price fixed by Her Serene
Highness. If that was the advent of fortune, she came in very humble
guise, the girl insinuated. Jimmie, with a magnificent sweep of the
hand, dismissed such contemptible considerations as present pounds,
shillings, and pence. He was going to paint the portrait of the sister
of a reigning monarch. Did not Aline see that this might lead to his
painting the portrait of the reigning monarch himself? Would not the
counterfeit presentment of one crowned head attract the attention of
other crowned heads to the successful artist? Did she not see him
then appointed painter in ordinary to all the emperors, kings, queens,
princes, and princesses of Europe? He would star the Continent, make
a royal progress from court to court, disputed for by potentates and
flattered by mighty sovereigns. He grew dithyrambic, a condition
in which Aline regarded him as hopelessly impervious to reason. His
portraits, he said, would adorn halls of state, and the dreams that he
put on canvas, hitherto disregarded by a blind world, would find places
of honour in the Treasure Houses of the Nations. It would be fame for
him and fortune for Aline. She should go attired in silk and shod with
gold. She should have a stall at the theatre whenever she wanted, and a
carriage and pair to fetch her home. She should eat vanilla ices every
night. And then she might marry a prince and live happy ever after.
“I don't want to marry a prince or any one else, dear,” Aline said once,
bringing visions down into the light of common day. “I just want to go
on staying with you.”
On another occasion she hinted at his possible espousal of a princess.
Again Jimmie dropped from the empyrean, and rubbed his head ruefully.
There was only one princess in the world for him, an enthroned personage
of radiant beauty who now and then took warm pity on him and admitted
him to her friendship, but of whom it were disloyalty worse than all
folly to think of. And yet he could not help his heart leaping at the
sight of her, or the thrill quivering through him when he saw the rare
softness come into her eyes which he and none other had evoked. What he
had to give her he could give to no other woman, no other princess. The
gift was unoffered: it remained in his own keeping, but consecrated to
the divinity. He enshrined it, as many another poor chivalrous wretch
has done, in an exquisite sanctuary, making it the symbol of a vague
sweet religion whose secret observances brought consolation. But of all
this, not a whisper, not a sign to Aline. When she spoke of marriageable
princesses, he explained the rueful rubbing of his head by reference to
his unattractive old fogeydom, and his unfitness for the life of high
society.
But Aline ought to have her prince. The coming fortune would help to
give the girl what was due to her. For himself he cared nothing. Cold
mutton and heel of cheese would satisfy him to the end of his days.
And fame? In quieter moments he shrugged his shoulders. An artist has
a message to deliver to his generation, and how can he deliver it if he
cannot sell his pictures? Let him give out to the world what was best
in him, and he would be content. Let him but be able to say, “I have
delivered my message,” and that would be fame enough.
These were things of the depths. The surface of his mood was exuberant,
almost childish, delight, tempered with whimsical diffidence in his
power of comporting himself correctly towards such high personages. For
the duchess, who never did things by halves, and was also determined,
as she had said, of not buying a pig in a poke, had conveyed to him
the intimation that Her Serene Highness the Princess of Herren-Rothbeck
would honour him with a visit to his studio on the following Thursday.
Jimmie and Aline held long counsel together. What was the proper way to
receive a Serene Highness? Jimmie had a vague idea of an awning
outside the door and a strip of red baize down the steps and across the
pavement. Tony Merewether, who was called into consultation, suggested,
with the flippancy of youth, a brass band and a chorus of maidens to
strew flowers; whereat Aline turned her back upon him, and Jimmie,
adding pages in fancy dress to hold up the serene train and a major-domo
in a court suit with a wand, encouraged the offender. Aline retired from
so futile a discussion and went on sewing in dignified silence. At last
she condescended to throw out a suggestion.
“If I were you, Jimmie, I should get the princess some portraits to look
at.”
“God bless my soul,” cried Jimmie, putting down his pipe, “I never
thought of it. Tony, my boy, that child with the innocence of the dove
combines the wisdom of the original serpent. My brain reels to think
what I should be without her. We'll telegraph to all the people that
have sat to me and ask them to send in their portraits by Thursday.”
He crossed the studio and began to rummage among the litter on the long
table. Aline asked him what he was looking for.
“Telegram forms. Why have n't we got any? Tony, run round the corner to
the post-office, like a good boy, and get some.”
But Aline checked the execution of this maniacal project. Three
portraits would be quite sufficient. Jimmie would have to pick out three
ladies of whom he could best ask such a favour, and write them polite
little notes and offer to send a van in the orthodox way to collect the
pictures. Jimmie bowed before such sagacity, and wrote the letters.
In the course of the week the portraits arrived, and the studio for a
whole day became the undisputed kingdom of Aline and a charwoman. The
long untidy table, so dear to Jimmie, was ruthlessly cleared and set in
dismaying order. The frame-maker was summoned, and the unsold pictures
that had long slumbered sadly on the ground with their faces to the
wall, were dusted and hung in advantageous lights. The square of Persian
carpet, which Jimmie during an unprotected walk through Regent Street
had once bought for Aline's bedroom, was brought down and spread on the
bare boards of the model-platform. A few cushions were scattered about
the rusty drawing-room suite, and various odds and ends of artists'
properties, bits of drapery, screens, old weapons, were brought to light
and used for purposes of decoration. So that when Jimmie, who had been
banished the house for the day, returned in the evening, he found a
flushed and exhausted damsel awaiting him in a transfigured studio.
“My dear little girl,” he said, touched, “my dear little girl, it's
beautiful, it's magical. But you have tired yourself to death. Why did
n't you let me do all this?”
“You would never have done it yourself, Jimmie. You know you wouldn't,”
said Aline. “You would have gone on talking nonsense about red baize
strips and flower-girls and pages--anything to make those about you
laugh and be happy--and you would never have thought of showing off what
you have to its full advantage.”
“I should never have dreamed of robbing your poor little room of its
carpet, dear,” he said.
They went upstairs for their simple evening meal, and returned as usual
to the beloved studio. Aline filled Jimmie's pipe.
“Do you think I dare smoke in all this magnificence?”
She laughed and struck a match.
“You did not realise what a lot of beautiful pictures you had, did you?”
“They make a brave show,” he said, looking round. “After all, I'm not
entirely sorry they have never been sold. I should not like to part
with them. No, I did not realise how many there were.” In spite of
his cheeriness the last words sounded a note of pathos that caught the
girl's sensitive ear.
“'Let us make a tour of inspection,” she said. They went the round,
pausing long before each picture. He said little, contrary to his habit,
for he was wont to descant on his work with playful magniloquence. He
saw the years unfold behind him and disclose the hopes of long ago yet
unfulfilled. What endless months of dreams and thrills and passionate
toil hung profitless upon these walls! Things there were, wrought from
the depths of his radiant faith in man, plucked from the heart of his
suffering, consecrated by the purest visions of his soul. Had Aline been
an older woman, a woman who had loved him, lived with him in a wife's
intimate communion, instead of being merely the tender-hearted child
of his adoption, she would have wept her heart out. For she, alone of
mortals, would have got behind such imperfections as there were, and
would have seen nothing but a crucifixion of the quivering things torn
out of the life of the beloved man. Only vaguely, elusively did the
girl feel this. But even her half-comprehending sympathy was of great
comfort. She thought no one in the world could paint like Jimmie, and
held in angry contempt a public that could pass him by. She was hotly
his advocate, furious at his rejection by hanging committees, miserably
disappointed when his pictures came back from exhibitions unsold, or
when negotiations with dealers for rights of reproduction fell through.
But she was too young to pierce to the heart of the tragedy; and Jimmie
was too brave and laughter-loving to show his pain. Other forces,
too, had been at work in her development. Recently her mind had been
grappling with the problem of her unpayable debt to him. This silent
pilgrimage round the years brought her thoughts instinctively to herself
and the monstrous burden she had been.
“I have been wondering lately, Jimmie dear,” she said at last, “whether
you would not have been more successful if you had not had all the worry
and expense and responsibility of me.”
“Good Lord!” he cried in simple amazement, “whatever are you talking
of?”
She repeated her apologia, though in less coherent terms. She felt
foolish, as a girl does when a carefully prepared expression of feeling
falls upon ears which, though inexpressibly dear, are nevertheless not
quite comprehending.
“You have had to do pot-boilers,” she said, falling into miserable
bathos, “and I remember the five-shillings-a-dozen landscapes--and you
would have spent all that time on your real work--Oh, don't you see what
I mean, Jimmie?”
She looked up at him pathetically--she was a slight slip of a girl, and
he was above the medium height. He smiled and took her fresh young face
between his hands.
“My dear,” he said, “you're the only successful piece of work I've
ever turned out in my life. Please allow me to have some artistic
satisfaction--and you have been worth a gold-mine to me.”
Thus each was comforted. Jimmie settled down to his pipe and a book,
Aline sat over her sewing--the articles to which she devoted her
perennial industry were a never solved mystery to him--and they spent a
pleasant evening. The inevitable topic naturally arose in conversation.
They discussed the princess's visit, the great question--how was she to
be received?
“The best thing you can do,” said the practical Aline, “is to go to Mrs.
Deering to-morrow and get properly coached.”
Jimmie looked at her in admiration.
“You are worth your weight in diamonds,” he said. “I will.”
He carried out his project, and not only did he have the pleasure of
finding Connie at home undisturbed by strange tea-drinking women, but
Norma Hardacre came in soon after his arrival. The two ladies formed
themselves into a committee of advice, and sent Jimmie home with most
definite notions regarding the correct method of receiving Serene
Highnesses. He also brought Aline the news that the committee would
honour him with a visit the following morning, accompanied by Mrs.
Hardacre, who had been pleased to express a desire to see his pictures.
The appointed hour came, and with it the ladies. Mrs. Hardacre's lips
smiled sweetly at the man who was to be taken up by a duchess and to
paint the portrait of a princess. She declared herself delighted with
the studio and professed admiration for the pictures.
“Are they all really your own, Mr. Padgate?” she asked, turning towards
him, her tortoise-shell lorgnon held sceptre-wise.
“I'm afraid so,” answered Jimmie, with a smile. “Sometimes I wish they
were not so much my own.”
“But I should feel quite proud of them, if I were you,” said the lady,
desirous to please.
Connie broke into a laugh, and explained that Jimmie had implied a
regret that they had found no purchasers. Mrs. Hardacre sniffed. She did
not like being laughed at, especially as she had gone out of her way to
be urbane. This was unfortunate for Jimmie; for though he strove hard to
remove the impression that he had consciously dug a pit of ridicule for
her entrapment, Mrs. Hardacre listened to his remarks with suspicion
and became painfully aware of the shabbiness of his coat. Presently she
regarded one of the portraits--that of a pretty, fluffy-haired woman.
“Dear me,” she remarked somewhat frigidly, “that is Mrs. Marmaduke
Hewson.”
Jimmie, in the simplicity of his heart, was delighted.
“Yes. A most charming lady. Do you know her?”
“Oh, no; I don't know her, but I know of her.”
Her stress on the preposition signified even deeper and more
far-reaching things than the nod of Lord Burleigh in the play.
“What do you know of her?” asked Jimmie, bluntly. Mrs. Hardacre smiled
frostily, and her lean shoulders moved in an imperceptible shrug.
“Those matters belong to the realm of unhappy gossip, Mr. Padgate; but
I'm afraid the duchess won't find her portrait attractive.”
“It is really rather a good portrait,” said Jimmie, in puzzled modesty.
“That is the pity of it,” replied Mrs. Hardacre, sweetly.
The victim smiled. “Surely the private character of the subject can have
nothing to do with a person's judgment of a portrait as a specimen of
the painter's art. And besides, Mrs. Hewson is as dear and sweet and
true a little woman as I have ever met.”
“You are not the first of your sex that has said so.”
“And I most sincerely hope I shall not be the last,” said Jimmie, with
a little flush and a little flash in his eyes and the politest of little
bows. Whereupon Mrs. Hardacre bit her lip and hated him. Norma, seizing
the opportunity of contributing to the final rout of her mother,
unwittingly did Jimmie some damage.
“We women ought not to have given up fancy work,” she said in her
hardest and most artificial tones. “As we don't embroider with our
fingers, we embroider with our tongues. You can have no idea what an
elaborate tissue of lies has been woven about that poor little Mrs.
Hewson. I agree with Mr. Padgate. I am sorry you believe them, mother.”
Jimmie's grateful glance smote her undeserving heart. She had gained
credit under false pretences and felt hypocritical--an unpleasant
feeling, for the assumption of unpossessed virtues was not one of her
faults. She succeeded, however, in rendering her mother furious. In a
very short time Mrs. Hardacre remembered an engagement and went away in
a hansom-cab, refusing the seat in Connie's carriage, which was put at
her disposal on the condition of her waiting a few moments longer. She
had thanked Jimmie, however, for the pleasure afforded by his delightful
pictures with such politeness when he saw her into the cab, that he did
not for a moment suspect that the lady who had entered the house with
expressions of friendliness had driven away in a rage, with feelings
towards him ludicrously hostile. He returned to the studio at peace
with all womankind; not sorry that Mrs. Hardacre had departed, but only
because courtesy no longer demanded his relegating to the second sphere
of his attention the divine personage of whom he felt himself to be the
slave. No suspicion of Mrs. Hardacre's spiteful motive in deprecating
the display of his most striking piece of portraiture ever entered his
head. He ran down the studio stairs with the eagerness of a boy released
from the flattering but embarrassing society of his elders and free to
enjoy the companionship of his congeners. And he was childishly eager to
show his pictures to Norma, to hear her verdict, to secure her approval,
so that he should stand in her eyes as a person in some humble way
worthy of the regard that Morland said she bestowed on him.
He found his visitors not looking at pictures at all, but talking to
Aline, who rushed to him as soon as he entered the studio.
“Oh, Jimmie--just fancy! Mrs. Deering is going to take me to Horlingham
on Saturday, and is coming upstairs with me to see what I can do in the
way of a frock. You don't mind, do you?”
Jimmie looked down into the happy young face and laughed a happy laugh.
“Mrs. Deering is an angel from the most exclusive part of heaven,” he
said. And this was one of the rare occasions on which he was guilty of a
double meaning. Had not the angel thus contrived an unlooked-for joy--a
few minutes' undisturbed communion with his divinity?
The first words that Norma spoke when they were alone were an apology.
“You must not take what my mother said in ill part. She and I have been
bred, I'm afraid, in a hard school.”
“It was very kind of Mrs. Hardacre to warn me of the possibility of the
duchess being prejudiced against me by the exhibition of a particular
portrait. I can't conceive the possibility myself. But still Mrs.
Hardacre's intention was kindly.”
Norma turned her head away for a moment. She could not trust herself to
speak, for a stinging sarcasm with just a touch of the hysterical would
have been all she could utter, and she had not the heart to undeceive
him. She shot into the by-path of the gossip concerning Mrs. Hewson.
“Mother believes the stories about her. So do I in the loose sort of
way in which our faith in anything is composed--even in our
fellow-creatures' failings.”
“You defended her,” said Jimmie.
“You made me do so.”
“I?”
“Either you, because you carry about with you an uncomfortable Palace of
Truth sort of atmosphere, or else the desire to rub it into my mother.”
“Rub what in?” Jimmie was puzzled.
Norma laughed somewhat bitterly. She saw that he was incapable of
understanding the vulgar pettiness of the scheme of motives that
had prompted the utterances of her mother and herself. She could not
explain.
“I think you are born out of your century,” she said.
It was lucky for Jimmie that he was unaware of the passionate tribute
the light words implied. She gave him no time to answer, but carried him
straight to the pictures.
“I had no idea you did such beautiful work,” she said, looking around
her.
Jimmie followed her glance, and the melancholy of the artist laid its
touch for a moment upon him. He sighed.
“They might have been beautiful if I had done what I started out to do.
It is the eternal tragedy of the clipped wings.”
She was oddly responsive to a vibration in his voice, and gave out, like
a passive violin, the harmonic of the struck note.
“Better to have wings that are clipped than to have no wings at all.”
She had never uttered such a sentiment, never thought such a thought in
her life before. Her words sounded unreal in her own ears, and yet she
had a profound sense of their sincerity.
“There is no apteryx among human souls,” said Jimmie, released from the
melancholy fingers. They argued the point in a lighter vein, discussed
individual pictures. Charmed by her sympathy, he spoke freely of his
work, his motives, his past dreams. Had Norma not begun to know him, she
might have wondered at the lack of bitterness in his talk. To this man
of many struggles and many crushing disappointments the world was still
young and sweet, and his faith in the ultimate righteousness of things
undimmed. The simple courage of his attitude towards life moved her
admiration. She felt somewhat humbled in the presence of a spirit
stronger, clearer than any into which chance had hitherto afforded her
a glimpse. And as he talked in his bright, half-earnest, half-humourous
way, it crossed her mind that there was a fair world of thought and
emotion in which she and her like had not set their feet; not the world
entirely of poetic and artistic imaginings, but one where inner things
mattered more than outer circumstance, where it would not be ridiculous
or affected to think of the existence of a soul and its needs and their
true fulfilment.
Hitherto meeting him as an alien in her world, she had regarded him with
a touch of patronising pity. From this she was now free. She saw him for
the first time in harmony with his environment, as the artist sensitive
and responsive, integral with the beautiful creations that hung around
the walls, and still homely and simple, bearing the rubs of time as
bravely and frankly as the old drawing-room suite that furnished
the unpretentious studio. Now it was she who felt herself somewhat
disconcertingly out of her element. The sensation, however, had a
curious charm.
There was one picture that had attracted her from the first. She stood
in front of it moved by its pity and tenderness.
“Tell me about this one,” she said without looking at him. She divined
that it was very near his heart.
In the foreground amid laughing woodland crouched a faun with little
furry ears and stumps of horns, and he was staring in piteous terror at
a vision; and the vision was that of a shivering, outcast woman on a wet
pavement in a sordid street.
“It is the joyous, elemental creature's first conception of pain,” said
Jimmie, after a few moments' silence. “You see, life has been to him only
the sunshine, and the earth drenched with colour and music--as the earth
ought to be--and now he sees a world that is coming grey with rain and
misty with tears, and he has the horror of it in his eyes. I am not
given to such moralising in paint,” he added with a smile. “This is a
very early picture.” He looked at it for some time with eyes growing
wistful. “Yes,” he sighed, “I did it many years ago.”
“It has a history then?”
“Yes,” he admitted; and he remembered how the outcast figure in the rain
had symbolised that little funeral procession in Paris and how terribly
grey the world had been.
Norma's chastened mood had not awed the spirit of mockery within her,
but had rendered it less bitter, and had softened her voice. She waved
her hand towards the crouching faun.
“And that is you?” she asked.
Jimmie caught a kind raillery in her glance, and laughed. Yes, she had
his secret; was the only person who had ever guessed him beneath the
travesty of horns and goat's feet.
“I like you for laughing,” she said.
“Why?”
“Other painters have shown me their pictures.”
“Which signifies--?”
“That this is one of the most beautiful pictures I have ever seen,” she
replied.
“But why are you glad that I laughed?” asked Jimmie, in happy puzzledom.
“I have told you, Mr. Padgate, all that I am going to tell you.”
“I accept the inscrutable,” said he.
“Do you believe in the old pagan joy of life?” she asked after a pause.
“I mean, was there, is there such a thing? One has heard of it; in fact
it is a catch phrase that any portentous poseur has on the tip of
his tongue. When one comes to examine it, however, it generally means
champagne and oysters and an unpresentable lady, and it ends with
liver and--and all sorts of things, don't you know. But you are not a
poseur--I think you are the honestest man I have ever met--and yet you
paint this creature as if you utterly believe in what he typifies.”
“It would go hard with me if I did n't,” said Jimmie. “I can't talk to
you in philosophic terms and explain all my reasons, because I have read
very little philosophy. When I do try, my head gets addled. I knew a
chap once who used to devour Berkeley and Kant and all the rest, and
used to write about them, and I used to sit at his feet in a kind of
awed wonder at the tremendousness of his brain. A man called Smith. He
was colossally clever,” he added after a reflective pause. “But I can
only grope after the obvious. Don't you think the beauty of the world is
obvious?”
“It all depends upon which world,” said Norma.
“Which world? Why, God's world. It is sweet to draw the breath of life.
I love living; don't you?”
“I have never thought of it,” she answered. “I should n't like to die,
it is true, but I don't know why. Most people seem to spend two-thirds
of their existence in a state of boredom, and the rest in sleep.”
“That is because they reject my poor faun's inheritance.”
“I have been asking you what that is.”
“The joy and laughter of life. They put it from them.”
“How?”
“They draw the soul's curtains and light the gas, instead of letting
God's sunshine stream in.”
Norma turned away from the picture with a laugh.
“That reminds me of the first time I met you. You told me to go and
ventilate my soul. It gave me quite a shock, I assure you. But I have
been trying to follow your precept ever since. Don't you think I am a
little bit fresher?”
For the moment the girl still lingering in her five-and-twenty hard
years flashed to the surface, adorably warming the cold, finely
sculptured face, and bringing rare laughter into her eyes. Jimmie
marvelled at the infinite sweetness of her, and fed his poor hungry soul
thereon.
“You look like a midsummer morning,” he said unsteadily.
The tone caught her, sobered her; but the colour deepened on her cheek.
“I'll treasure that as a pretty compliment,” she said. There was a
little space of silence--quite a perilous little space, with various
unsaid things lurking in ambush. Norma broke it first.
“Now I have seen everything, have n't I? No. There are some on the floor
against the wall.”
Jimmie explained their lack of value, showed her two or three. They were
mostly the wasters from his picture factory, he said. She found in each
a subject for admiration, and Jimmie glowed with pleasure at her praise.
While he was replacing them she moved across the studio.
“And this one?” she asked, with her finger on the top of a strainer. He
looked round and followed swiftly to her side. It was her own portrait
with its face to the wall.
“I am not going to show you that,” he said hurriedly.
“Why not?”
“It's a crazy thing.”
“I should love to see it.”
“I tell you it's a crazy thing,” he repeated. “A mad artist's dream.”
Norma arched her eyebrows. “Aha! That is very like a confession!”
“Of what?”
“The ideal woman?”
“Perhaps,” he said.
“I thought everything was so positive in your scheme of life,” she
remarked teasingly. “Don't you know?”
“Yes,” said Jimmie, “I know.”
Again the vibration that Jimmie, poorest of actors, could not keep from
his voice, stirred her. She felt the indelicacy of having trodden upon
sanctified ground. She turned away and sat down. They talked of other
matters, somewhat self-consciously. Both welcomed the entrance of Connie
Deering and Aline. The former filled the studio at once with laughing
chatter. She hoped Norma had not turned Jimmie's hair white with the
dreadful things she must have said.
“I don't turn a hair, as I'm a mere worldling, but Jimmie is an
unsophisticated child of nature, and is n't accustomed to you, my dear
Norma.”
She went on to explain that she was Jimmie's natural protectress, and
that they who harmed him would have to reckon with her. Jimmie flew
gaily to Norma's defence.
“And this child's garments?” he asked, indicating Aline, whose face was
irradiated by a vision of splendid attire.
“Don't meddle with what does n't concern you,” replied Connie, while
she and the girl exchanged the glances of conspirators.
A short while afterwards the two visitors drove away. For some time
Norma responded somewhat absently to Mrs. Deering's light talk.
“I am so glad you have taken to Jimmie,” said the latter at last. “Is
n't he a dear?”
“I remember your saying that before. But is n't it rather an odd word
to use with reference to him?” said Norma.
“Odd--? But that's just what he is.”
Norma turned in some resentment on her friend.
“Oh, Connie, how dare we talk patronisingly of a man like that? He's
worth a thousand of the empty-souled, bridge-playing people we live
among.”
“But that's just why I call him a dear,” said Mrs. Deering,
uncomprehendingly.
Norma shrugged her shoulders, fell into a silence which she broke by
risking:
“Do you know whom he is in love with?”
“Good gracious, Norma,” cried the little lady, in alarm. “You don't say
that Jimmie is in love? Oh, it would spoil him. He can't be!”
“There was one picture--of a woman--which he would not let me see,” said
Norma.
“Well?”
Norma paused for some seconds before she replied:
“He called it 'a mad artist's dream.' I have been wondering whether it
was not better than a sane politician's reality.”
“What is a sane politician's reality, dear?” Connie asked, mystified.
“I am,” said Norma.
Then, woman-like, she turned the conversation to the turpitudes of her
dressmaker.