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An Engagement of Convenience: A Novel

by Louis Zangwill · English · Gutenberg #33747 · 449,864 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: An Engagement of Convenience: A Novel

Author: Louis Zangwill


        
Release date: September 17, 2010 [eBook #33747]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/33747

Credits: Produced by David Edwards, Pat McCoy and the Online
        Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN ENGAGEMENT OF CONVENIENCE: A NOVEL ***




Produced by David Edwards, Pat McCoy and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net









  _An Engagement
  of Convenience_

  _A Novel_

  _By_

  _Louis Zangwill_

  _Author of "The World and a Man,"
  "One's Womenkind," &c., &c._

  _London
  Brown, Langham & Co., Ltd.
  78 New Bond Street, W.
  1908_




        "In tragic life, God wot,
  No villain need be!"

  GEORGE MEREDITH.




  An
  Engagement of Convenience




I


Miss Robinson had first seen Wyndham and fallen in love with him on the
day that he appeared in the road as a neighbour and set up his studio
there. But that was years before, and she had never made his
acquaintance. He was the Prince Charming of the romances, handsome, of
knightly bearing, with a winning smile on his frank face. From her magic
window in the big corner house where the road branched off into two, she
had narrowly observed his goings and comings, had watched eagerly all
that was visible of his romantic, mysterious profession--the picturesque
Italian models that pulled his bell, the great canvasses and frames
that, during the earlier years at least, were borne in through his door,
to reappear in due course as finished pictures on their way to the
exhibitions--and it was sometimes possible to catch glimpses of stately
figure-paintings and fascinating scenes and landscapes.

Then, too, there was the suggestion of his belonging to a brilliant
social world: she had indeed felt that at her first sight of him. Smart
broughams and victorias in which nestled stylish people not unfrequently
drew up at his studio about tea-time, and in the season he could be seen
going off every night in garb of ceremony; not to speak of his
occasional departures--to important country-houses, no doubt--with
portmanteaus and dressing-bags stacked on the roof of his hansom.

And not less eagerly had Miss Robinson followed his work, scanning the
magazines for his drawings, and haunting the galleries in the search for
his paintings. No one guessed how much he was the interest of her life:
her parents had no suspicion at all, though they knew of their unusual
neighbour, and spoke of him occasionally at table. But Alice Robinson
was the humblest of womankind. Her youth lay already in the past: she
accounted herself the plainest of the plain. So she idealised and
worshipped her hero at a distance, feeling immeasurably farther from him
than the hundred yards of respectable Hampstead pavement that separated
their lives.

One morning at breakfast her father read out from his paper the news of
a sensational bankruptcy. A world-famous house of solicitors had
fallen, and some of the first families in England were losers. Immense
trust funds had gone for building speculations, and amongst the
fashionable creditors who had been hit the worst were Mr. Walter Lloyd
Wyndham, the artist, of Hampstead, and Miss Mary Wyndham, his sister. It
seemed a curious little fact to Mr. Robinson that this affair should
vibrate so near to them, and a mild and not unpleasant stimulation was
thereby imparted to the breakfast-table. But Miss Robinson was hard put
to it to dissimulate her deeper interest in the announcement. Her
agitation was profound, shattering: she was glad to escape, and sit
alone with her secret. It seemed a sacrilege that earthly vicissitude
should touch this brilliant existence. And thereafter she watched her
hero more narrowly than ever, reading in his bearing a stern defiance of
adversity.

At first indeed there was little difference visible in Wyndham's outward
seemings, and Miss Robinson was thankful that the calamity had ruffled
him so imperceptibly. Yet, as the year went by, it began to dawn upon
her that things nevertheless were changing. She had learnt to read with
consummate skill all the little activities that beat around the studio,
and it did not escape her attention that he was going into society
rarely, that smart visitors were fewer, and that pictures were being
returned to him after astonishingly brief intervals. And gradually, as
if in corroboration of her own conclusions, she found his work missing
from the exhibitions, and knew with a sinking of her heart that his
brilliant days were waning.

And as time further passed, and one year merged into another, she
realised definitely that his vogue had ended. She could not even find
anything of his in the magazines, though she purchased them prodigally,
and searched them through with a hope that was desperation, and a fear
that was well-nigh frenzy.

The last year or two a dead unnatural calm had settled over the studio.
Pictures were neither despatched nor returned: if models rang the bell,
it was only to turn away the next minute with disappointed faces. Of
fashionable visitors there was never a sign now: not even a comrade or
fellow-artist came to look him up. But only a tall, sad-faced girl, who
somehow resembled him, called there at long intervals, and Miss Robinson
envied this sister the sympathy she could bring him.

He did not leave London now. All through the summer he kept in town,
lying low, as Miss Robinson could well see from the pallor of his face
on her return from her own conventional holiday at the seaside. She
could cherish no delusions--he was a beaten man!

Time and again she brushed close to him, passing him by chance in the
street, and observed the languor of his step, the growing sadness of his
features. Other details did not escape her. There was no one to attend
on him; no one to care for him. Even a charwoman was a rarity at last,
and Wyndham could be seen shopping almost furtively in the adjoining
streets, and bearing back his own provisions to the studio. Miss
Robinson divined, under their wrappings, the tin of sardines, the potted
tongue, the loaf of bread. She knew that he never took a meal out now,
and that, if he left the studio in the daytime, it was only to escape
from the misery of solitude and hopelessness.

She alone observed him so minutely. Her mother had in some degree shared
her interest in his work, and had sometimes accompanied her to the
galleries; but the common interest of the family in their neighbour was
casual and fitful. Miss Robinson hardly dared mention his name now: it
seemed to her that to draw attention to his poverty was to humiliate
him. Besides, she feared to reveal her own emotion.

One day Miss Robinson's own life caught her with a breathless upheaval.
An honoured and intimate friend of her father's, successful, opulent,
came forward with an avowal of esteem for her; deferentially desired her
association with him in his second essay in matrimony! Mr. Shanner
seemed to spring it on her with untempered abruptness; though the
attentive courtesies that had preceded the crisis might have glimmered
some little warning. But Mr. Shanner's footing in the house was as
old-established as the rest of his appertainings; and Miss Robinson's
spirit was ever at the nadir of diffidence. Men as a rule shunned her:
women cared as little to talk to her. That anybody might ever wish to
marry her had seemed impossible, inconceivable. Mr. Shanner had many
pretensions to style, yet, to her spoiled eye, he seemed merely of clay
indifferent.

She strung herself to the ordeal of refusing him, though her real
strength knew no faltering. For he proved insistent; wooed
her--soberly--decorously--as became the dignity of five decades
completed; wooed her with reasons of urgency, and implications of
sentiment. He was to depart on a mission to the New World; wished to
bear her promise with him. He would treasure it; would think of the new
light to shine in his household. But within her lay an unfailing
inspiration, and her innermost soul stood like a tower impregnable;
though she was all wounds and distress, and quivered with the hurt. Was
not her heart with her Prince Charming? her one dream in life the
privilege of helping him?

Mr. Shanner had to sail away disconsolate!

But, though Miss Robinson's mind was occupied day and night with this
problem of Wyndham's salvation, she could arrive at no plausible
solution. For how should she ever dare to give him a sign? She who would
have yielded her life for him could only watch him drifting downwards
with an agonised sense of her helplessness.

And he all the while unsuspecting of this obscure, loving historian of
his existence; of the warm heart that beat for him in these evil days on
which he had fallen!




II


For hours the rain had beaten against his windows, and at last, now that
a lull had declared itself, Wyndham dragged himself to the door, and
looked out into the gray afternoon. His eye took in the familiar vista,
but, as it rested on the great bow-windowed house at the corner where
the road branched into two, he turned away with a shudder. For years the
sight of that house had irritated him: its ugly brick bulk had been
symbolic of all Suburbia, of everything in life to which he was
instinctively hostile as an artist and a gentleman.

But presently he laughed: it had struck him as comic that he should have
preserved in its freshness his full youthful contempt for all this
Philistine universe!--he, a half-starved devil of an artist, down in the
mouth, with a solitary half-crown in his pocket, speculating with bitter
humiliation whether his hard-worked sister had yet a little to spare for
him, after all the life-blood which, leech-like, he had sucked out of
her! Nay, more, he was conscious that his distaste for this surrounding
wilderness of affluent homes, in the midst of which he had so long
dwelt as an isolated superior intelligence, had grown more marked in
direct proportion as he had become poorer and poorer.

The prosperous figure of the owner of the bow-windowed house rose before
him. Immersed in his own existence, Wyndham had deigned to notice very
few indeed of his neighbours. But old Mr. Robinson was one of the few,
not only because of the regularity with which he passed the studio every
day at six o'clock as he came home from business, but also because he
invariably bore something in a plaited rush-bag that had a skewer thrust
through it, suggesting visits to Leadenhall Market, and purchases of
game or salmon for the good wife according to season. But Mr. Robinson's
mild aspect, benevolent white beard, and gentle amble had never
impressed Wyndham with much of a sense of human fellowship. He might
concede that the old man was "a decent sort, no doubt, in his own way";
but they were creatures belonging to different planets.

Still amused at his own disdain, though the corners of his mouth were
set a trifle grimly, Wyndham turned back into the studio with the idea
of making himself presentable and going to see his sister--since it now
seemed possible to get across town without the prospect of an absolute
drenching. Happily his wardrobe had substantial resources: in the old
days he had kept it well replenished, and his simple life of late here
in the studio had made small demands on it. Thus he could still go out
faultlessly clad and shod. Nobody need suspect his poverty, he flattered
himself, if he ever chose to dip into his own world again. Only he did
not choose; there was always so much questioning to face. "We've seen
nothing of yours in the last two or three Academies--when are you going
to give us another masterpiece?" "Still on the big picture? How is it
getting along?" However genially thrown out, such usual interrogation
annoyed him beyond measure. It was so long since anything had been
"getting along." On all sides he was regarded as a doomed man, and
suspected it: suspecting it, he was morbidly sensitive. His life was
unnatural and not worth the living. Months and months had been wasted in
apathy. Each day he dreamt of a new lease of energy and courage to begin
on the morrow; but, after making his bed and clearing away his breakfast
and purchasing his food for the day, he would find himself dejected and
incapable of a single stroke.

And yet he could not wholly realise the change that had come over the
scene. He rubbed his eyes sometimes, as if expecting to awake from an
unhappy dream. Was not the flourish of early trumpets still in his ears?
The dazzle of admiration still on his retina? The gush of extensive and
important family connections still tickling his self-esteem? The
sweeter approval of a superior art-clique still flattering his deeper
vanity?

He had been born with a silver spoon; his childhood and youth had been
ideally happy. From the playing-fields of Eton he had passed to the
quadrangles of Oxford. A distinguished student of his college?--not in
the ordinary grooves; yet favourably known as an intellect with
enthusiasms. Phidias was more of an inspiration to him than Aristotle;
Titian more actual than Todhunter. Ruskin, Pater, Turner, had stirred
him; left his mind subdued to their colours. From boyhood had been his
the swift skill with pencil that ran as easily to grace as to mockery.
And, left early arbiter of his own existence, with gold enough for
freedom, he had made for the one career that called to him.

Genius cannot prove itself at a stroke: it has its adventurings to make.
Seldom it realises at the outset that it is adventuring in the dark,
therein to grope as best it may to self-discovery. Even this first stage
may be long deferred; yet, however sure of himself at last, the artist
has still to tread the unending road with the great light of
self-realisation ever in the distance. There are the years of strenuous
search, of faithful labour; of bitterest failure on failure to bring the
deep, mysterious impulses to bloom and fruition. But there is yet
another, if independent, adventuring. The great light that crowns the
artist's journey shines only in his own spirit. The world sees and knows
nothing of it. He has none the less to find his way into that other
light--the lurid, mocking limelight of the world's acceptance; to seek a
place beside or beneath the charlatan. This is the bitterest stage of
all--- to stand shivering in marketplaces that are knee-deep with dung
and offal; to be upholding precious things to the vision of swine. What
wonder if in the course of so harsh a journeying, as he lives and
breathes in his own universe of striving, his precise moral relation to
things external grows dim, intangible; and, if money one day give out,
he clutches at any crust for sustenance.

Wyndham began his journeyings. His advantages were many and obvious; his
disadvantages subtle and unseen. There was the danger that facile talent
and social prestige might bring him an early delusive success; a
failure, rightly seen, however tricked out with glamour.

His beginnings, indeed, were pleasant: it was great fun throwing himself
into this new queer Bohemian world of art. He worked hard as a student,
the sheer interest of his labours lightening them astonishingly. And,
after some preliminary swayings in varying directions, he at last "found
himself," as he supposed; developing a dexterous imitative craft, and
joining an advanced crowd with Whistler and Sargent for his deities.

Wherever he pursued his studies--in London, or Paris, or Italy--there he
was remarkably popular. Everybody said: "Wyndham belongs to very good
people. They're swells--tip-top!" And indeed he had obviously the stamp
of being "the real thing," and even the elect of Bohemia were flattered
and fascinated by personal association with him.

When ultimately he set up his studio here in Hampstead, he had his
policy definitely before him. With the means and the leisure to aim at a
high career, he would make no concessions to popularity or the market.
He had chosen the locality deliberately. It was London, and within reach
of the world; but not so near the world as to endanger his labours. The
little tide of fashion that rolled up to his door was not a tribute to
fame, but merely the fuss and interest of his non-Bohemian circle
pleased for a time with the novelty of having a studio and a genius
connected with them.

So in the early years he worked enthusiastically, and was able to win
some footing in the galleries. But, in the eyes of his numerous family
connections, he was seriously launched; especially when a couple of his
pictures at last attracted buyers, and he moreover found himself earning
guineas from the patronage of friendly editors whose humbler commissions
he carried out in the same spirit of the dignified, ambitious worker.

Then the financial crash came, leaving brother and sister entirely
dependent on their labours. Both met the crisis with commendable
philosophy. Mary, who had long before taken up educational work as an
amateur, was soon able to establish herself as a professional, and had
taught ever since at a high school in Kensington; picturesquely settling
herself in a tiny flat in an artisan's building, and living as a homely
worker. The dignity and serene simplicity of her life had of late
furnished the one ideal thing for Wyndham's contemplation.

Wyndham himself had stood up straight and felt very strong; had
reassured his fussy, frightened folk that he could rely on his
profession. He felt in himself an endless ardour for achievement, a
confidence of triumph in the contest with men. Nay, more, he would gain
his bread without descending from his high standpoint! The task was
fully as difficult as he had anticipated; but at any rate he contrived
to live for a couple of years. Then, somewhat to his surprise, the
Academy began to return his pictures; and somehow, to his greater
surprise, everything else went against him at the same time. He could
not even get "illustrating" to do. Those who had acclaimed him before
because he was a "swell" were now turning against him apparently for the
same reason. Your aristocrats were never to be taken seriously; they
were necessarily amateurs! It was all so unanimous, so settled and
persistent, that it had almost the air of a conspiracy. Wyndham saw well
enough that everybody had tired of his work, that he had had his hour
and his vogue; his career lay like a squib that had blazed itself out.
All bangs and fizzings, and then a blackened bit of casing, silent,
extinguished! Yet he had the discernment to recognise that the
dying-down had been really inevitable; that his present relative poverty
had little or nothing to do with it. He had been dexterous on the
surface, but the sameness of his note--without even the saving grace of
convention--had destroyed him commercially.

Well, he believed in himself, and he refused to accept this erasure. On
the contrary, he would launch out more daringly than ever. An end to
facile imitation of other people's styles! He must express his own
deeper self. The strict Whistlerian creed was much too narrow. Art was
not merely a bare abstract aesthetics: humanity counted for something
after all. Was woman's loveliness something really apart from woman
herself? True that art meant beauty--in the largest sense, of course;
but why should not humanity and beauty fuse together?

So, scraping together all he could command in the way of money, he set
himself to work out a large dramatic idea, suggested by the sight of a
May-day demonstration. The canvas was gigantic, and he strove to depict
a mob of strikers straggling out of the Park after their great meeting,
with elements of fashion caught in this _melee_ of labour. The pictorial
irony had greatly interested him, and he felt that this painting on the
grand scale was being sincerely born out of his own emotion, that it
would trumpet out a warning to the age.

The beginnings were full of promise, and he decided to stake everything
on it. But for so realistic a representation of Hyde Park Corner he
needed to make a great many sketches on the spot. So, through the
friendly offices of an amiable acquaintance, he obtained access to a
convenient window in Grosvenor Place, and made free use of the
privilege. The master of the house, a nobleman of the old school, who at
first sight seemed stately as the portraits in his own dining-room,
proved on acquaintance to be singularly bluff and genial, sometimes
almost slap-dash. He had made Wyndham welcome and at his ease, bidding
him come and go as he pleased, and "never to mind a bit about turning
the room into a studio." And this charming nobleman had likewise a
charming daughter, who sometimes came for a minute or two to talk to
Wyndham and interest herself in the sketches. Lady Betty was a brilliant
figure of a girl; had travelled a good deal and knew the world. She was
sunny and friendly, yet naturally on a pedestal. She was clear-headed
and capable; in the home supreme mistress. Wyndham was the subject of
many graceful little attentions. If he came in the morning she saw that
his glass of sherry and biscuit was never neglected; in the afternoon
she presided over tea in the drawing-room and expected him to appear
there.

Of course poor Wyndham never dared tell himself that he was in love with
her. A girl like that must naturally be reserved for a great match, as
regards both position and fortune. He could not think of her save as
presiding over a plurality of palaces or voyaging in a magnificent
yacht. Palaces and yachts were not the rewards of painters, so Wyndham
kept his mind sternly fixed on the purpose for which he was there. Even
so, the intervals between his appearances grew wider and wider. And
when, after some couple of years of toil, discipline, searching, it had
come home to him that in this terrible picture he had undertaken a task
beyond his strength and experience, he found himself too shamefaced to
"abuse" further the courtesy that had been extended to him. The
consciousness, too, of his growing poverty was becoming acuter and
acuter. Already he was drawing back into his shell, and, once he had
ceased going to Grosvenor Place for the sake of his work, he had not the
heart to continue his visits as an ordinary acquaintance. More than a
year afterwards he read of Lady Betty's engagement in the papers--it
was the very match one would naturally look for. Yet the news "shattered
him to bits"--absurdly enough, he told himself, since he had known her
at best irregularly, and not in the ordinary course of social intimacy.
He was really half-surprised at receiving an invitation to the wedding.
He could not prevail on himself to go; but, remembering she had once
admired one of his Academy pictures, he sent her a photograph of it on a
miniature silver easel as a trifling wedding gift. She wrote back a
gracious acknowledgment, which had since remained one of his treasures.

Meanwhile he had been struggling on with the picture, determined to
conquer. But its difficulties and problems were endless. After all his
toil it stood on his easel in a terribly unfinished condition, though he
had stinted his own body to lavish his money on it. At last, gulping
down the humiliation, he was forced to accept of Mary's little store of
savings to pay his rent and his models. It was his first step of the
kind, and he paid the full proverbial cost of it. But he had still the
hope of returning the loan a thousandfold. Was not his success to redeem
her life as well as his?

Certainly Mary believed in him and the picture, and looked forward to
its scoring a great triumph. The whole heart and hope of the sister
centred on that vast canvas. She sometimes ran across town to see it,
though--poor child!--Hyde Park Corner always looked the same to her at
every stage of its long creation. But the picture was Wyndham's
backbone; it was his stock-in-trade before his world. He was more and
more of a recluse now, refusing all invitations, discouraging his
friends from coming to interrupt him--as he put it. Certainly Wyndham
would rather have died than confess to failure after all the magnificent
trumpeting. Even as it was, the time came soon enough when the big
picture no longer served to protect his dignity. He imagined
half-pitying glances and ironic smiles, and so eventually he found
himself avoiding everybody without exception.

It was only on Lady Betty's wedding day, after more than three years of
futile striving, that he had the resolution to remove the great canvas
from the easel and stand it with its face to the wall.

He was tired now, but he must make an effort to emancipate himself from
Mary's exchequer. Till then he could not hold his head up. So he painted
some smaller and pleasanter pictures, but again he could do nothing with
them. The Academy sent them back, the minor galleries sent them back,
the Salon sent them back the following year. The dealers offered less
than the cost of the frames. Meantime he had ceased to count up the
five-pound notes Mary had starved herself to keep for him. He knew he
was a coward and dared not. He had reached that stage of moral
confusion which Nietzsche registers as in the natural history of the
artist-type, and which may not be eyed too harshly from the point of
vantage of ordered and organised existence in this outer universe. One
idea stood clear beyond all others; grew into his mind; grew till it
became his mind. He must cling to his studio, hold desperately to this
atmosphere of paint and canvasses.

He was getting on in years now--past thirty-three. It was like the
striking of a pitiless clock, this adding of swift year after year to
his unsuccessful life. His hand began to fail him. The necessity of now
doing his own house-work; of bothering with coals and cinders, preparing
his makeshift monotonous meals, pouring oil into lamps, and boiling
kettles, and washing plates and teacups, had begun by encroaching on his
time and energies, and ended by absorbing them altogether. The care of
ministering to his own primary needs had at last superseded art as his
profession. Even so, the cobwebs multiplied and the dust lay thick.

Months now slipped by, he scarcely knew how; he was astonished to
realise how time might elude one, how a colourless day might be trifled
away without appearing to hold the possibility of even a morsel of
achievement. Yet he still grasped the hope that something would
"arrive"--an unexpected magazine commission, a request from a dealer.
Ideas for a new start would teem in his head as he lay tossing on the
narrow iron bed up in the gallery at the end of the studio. Why not do
some pretty little things--to fetch ten guineas apiece, say--Cupids
playing amid wreathed flowers with pale Doric structures in the
background? If Mary could manage just another few pounds for him, he
would have time to turn out a number of such decorative trifles. Such
things were in constant demand and were a sure source of livelihood. He
had stood out long enough, much longer indeed than he had had the right.
He had consistently worked on a basis of high endeavour, but now he must
withdraw his dignity and enter on the pot-boiler phase. Better that than
this abominable leech-like existence. Continued misfortune had befogged
his wits, and this last year certainly he had been half mad.

So be it! He must wake up now, and no longer lose his days in this
stupid pottering about!

Every dog had his day, and his own turn would come in time. He was an
artist. He felt it in his bones and blood. Art was his life and destiny.
He had blundered in attempting too big a feat too early in his career,
but he did not intend that that should wreck his existence. No, no! he
would never throw up the sponge. He would rather die than admit defeat,
with all those who knew him looking on at the game.




III


He dressed himself carefully to go to Mary's, trying hard not to think
of the real purpose of his visit--he had merely informed her that he
would be in the neighbourhood and would look in for a cup of tea. But,
though it was distasteful to dwell on these unending demands on her
earnings, he was anything but profligate in spending them. He had spun
out her previous five-pound note so that it had kept him going for weeks
and weeks, and he had grudged himself even a newspaper. In view of the
newly-projected work to tickle the dealers, he regretted more than ever
that he had not been able to pull himself together sooner: in these past
precious weeks he might have knocked off half a dozen of such
pretty-pretty things.

A series of omnibuses took him across London to Kensington Church, where
he descended, presently turning out of the High Street. The "Buildings"
where Mary resided were in a side alley at the back, and Wyndham made
direct for them. He walked straight in through the large front door that
stood perennially open, and followed the trail of muddy footmarks up
the worn stone stairway. On the third landing he came to a stop, and
pulled a bell half hidden in the obscurity of a corner. The door opened,
and Mary stood before him. He could not help seeing how unnaturally slim
she appeared to-day; how her simple stuff dress seemed to hang loosely
on her.

"This is so good of you. I am so glad to see you, dear." Her earnest
face brightened with a wistful yet pleasant smile.

He stooped and kissed her, then followed her into her tiny sitting-room.
It was evidently the home of a gentlewoman. With the shelf or two of
books, the escritoire, the few prints, and the little trinkets and
photographs she valued, she had contrived to make a dainty little nest
of it, and all these simple things gave the place a peculiar personal
stamp. The table was laid for tea, and the kettle sang on the fire.

"You have had a dreary journey," she said, as she gave him a chair.

"No, the weather has been unexpectedly kind," he reassured her. "The sun
peeped out just for one moment. I believe I was the only person in
London that noticed it: the rest of the world were intent on other
things. Have you been keeping well?"

"You forget I am just back from vacation."

"Of course--I had forgotten," he laughed. "How did you spend your time?"

"I passed the first three weeks with Aunt Eleanor, as I told you I
should. We were a big, merry party, and everybody made a great fuss of
your little sister." Again that wistful smile. "They all spoiled and
petted me shamefully."

"Ah, that was good for you."

"I am not so sure about that," she returned thoughtfully. "I am
certainly not used to the sort of thing, and I really found it restful
and refreshing to go on to old Lady Glynn, who had me to herself."

"So that's your idea of a holiday--taking care of paralytic, deaf old
people whom everybody else shuns like the plague." He shook his finger
at her. "And you call it restful and refreshing."

"Service is the greatest of all happiness," she answered gently. "Even
as it is, I'm sadly afraid I'm a sham and a fraud. I'm not really a
worker--in the same sense as others I know. They have no fashionable
friends with big houses in the country."

She brewed the tea and gave him his cup.

"Do people inquire much about me?" he asked, as the uncomfortable
thought recurred to him.

"Certainly not of me," she returned. "You neglect them, you refuse their
invitations, they never hear a word from you, and naturally they suppose
you wish to be quit of them all. And so, no doubt, they feel it the
proper thing not to appear to wish to discuss you with your sister."
There was a pause. Both seemed lost in thought for the moment. "And so
you, poor Walter, have had no holiday at all!"

"Ah, well," he sighed. "I try to content myself with the thought that
I'm saving it up. One of these days I daresay I shall go off to Rome or
Venice, and recuperate from several points of view. I daresay a bit of
luck will be coming my way presently, and I'm keen on getting back to
Italy again. I've often planned it out. A month or so at Paris, a couple
of months in the South of France, three at Rome, and three at
Venice--with a look-in at Naples some time, of course."

"What a lovely holiday that would be!" He did not surprise her quick
flash of longing. Both remained pensive.

"But tell me about everybody," he said at last. "You see I take more
interest in them all than they suppose."

"That's natural enough. After all, Hertfordshire's your home."

He winced visibly, half sorry that he had set her mind in that
direction. She, however, proceeded to draw for him various pictures, and
he presently found himself listening with a deeper eagerness than he had
foreseen. She brought him close again to his own world, uplifted him in
his own eyes: he had almost the sensation of being restored to a sphere
which it had been more painful to abandon than he had ever admitted.
The minutes passed, bringing him a warm, happy sense of social
comradeship with his sister. The little fire burned brightly, and the
feeling of the well-ordered nest was fragrant and exquisite. He felt his
bitterness softening under its influence; a deep peace seemed to
surround him, filling the little haven, radiating from Mary's wistful
face, from her gentle smile and voice. How thankful he was this terrible
London yet held her sympathy!

"It is a great thing for me to have you to come to, Mary," he broke in
on her suddenly. "It helps me tremendously."

"Poor Walter!" she breathed. Her eyes filled with tears.

For a moment both were too moved to speak again. But abruptly, as with a
courage and firmness long since resolved upon, she looked straight at
him.

"Why don't you give it up, darling? This art is ruining your life."

He did not seem surprised at this sudden turn of the conversation,
though such a suggestion had never before fallen from her lips. He took
her words as a cry of despair rather than an attempt at a stern
reckoning.

"Why don't I give it up?" he echoed. "That's an easy question to ask.
The answer is difficult. But I can't give it up. It is impossible."

"It is not so impossible as it seems."

"What can I turn to? I am fitted for nothing."

"Go to the Colonies. Labour on the soil--or work with hammer and saw."

"I am willing to labour, willing to face anything in life. But,
Mary--the confession of failure--you don't see how deep, how mad the
pride is in me."

"You have nothing to confess. The whole world knows you are a failure.
They talk about it openly. They spare me as much as possible, but I
can't shut my ears."

It was a staggering blow. "They despise me!" he breathed.

Her lips hesitated, clenched together, the corners convulsed with pain.

"They despise you!"

He found his defence. "Because I have not succeeded commercially." His
voice was full of scorn. "It matters little that these gross Philistines
misjudge me. They will yet regret it. I shall yet show them that I am
not so self-deceived as they imagine. I am an artist--art was born in my
blood, art is my whole existence. I shall stick to it till I fall dead.
I ask you, Mary, to believe in me a little longer."

"Heaven knows I have never wavered in my belief a moment. But it is not
my belief that can save you. You have made a brave attempt, but you have
been defeated. I am only facing the simple facts. The present position
seems to me a hopeless one to start from. You have no means behind you
now, so what is there before you save to go on in the same miserable way
as you have lived the last year or two? I see no possibility of anything
but repetition of the same unhappy experience--the world is not going to
step out of its way for your sake. And remember it has already made up
its mind about you."

"Then I have lost your sympathy!" he exclaimed. He stared gloomily into
the fire.

She saw now that the morbid sensibility of the man who had failed would
never face clear, cold reason, however gently administered.

"No, dear; you have not lost my sympathy. Please don't think that," she
pleaded. "Don't you see I want to be a real friend to you; don't you see
that you are more to me than your art?"

"I must fight it out," he insisted. "To-morrow I am starting a fresh lot
of things--to sell! I have always stood out for the big accomplishment,
but now I offer my labour in the market. Pretty designs, prettily
coloured--Cupids and pearly clouds and wreaths of flowers. The dealers
will take them. You will see, Mary, I shall manage to pull through yet."

She shook her head incredulously. "Better to give it up altogether
before it is too late."

"You can't mean it," he exclaimed. "You have stood by me so long that I
can't believe you are going to turn against me."

"I repeat that I care for you more than for your art, and I cannot see
you sacrificed. No, I have not turned against you. I have been against
you all this long, unhappy time. To-day I am your friend for the first
time. Listen, darling. When I got your letter yesterday, I knew that
things were as bad as ever, that you were at your wits' ends again for
money."

He maintained a shamefaced silence, not daring to make any pretence to
the contrary. She looked straight at him as she continued: "I am sure
you will be the last to think I have ever considered the few pounds I
have been able to put aside for you--my heart's best affection has
always gone out to you with them. But the whole of last night I kept
awake, and prayed for strength to refuse you any more money."

He held his head down; he was too abased to speak.

"Strength has been granted me at last. You are dear to me, and I will
not help to continue this unhappy state of affairs. Sell off your
studio, try your fortune in the Colonies, and you will yet pull your
life out of the mire."

He rose, and took up his hat. "I daresay you are right, Mary. But I am
an artist. Art is my life. Outside that there is nothing for me. Don't
think I am ungrateful for all you have done. Goodbye!"

"Goodbye, darling. Perhaps you will yet think it over."

He shook his head wearily and turned away, not seeing that she had held
her lips to him. The next moment he was descending the muddy staircase,
slipping and stumbling on the bare stone. He was conscious that Mary was
standing in the doorway a moment, but he did not see the convulsive
working of her face, nor know that as soon as he was out of sight she
had thrown herself on her bed, heart-broken, her body shaken in a
terrible burst of sobbing.




IV


In the High Street Wyndham waited impatiently for an omnibus to take him
home again. Instinctively he turned for refuge to the bleak studio, from
whose loneliness he had so often been impelled to escape. But it was his
own corner, and all he had. He would not light his lamp; he would lie
there in the gloom till his pain and self-abasement should have worn
themselves out. Merciful sleep might come; perhaps--and the idea seemed
sweet to him--the sleep of all sleeps.

So he possessed his spirit as best he could, while the vehicle lumbered
along through the endless streets; shivering a little in the autumn dusk
as now and then a gust of wind arose. The sky clouded heavily, and, when
finally he descended, the rain was falling swiftly again.

At last he was at home! He thought of the studio now with affection, and
quickened his pace feverishly. Then he became aware that a familiar
figure, holding a familiar rush-bag with a skewer thrust through it, was
trudging just ahead of him in the growing darkness. But he was not
surprised at catching sight of Mr. Robinson, since it was the regular
hour of the merchant's appearance after his homeward journey from the
City. As usual, Mr. Robinson's house filled the centre of vision,
looming vast at the cross-roads, and softened in the evening mist; and
for the first time the figure plodding towards it under the dripping
umbrella struck Wyndham as interesting and strangely human.

Steadily, steadily, Wyndham gained on his neighbour; then, acting on
some vague instinct, slackened his step so as not to have to pass him to
get to his own door. But just outside the studio Mr. Robinson slipped,
swayed, then came to the ground heavily. Wyndham at once hurried
forward, and helped him to his feet.

"You are not hurt, I hope?" he inquired.

"I think not," returned the old man. He leaned against the studio door,
whilst Wyndham took the rush-bag from his clenched fingers, and gathered
up the umbrella from the gutter into which it had rolled. Mr. Robinson
surveyed his soiled garments ruefully, and shook his head sadly.

"It _is_ beastly," assented Wyndham.

"It can't be helped," said the old man; "though mud like this on a new
suit of clothes puts a hard strain on a man's philosophy." There was a
good-natured gleam in his eye and a brave smile on his face. Wyndham
found himself unexpectedly attracted, and was much concerned when Mr.
Robinson tried to take a step or two, but was pulled up painfully.

"Pray, don't alarm yourself, sir," said Mr. Robinson, as Wyndham caught
at his arm solicitously. "I am only a little bruised, and have had
rather a wrench. I must just breathe for an instant."

"Won't you come into my studio, and rest for a moment or two?" suggested
Wyndham. "I shall be delighted if you will."

He produced the key from his pocket, turned it in the lock, and threw
open the door. Then he offered Mr. Robinson the support of his arm.

"It is very kind of you, sir," said the old man, as he linked his arm in
Wyndham's. "My name is Robinson. I live just up the road. I daresay you
may have noticed me: I have often noticed you."

"I am enchanted to make your acquaintance, though I regret the
particular circumstances," said Wyndham, as they passed through the
little ante-room into the dim interior.

"I cannot share your regret," returned Mr. Robinson, with a touch of
suave conviction. "No, not even if the accident were more serious, since
I have been afforded the pleasure of knowing you."

Wyndham was surprised at the sweetness and old-world courtesy revealed
in the old man's personality. "You are very kind," he said with a smile.
"I hope indeed I am worth so pretty a sentiment. But please take this
arm-chair."

He pushed it forward, then set the rush-bag down on the table, hastily
throwing a serviette over the litter of his last meal, which he had not
had the energy to clear away, and which now brusquely offended his
fastidiousness. But as Mr. Robinson, good careful soul, hesitated to
soil the chair, Wyndham got a rag and wiped away the more lurid splashes
from his garments. Then, whilst the old man rested, Wyndham trimmed his
lamp; and presently the glooms vanished before a cosy illumination. Mr.
Robinson at once began to scrutinise the studio on all sides with
amusingly deep interest. The old Normandy presses, the model's throne,
the giant easel, the well-worn Persian carpet, the hosts of canvasses of
all sizes standing with their faces to the wall, the disorder and
informality everywhere--all seemed to strike for him a note of youth and
gaiety, to animate him with a sense of a new romantic universe. His face
lighted with pleasure. He gazed up at the lofty roof and the oak
cross-beams that supported it, and finally his eye rested on the little
stairway and gallery at the far end, now almost lost in the shadows.

"Is your bedroom up there?" he hazarded, his naive interest slipping out
on his tongue.

"Yes," smiled Wyndham, as he tackled the dying fire. "It's the
traditional arrangement."

"What a fascinating place you've got here! It's all a new world to me."

"Ah, it's a very ordinary sort of world--when once you've settled down
to work."

"I have never known an artist before," pursued the old man, "and it is
all fresh to me. I think that if I were a youngster again, I shouldn't
at all dislike having a place like this, and making my home of it. Not
that I mean I should ever have made anything of an artist," he added
with a smile. "It's the spirit of the thing that appeals to me. You must
be very happy here."

"Not necessarily," said Wyndham. He saw the old man's eyes fixed on him
gravely. "You see, I'm not one of your successful artists, and the years
have a way of passing on." He struggled with the fire, making the sticks
blaze, then piled up the coals unsparingly. Mr. Robinson was the only
person in the world to whom he had ever admitted failure, but somehow it
did not seem to matter.

The old man gazed at him in frank astonishment. "Why, you are in the
prime of early manhood!" he exclaimed. "Really it is most extraordinary
to hear a splendid young man like you complain of the years passing!"

"I'm thirty-three," volunteered Wyndham. "And an unlucky devil of
thirty-three, who has as much trouble in getting rid of his work as I,
feels old enough in all conscience."

"But you artists have to expect these adverse experiences," said Mr.
Robinson. "Art of course isn't like other things--it isn't exactly a
business or profession in the ordinary sense, and so long as a man has
the gift, he ought not to get disheartened. In our business world, of
course, pounds, shillings and pence are everything, but in the world of
art it wouldn't do to set up a standard of that kind."

Such sentiments on the part of a Philistine who came home every evening
from the City at six o'clock struck Wyndham speechless.

"The struggle of genius is proverbial," Mr. Robinson added, before the
younger man could find his tongue; "and genius wouldn't be genius
without it."

"Ah, if I were only a genius!" said Wyndham, laughing.

"I am sure you are a genius," said the old man very gravely. "I have
often thought what a clever face yours was. At home we have often spoken
of you."

"I suppose then I must be a conspicuous figure in the road. I had no
idea of it!" Wyndham laughed again.

"You've been in the neighbourhood some years now," said Mr. Robinson
half apologetically; "and neighbours naturally notice one another.
Besides, if I may say so, you are quite unlike the ordinary run of
people. You are not the sort of man one sees in the City."

"You interest me. In what way do I differ from others?"

"You have the stamp of belonging to leisured people; it is plain from
your walk and bearing, from your voice and manner of speech. And then
there is something about your clothes even--I don't quite know what."
The old man's eyes rested on him with a sort of approval and
satisfaction.

Wyndham was amused. "You are really an original character," he
exclaimed. "I like you."

Mr. Robinson smiled with gratification. "I more than return the
compliment, I can assure you."

"But pray go on," said Wyndham. "I believe you're a wizard. I must get
you to cast my horoscope."

Mr. Robinson raised his hands. "I don't think I could manage that," he
laughed. "I am only a quiet observer of my fellow-men. In the present
case it is very easy to see that yours is the face of a gentleman by
birth. There is a certain composure in your whole style. Whatever you
had to face, you would never have that appearance that men get in the
City--of wearing themselves out."

"Better to wear out than to rust out," said Wyndham meditatively. "I
rust out."

He was astonished at his own frankness. But there was a deep pleasure in
being natural for once, in throwing off the cover of sham and pretence
that had characterised his intercourse with his kind in the past. He did
not even consider it was strange that the person he should be baring
himself to so freely was one whose existence hitherto he had merely
deigned to notice. But nothing could exceed Mr. Robinson's amazement at
this last profession of his.

"Rust out!" The old man's eyes opened wide. "Why, you have done an
immense amount of work!" He waved his hand significantly towards the
army of canvasses ranged against the walls.

Wyndham affected to be impressed by the consideration. "Yes," he
admitted; "I have used up a considerable amount of material in my time,
I must admit." He had suddenly perceived that Mr. Robinson was largely
discounting his ingenuous frankness, and was really taking his
profession of failure, which, as it happened, he had thrown out in an
offhand way, as rather affectation than literal truth.

"And no doubt will be using up still larger amounts in the future." The
old man smiled and rose. "But I am taking up your time!"

"No, indeed," Wyndham assured him. "I hope you have quite recovered
now."

"Oh, quite," returned Mr. Robinson. "I had altogether forgotten the
little accident in the pleasure of our conversation."

There was a pause. "I am sorry there's no light," said Wyndham; "else I
should show you some of my work--that is, if you cared to see it."

The old man looked eager. "Couldn't you make the lamp do?" he exclaimed.
"I'm sure it would give me a very good idea of your pictures. But I am
presuming on your kindness."

"Oh, no," protested Wyndham.

He began to move about the studio, conscious of a new energy. Somebody
was here to appreciate him; somebody desired to see his work, was
looking up to him in admiration! He felt strangely rejuvenated--it was
as if he had taken a dose of some wonderful elixir. He selected half a
dozen of the smaller pictures, and brought them forward. Then, as he
wheeled the great easel into position, the whim took him to see how his
huge "masterpiece" looked after all this long interval of time.

For, since he had stood it with its face to the wall on Lady Betty's
wedding-day, he had never had the heart to glance at it again. Not
merely failure and wasted years were associated with it, but it stirred
memories of the hours he had spent at Grosvenor Place in the first
freshness of his hopes, when he had worked with the passion of youth.
Then, too, there was the silent drama that had played itself out in the
depths of his own spirit. Looking back, it seemed to him that no man
could ever have cherished a more hopeless love, or have encountered a
more inevitable one. Nor had the lapse of time softened the bitterness
of that strange romantic chapter. Lady Betty's figure and personality
would remain with him as his ideal of woman for the rest of his life;
and he clung to the memory of his hurt as typical of his whole fortune.

But though the thought of the picture to-night inevitably stirred up
some of these old emotions, there was joined to them a sudden
overwhelming curiosity. What would be his impression at the first
glance? Would all its deficiencies and crudities stand out in relief,
and make him turn away from it in sickness and loathing? Or would it
strike him, however unfinished it might be, as having yet promise in it,
as justifying some at least of the time--nay, even life-blood--he had
consecrated to it?

"What a huge thing!" ejaculated Mr. Robinson, as Wyndham tilted it back
from the wall.

"It _is_ tremendous," smiled Wyndham. "I'm afraid I shall have to ask
you to give me a hand with it."

Together they carried it to the easel, and Wyndham hoisted it to its old
place. "I don't know whether we shall be able to make head or tail of
it," he said; "but I'll do what I can with the lamp. As you see, it's a
powerful one."

"Of course I don't profess to be a connoisseur of oil paintings," Mr.
Robinson warned him. "But I know what I like, though I daresay you will
think me extremely benighted."

"No, indeed," protested Wyndham; "I shall value your opinion highly." He
worked away at the little wheel at the back of the easel as he inclined
the canvas at the most favourable angle, whilst the old man watched the
process fascinated.

The next moment Wyndham was holding the big lamp high in the air, and
carefully illumining the surface of the picture. For a moment everything
before his eyes was blurred, and he could see nothing at all; but he
stood his ground firmly, and gripped the lamp heroically. And before the
mist could clear he heard Mr. Robinson's voice rise in admiration.

"Wonderful!" exclaimed the old man, his tone vibrating with an immense
conviction; and at that moment Wyndham received the picture full on his
vision and felt at once he had there a basis that could be worked up
into a splendid achievement.

"The crowd of strikers with their banner is the most life-like thing
I've ever seen. Wonderful!" Mr. Robinson gazed and gazed, his interest
overflowing into a running comment. "It's Hyde Park Corner! Why, of
course--there's the Duke of Wellington's house, and there's Lord
Rothschild's. Marvellous! What a variety of faces and characters! And
the old fellow there in the corner--what powerful features full of
despair! And the old woman with the red shawl--she hasn't had a morsel
of food, poor creature, for twenty-four hours, I'll wager. Why don't you
leave her alone, you old ruffian of a policeman! And then that
fashionable lady in her brougham with her over-fed poodle--what contempt
on her face for all these artizans! How real everything is--the
perspective is grand! Why, you could take a walk out there in the
distance! Marvellous! It doesn't need an art education to see that's a
work of genius."

Wyndham stood listening in elation, though, in his own perception of the
work just now, he felt as aloof from it as if it had sprung from
another's labours. His brain seemed emancipated from the tangle of its
old problems and all his old flounderings. And as Mr. Robinson continued
his admiring ejaculations, Wyndham put in now and again a word of
explanation, drawing attention to a point here and there, though this
was at first rather by way of soliloquy than conversation. But,
presently, as he moved the lamp to and fro, up and down, he warmed to
the occasion; even enlarging on his pet ideas, and pointing out where he
had failed to realise his own scheme and formula. Mr. Robinson listened,
wholly absorbed and fascinated by these new horizons that opened before
him. His respect and worship for art was contagious: Wyndham began to
worship it more himself.

And the younger man grew eloquent, expatiated on the old art and the
new, on academies and masters, on realism and symbolism, on plein air
and sunlight, on colour and technique. And as he spoke, he was enchanted
with his own voice. It was splendid to feel himself speaking again after
all this long suppression--he was realising the strength and
infallibility of his own artistic convictions. Never before had he felt
so sure of his conceptions; his former humility had only led to
confusion and hesitation. In future, his own mind should dominate--he
would not be blown about by all these conflicting schools and critics.

He was conscious of standing more vigorously upright; and, as he
enlarged on the picture, he seemed to get a new and sure hold of it,
seeing more and more the potentiality of a great and powerful structure
that no Academy could dare refuse to recognise. He saw now that his long
interval of hibernation had not been unfruitful. And it had made a
necessary sharp division between the two parts of his life--the first,
uncertain, stumbling, unsuccessful; the second, confident, mature,
triumphant.

The picture before him was transformed. Problems that had baffled him
seemed to solve themselves in a flash. Effects he had vainly sought
through maddening months stood at once revealed, flowing naturally out
of what he had already set down. His hand longed to be wielding the
brush again.

"But if I may make the remark," interposed Mr. Robinson at length; "it
seems matter for surprise that a gentleman like you should be attracted
to the choice of such a subject. I should hardly suppose that you have
ever come into any real contact with labour, and workmen on strike would
therefore scarcely come within the sphere of your sympathy."

"The artist is of universal sympathy," said Wyndham gravely, and himself
believed it. At that moment he felt his endless sympathy spreading
itself out, embracing all creation. "And then it was not only the
humanity of the scene that touched me, and inspired me to attempt to put
it down finely and greatly; there was also the pure art part as it
appealed to the trained vision--the splendid difficulties to be
vanquished, the opportunities for draughtsmanship and subtle colour, the
sense of far-stretching space to be produced from only a narrow gamut of
light and shade."

"Marvellous!" echoed Mr. Robinson again.

"But if I may make the remark in my turn," said Wyndham, "your sympathy
with labour surprises me equally."

"Why so?" asked Mr. Robinson.

"The natural antagonism between capital and labour!" smiled Wyndham.

"Oh, I started as a poor boy--right at the foot of the ladder,"
explained Mr. Robinson. "My father was a carpenter. Wages were low in
those days, and prices of all necessaries were high. I remember in my
childhood we had a pretty hard time of it. In my own firm we share the
profits with all the employees. So you see I'm rather partial to labour
so long as it's decent and reasonable. When I think of my own struggles,
I like to see every man get fair opportunities. When a man has no
particular talent--such as myself, for instance--it is ever so much the
harder to go through discouragements. But, at the worst of times, it
must be a great thing for a gifted man like yourself to be conscious of
his own powers."

"So you set up to have no particular talent!" explained Wyndham. "You
amuse me. Haven't you made your fortune unaided? I confess that that
seems to me the most difficult thing in the world--immensely cleverer
than anything in the way of art or painting."

Mr. Robinson laughed. "Now you're making fun of me."

"I was never more serious in my life," insisted Wyndham, now wheeling
forward a smaller easel, in order to display the pictures he had at
first selected. "I consider it frightfully clever to make money."

"My dear sir, fools often make money," Mr. Robinson assured him.

Wyndham shook his head incredulously. "Do you care much about this
landscape?" he asked.

"Very much indeed. It is so green and fresh and airy, and those are
grand old trees."

"It's our old home in Hertfordshire. I lost the property and a modest
fortune through a rascally set of lawyers."

Mr. Robinson's face expressed deep concern. "Yes, I remember the affair
well," he said. "I remember reading it over the breakfast-table to my
wife and daughter. We saw your name among the creditors. It was a bad
business."

"They had managed all our family concerns for thirty years."

Wyndham was now wound up to enter into more personal matters than he had
so far touched upon. As before, he was perfectly frank, recounting in
the intimacy of the moment all the details of this financial
catastrophe. He spoke freely of his relations in the country, and of his
sister Mary, and the independent way in which she was earning her bread;
passing from canvas to canvas the while, and breaking off frequently to
discuss the paintings.

At last they had gone through all the selection, but the unfailing
appreciation of his visitor was so pleasant to the artist that he could
not help bringing forward two or three more, and then finally another.
And still yet another after!--like the preacher's "one word more."

"I have passed a very happy time here with you," the old man declared,
as Wyndham restored the lamp to its usual place on the table. "You see I
was right; the occasion was well worth the accident that brought it
about."

"Happily you were not really hurt. So all's well that ends well."

The old man took hold of his rush-bag. "I mustn't forget my middle of
salmon," he smiled. "I generally fetch something home for my wife--some
game or fish fresh from the market."

"You make me wish _I_ had a husband in the City," sighed Wyndham.

Mr. Robinson laughed. "Well, I suppose I must make up my mind to be off,
else my wife and daughter will be wondering what has become of me."

Wyndham came forward hurriedly. "I hope I have not been keeping you," he
murmured. Somehow he did not like being left alone now. The old man's
coming had saved him for the time being from the clutch of a terrible
despair, and he saw it waiting to descend swiftly on him. The half-hour
of self-respect would vanish like an illusion.

But Mr. Robinson's voice was breaking in on his mood again.

"Would it be presuming too much on our slight acquaintance if I
suggested----" The old man hesitated with an evident shyness that was
very winning.

"Pray suggest anything you like," said Wyndham.

Thus encouraged, Mr. Robinson launched out boldly. "Would you come home
and dine with us--quite without ceremony. We're the simplest of people,
but we shall offer you the heartiest of welcomes."

"That is very kind of you," said Wyndham. "I should not be deranging
your household?"

"I am sure my wife and daughter will be as delighted to see you as I am.
Will you not come home with me now--in a simple, friendly way?"

"Since I am to meet ladies," smiled Wyndham, "I should like to make
myself presentable. I have just been across town, and in this filthy,
murky atmosphere one gets to feel so utterly unclean."

"Oh, yes; am I not in the same plight myself?" smiled Mr. Robinson.

Wyndham escorted him to the door, and the old man again thanked him for
the pleasure the visit had afforded him.

"We dine at half-past seven," was his parting reminder, and Wyndham,
promising faithfully to be punctual, closed the door after him.




V


But his visitor had no sooner departed than Wyndham experienced a sharp
revulsion of feeling. How stupid to have accepted this invitation! His
isolation in this suburban wilderness had always afforded him a certain
satisfaction--he had consistently maintained his magnificent want of
interest in all this Philistine population. His studio was his castle,
and if he chose to starve therein it was at least a mitigation of his
misery to be able to do so without the sense of others' eyes prying at
him. And now he had surrendered his privacy. The indiscretion was really
inexplicable! And he had let his tongue run on so recklessly and
confidentially! He might even have drawn back at the very last--alleged
an engagement, and cut short the acquaintanceship there and then.
Perhaps it was not yet too late!

In his annoyance he started pacing the length of the studio. But the
great canvas, still glistening there on the easel, suddenly claimed his
attention again, and brought him to a standstill. Impulsively he caught
up the lamp, and once more directed its light on to the surface. The
picture took deep hold of him, and he stood absorbed in it. And somehow
Mr. Robinson's wondering voice began to sound its praises. "Marvellous!"
the old man seemed to be saying. "It doesn't need an art education to
see that's a work of genius." And as he recalled each stroke of
admiration, he nodded his head in agreement.

Was not the old man's appreciation of good augury? Surely it
foreshadowed a popular Academy success. Whatever one's personal art
ideals, it did not detract from their worth if one could carry them out
and please the crowd at the same time--incidentally, of course--without
deliberate intention. Did not Moliere first try his comedies on his
housekeeper? Mr. Robinson's tastes were the tastes of the great
public--nay, of even the better classes that went to the galleries. Like
him, they dwelt entirely on the illustrative aspect of painting, and
were altogether swayed by the humanity of a picture, by its dramatic or
anecdotal interest. No wonder some of his fellow-craftsmen had been
driven to the opposite extreme, and tried to rule out humanity
altogether. But the human side of art need not be necessarily on a low
plane, or descend to mere anecdote. In his hands art should be the
vehicle of real intellect and emotion.

If only he were not forced to do those idiotic trifles! After holding
out so long, to capitulate absolutely for want of bread! No, he would
not dine with Mr. Robinson--he would starve rather!

"Better to starve than stoop to inferiors!" he exclaimed, as he set down
the lamp again. How little, indeed, he had eaten all that day! And with
the thought a distressing weakness came over him. There was a humming at
his temples: the studio disappeared in a mist, then reappeared
oscillating. He was constrained to steady himself by clutching at the
table.

In a minute or two the vertigo passed off, leaving him with a dull
craving for food and drink. He might make some sort of a meal from such
poor provender as his larder afforded--a portion of a loaf, the
remainder of a tin of sardines, a hunk of cheese; but somehow the
prospect was singularly uninviting. He might, indeed, add variety to the
store by laying out his last shilling in the streets adjoining, but the
shilling was too precious, and anyway he had not the energy to go
shopping. There swam up before him the picture of a well-lighted,
comfortable dining-room with a heavily laden table, and of a middle of
salmon, piping hot, that was being served with a dainty white sauce. And
then there were hosts of bottles on a mahogany sideboard: fat,
gold-tipped bottles; tall, long-necked bottles; fantastic twisted
bottles. Good well-cooked food was nourishing him, a delicate wine was
moistening his feverish palate, touching his whole dull self to a
lighter mood.

He had accepted the invitation. The Robinsons were expecting him, would
be troubled and put out if he did not arrive. He carried the lamp up to
the gallery, and began his preparations. And then the whim took him to
change his clothes again. Not that he supposed the Robinsons affected to
be fashionable of an evening, but the pride of the half-starved man rose
in irrational self-assertion.

So he dressed carefully, tying his bow to perfection, and arranging the
set of his waistcoat fastidiously. It was so long since he had put on
evening clothes, and as he saw himself in the glass, well set up, and
bearing himself exquisitely, the fact of his poverty seemed absurd and
incredible. His face, too, seemed to have recovered some of its olden
confidence as he scanned it critically. True the cheeks were a trifle
thin and shrunken, but the lines of dejection and sadness had lightened
at the new stirring within him.

Then for the first time in all these years he made his way up the road
to the ugly house at the corner that had stamped itself upon him as the
symbol of all Suburbia, as the stronghold of a type of life that Bohemia
mocked at and Belgravia waved aside as impossible.

If he had not yet entirely overcome his distaste, it was at least
mitigated by a splendid sense of condescension.




VI


A handsome Phyllis, in cap and apron, opened the door, and Wyndham
stepped into a broad corridor, carpeted in red, and hung with popular
engravings that he had seen in the windows of all the carvers and
gilders in London. Next, he was ushered under a crimson door-hanging
into a resplendent drawing-room, lighted by a dazzling crystal
chandelier, and sensuously warmed by a great red-hot fire. There was
nobody to receive him yet, and he was left to amuse himself with the
show-books on the tables--padded photograph albums full of old-fashioned
naive people posing against rococo backgrounds, collections of views of
the Valley of the Thames and of the Lake District, and richly bound
volumes of Tennyson and Sir Walter Scott.

The interest of these treasures was soon exhausted, and Wyndham, sinking
into a remarkably soft arm-chair, impatiently beat with his foot at a
cluster of roses on the brand-new "Aubusson" carpet. The room was almost
triangular, a large bow window commanding the vista of the main road,
and pairs of other windows, straight and tall, overlooking the streets
that branched on either hand. And all these windows were elaborately
draped in a would-be Renaissance style, with many loops and festoons,
and with big gilt cornices above. And between each pair of them stood a
gilded consol table surmounted by a mirror that reached to the ceiling.
Oval mirrors with lighted candles in sconces glittered from several
points of vantage, and crimson couches and the immense piano completed
the tale of splendours.

At length the door opened softly, and Mr. Robinson entered. Wyndham
rose, not displeased to observe that his host was likewise in evening
clothes; as he had been already regretting the self-assertion to which
he had yielded.

"Ah, you are in good time," said the old man, coming forward in his
quiet, gentle way, and shaking hands again. "I am sorry to say that my
wife and daughter are not down yet."

His tone was apologetic, and Wyndham smiled, readily understanding that
the announcement of a guest to arrive had scared the ladies to a more
elaborate toilette than usual.

"They were enchanted when I told them you were coming," Mr. Robinson
continued. "As for commiseration over my fall--not a word!"

The two men had conversed for some few minutes before the hostess and
her daughter came sweeping into the room; and, as he had half expected,
Wyndham found he knew them more or less vaguely by sight. Mrs. Robinson
was a tall dame, fully sixty, with gray hair, and a most amiable
expression; stately, even handsome, in her black silk dress with its
tasteful lace at the throat and wrists. The daughter who followed rather
shyly behind her gave Wyndham the impression that he was beholding the
most simple, homely person he had ever met; and this despite the
complexity of her costume, which seemed to be built up almost entirely
of old lace that lay over itself in thick folds and rich creamy masses.
Timidity of temperament and modesty to the verge of self-distrust were
at once suggested by the almost awkward constraint of her bearing and
the quiet, half-averted glance of her dark eyes. He could see that she
hardly dared look at him. He gallantly supposed that she was a year or
two younger than himself, and as he met her desperately friendly smile
(intended for him but hardly bestowed in his direction) with his
choicest bow, he received a further impression that was distinctly more
favourable than the first of unrelieved plainness. For, once his eye had
taken in her features, the artist in him was ready to do justice to her
throat and arms, which were really good: and her dark hair, her greatest
glory, lay in a superb coil, which, with a surprising touch of
coquetry, was set off by a velvet band and some lilies of the valley. It
was curious that the figure of Lady Betty should swim up before him just
then, as if to emphasise his real ideal of woman's beauty, and to make
him feel once for all how impossible it was ever to step down from that
standard. But he could not help smiling covertly at the thought that the
family were making such a serious business of so casual an
invitation--these toilettes were really so very much more elaborate than
anything he might conceivably have looked for; though at any rate it
reassured his pride in the fullest degree--evidently, his frank
admissions to Mr. Robinson notwithstanding, they were not taking him as
a poor devil of an artist, but were looking up to him with a perfect
appreciation of the respect that was his due.

Wyndham's presentation to the ladies over, there followed an instant of
general embarrassment. Mrs. Robinson smiled again, and quickly tried to
make conversation.

"How pleasant to become acquainted at last, after being neighbours so
many years!" she murmured. "And so unexpectedly, too."

"When the unexpected does happen," said Wyndham, "it generally is
delightful. I suppose that's because most of us in this hard life get
into the habit of expecting only the opposite sort of thing."

Miss Robinson laughed shyly, whilst her mother seemed somewhat puzzled.

"They say that the unexpected always happens," ventured the younger
woman tremulously. "I'm sure the proverb must be wrong, because nice
things happen so seldom." Her voice was soft, vibrating with gracious
amiability.

"I disagree with Mr. Wyndham," said her father. "I was not at all
expecting to slip down. When the unexpected happened, I am bound to say
I did not find it delightful."

They all laughed; and then Mrs. Robinson resumed the interrupted tenour
of her discreet, agreeable way. She herself had often thought how
pleasant it would be to know him; but in London one could live for ever
so many years and yet know absolutely nothing of one's next-door
neighbour. In the country, of course, things were different: there
etiquette was more human, and people called of their own accord. Was Mr.
Wyndham exhibiting anything just now? They had seen pictures of his in
the Academy in past years, and were great admirers of his. Wyndham was
by now too faint and exhausted to do more than hold his own in a
smiling, conventional way: the splendours of the room, too, dazzled him
to the verge of confusion. He was thankful when Phyllis appeared with
the announcement that dinner was served; and Mr. Robinson, giving his
arm to his daughter, led the way across the hall, under another crimson
door-hanging, and into a long dining-room, wherein was set out a great
table with flowers and fruit and silver. The covers were laid at one
end, which gave the dinner an air of informality and family intimacy.

A glass of sherry at the start revived Wyndham considerably, and soon he
fell to conversing at his ease. Presently he found he was somehow taking
the lead, and their evident respect and admiration for his lightest word
made him clearly perceive that he was an important and brilliant figure
for them. Such grains of resentment as he still cherished at having
entered on the acquaintanceship were dying away. Meanwhile the seductive
prevision of material joys that had risen before him at the studio at
that moment of physical weakness was being literally realised, almost
comically so. There on the immense mahogany sideboard stood bottles and
decanters galore, and now up came the middle of salmon with a piquant
sauce accompanying it! God! how delicious it tasted, after all these
months of bread and cheese! Wine gave him inspiration, and food the
strength to live up to the role they were allotting to him. He was
good-looking and knew it; his voice, his bearing, his choice of words,
were alike distinguished; his experiences were of worlds that were to
them far-seeming and romantic. He was the sort of hero they had read
about in novels--a handsome guardsman nonchalantly looking in at a Park
Lane dance at midnight, or a brilliant attache to an embassy in touch
with wonderful horizons.

Meanwhile the supply of dainty food continued; a leg of lamb, spinach,
fat, luscious asparagus, a melon from a Southern clime, a chicken, and
the juiciest of French lettuces. The hock was of the most delicate, the
champagne subtle and sparkling. Even so he felt himself sparkling in the
eyes of the others. He was the lion to whom all this homage was his
rightful due, holding them fascinated with his wide knowledge of men and
cities, of social life in European capitals. He drew upon his wanderings
in by-ways known only of artists; fascinated them with sketches of the
art life of Rome and Paris. Reminiscences bubbled up of his student
days, and with them were mingled deft touches of Eton and Oxford, and
charming cameos of county life; this last developing insensibly into
discussions of Anglo-Saxon character, its comparison with the Latin,
relative estimations of intelligence, industry, ambition. Mr. Robinson
here had many shrewd observations to offer, for they had now wandered
into the domain of affairs. Wyndham was genuinely interested in his
host's experiences, in his accounts of unusual men of business from
strange, even barbarous parts of the world, with whom he had had
personal relations. They even touched upon financial operations; and
Wyndham felt perfectly at ease amid complications in which millions were
bandied about like tennis-balls, and the credit of banks and States was
pawned as simply and swiftly as he might pawn his own watch. At last,
over the dessert, there was a perceptible slackening. Wyndham, who so
far had taken care not to let his eye rest on the many heavy-framed "oil
paintings" that hung on the walls, for fear some discussion of them
might thence arise, was now incautious enough to fix his gaze markedly
on some sheep pasturing just opposite him. But Mr. Robinson seemed to
welcome the opportunity thus afforded.

"Oh, of course I know you won't find any of _those_ things worth
glancing at," he threw out with a laugh; and the others chimed in,
highly amused at the thought of the impression "the things" must be
making on their guest.

"Oh, some aren't at all half bad," conceded Wyndham politely, his eye
now promenading freely. "The girl with the mandoline is laid in with
rather a charming touch, and the fruit-and-flower piece is really
decorative."

"We always considered those two the best," declared Mr. Robinson. "I
bought them at an auction in the City, many years ago now--more, in
fact, than I care to remember."

Wyndham still affected to be examining the collection.

"Now, of course," resumed Mr. Robinson, "that Highland scene is the
merest pot-boiler--a stream in the middle, a mountain on one side, and a
cow on the other. I've seen hundreds of them for sale. But it's not
likely I shall ever be taken in again that way, especially after
examining the work I saw at your studio, Mr. Wyndham."

Wyndham inclined his head smilingly, and Mr. Robinson duly proceeded to
describe to the others the great masterpiece which that afternoon he had
had the privilege of inspecting. His memory of the details proved to be
extraordinarily minute, and his face glowed all over again with the
wonder and enthusiasm he had displayed at the studio. "The figures, the
faces," he wound up, "were simply marvellous. I can't give you the
faintest idea of how magnificent it all is. I could spend hours looking
at it."

Wyndham could do no less than suggest that the ladies should come and
see the picture for themselves, though just then a whiff of unpleasant
thoughts urged on him again the imprudence of such further social
developments.

"We shall be only too delighted; it will be a great pleasure," exclaimed
Mrs. Robinson, and Miss Robinson's eyes shone with unmistakable
excitement.

"We must really take down that Highland scene, my dear," proceeded Mrs.
Robinson, addressing her husband. "It is altogether too bad. We ought
to have something better in its place."

It passed through Wyndham's mind that one of his projected panels would
do excellently, but of course it was far too below the dignity of the
brilliant lion to appear to snatch at the opportunity of turning a few
honest guineas through the grace of his humble entertainers.

"Let us have the Highland scene down by all means," said Mr. Robinson.
"And I've an idea! If we can induce Mr. Wyndham to paint our Alice's
portrait, why, then we should have something first-rate to hang in its
place."

Miss Robinson turned fiery red; the quick glance she flashed at her
father was the more conspicuous. "How splendid!" she exclaimed
breathlessly. Her bosom heaved. Wyndham was almost painfully aware of
the thumping of her heart.

But he himself was caught quite unprepared. True that the unexpected had
happened again, but that very quality of the event was in this instance
disconcerting. No doubt they observed his slight hesitation.

"Of course it would be a great privilege for us," interposed Mrs.
Robinson; "but it seems to me we are counting without Mr. Wyndham's
authority."

Wyndham inclined his head graciously with a smile; swiftly master of the
situation again, and improving the occasion with a compliment.

"Oh! I shall be most delighted." He gave his proposed subject the
professional glance that the occasion authorised. "Miss Robinson will
afford me the opportunity of a most distinguished piece of portraiture."

Miss Robinson gazed at her plate, nervously peeling a banana. She had
not spoken much during the dinner, but she had hung on Wyndham's words
with a naive, unconscious admiration, which, from a prettier and more
brilliant woman, he would scarcely have passed with so little a sense of
appreciation.

"Thank you for the compliment, Mr. Wyndham," she said simply. "I am
afraid the distinction will be due more to your work than to your
sitter."

"No, indeed, Miss Robinson," he protested, with a suave gravity that
made his polished assurance the more impressive and charming. "I did not
intend any compliment--I spoke only as the artist." He was rather
surprised that a woman should display so little vanity. And, in a subtle
way, it did not enhance his estimation of her.

Miss Robinson's banana occupied her more earnestly than ever; but her
mother came to the rescue by raising the important question of costume.
Wyndham, after further professional consideration of his client,
preferred to paint Miss Robinson as he saw her now. And with a ready
sense of detail he saw, too, that certain rings she wore, though he had
not observed them closely at first, would make excellent spots in a
scheme of decoration. These rings were unusually chosen, and were more
artistic than extravagant. The one on her right hand was a small, subtle
cat's-eye surrounded by fine pearls. On her left hand were an
aquamarine, and a scarab that shone like the patina of an ancient
bronze. Almost without a pause he dashed at once at a scheme, which he
elucidated there and then, much to their overwhelming. He would pose her
on an Empire chair. In a blue and white Oriental vase on a high stand at
the side should be arranged three tall arum lilies amid some vivid
carnation blossoms. Why, the Nankin bowl on the mantelpiece was the very
thing! The background of the picture should be vague and of an
olive-grey tone, laid in with free brushwork, against which the masses
of creamy lace would show deliciously decorative. The great surmounting
coil of hair would give character to the whole scheme, and the lilies of
the valley in the velvet band afford a final contrast of lightness and
graciousness against the intense note of the coiffure.

The parents were radiant with pleasure, though poor Miss Robinson looked
more and more scared each instant. In her trepidation she could only
echo stammeringly the elder people's wonder at his great skill and
cleverness. The scheme unfolded itself before them richly beautiful--not
one of your dull black portraits, but a canvas glowing with exquisite
light and colour.

"There, Alice, you ought to be proud of yourself," said her father,
rallying her good-naturedly as a parting shot, when the women rose to
retire; and Wyndham attended their exit under the crimson hanging with
his most engaging air.

Left alone, the men drew their chairs to the fire, and Mr. Robinson
brought forward boxes of fragrant-smelling cigars, large and rotund. The
atmosphere of comfort enveloped Wyndham soothingly: the sense of
unlimited abundance seemed a miracle after his long privation.
Fortunately he had not been tempted to have his glass filled too often:
he had appreciated all these good and luscious things with commendable
moderation, and had been stimulated to brilliancy without losing cool
command of himself. He lighted his cigar at the little silver smoker's
lamp that just then came in with the coffee, and, as he puffed, a
splendid warm feeling of well-being took possession of him. He helped
himself to cream and sugar with the masterful calm and something of the
gesture of a stage hero.

Presently Mr. Robinson raised the subject of Wyndham's fee for the
portrait, approaching the point apologetically.

"Of course, we could hardly discuss this side of the matter before my
wife and daughter," said the old man. "But I must insist on your
accepting a fair remuneration for the work--shall we say two hundred
guineas?"

"To be frank," said Wyndham, "if you had left it to me, I should hardly
have mentioned so large a sum."

"Naturally a gentleman of your disposition would think more of the
artistic pleasure of the work than of the money it brought. Still, in
this life money has to be considered. In all things, sublime or humble,
the labourer is worthy of his hire. I do not for a moment suggest that
the sum I have named in any way expresses our appreciation of the work,
even in anticipation, and certainly not in any way our sense of the
privilege and honour you are bestowing upon us."

"I shall endeavour to merit your kind words," said Wyndham, not to be
outdone in polished courtesy, though he conceded that, by force of
simple sincerity and good feeling, Mr. Robinson seemed a past master in
the delicate art. "At any rate," he pursued, "the work is developing in
my mind. The more I dwell upon it, the better and better I like the
scheme, and I shall work at it enthusiastically from start to finish."

It being thus assumed that two hundred guineas were to be the artist's
reward, Mr. Robinson seemed by no means loth to wander from a point
which he had approached with great hesitation and an immense sense of
its difficult delicacy. As yet Wyndham did not measure the radical
change in his personal situation; nor did he display any undue elation.
But his cool demeanour was no mere pose. Indeed, he was surprised
himself at the ease with which he was accepting the transaction, as if
it were commonplace in his experience. But he merely supposed that he
was meeting good fortune with the natural dignity of the artist--to whom
commissions are due as a matter of right, however long they may be
deferred.

They did not linger in the dining-room, but joined the ladies after
their first cigar; though not before Mr. Robinson had sedulously
inquired as to his liking for the particular brand, which, he assured
Wyndham, was not readily obtainable in London, and had made, him promise
to take a box away with him.

In the drawing-room Miss Robinson played to them, at first tremulously,
but gaining confidence with the experience. She displayed a degree of
trained taste and a certain individual choice, favouring the tenderer
and gentler works of Mendelssohn and Mozart. She sang also one or two of
Heine's love songs in the German with a touch of passion and regret,
whilst Wyndham accompanied her; and he himself wound up the evening in
more jovial mood with a rousing student's song from his old Munich days.

Their parting with him had almost a touch of affection; and the final
understanding was that he was to plan out the arrangements for the
sittings, and to communicate with them in the morning.

He was forgetting his box of cigars at the end, but Mr. Robinson
carefully caught it up from the hall table, and brought it after him
just as the servant was opening the door.




VII


The next morning early Wyndham jumped out of bed with a bewildered sense
of some change in his life, and it was an instant or two before his
faculties cleared and he remembered his adventure of the previous
evening. His next thought was one of pleasure that he had at last
carried out his resolution of rising early. The autumn had developed
with unusual severity, but the morning was intensely clear, and the
studio full of a strong light. He pushed aside the hanging, and looked
down from the gallery on the familiar scene below. Ordinarily, on
rising, the sight had filled him with disgust and apathy, but now a
freshness and vigour pervaded him, a new imperious desire, not merely in
his mind but in all his limbs and muscles, to enter again on the contest
with men. As his thought ran back through the past intolerable year or
two, his inaction and sloth seemed almost incredible. He saw himself
rising at midday, suffering moral tortures before the work he was
powerless to begin, letting the barren hours drift away into the deep,
then regretting them passionately. Was it not all a nightmare from which
he had been curiously released?

He dressed, and, whilst his little kettle was boiling, took careful
stock of his professional materials. Colours, brushes, varnishes--all
needed renewing; there seemed nothing but impracticable odds and ends,
mere bits of wreckage from his disastrous life's venture. Then, too, the
filth and disorder all around him struck him brusquely, stung him to
annoyance. On every surface where dust might accumulate it lay in serene
possession. Wherever spiders could spin, there the webs hung thick,
amazing and complicated citadels, prodigious masses and networks.

He felt he could not endure it a day longer. There must be a thorough
physical cleansing at once. And he must return to the luxury of a daily
bed-maker. This preoccupation with household things took off the keenest
edge of one's first energy and enthusiasm; he must reserve himself
jealously for his high calling.

As he sipped his coffee he mused over the little financial difficulties
that immediately beset him. Now that at last he had a valid ground for
appealing to Mary, he felt reluctant; anxious to bring her only the
sense of his success without alloy. He might explain the situation to
Mr. Robinson, and ask for money in advance; but that seemed as impolitic
as it was repugnant in this new rapture of fine upstanding dignity.
Payment of the quarter's rent that was already due could be easily
deferred--for the bare humiliation of making the request. But he needed
something for equipment, and must face the sacrifice of some of the
older pictures to which he had clung so long, accepting any sum in
exchange, if only shillings.

He still felt no disposition to invest the accident that had turned the
tide for him with any touch of superstition or romance. He regarded the
whole matter in the same dry light as at his first acceptance of it the
evening before. He had sat waiting for clients, and at last they had
turned up. But he did not at all dislike the Robinsons: they were very
much better than the great run of their class--they had evidently
ideals, and aspired to a higher degree of refinement than they as yet
possessed, or, perhaps, were capable of possessing. They were neither
smug nor self-satisfied, and, in giving him this work, they had avoided
indulging in any semblance of bourgeois patronage, whereas other people
of their class, even if well meaning, might easily have been gross and
intolerable.

He had studied his sitter pretty closely. The profile, as is not
unfrequently the case with "plain" women, had a curious individual
interest. He felt it offered scope for "construction," and he could
import subtly into the drawing a certain distinguished sentiment that
was not really in the original, though somehow it might easily have been
there, and, in moments of enthusiasm on the part of the observer, might
even be conceived to be there. Yes, the profile was undoubtedly the
thing: that way, too, the great coil of hair could be handled the more
effectively. Indeed, it seemed to him that, taking into consideration
her dark eye with its soft lashes, and the long shapely arms, and the
exquisite ivory tones of the old lace dress, the scheme should really
turn out, as he had so promptly put it to Miss Robinson herself, "a most
distinguished piece of portraiture." He was shrewd enough to understand
the essential shyness of her disposition, and he felt he might well
invest her expression with some suggestion of this, though it should
come out as a sort of gentle spiritual modesty.

And now his imagination returned to the contemplation of his own
fortunes, and went soaring skywards. His luck having once changed, who
could say what might not turn up next? Another sitter might appear, one
of your great heroines, stately and brilliant--a sort of Lady Betty, in
fact: he might as well admit he _had_ Lady Betty in mind! Such a
portrait, appropriately conceived, would form a remarkable pendant to
this one. Then, too, he might make another dash at his masterpiece! Such
a display of versatility in the next year's exhibitions must place his
name on everybody's lips, must surely pave the way to his reputation not
only as a great decorative portrait painter, but also as a modern of the
moderns, touched to inspiration by all the stress and striving of his
age!

This roseate flight was abruptly disturbed by the advent of the postman.
The rat-tat, one of the double sort, imperiously summoned him to the
door. Had the "something else" already turned up? He rather prided
himself on the coolness with which he rose to meet it. The postman
handed him a packet and a letter. But at a glance he saw that the packet
was a rejected drawing and the letter Mary's, and he went straight down
into the depths again. He, however, affected a cheerful good morning to
the postman; then, no sooner alone, tore open the letter, with the
bitter taste of yesterday's scene with his sister full in his throat. To
his astonishment, he pulled out two five-pound Bank of England notes,
and only a few words accompanied them. "DEAREST," she wrote,--
"Since you left me to-day I have suffered beyond endurance. That you
will ever forgive me for my harshness I cannot hope. I am the only soul
you have to turn to, and yet I struck at you as with a whip. Your face
as you turned away will haunt me for the rest of my life. I have been
sobbing and sobbing, feeling my heart must break. I ask you to be good
to me now, and take this little money. Darling, don't punish me by
sending it back. Better times are coming presently, and, if God is good,
this little help now may bring you the best of fortune.--Your loving
sister, MARY."

Wyndham was unnerved; realising to the full the torture her gentle,
sympathetic nature was inflicting on her. What it must have cost her to
gather up her strength for that critical interview he could only
remotely surmise. Yet it had failed her after all!

However touched he was by her sweetness, however much he was moved to
respond to this prostration and surrender, he yet saw only too clearly
that at bottom it _was_ a failure of strength. The idea of using the
money was singularly distasteful; even though he told himself he would
have his hand cut off rather than doubt her perfect goodness and
sincerity in sending it.

This necessity of a difficult decision disturbed the nice cool balance
with which he had started out to face the day. There was nothing for it
but to put aside the letter for the present in the hope that counsel
would come to him later. And in the meanwhile he went on with his
programme. He tidied his papers, went to hunt out his old charwoman,
and, ultimately leaving her in possession of the studio, he ran into
town to get his new materials, and look up the various accessories for
the scheme of the picture.

His first visit was to a shop in Oxford Street, where he had dealt ever
since his student days, and where he could order what he needed without
immediate payment. A burly man in a Norfolk jacket and knickerbockers
was making purchases at one of the counters, and his back seemed not
unfamiliar. Wyndham brought out his list and was going through the
various items with one of the assistants when a heavy hand was placed on
his shoulder, and, turning, he beheld the big powerful head and pointed
beard of one of the old gang of his Latin Quarter days.

"Sadler!" he exclaimed.

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

"How jolly! I was coming to look you up! I've just ferreted out your
address; you're still fixed out there at Hampstead?"

"Oh, do come--I shall be delighted," said Wyndham genially. "Have you
been in London long?"

"Three weeks. After knocking about for five years--what do you think of
that, my boy? First went all over Spain--made scores of studies. Gee!
First-rate! Cheapest place in Europe--exchange thirty-five to the
sovereign--and lots of good eating. Went to see a bit of Velasquez down
at Madrid. Gee-rusalem! And the Titans, stuck up in a funny little
room! You never see anything so fine in your life."

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

The vigour and enthusiasm of his old friend, the nasalities of the deep
voice, had almost a complete freshness for him, after the long interval
since their last meeting. He was pleased at the encounter--it brought
him whiffs of old days of happy comradeship. He felt the stirring of the
war-horse.

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

"I once saw some wretched things of his, though," said Wyndham. "I
remember--at a modern exhibition at Venice."

"I grant there are one or two rotten ones," conceded Sadler; "but
they're interesting, if you take them in the right way--experiments that
failed, though they were fine as he had them in him. Well--then I did a
bit of a tour all over the shop--came along through Holland--made
cart-loads of sketches; and then I came right along here. Been getting
lots of fun in London; been round with the boys, and had a rattling good
time. Taking the opportunity, too, of getting some nice suits of
clothes." And here Sadler turned abruptly from art, and plunged into
sartorial details. His interest in such matters was astonishing, almost
touching. He revelled in fancy waistcoats and rioted in tweeds and
broadcloths. London was the only place in the world where you could get
the rakish cut. He, Sadler, had never suspected what a lovely figure he
had, till this latest cutter had revealed him to himself!

He paused at last for breath.

"Anything particular on with you?" he was presently impelled to ask,
observing that Wyndham was exercising a marked fastidiousness in the
choice of his canvas.

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

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

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

"Good!" roared Sadler again. "I heard you hadn't been doing much of
late. They were running your work down--some of the boys, and I said
they were talking rot. We nearly came to blows about it. I think I
fairly shut them up."

Wyndham had at first winced a little. Then he felt like shrugging his
shoulders. After all, the past had to be lived down. Besides, Sadler's
championship was genuine and influential.

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

"Don't you mind 'em a bit, my boy. You just go ahead, and you'll come
out at the top of the tree."

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

"That'll be good enough, I guess," said Sadler. "Perhaps this portrait
will open up other things for you."

"How so?" inquired Wyndham.

"It all depends on the crowd you strike--I heard you came a bit of a
cropper, and I daresay you're not too well off now to despise a job or
two--you can always put decent work into them. Now there's Jim
Harley--he struck a rich middle-class lot ten years ago, rotten
out-and-out Philistines, twenty guineas apiece--and they've been keeping
him going ever since. Does fifty of 'em a year."

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

Sadler smiled. "I guess I should be the first to drag you back
again--after a while. But Jimmy married young. A boy and girl affair.
His wife's family weren't satisfied with his financial position, and
there was a mighty row at the time. Of course the girl had only her
pretty eyes."

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

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

Wyndham had finished his purchases, and was telling the assistant to
send the parcel to his studio. As they left the shop presently, Sadler
pressed Wyndham very hard to lunch with him at a particular restaurant
he mentioned, and Wyndham could not do otherwise than accept the
invitation, though he confessed the place was unknown to him. Whereat
Sadler expressed great astonishment. It was one of the very few places
in London where the food was fit to eat! Why, the cooking was even
better than at Lavenue's in the Quarter, and that was saying a great
deal. He, Sadler, could not endure any other place during his
sojournings in London. Wyndham let the dear fellow gallop on to his
heart's content. Sadler was a fine painter, and in the old days Wyndham
as the junior had sat at his feet, and in the matter of technique had
been greatly indebted to him. But he had observed with covert amusement
at a very early stage in the acquaintanceship that Sadler, like so many
others in the hard-working, hand-to-mouth world of the arts, had an
amiable weakness for "being in the know" anent the good things of life,
and affected a lavishness in public that was off-set by a sharp economy
in the less visible phases of his existence.

At the restaurant Sadler scrutinised the carte with the confident eye of
a man about town, grumbled a little, held a fussy colloquy with the
waiter, and finally ordered oysters and chablis to begin upon, the while
a chateaubriand was being prepared for them.

Over the meal Sadler talked a great deal of old times. He seemed to have
kept himself well in touch with scores of men they had known in common,
despite scatterings and vicissitudes. His mind kept leaping across the
world, beating them all out of their lairs for Wyndham's enlightenment.
Did he remember Pycherley--the biggest duffer of them all? Well, he had
married an heiress on the strength of his genius, and was painting awful
stuff out in California; and Snyders, who had shared his studio, had
built himself a Moorish house high up on a mountain-side overlooking the
Gulf of Salerno; a third had settled down to "black-and-white" in a
queer little creeper-clad house in St. John's Wood; a fourth was
decorating a municipal building at Toronto. Marlowe was still in the
avenue du Maine, where the fascinating American actress he had wed had
since borne him a sheaf of daughters: and the beautiful Mrs. Smith they
had known at Fontainebleau, the summer they had spent there together,
had long ago divorced her husband, and married the Italian sculptor, in
whose studio she had made such sensational progress. She now exhibited
regularly, and had already received a gold medal of the second class.

And so the conversation continued--for the most part about men who were
now pretty well getting on into middle life, whose destinies had found
definite declaration and were visible to all Wyndham expressed his
pleasure that his own future, on the contrary, still lay wrapped in
mystery; that, though the curtain was full up, the interest of the drama
was by no means played out.

"You can afford to talk like that, Wyndham," shouted Sadler. "What are
you? You're only a boy! But I'm forty, and I tell you I'd give up the
interest of the drama for a safe income, and think it a damned good
bargain. I get along, I sell my stuff, but I tell you I sweat and
groan."

"I admit I should like my old income back again," said Wyndham; "not for
itself, but for the sake of the splendid freedom to work."

"That's just my point," shouted Sadler. "What the hell do I care about
money for itself? And I tell you what, my boy, the right thing for an
artist is to marry a woman with money." He struck the table hard with
his big fist, making the whole restaurant rattle.

Wyndham almost jumped. "Good gracious! So that's what you were driving
at! The idea to me is perfectly loathsome."

"That's just what I used to think," exclaimed Sadler. "But you can't go
on for ever with your head in the clouds."

"The thing's so awfully brutal and sordid," insisted Wyndham, shuddering
visibly. "It makes my blood run cold."

"You make me tired," snapped Sadler pettishly. "Where's the sordidness?
I don't say a man ought to run after a fortune--but enough to steady
things. Taking it all round, we artists have less chance of making money
for ourselves than other men of the same worth; and since most of us do
marry some time or other, we ought to look to marriage to help our work,
and not to drag it down."

Wyndham was unconvinced. "If you take away the poetry out of life, the
rest of it is too hideous to bother about. If a man marries to make
himself comfortable, he's no better than a contented pig wallowing in
muck. Rather than surrender the ideal, I'd give up marriage altogether,
stand by my guns, and die fighting."

"We artists are a damned sentimental lot," shouted Sadler. He lifted a
juicy morsel to his mouth. "This chateau's jolly good, isn't it?"

"Excellent," admitted Wyndham.

"Now you see I wasn't exaggerating when I said it's as good here as at
Lavenue's." Sadler swallowed his mouthful. "We all begin with your
idyllic ideas--Rossetti, Meredith, and all the rest of it. But I tell
you it's hell! You dig the work out of yourself with sweat, with blood!"
The veins began to swell in Sadler's mighty forehead. "And when you're
not one of the lucky ones, what does the world do to help you to work
for it?" He had wrought himself up to a tense excitement, and put the
question with a hoarse shout. "Nothing! It prints your name in the
papers, it talks about you at dinner parties! Painting is
starvation--painting is death! By the time you've worried along till
you're forty, you begin to see a bit straight, my boy. Look around
you--what do you see on all sides? You see the best of us and the
luckiest of us fixing up some pretty little nook here in town or in the
country, and then trying to clear a few hundreds or so by tempting
somebody to buy it for double what it cost. We begin with ideals, and
afterwards we are glad to come down to the level of the common
speculator. Let us have no delusions about it--there's nobody keener for
necessary money than we artists when we begin to feel the years slipping
by. I tell you it's hell!" He gulped down a glass of wine and wiped his
lips.

"I see your point of view," said Wyndham; "but I detest it. Better to
fight to the end, and stand alone."

"You make me tired," snapped Sadler again. "There are plenty of women of
the right sort who'd prefer an artist with a name to some damned bore of
a booby who hasn't an idea in his head. They're not fools, those women,
I tell you. They know there's no money in the profession; they know you
can't get everything in life. Life's a compromise. You've got to give
and take. And when women have money, you'll find they understand these
things better than when they haven't. A romantic boy runs after a
rosy-cheeked, bread-and-butter miss with nothing. The chit gives
herself airs, expects what they call 'an establishment'--the rotten
Philistines!--and then starts out to please herself in every way, places
her whims and caprices first, and the happiness of the household
nowhere. The brute exacts every sacrifice, and if she has to make the
tiniest concession, it rankles in her all her life."

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

Sadler dissented in his turn. He insisted that in woman money and good
sense somehow went together. It was a fact. "Look how much happier
French marriages are; look how the husband and wife are comrades and
stick together. I tell you the French system is the best in the world.
Every girl brings her husband a dowry of some kind, and they both work
together for the common good. When the time comes it is easier to pass
on the money to their own daughter in their turn."

Wyndham contended that these things were all a matter of temperament.
"Even at the best you'd have to keep your mind very elastic as to the
type of person, whereas, for my own part," he declared, with the Lady
Betty type in his mind, "I not only hold on to my poetic standpoint, but
there are certain personal ideals I couldn't possibly surrender."

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

"There are things one must stick out for," insisted Wyndham. "For
instance, I could never marry a woman who wasn't intelligent, and
certainly never one who wasn't beautiful."

"Intelligent--yes. But what is beauty?" asked Sadler, shrugging his
shoulders. "And if you get a woman too obviously beautiful, you'll have
every man a mile round making love to her, like flies round a honey-pot.
It's a sort of primitive law of the universe, and it'll hold good for
all time, I suppose."

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

"But what is beauty?" insisted Sadler.

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

"Give me character," said Sadler. "Unselfishness and loyalty are the
chief points, and a sort of sweet reasonableness, of course. If a
woman's features aren't quite classical, it's wonderful what a good
dressmaker can do to set them off. Waiter! Cigarettes!"

When ultimately the waiter brought the bill, Sadler produced a silver
sovereign purse, saw with unconcealed horror that it contained only half
a sovereign, then felt in his pockets for loose silver. "It's rather
awkward," he said, pulling the longest of faces. "I'm afraid I haven't
enough left on me after paying for my colours and materials this
morning. I shall have to ask you to lend me a little."

A flash of surprise, an imperceptible raising of the eyebrows; then
swiftly Wyndham accepted the situation, and threw down one of Mary's
banknotes. "Sorry I've nothing smaller," he said, smiling.

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

By the time the waiter brought Wyndham his change, the conversation had
passed on to the last exhibition of the New English Art Club.

Wyndham arrived home, after completing all his business calls, late in
the afternoon, and found that the charwoman had finished her work, and
was replacing the furniture. A not unpleasant tinge of turpentine
permeated the atmosphere. The oak presses, newly polished with beeswax,
shone and glowed even in the shadow of the afternoon. For the first time
for months the hearth was clear of ashes and cinders, and the stone
scoured and whitened.

When the woman had gone he devoted a few minutes to wandering about his
domain, enjoying this new sensation of spotlessness, appreciating the
professional hand, the skill of which had never before seemed so
legitimate a theme for admiration. Then he sat down and wrote to Mary as
follows:--

 "MY DEAR LITTLE MARY,--Your sweet little letter came this morning,
 and at a moment to be of the greatest service to me. Fortune has
 already smiled on me again. For the immediate present I have a
 portrait commission for a couple of hundred guineas! A great
 fortune--is it not?--after all these seasons of leanness! You will
 guess that I am now ambitious of getting to grips again with the big
 picture. I have taken a deep and engrossing look at it again, and I
 see how to resolve all its difficulties, I daresay, by the spring. I
 know this letter will make you happy, so, for Heaven's sake, don't
 give another thought to yesterday afternoon. I have been a great
 trial to you for so long, and I want to recognise your goodness and
 kindness in the only way I can, and that is by--succeeding. My heart
 is in the work, and your belief in me shall find justification.

 "I am keeping your money; it will remove my last anxiety and enable
 me to work at ease. I want you to come here as soon as I have made
 some headway with the new work, as I should like you to carry away
 the impression on your next visit of something real that has been
 accomplished.

    "Your loving brother,

      "WALTER."




VIII


The first sitting was eminently satisfactory. Miss Robinson and her
mother were punctual to the very stroke of the clock, the new canvas
stood waiting on the smaller easel, and everything was ready for an
immediate start. Wyndham had been able to obtain on hire a most lovely
Empire chair, with swans' heads for armrests, and exquisitely mounted
with chiselled garlands. It did not take him long to find his
arrangement, and he saw now how shrewd had been his idea of the Empire
chair. It was remarkable how Miss Robinson and the chair composed
together: it gave her distinction, heightened her personality, and the
profile at once seemed to take precisely the quality which he considered
essential to his scheme. Her right arm rested lightly along the swan's
neck, and the subtle cat's-eye, with its border of tiny pearls, showed
deliciously against the long hand and fingers that emerged from the lace
lying loosely about the wrist. Her left hand lay on her lap, and here
the ancient green scarab and the aquamarine made important decorative
spots amid so great a mass of lace-work. The nankin vase had been sent
to the studio during the morning, so that Wyndham was practically able
to build up his picture before him. Indeed, so interesting was the
result that it promised to lessen by half the labour of creation.

And, now that he had taken the measure of the Robinsons, he was easily
master of the situation. They were not merely in his hands as clients
who were availing themselves of his skill; but surrendered as to one
naturally high above them. In posing Miss Robinson, he had once or twice
given utterance to his satisfaction in so spontaneous a way that the
tremulous sitter had no easy task to maintain her immobility. And then
the kind and condescending explanations with which he accompanied the
many little changes and refinements in the arrangement from moment to
moment were so clever and penetrating! It was really wonderful how
points struck him, and what surprising improvements he accomplished with
a wave of the hand and imperceptible subtle shiftings of Miss Robinson's
position. At last, after many scrutinisings of his sitter from varying
standpoints he suddenly expressed the conviction "Splendid!"
Then--"Wait; the left hand slightly forward, I think; so as to soften
the bend of the elbow.... Ah, that's better. Now it couldn't possibly be
improved upon. Don't you think so, Mrs. Robinson?"

And the mother was as fluttered as her daughter at this sudden appeal.
"Alice looks lovely," she broke out. "You know so well how to make the
best of people. I've never seen her so beautiful."

"It's the beautiful accessories that produce the effect," stammered
Alice.

"They certainly produce some effect," conceded Wyndham. "That is why
they are there. But it's you I'm painting, Miss Robinson. You are the
picture, and the picture will be you--and not the surroundings."

He had arranged his palette, and fell to with the brush in earnest,
bidding her speak the moment she felt fatigued. And, indeed, he insisted
on her resting frequently, though she struggled bravely to keep the
spells of work as long as possible, and confessed to cherishing
ambitions in that direction.

Altogether the ladies were enchanted with their experience. Like Mr.
Robinson, they had never before visited a studio, and it stirred them
with a sense of play rather than of work, suggesting to them endless fun
and merriment. Pleased with the promise of the picture itself, Wyndham
chatted to them charmingly. Miss Robinson, reassured and encouraged by
his gracious suavity, soon felt at her ease, and spoke more freely than
was her wont at any time. A shade of animation came into her features,
and she was ready to break into a laugh at a jest, or to listen to a
more serious little disquisition with the intensest absorption. They
were not infrequent these charming little disquisitions of Wyndham's,
and his visitors thought it wonderful (and told him so with engaging
frankness) that he should be able to go on speaking so beautifully, and
yet never relax his attention from the painting.

He did not prolong the whole sitting beyond two hours, when he expressed
himself delighted with this beginning, and offered them tea.

They accepted eagerly. "Will you be making it, Mr. Wyndham?" they asked,
their eyes shining with amusement.

"Oh, I'm an old hand at it," he assured them. He threw open a door which
they had imagined to indicate a cupboard. "Kitchen, scullery, and every
kind of domestic office rolled into one," he explained, and promptly
disappeared inside it. They came peeping in gleefully, fascinated by the
rough white-washed doll's interior with its miniature dresser, and they
watched him fill his kettle and put together the tea-things. Then he
emerged, set the kettle over the fire, spread the table with a fresh
cloth, and emptied a large bag of cakes on to a fascinating plate of
old-seeming majolica.

"How nice!" said Miss Robinson, her face shining with make-believe
gluttony.

"There are some chocolate fingers among them--just the sort you like,"
said her mother.

"And tiny cream-cakes--just the sort you like, mamma," returned Alice.

"How much tea do you put in the pot?" inquired Mrs. Robinson.

"One spoonful for the pot, and one for each cup," quoted Wyndham
promptly. "And I am always careful to warm the pot first with a little
of the hot water, and, in scalding the leaves, I am equally careful to
catch the water at the exact moment it boils."

"If only our cook were as careful!" sighed Mrs. Robinson.

Wyndham asked them if they would like their tea in the Russian style.
They didn't quite know what it was, but it sounded interesting, so they
said they'd certainly like to try it. Whereupon he fished out a large
lemon, and, cutting it up, put slices into their cups. They were in a
happy mood. They kept him sternly to the role of host, refusing to spoil
the fun by moving a finger to help him. And when he had completed all
the processes, and poured the tea for them, they praised its fragrance
and delicacy to the skies, and in a trice he was called upon to renew
the supply. They likewise declared the cakes delicious, and ate them
with affected greed. Meanwhile he let them see some of his pictures;
showing off his tall, handsome figure, and occasionally balancing his
cup to a nicety, as he talked and manipulated the canvasses from his
point of vantage. And when tea was over, he kept them some little time
further, whilst he exhibited his overwhelming masterpiece, which he had
kept to the end with its face turned away from them. As he wheeled the
big easel round, and the picture came into view, a cry of admiration
broke from their lips. They were indeed surprised to learn that it was
"impossibly" unfinished; to them it seemed that, if justice were done,
it should go straightway into the National Gallery. Their pleasure and
gratification were extreme: they made not the least attempt to hide
their sense of the privilege of sitting at his feet.

And, when they rose to depart, they were absurdly grateful for the
lovely afternoon he had given them. Still staggering under the
magnificent impression of his brilliancy as an artist, Mrs. Robinson
summoned her courage, and suggested that, if he hadn't any other
engagement that evening, he might as well dine with them as dine alone.
The argument struck him as forcible, and he accepted with an
unhesitating simplicity that won her heart still further. He was
thanking her for her kindness, but she raised her hands in horrified
deprecation to check him.

"Kindness," she cried. "Not at all, Mr. Wyndham. We know we are not
worthy of the honour you do us."

"Yes, it is very good indeed of you to come," chimed in Miss Robinson,
as they shook hands. She smiled at him quite frankly now, and her soft
fingers lingered a friendly moment in his.

He shut the door and turned back into the studio; then, as the thought
struck him for the first time, his lips murmured almost involuntarily,
"I do believe Miss Robinson's half in love with me." But he checked
himself abruptly. "Good heavens! what a caddish thing to say." For, with
his innate chivalry, he had certainly never been addicted to the habit
of imagining that this or that woman was immediately enamoured of him.

He returned to the portrait, lingered over it a moment or two, putting
in here a stroke, there a touch or a smear. And somehow the train of
"caddish" thought persisted in his mind; mastered his will and desire to
suppress it. Suppose Miss Robinson should fall in love with him! He
recognised her worth as a human being, but instinctively he placed her
beyond a certain pale. It was not with that kind of woman that one
connected the idea of loving or falling in love; the true type had been
fixed for him once for all. The person, too, perhaps! As he had all but
felt in his discussion of the subject with Sadler, matrimony was really
excluded from his mind. His business in life was work, achievement--his
spirit was almost one of revenge for the past.

Yet, suppose she _should_ fall in love with him! The speculation
persisted, and again he tried to brush it aside. Well, he hoped to
goodness that she would not, and brusquely wielded his paintbrush. In
any case, it was all in the day's work. Take his own case, for instance!
Had he not suffered atrociously during all the time he had known Lady
Betty? In his bitter poverty he had hardly dared say even to himself
that he had met the woman of his aspirations!

Thus reflecting, he wheeled forward his masterpiece again, and worked on
it tentatively, though he did not hope to make serious headway till he
should be able to do some fresh sketches on the spot, and have a few at
least of the models pose to him over again. But it was a pleasure to
feel himself so eager-spirited and hopeful. The Academy dare not refuse
it! The picture must establish his reputation!

He went on till the light failed, then, after reading an hour or two, he
dressed for his engagement with the Robinsons.

He found the family had in no wise relaxed from the pitch of ceremony to
which his first acquaintanceship had wrought them up. But he reflected
that, however indifferent the point might be to him, it was just as well
they should feel it the right thing to meet him on his own plane--as
they understood it. Certainly it was not without its amusing side--the
spectacle of a good honest family stimulated out of their customary
simplicity merely because a starving artist was to regale himself at
their table! And fare sumptuously again the artist did with a vengeance!

He ate, too, with the satisfied contemplation of a good day's work
behind him. He had somehow earned this provender, and the meal had on
that account an extra subtle relish. Besides, he felt so much more at
leisure and at ease than on the former occasion. Then, his visit had
been an uncertain and not over-willing experiment; now, he was
acclimatised, his impression of everything was cooler. The greater
self-possession of the family, too, made the evening distinctly less of
an effort for him. Miss Robinson had largely got the better of her
distressing shyness, and her personality was more in evidence. In her
gentle way she was rising to fill her important position as daughter of
the house.

Wyndham's impression of the Robinsons was thus definite and final; as
much derived from their surroundings as from themselves. He noticed, for
example, that the house itself and everything in it was of an extreme
solidity. Indeed, the substantial walls and solid wood-work were so
unusual in suburban construction, which was associated in Wyndham's mind
with jerry-building, that he could not help remarking thereon when he
and Mr. Robinson were left to their coffee and cigars. The old man was
greatly pleased at this piece of discernment and observation. He
explained that he had had the house built for him twenty years before,
and this solidity represented his dearest philosophy. He hated nothing
so much as a superficial appearance which affected to be superior to the
underlying reality. "Soundness and sincerity" had been his motto
throughout his life, and on that principle his prosperity had been
founded. Wyndham grew infected with this unmetaphysical philosophy. The
ground he had trodden these last years seemed hideously unstable to look
back upon: there was really a wonderful comfort in feeling himself here,
supported on so sure a flooring, surrounded by these strong walls, and
seated on this thickly-cut mahogany arm-chair that was framed to last
three generations. The entire furniture of the house was of the like
soundness--even the crimson couches of the drawing-room were of a
massive build, and the grand piano, like this great dining-room table,
had the fattest of legs, and was resonant of strength and durability.

And in tune with all this solidity was the solid prosperity of Mr.
Robinson himself: his banking account seemed an embodiment of his
life-principles, supporting all this substantiality on its imperturbable
back, like the fabled Buddhistic tortoise nonchalantly supporting the
world. Wyndham's own existence seemed feeble by contrast, ready to go
down before the merest puff of wind. He stretched himself luxuriously,
half incredulous, as if to assure himself it was all no vain imagining;
permitted Mr. Robinson to recharge his glass with port; and lighted
another of those fragrant unpurchasable cigars. It was so good to savour
to the full this sensation of prodigious security! Here one might repose
one's head: might hear the trump of doom ring out, and pity the rest of
the universe.

After all, was there not more than a grain of truth in Sadler's gospel?
In boyhood you could be adventurous; life stretched before you so
endlessly that you could afford to gamble with it. But, when the years
were racing by, you longed for a little peace, a little happiness. This
constant uncertainty of outlook, this perpetual wear of heart and brain,
how it sapped life at the very foundation!

To be "safe!" To be solidly established! The import and significance of
the conception sank deep into him. Sadler was an older man, had gone
through all these phases. "Safety!" No wonder his friend would not
hesitate to barter romance for all that the magic word doubtless meant
to him.




IX


It was this keynote of "safety" that sounded more in his mind, this
appreciation of the stability and comfort of the house at the corner
that grew upon him as his visits to the Robinsons continued; for it
naturally came to be the settled thing that he should dine with the
Robinsons on most of the evenings that he was not engaged elsewhere or
otherwise. The argument at first had been the same simple one that he
might as well join them as dine alone, and there seemed no reason for
refusing their excellent fare and their admiring society. On the other
hand, as his ever-insistent pride demanded that they should not suppose
he was cut off from his own world; and as, too, he felt subtly required
to live up to the social role which he fancied they as yet attributed to
him, he was thus stimulated to pick up again some of the old threads of
his existence. He called on remote aunts in Eaton Square; on retired
military uncles in South Kensington. And as the winter advanced he began
to find a pleasure in renewing old acquaintanceships, enjoying
everybody's surprise at his turning up again, smiling and prosperous.
It almost amounted to a self-vindication, and he chuckled in secret,
imagining to himself their confusion.

And since he _was_ emerging from his retirement, there seemed no longer
any reason why he should not mix again in the art world, and Sadler, who
had come up to his studio on one or two occasions, induced him to show
himself at some of the clubs. At the same time he began to cultivate
again some of the smaller coteries of which he had once been so popular
a light. Other men, too, began to look him up, and, best of all, an
editor one day sent him an unhoped-for commission--half-a-dozen drawings
for a magazine story by a widely-read author.

On the whole he was well satisfied to get back into the world. It
raised, or rather confirmed, him in his own esteem, and saved him--as he
put it--from attaching too cheap a price to himself. He was thus able to
meet the Robinsons from a real plane of vantage, and to purge his mind
of that slight consciousness of charlatanism which had haunted him at
the outset.

Were he not taking ultimate success for granted, without a renewal of
the more bitter side of the struggle, he would scarcely have resumed all
these old relationships. Yet the precariousness of the future, summon
his coolness and confidence as he might, was a thing to be actively,
even desperately, reckoned with. The editor's cheque was a god-send,
relieving him of immediate anxieties, but he dared not relax his
efforts. His mornings were entirely devoted to the big canvas now, and
he rose early to avail himself of every minute of light during these
short wintry days. He worked with a passion and a concentration that he
had never yet known. Every fibre of his body bent to the strain; every
drop of his blood seemed to drain its life into this frenzy to achieve.
Withal, a delightful sense of emancipation from the old tired vision; a
splendid consciousness of some rich new store that had gathered in him
during the long period he had lain fallow!

Yet he shuddered and grew sick at the possibility that the Academy might
still reject him! In that case, what had he to build upon beyond the
coming fee for Miss Robinson's portrait? As the weeks went by, something
of a panic began to overtake him; the future seemed to be bearing down
on him grim and remorseless.

It was then that the well-garnished atmosphere of the house at the
corner seemed more and more desirable and alluring. The flow and
abundance, the great glowing fires in this raw winter, the naive burning
of incense at his altar--all these things wooed him, wrapped him in a
certain balm. Ensconced with Mr. Robinson, and sipping his after-dinner
coffee, he felt the load of his anxieties falling away from him, The
heavy decanters of cut glass glowed richly at him--the softness of old
whiskey, the ruby and golden glint of wines, the clear light of cunning
distillations. The great pineapples, the clusters of grapes, the baskets
of peaches, all the fragrant store of Nature's bounty set out on a table
that yet, by no stretch of imagination, could be conceived as
"groaning"--all seemed to shine fatter and finer than at the houses of
his society friends. And here, too, his footing was of an unique,
admirable character. He had his place at the board practically as a
matter of right. They ranked him as a god; yet felt that the balance of
debt was heavily against them. Whereas, elsewhere, he was one of a
crowd, a merely casual figure among others not less important even where
he had been most intimate. He knew that his own world, despite its
breeding and traditions, would yet at bottom despise him and his art if
he could not earn an excellent livelihood by its practice. But the
Robinsons worshipped him for himself; and money was almost a vulgarity
sullying the high artistic universe in which he moved and breathed and
had his being.




X


Meanwhile the sittings were progressing in a manner to gratify the
artist beyond his hopes. Miss Robinson seemed to find some mysterious
inspiration in this decorative scheme, seemed to fuse into it, to lend
herself to design and draughtmanship. Her face, too, took on subtler
phases, was touched to a measure of nobility! Her dark eyes shone softly
under their long lashes; her expression was full of goodness and
charity. Wyndham prided himself that he had put on the canvas something
remote from the lines of ordinary portraiture--a simple soul, a gentle
Lady Bountiful, yet not less dignified in her way than the heroines of
the grand portraiture.

Mrs. Robinson did not insist on uninterrupted chaperonage of her
daughter; the ladies evinced little fanaticism on this head. Often they
brought knitting or needle-work with them, which occupied the mother in
a peaceful, old-fashioned way that Wyndham even found himself admiring.
Sometimes Mrs. Robinson would appear only towards the end of the
sitting, and sometimes she considerately announced that Alice would
have to come alone for the next occasion as she herself was otherwise
busy. They both showed a tact and a good taste in the matter which he
fully recognised, and for which in a way he was grateful.

In the natural resulting intimacy between artist and sitter, Miss
Robinson expanded, opened out her mind; at first timidly and
tentatively, ultimately with freedom and confidence. She confessed that
her experience of life had been nothing at all, since she had always
lived in quiet shelter. Her unsophisticated simplicity was certainly
engaging; he could see that she was a sheet entirely unwritten upon,
that her soul was as naive and trusting as her outward being. She was
refreshingly a child of nature--no bewildering complexity here--no
shadow of affectation. She spoke without reserve of the poverty of her
childhood, and admitted that she had disagreeable qualms of conscience
about their present riches. Was it right to enjoy so much when one
thought of the state of the world generally? They debated the subject
endlessly; considering it elaborately from every conceivable standpoint:
and his personal authority went far to allay her disquietude. His
theories, backed up by high philosophy and poetry, fascinated her with
their harmony and originality; he had such a charming way of arranging
the order of things into a beautiful artist's scheme, whilst yet his
sympathies were deep, true, and universal!

Sometimes he was conscious of his sophistry, and felt ashamed of it
afterwards. Was he playing a comedy of sentiment? he asked himself.
Well, why not? Men and women made a careful toilette for an evening
party: why not a spiritual toilette for their sentimental relations?

The last words of his own thought, startled him. Then it _was_ a
sentimental relation. "By Jove, I must be careful!" he murmured to
himself. "She's an awfully good soul, and it isn't fair to either of
us." But the next moment he shrugged his shoulders. Why trouble his mind
at all? Every relation between a man and a woman who came into such
close personal touch was in a way sentimental--for the time being! That
was only the game of life, and everybody had to play at it: the main
thing was to bow to the rules. Such temporary relations might well be
made as pleasant as possible; but, when they were at an end, it was
incumbent on both parties to realise that.

Yet he could not help being increasingly conscious of his power over
her; it was so pathetically visible. Their conversations were often
amusingly like those of kindly tutor and obedient, inquiring child; she
hanging on his words in entire self-surrender, as he discoursed so
graciously and brought his points so lightly and simply within the
range of her comprehension. Sometimes, in following up an explanation,
he would be carried away by the flow of his own ideas and his personal
interest in the matter, and then he would almost seem to be addressing
an equal in knowledge and experience. But whenever that happened;
whenever, for example, he had let himself go too far into the subtle
mysteries of technique, he would find himself regretting the unchecked
surrender to impulse, and remain strangely vexed about it long
afterwards. It was really soaring right outside her limitations! She was
not a Lady Betty!

Lady Betty was so often in his mind now: she seemed to have established
herself more definitely there than ever before, as if to keep him up to
the proper pitch in his judgments of women. He bowed his head low to
Lady Betty, recognised her as his full intellectual equal--in some
aspects his superior. She was brains and beauty. She was stateliness
itself. She was sunshine and sweetness. What was Miss Robinson by the
side of her? And as he asked himself the question, an impression of Miss
Robinson, as he had recently come upon her suddenly in the streets,
blotted out the more dignified version on his own canvas. How plain and
homely she had seemed in her unobtrusive walking-costume; how
insignificant her whole meek bearing! Yes, that was the true Miss
Robinson; caught photographically in the act of being herself, and
fixed by his vision for always--extinguishing the gorgeously-dressed
person of these incessant festal evenings no less than his own artistic
edition of her.

In no respect could she claim to come up to his measure. He appreciated
all her virtues, recognised her exceptional womanhood: by the side of
Lady Betty she was insipid, _bourgeoise_, monotonously amiable.

Yet he could never arrive at so harsh a verdict without relenting at a
rebound. "It is curious," was his thought, "that in proportion as I get
more friendly with her and really like her, I yet get harder and harder
on her, poor child! She's a jolly good sort! What a decent world it
would be if only there were ever so many more women like her!"

And, by way of atonement, his manner at their next meeting would warm
and soften sensibly; and it came upon him always with a degree of
surprise that, however he might feel about Miss Robinson theoretically,
her actual society was always pleasant and comrade-like.




XI


By mid-December the portrait needed only the finishing touches, and, at
his invitation, several of his artist-friends came to see it.
Commendation of the work was general, combined with a certain admiration
of the unknown sitter. Wyndham could not help feeling that there was
much speculation as to her identity, and he gave himself all the more
credit as an artist for the qualities with which he had endowed her, and
which alone bestowed upon her this interesting individuality.

Wyndham, who made it a point never to have his work interrupted, had so
arranged these visits that none of his friends had stumbled upon the
Robinsons. To the not infrequent query of "Who is she?" he usually
responded, with a half-humorous gleam in his eye, "She might be Brown or
Jones: as a matter of fact she is Robinson--the daughter of a
respectable citizen of that ilk." Yet what more, in sober truth, could
he tell them about her? He might have put it differently, but it was
the information he supposed they wanted. Yet one day he was to learn
that this conciseness had been construed as reserve. Sadler lounged in
one Sunday afternoon, when, as it happened, Wyndham was awaiting his
sister, whose long-deferred visit had at last been arranged for that
day. And, in the course of conversation, the visitor soon let slip out a
word that struck Wyndham like a blow. Sadler had begun by referring to
Miss Robinson as "your friend;" but, presently, as he still reviewed the
painting, out came "your _fiancee_."

"My _fiancee_! What the devil----?"

Sadler apologised; a shrewd meaning smile clung about his massive jaws.
"Of course everybody understands that it's a secret, but when you've
heard of a thing, it's difficult to keep it from slipping out, don't y'
know."

"This is all too absurd!" Wyndham was suddenly impelled to laugh.

"What's absurd about it? It seems likely enough to me; else I shouldn't
have believed it."

"An artist cannot accept a commission without being engaged to his
sitter?" urged Wyndham indignantly.

"Things have a way of getting about, you know," maintained Sadler.

"They have indeed," said Wyndham.

"Well, what are you so annoyed at?" shouted Sadler. "You make me tired.
There's nothing discreditable in being engaged by rumour to a wealthy
and beautiful woman."

Wyndham laughed again. Beautiful! he thought. If only Sadler had met the
everyday Miss Robinson shopping with her mother in the Finchley Road!

"Seriously, do you consider her beautiful?" he asked in a more genial
tone, suddenly curious to hear Sadler's real impression.

"What is beauty?" demanded Sadler. "The moment you can define it, it
ceases to be beauty. Its essence is elusiveness. A touch, a flash--and
you've got it! The lines here are not classical, but your Miss Robinson
has distinct individuality. The eyes are fine. She looks the sort that
would stick to a man. Gee-rusalem! I shouldn't mind having a shot at her
myself. Look here, old fellow, will you introduce me to her? If there's
nothing in it for you, give me a chance."

"Goodbye," said Wyndham sweetly. "You won't think me rude, but I've an
engagement in a minute or two."

"Right!" said Sadler. "I'll be off. Goodbye, Wyndham, old chap. You're a
real damned old swell. Gee-rusalem! you're just great at getting rid of
people."

Left alone, Wyndham gave way to annoyance again. It was a fine thing!
Artists themselves ought to know better than to indulge in
tittle-tattle of that kind. He worked himself up into a towering rage.
Then Mary rang the bell, and he had abruptly to recall his graciousness.

It was her first visit to the studio since the new turn of affairs; her
multifarious duties as worker among the sick and poor after her day's
teaching leaving her so little freedom. They had of course seen each
other in the interim; for Wyndham had himself looked in at the
"Buildings" in Kensington whenever his engagements had taken him that
way, and he had been fortunate enough just to catch her at home for a
few moments on several occasions. The poor girl had been overflowing
with happiness--had not a window on the skies been opened, too, for her?
And though both had so far delicately avoided all reference to that old
painful interview, she had yet often been impelled to throw herself at
his feet in contrition. Only she felt that he, in his great magnanimity,
would be hurt by such an abasement.

When he brought the picture well into the light, her first exclamation
was, "Oh, how beautiful!" Then she kissed him impulsively.

The tribute gave him more pleasure than all the professional praise that
had been showered on the portrait.

"What a charming girl! I should like to know her," were her next words.
"She has such a good face, and I'm sure she's every bit as beautiful as
you've painted her."

Wyndham's vexation at his rumoured engagement seemed to take wing and be
off into the airs. He even felt a shy pride in Miss Robinson. "I'm sure
you'll like her," he said. "Shall I arrange a tea here one of these days
before Christmas?"

"That would be lovely." Mary's voice was full of enthusiasm. "School
breaks up in a day or two, and I shall have so much more time to
myself," she added, still gazing at the picture.

"Any criticism?"

"None," she returned. "You have caught the character with rare genius.
She is so simple and unaffected; one could repose absolute trust in
her.... You see," she continued, smiling, "I feel so strong an interest
in her as being the beginning of your good fortune. I have a sort of
conviction--don't laugh at me, please--that it has come to stay."

When he poured out her tea, she suddenly laughed, remembering she had a
message for him which she had forgotten to deliver in the absorption of
contemplating Miss Robinson; in fact, there was a heap of things she had
wanted to talk over. The most important, at any rate, was the question
of his Christmas holiday. Aunt Eleanor wanted Mary to spend the two or
three weeks with her, but she was anxious that Wyndham, too, should
join their little party over the New Year--since she now understood that
he had emerged to some extent from his austere seclusion. A refusal Aunt
Eleanor would take to heart--she naturally regarded her own home as his,
as the place to which his mind should spontaneously turn at such a
season.

Wyndham welcomed the invitation. It was more than two years since he had
passed any time in Hertfordshire, and the visit itself, which last
Christmas he had sullenly avoided, would afford him the greatest
satisfaction. Much as he appreciated the Robinson housekeeping, it was a
relief to feel definitely that he was not staying the year-end at his
studio, with no resource save their cordial hospitality.

Mary went off in great elation. "I don't know when I have felt so happy
as to-day," she declared, as she kissed him. "I leave my best love for
the work--and for the lady as well," she added, smiling.

It was arranged on the door-step that they should travel down to
Hertfordshire together, and Mary insisted he must leave her to look up
the trains, and make all the arrangements.

"It is just the sort of task I enjoy," she assured him. "Looking up
trains to get into the country always sends me into a sort of happy
excitement; it is part of the joy of anticipation."

Wyndham was left, somehow, a greater admirer of Miss Robinson. He
studied her again in his own picture, and accepted her as a far finer
creature than he had realised--even allowing for this idealisation of
her in paint. "My feeling against her must be purely morbid, and it's
really too bad when she likes my society so much!--she has no idea how
much she shows it." Her unsophistication, hitherto a deficiency, began
to take on a certain charm. How refreshing this womanly simplicity in a
world of showy coquettes and chattering, feather-headed females! Even
Mary, who was so shrewd and fastidious, had been compelled to pay her
homage. The Robinson family was charming! What fine old-world courtesy
in the father--many a born aristocrat might well take a lesson from him!
How unassuming, too, the mother, full of quiet virtues and womanly
excellencies!

And Mary's significant smile remained with him. Good gracious! was she,
too, taking the sort of thing for granted? This power of suggestion from
every side was annoying: still--it would not be right to let that
prejudice him!

Wyndham paced to and fro feverishly. Why should he not----?

It was the first time he was impelled to put the question to himself in
clear seeking. Obscure in his mind these last weeks, it crystallised
itself brusquely--surprised him with its swift definiteness: but he
broke it off, all unprepared to meet it yet. He had a shamefaced
remembrance of his matrimonial conversation with Sadler, of the lofty
convictions he had then expressed.

Well, he had spoken honestly, he argued, and his convictions had changed
not a jot. "Only now that I am face to face with the actual possibility,
I see aspects of the case that then escaped me. Till now I have always
viewed marriage as the great central fact to which the whole of life has
to converge, from which everything else takes its significance. Hence it
was a case of the ideal or nothing--there seemed no other choice. But
now I recognise that matrimony that is not ideal may yet take its place
as an accessory to life, may be accepted as a good without filling the
whole horizon."

He resumed his feverish pacing. Well, why should he not seize an
opportunity which presented itself so favourably? By the loss of his
money he had become reduced in his own world to the rank of a mere
"detrimental." Had he not already felt that sufficiently? He laughed
harshly at the memory. No, no, a Lady Betty he could not hope to marry.
Such wondrous beings did not grow on every bush; nor did life permit of
his setting out in search of one. This holding out for the perfect ideal
only meant humiliation and sadness in the end. The world--the hard world
of fact--was like that, and you had to take it as you found it. No
folly could be greater than to forget that life was as it was, and not
as you thought it ought to be!

Yet he vacillated again. Did he really want to marry at all? Had he not
decided--wholly, absolutely, irrevocably--that his business in life was
work? Though he would never have spoken of it to another, he was proud
in his heart of his sentimental loyalty to Lady Betty, and marriage
seemed almost an unfaithfulness. Better perhaps to bend himself sternly
to the task before him!

Yes, but this task before him--unaided, he could never accomplish it.
Let him confess it now, since he was master again of his full sanity. He
had been beaten, smashed! But for this timely piece of good fortune all
would have been at an end by now. The Robinson support once withdrawn,
he would not be strong enough to stand. He had gauged his powers in the
great contest, and, in this moment of supreme lucidity, he foresaw he
must be conquered again. One portrait could not suffice for the
rebuilding of his future; even on the money side his fee would be
absorbed immediately. And the finishing of the great picture meant more
outlay. To try to "fake" it without proper models would be a folly of
follies--far better to abandon it altogether. His blind optimism at the
turn of things had certainly been of benefit to him, had stimulated him
to his best; but with this first piece of work practically
accomplished, the moment for estimating and facing the situation with
mathematical exactitude had certainly arrived.

He could not fight the world alone. However he might desire nothing in
life save self-consecration to work, he could not even achieve that much
without reinforcing his own strength by means that were unexceptionable
and honourable.

He came to an abrupt stop as the words swept from his brain. "By Jove,
that hits the nail pretty square!" he murmured, his lips ashen. Naked
and ugly, his primary motive stood before him as in a mirror. For one
clear moment he saw himself brutally, and shuddered. "I am not in love
with her. If she were dowerless, I should never have worked myself up to
this stage of appreciation; I should never have dressed up the Robinson
menage to make it palatable. The portrait would never have come out like
this. I should have dashed in a brutal modern study of a plain woman,
full of bravura passages. If I am going in for a thing of this kind, let
me at least be honest with myself."

And then he laughed with the irony of it all. He, the lover of poesie;
he, the fastidious gourmet in things of the spirit; who had followed the
cult of all that was lyrical and exquisite; he planned to mate beneath
him for the sake of crude money. Faugh! A vulture hovering over a heap
of carrion!

But the violence of the metaphor brought a reaction. "Rubbish!" he
murmured, and paced again. The pacing grew into a striding. Up and down
the length of the studio he stamped, face and eyes working intensely. "I
am exaggerating. I am morbid about it all; I am rushing to the other
extreme. When have I ever hidden from myself that the thing would be
primarily a means to my great impersonal end--I may as well admit it has
been in my mind all along! What could be a greater degradation than my
old way of living? Poor Mary! Why, I owe it to her as a duty to put an
end to all this misery. I'd face anything on earth now to make up to her
for the past! Besides, the idea is not at all so inhuman as I am trying
to make out. In a mildish sort of way, of course, I am really fond of
Miss Robinson. Her virtues _are_ a reality! She is plain, I admit--very
plain; but my eye has learnt to see her its own way--the way of the
portrait!"

Brusquely he flung his hesitations from him. Why should he not marry
Miss Robinson? Even in the driest aspect of the case, the match was not
inequitable. The "crude money"--yes, let him use the words
deliberately--the "crude money" on her side; on his a full equivalent in
his personal self, his no doubt brilliant career once sordid matters
were disposed of, and a sphere of existence that was obviously
interesting to her. If he brought no immediate fortune himself, his
future earnings, once he were free to work without anxiety, might well
be considerable. What was there in the idea to wound his pride? How
absurd his metaphor of the vulture!

And then he turned to dwell again with relief at the pleasanter aspects
of the case. Even if he were not attaining to passionate poetic dreams,
he would yet be carrying into effect a charming domestic ideal of peace
and tranquillity. And the very poetry of marriage began to invest Miss
Robinson with something of its own glamour. He saw her in a bridal veil
holding a big bouquet. His enthusiasm mounted.

And Mary's voice seemed to echo again in the studio: "What a charming
girl! She has such a good face, and I'm sure she's every bit as
beautiful as you've painted her." He almost felt himself blushing in
embarrassment; it was as if he himself were being commended. "She is so
simple and unaffected," went on Mary's voice with its unmistakable ring
of conviction. "One could repose absolute trust in her."

How shrewd and true was his sister's reading of the character! Moreover,
Mary had confessed to an almost superstitious thrill at gazing on the
features of the woman who had been the beginning of his good fortune.
Could he say that he was entirely free from the same sort of
superstitious sentiment? Alice Robinson had begun his good fortune; why
should she not complete it? If only that confounded set of fools hadn't
started their silly tittle-tattle!

Undoubtedly there was a substratum of truth and good sense in the views
so stoutly and passionately maintained by Sadler; only Sadler imagined
it was possible to compromise, to step down from the ideal and yet find
great happiness. He himself would give up the dream of happiness in the
ideal sense: his would be frankly a case of convenience, though were it
not for the many virtues of Miss Robinson, his mind would never have
become reconciled to it. No! not even were she as rich as Croesus. He
must do that amount of justice to himself. At his age he could
appreciate the importance of the rarer qualities of character in his
life's mate--loyalty, modesty, devotion! He would be making a wise
marriage! not a sordid one. He would be choosing the deep calm of life
instead of the elusive and often mocking flash of superficial passion
and beauty.

And, on his part, he was prepared to be the best and most dutiful of
husbands!




XII


When, that same evening, Wyndham was ushered into the Robinsons'
drawing-room, he was mildly surprised to find a sedate gentleman there
in familiar conversation with the family. The stranger vibrated with
neuter lights; yet dry, clean lights. Tall spare figure, hair and
close-trimmed beard, tailed morning coat and sharp-creased trousers,
brow and visage, air and movement--all a chiaroscuro in grey;
accentuated curiously, too, against the host's correct black and white,
and the laces and chiffons and shimmering brilliance of the ladies.

"My friend, Mr. Shanner," said Mr. Robinson, introducing them; and
Wyndham remembered at once that the Robinsons had mentioned Mr. Shanner
occasionally as an intimate of the house who was away in the New World
for the interests of the concern in which he was junior partner.

But Mr. Shanner, though he shook hands cordially, yet gave him a swift
look up and down that had something of antagonism in it. And in Wyndham,
too, arose some obscure enmity, likewise masked by the conventional
friendliness of greeting.

"As I was just telling Mr. Robinson," said Mr. Shanner, with an
obviously forced smile that yet illumined the man, broke through and
flashed away the greyness for an instant, "I hadn't the least idea that
I was going to stumble on an evening party. I feel quite out of it." His
voice was full of affable vibrations, and he smiled again, with a
general nod that indicated all this ceremonial get-up around him.

"I am sure we shall do our best to amuse you," returned Wyndham,
naturally associating himself with the family, but feeling hopelessly
out of sympathy with the new-comer.

Miss Robinson had reddened as the two men approached each other, but on
her father's again mentioning that Mr. Shanner was just back from his
tour in the New World, she came into the conversation bravely, and rose
above her shade of embarrassment.

"Have _you_ ever crossed to America, Mr. Wyndham?" she asked, smiling at
him.

"No," he confessed; "though America has largely crossed to me."

Mr. Shanner looked puzzled.

"How do you mean--America has crossed to you, Mr. Wyndham?" he asked.

"Oh, I hope I did not seem to suggest that I have been a centre of
pilgrimage," laughed Wyndham. "Only, in past years, when I was running
a good deal about the Continent, I often used to live with New York,
Chicago, and Boston, for considerable periods."

"Mr. Wyndham has often given us charming sketches of the Americans,"
chimed in Miss Robinson.

"Oh, I don't pretend to be much of a hand at that sort of thing," said
Mr. Shanner, with pleasant humility. "I can only just give my
impressions as a plain observer. But then I'm a man of affairs, and
nothing at all of an artist or a literary man." Wyndham observed how
careful and honeyed his delivery was; it seemed to advertise a perpetual
self-consciousness of being a gentleman.

"Mr. Shanner is unduly modest," put in Mr. Robinson. "His descriptions
are most entertaining."

"Well, of course, I can speak of things within my experience, and make
myself fairly clear--in my own way, of course. But, from all that you
people have been telling me, I shouldn't attempt to emulate Mr.
Wyndham."

Mr. Shanner gave a strange little laugh, full of insincere echoes; which
failed in its implication of good-fellowship, and only emphasised the
ill-nature it was meant to cover. Wyndham was not a little bewildered;
conscious of some suppressed excitement in the man, some ruffling of the
ashen chiaroscuro. This impression was deepened when dinner was
announced, and Mr. Shanner made what was perilously like a dart to the
side of Miss Robinson and offered his arm. Wyndham stepped out of their
way, bowing as they passed him.

At table Mr. Shanner gave no undue signs of modesty or self-distrust,
but talked about "things within his experience" with the utmost
unconstraint. An unmistakable note of assurance animated the honeyed
voice, which soared away occasionally, yet sedulously recollected
itself; drew back within bounds, reverted to the lesser pitch and the
deliberate pace. Mr. Shanner was at pains to let it be seen that he was
a man of affairs on the grand scale, one to be ranked with diplomatists
and ambassadors. In the course of business he had come into contact with
exalted personages of almost every kingdom, and had corresponded
voluminously with some of them. He carried an assortment of their
letters in his pocketbook, which lay on the table as a perpetual source
of illustration. He spoke of some of these great ones of the earth with
extreme familiarity--he had been closeted with them on confidential
business, and he flattered himself he had counted for something in
certain important decisions of policy. And, as he warmed to the
conversation, far from being "out of it," he was king of the table, his
honeyed words emerged endlessly. There was a distinct flash of challenge
in his occasional glances at Wyndham--he was not to be overborne by the
presence of any aristocrat on earth. And not content with all this
insistent implication of his personal importance, he even related by way
of pleasant interlude how, with ear to one private telephone and mouth
to another, he had smartly seized a sudden opportunity, and, buying an
incoming cargo through the first telephone and selling it through the
second, had netted twenty thousand pounds for his firm. Whereas Wyndham
amused himself trying to measure the depths of Mr. Shanner's contempt
should he suspect that the sole resources of his vis-a-vis were the
guineas to be paid him from Mr. Robinson's treasury.

It was evident, too, that Mr. Shanner was more familiarly at home in the
house than Wyndham. He called its master "Robinson"; most significant of
all, Miss Robinson was Alice to him. Indeed, his manner, as he sat next
to her, was almost proprietorial; at any rate it had easy, affectionate
suggestions about it. She, however, had fallen back into a shy
constraint; though she emerged at moments, lifting her deep-glancing
eyes to Wyndham and flashing him the friendliest of messages. Wyndham
understood by now; knew also that it was clear to Mr. Shanner that they
were rivals--that a mutual detestation lurked beneath their pleasant
amenities. He had gathered also that Mr. Shanner meant to show that he
did not concern himself one jot about the new star that had appeared in
the firmament during his absence. But Wyndham came off easily the
victor, displaying for Mr. Shanner a charming deference, and pursuing
the unruffled tenour of his entertaining conversation without
manifesting in the slightest degree any of the emotions that the evening
had raised in his breast. Such perfect unconsciousness of matters
intensely present, Mr. Shanner could not hope to emulate. It was clear
he was uneasily alive to the contrast--that he had the growing
consciousness of defeat. His note of self-emphasis rang louder, though
smothered continuously.

The war continued after dinner; Mr. Shanner eagerly turning the pages of
Miss Robinson's music, and so entirely appropriating her that Wyndham
could scarcely contrive to approach her during the rest of the evening.
However, Wyndham smilingly kept his place in the background, disdaining
to assert himself or to enter openly into emulation; though there were
opportunities he, the socially experienced, might have seized adroitly.
After all, why annoy this admirable, upright gentleman? Even as it was,
poor Mr. Shanner was fated to receive one or two sharp slashes; as when,
in the course of describing the sittings, Mrs. Robinson let it be
clearly seen that she was not always present to chaperone her daughter
in the studio. At that moment Mr. Shanner's face was an extraordinary
face to look upon; although he affected to laugh and smile, and packed
even more honey into his voice. All of which forced sweetness
notwithstanding, it began to be evident that the topic of the picture,
and of Wyndham's work in general, bored him considerably. At last, when
Mrs. Robinson innocently suggested that Wyndham should ask him to come
to see the portrait at the studio, he deprecated the idea with some
degree of vehemence. He really was very busy in the daytime now.
Besides, he added pleasantly, on principle he never cared to see an
article whilst yet on order; time enough to examine it when it was
tendered for delivery. He smiled meaningly at Wyndham as if to
accentuate that these commercial metaphors were merely by way of
pleasantry.

"And then it's so extremely difficult for an outsider to get any idea of
an unfinished picture, and of course I don't profess to be a judge of
art in any case, though I know what I like."

So, if Mr. Wyndham would excuse him, he added, he would rather wait till
the portrait had come home, and had been hung in the house.

It was not without difficulty that Wyndham found his opportunity of
arranging the little tea-party at which the ladies were to meet his
sister. Miss Robinson was to give him the final sitting on the Tuesday;
so it was therefore agreed that the tea should take place on that day
after work was over. The sitter herself crimsoned deeply at learning
that Mary "had admired her immensely," and her eyes glistened in a way
that showed her pleasure and rapturous appreciation.




XIII


The definite figure of Mr. Shanner with his magnificent appropriation of
Miss Robinson merely impelled Wyndham to smash up this rival at once and
have done with the business. The evening had obscured all the repugnance
that lay in the depths of him; had stimulated roseate conceivings of
possible felicity.

On the Tuesday he found his opportunity. Miss Robinson came alone,
explaining that her mother would not appear till the time fixed for the
tea-party. The weather was rigorously wintry now, and a biting wind blew
in as the door was opened. A new layer of snow had fallen during the
last hour, and Miss Robinson had come across wrapped in a big, heavy
cloak. He ushered her through the ante-room with a charming air of
solicitude, to which she vibrated like a struck harp, and gave him the
softest and tenderest intonations of her voice. He helped her off with
the cloak, and hung it away carefully, the whilst she stooped and warmed
her long hands at the lavishly heaped-up fire. Her throat and arms now
showed at their best, and her face had some strange, almost mystic
undertone of happiness. As she bent down there before his eyes, she
completely blotted out the impression of the insignificant plain woman
whom he had suddenly come upon in the streets; of the everyday Miss
Robinson that at one time had almost become an obsession. At that moment
she was well-nigh the idealised figure he had painted. Yet there was
something even subtler in her which he had missed, and knew that he had
missed. But, studying his own work again, he saw that that was just as
well; for the picture existed as a separate creation, a piece of
painting first and foremost, in which he had exhibited the cleverness of
his brush. It was paint--distinguished, intellectual paint--more than it
was human portraiture; in spite of all the significance with which he
had tried to invest it. As this new truth dawned upon him, he kept
glancing from sitter to canvas, and from canvas to sitter, with a
strange, surprised interest. But her hands suddenly arrested his
attention, and he became aware that, for the first time since he had
known her, they were absolutely bare of rings.

"You have no rings to-day," he remarked, his voice showing his surprise.
"I might have wanted to touch up the hands."

Her colour deepened unaccountably. "I thought the hands were finished,"
she breathed, all of a flutter. "Shall I go back for them?"

"What a goose it is!" he said lightly, and she smiled again, as if
pleased they were on so charmingly intimate a footing.

"Shall we not need them?" she asked.

"I think not," he answered, studying the hands a little. "You were
perfectly right; they had best remain as they are."

She took the pose, and for a minute or two he worked silently; she
maintaining the perfect stillness that had at first been her cherished
ambition. He was still pondering about her bare hands and her confusion
at his having observed them, and light came to him. Was it to show him
that no man--not even Mr. Shanner--had any claim on her? After the close
attentions he had witnessed the other evening, was she afraid he might
infer that some understanding existed between herself and Mr.
Shanner?--that one of these rings, even if not a formal pledge, might be
his and worn for his sake? Her neglect of such favourite trinkets to-day
was then to indicate that no one of them had any special sentimental
interest for her!

"You are sitting perfectly to-day," he presently remarked. "It doesn't
tire you?"

"What an unkind suggestion! I thought I had got beyond the amateur stage
long ago."

"I'm sorry. You didn't hear, though, the beginning of my remark."

"I agreed with that," she answered with a sly humour.

"So that it hadn't to be reckoned. Do you know all women are like that?"

She considered. His brush made strokes. "Like what?" she asked at last.

"If you pay them the greatest of tributes, but are incautious enough to
hint the tiniest of qualifications, the tribute dwindles to nothing, and
they remain tremendously annoyed at the suggestion of imperfection."

"Am I like that?"

"You were just now."

"I was such a bother and a hindrance to you when we started," she
explained. "I used to get tired every few minutes. And now at last, just
when I am flattering myself on my improvement----"

"You take me too seriously," he broke in.

"You _were_ serious," she insisted.

"Serious--yes; in so far as I was afraid you were tired. I didn't even
mean it as a qualification of my tribute; it was only genuine concern
for you."

"How stupid of me!" she exclaimed. "I ought to have felt that at once."

There was another spell of silence; he intensely absorbed in his brush,
she obviously considering.

"I am not really like that," she said at last.

He stood away from the canvas, glanced critically at certain points,
levelled his mahl-stick at her, took up a rag, and wiped a bit out.
"Like what?" he asked.

"Like women."

"But you are. You see, it is sticking in your mind." He smiled wickedly.

"You fight too hard," she pleaded.

"I'm sorry," he said remorsefully. "I shall not do it again."

"Oh, I'm not a bit hurt," she protested. "I was only thinking the point
over."

"I want to hear what you were thinking." His smile and tone were
meaningly affectionate, as if they would add "little child."

"I meant that I should never really be hurt by qualifications. I have
never been used to having nice things said to me. I certainly do not
deserve tributes, but I know I deserve all possible qualifications."

"Oh, if you please! I'll not allow even Miss Robinson to say such
slanderous things about so valued a friend of mine."

"So I have been slandering a friend of yours! I'm so sorry. Forgive me."

"I suppose I must--though I find it hard--very hard."

"I do believe you are paying me a tribute," she laughed. "Now for the
qualifications. You shall see how stoical I am."

"Qualifications--none!" He threw down his brushes and palette, as if to
emphasise the declaration. "I'm tired first," he sang out gaily. "Let
us rest."

"There!" she exclaimed. "What a triumph for me!"

"But you say it so gently that it is a pleasure to concede you the
victory. You are an ideal foe."

"Oh, if you please, I don't want to be a foe.... How cold it is!" She
stooped and held her hands again to the fire.

"No, child," he said gently, "of course we aren't foes. We are very good
friends indeed, aren't we?" He held out his hand, as if to clench the
understanding, so clearly and warmly acknowledged.

She was all a-flutter again, though, as was her habit, she covered it up
with a smile. "Very good friends!" she returned, with conviction, and
she put her hand in his, and let it linger there. "I have always lived
reserved and to myself," she added thoughtfully. "You may think it
strange, but I have never had a friend before--not even a woman friend."

"I can well understand your shrinking away from people. No doubt most
people would jar on you."

"It would hurt me if I thought that. I should not like to despise
anybody. I should have loved to have friends: only I have never had the
gift of making them. Sometimes I am thankful that I am not brilliant--I
might so easily have become unendurable and full of self-conceit."

"Ah, you are something better than brilliant," he exclaimed. "It needs
an exceptional spirit to appreciate you. You are so much out of the
ordinary in every way, in looks----"

"No, no," she interrupted in protest. "I have no looks. I have no
illusions about that."

"Look at your own portrait," he insisted. "I say it is the kind of
beauty it needs a gift to appreciate. In beauty--as in everything
else--the crowd runs after the obvious and the commonplace."

"You are the first that ever thought I possessed good looks. You have
given them to me."

"I have not even done you justice. I have omitted more than I have
suggested. My sister thinks you are beautiful; all my artist friends who
have seen the picture share her opinion."

She was silent, almost distressed; she could not meet his gaze, but
turned her eyes away.

"It gave me pleasure to hear you appreciated," he continued. "You are
above conventional compliments. I withdraw what I said before. You are
_not_ like other women."

Her breath came and went as she listened, but she smiled bravely.

"At any rate I am not like _some_ women. I never could take any of the
deeper aspects of life in a merely frivolous spirit. With me it is a
loyal, deep friendship, or nothing."

He took her hand again. "Believe me, dear child, the friendship on my
part is equally loyal and deep. It is for life."

"For life," she murmured, suddenly grown pale.

He dashed in, determined to strike home.

"I prize you at your full worth, since I am one of those who can measure
it. I have the deepest affection for you. I believe I could make you
happy. Don't you understand? I offer you my whole life--that is, if you
think me worthy."

"Worthy!" she echoed, in dazed distress. "How can you think me worthy of
you! I have lived in narrow retirement. I am nothing."

He seized both her hands now. "No more of this. I ask for your promise."

"I love you with all my heart and soul. But I am not good enough for
you."

"I thought we agreed you were not like other women, and yet there is
this stiff-necked obstinacy." He drew her nearer to him, and kissed her
on the lips. "It is settled--you are to be my wife."

His domination seemed to hypnotise her. "Yes, I will do my best to make
you a perfect wife, dear," she murmured, as if bowing to his
irresistible will.

He held her hands tighter, and looked into her face as if proudly. She
met his look with glistening eyes: she was deathly pale now, and her
lips, too, were colourless. Then abruptly she drew her hands from him,
and, as if impelled on some tide of womanhood that rose in high music
above all hesitations, above the fluttering timidity of her whole life,
she threw her arms round his neck, and kissed his lips with a long
abandonment.

"I am now almost afraid of your sister," she whispered presently. "I
shall feel on my trial."

"But she has fallen in love with you already," he reassured her again.
"And Mary is the sweetest and gentlest soul in the world."

"I know I shall love her," she said. Her head hung down a moment in
meditation. "But let us continue the work now, dear. I know you wish to
have it finished to-day."

But he had little now to add to it, and he had made his last stroke
before the dusk of the afternoon overtook him.




XIV


Wyndham's career as an engaged man began amid a radiance of enthusiasm.
When his prospective mother-in-law arrived for the tea-party, she was
enchanted at the news, declaring, after the first joyous surprise, that
it was the wish that lay nearest to the hearts of herself and her
husband. And, presently, when Mary appeared, and was introduced not only
to "the original of the portrait she had so admired," but also to "a
very sweet Alice" who was to be her sister, "I guessed it," she broke
out, kissing Miss Robinson impulsively. "I am so delighted."

Heigh, presto! In a trice the three women were chatting away like a
group of old neighbours! Wyndham became discreetly busy with tea-things.

Of course the Robinsons insisted on Mary's dining with them, and so
there was a happy little reunion in the evening. Mr. Robinson thrilled
visibly with the honour of having Mary at his board, and he
congratulated Wyndham with pathetic cordiality, his voice husky with
emotion, his eyes streaming with tears.

Such was the auspicious beginning. But the universe seemed to vibrate to
white heat as a wider population entered into the jubilation. Mary was
the first to spread the news, her letters reaching the Hertfordshire
circle express. In the twinkling of an eye, as it appeared to Wyndham, a
flood of letters poured through the slit in his door. He had done that
which makes every man a hero for the moment, and dim figures with whom
he had been out of touch for endless years started up again on the
horizon, palpitatingly actual, athrob with goodwill. In the Bohemian
world, too, confirmation of the former rumour was not slow to be noised
abroad, and Sadler hastened to Hampstead and burst in upon him, the
massive head enthusiastically aglow; declaring that he had never for a
moment taken Wyndham's denial seriously, and roaring out his
congratulations and envy with an exuberance of virile expletive.

At Aunt Eleanor's the Christmas festivities were struck in a gayer key
in his honour. Odes of welcome and triumph were in the air. And he was
glad enough to be among his own world again; living in the way that
meant civilisation to him, and breathing homage and consideration--
lionised by his equals! It was as though the fatted calf had been killed
for him, after his prodigal riot of penury. He expanded in this
atmosphere of adulation, amid all these manifestations in honour of the
brilliant artist and the Prince Charming who loved and was loved
idyllically. His engagement seemed to him now most admirable--the
world's sanction had invested it with warm and pleasant lights.
Certainly nobody deprecated or criticised the projected alliance; though
it was known to be with middle-class people who were not in Society, but
merely quiet folk of wealth and respectability. Mary's enthusiasm had
gone a long way in anticipating any possible caste objections, and the
word of approval went round from one to another in the usual parrot-like
way in which public opinion has formed itself since creation. There
seemed in fact to be a very conspiracy of approbation. Wyndham had done
wisely; and voices dropped impressively to dwell on the Robinson
millions--with the obvious implication that that is what wealthy
middle-class people are for--to have the most promising of their kind
promoted into the upper classes.

But the Robinson fortune, though not inconsiderable, was not the
romantic one of rumour. Mr. Robinson had already performed his duty of
writing to Wyndham on the financial aspect of the alliance, and in so
charming a way that Wyndham had at once paid him the tribute of "jolly
decent." Since they had not had the opportunity of disposing of the
subject _viva voce_, had said the old man, he conceived it perhaps to be
an obligation on his part to do so without delaying further; after
which these matters would of course pass entirely into the realm of
Wyndham's private affairs, where he was well content to leave them.
Alice's fortune, such as it was, had been placed under her own control
absolutely when she had attained the age of twenty-five, and probably
now, with certain accumulations, amounted to some thirty thousand
pounds. She was a wise and prudent child, well capable of controlling
those money matters that were naturally distasteful to so gifted an
artist, and in that way he would no doubt find her a most useful
companion. However, he now left it to him and Alice to plan out their
future together, and wished them all good luck. At the same time, if
Wyndham had no objection, he would like to give them as a
wedding-present any house they might fancy, and his wife desired to
furnish it or give them a cheque for that purpose.

Wyndham was in reality deeply moved by so much considerate kindness and
rare delicacy. He wrote Mr. Robinson a charming note of acknowledgment;
though he touched just briefly on the main theme, diverging into a
chatty account of his visit, and letting his pen run on and on till he
had covered several sheets.

Each morning during his visit a letter from Alice awaited him on the
breakfast-table. For a week or two the chant was timorous, uncertain; of
a pitch to soothe his self-complacency, to stir no ruffle in his
holiday mood. But towards the end of his time she found herself--she
tuned up, and adventured. And then followed Wyndham's awakening; taking
him with the force of cataclysm, and dashing him out of his drowsy mood
of contentment. Evidently the poor child was not living in this world.
If her feet touched earth, her head at any rate was in a heaven of its
own. She poured herself out with a lyric fervour that was like the song
of a lark for rapture. All the years of her life she had saved herself
for this, not frittered her emotions away in flirtations or frivolous
love-affairs--as the soberer Wyndham now reflected. Her ideals were as
unsullied as in her childhood. Her spirit soared up with a tremulous
eager joy--without doubts, without cynicism, with a simple sure faith in
love's paradise. Reserved, shrinking away from men, her heart yet held
rich store of treasure, and she poured all out at his feet. Timorousness
had vanished; the soul that had woven its own music in solitude had been
translated to a higher universe. There were no barriers now, nothing but
this joyous, confident life into which her womanhood had passed at that
moment when, swept onward by the flood, she had thrown her arms around
him.

"Dearest," she wrote, "my whole past life seems like a half-slumber from
which I have awakened into a world almost too dazzling with light and
joy. Yet who am I that this joy should have come to me? When I think of
the years when I lived alone with my own thoughts, it seems wonderful
that your love should have been granted to me. The world is full of pale
ghosts that come and go, not knowing what life is, and it amuses me to
wonder if any of them will ever turn into real people.

"Oh, my dear love, you are so far, far off. I want you here, here again
with me, happy that you love me, happy that I love you, wanting no other
life than this with your arms round me and your heart beating close to
me. And yet I like to think that you are happy amid your own family, in
the place where your childhood was spent. I love, dear, to dwell on the
thought of your childhood, and fancy I see you now, a beautiful child in
velvet, with a feather in your hat and a toy sword. And I see myself a
child again, playing with this fairy little prince in the meadows. How
beautiful if we were children like that! Impossible does it seem? Yet is
anything impossible in this enchanted world?

"Think of me, dearest, with the deepest and truest love of your heart,
as I am thinking of you every moment of this wonderful life."

And another time: "It is strange to feel how everything is transformed
since you came into my life and made me understand what this great
happiness is. I laugh gaily at nothing; yet tears come into my eyes
quickly at unhappiness or suffering. It seems as if I were born to love
you with a yearning and a passion that sometimes frighten me, yet which
I would rather die than live without. When I first loved you, I did not
know that this would come, that I should not be able to imagine it to be
otherwise. The thought is frightful; indeed, if anything were to happen
to change the present, I think my heart would give one great, great
throb, and all would be over. I draw my breath hard at the thought;
there is a deep pain at my breast; my teeth are set. But how morbid I am
to-day! how ungrateful for this splendid gift of your love that has been
bestowed upon me! But somehow I feel frightened; I don't believe that
anybody will be allowed to keep such happiness on this earth. So come to
me quickly, dearest; you seem so far, far away from me. I kiss your dear
letters, I wear them near my heart, at night they are under my pillow. I
love you, I love you."

And this heart-cry broke down all the strong fibre of the man. Poor
Alice! He must take care of such a child; he must cherish her life and
make it perfect! Not in the least detail must he fail in his duty. Never
for a moment must she think that this was--he flinched now before the
words--an engagement of convenience!

An engagement of convenience! He slipped away to his room--away from the
rest of the world!--and sat staring into the dusk. He knew now that he
was face to face with the actuality that lay before him in all its
horror. An engagement of convenience! He would have given the world to
recall it. His eyes saw clear again--the enthusiasm that swirled and
whirled around him had thus far sustained him: vibrations of romance had
arisen within him, had resounded with a certain music. But these letters
of Alice, this crescendo series, each soaring beyond the other, had
illumined the horrible poverty of his own emotion. The freshness of her
note was a revelation and yet an agony to him. If only he could have
piped with half the thrill!

He could see at last that in his specious reasonings he had somehow
assumed a largely passive attitude on her part. Indeed, egotistically
preoccupied with his own side of the case, he had scarcely bestowed a
thought on hers. This reality--immense--overpowering--of the romance in
her heart terrified him. He had given her empty words, and she had given
him--love! And what else, indeed, but empty words had he to offer her
now?--had he to offer her in the whole long vista of their future? At
the best a studied kindness, an acceptance of duty. He had entered on a
role of mockery, and he knew now he was utterly unfitted to play it. His
whole nature rose and cried aloud in revolt.




XV


At the beginning of the New Year Wyndham hastened back to town, and was
soon at his post striving to adapt himself to the outlook of his life.
He had tried to steel himself to confess the miserable truth to Alice,
to lay it before her with a fidelity as unswerving as Nature, merciless
both to him and to her. But her letters continued to shake him, and he
had not the strength to face the inevitable wreckage. To break was to
punish her: to continue was only to punish himself. His course was
obvious: he must play the game _a outrance_. Yet he sought temporarily
to escape the actuality by immersing himself desperately in routine.

So, for the present, his days were mapped out simply enough. He was up
early, for the winter hours of light were precious. Braced for a great
effort, he found himself drawing on unexpected stores of vitality; he
flung himself on his masterpiece like a Viking into the melee of battle,
and had the reward of splendid conquest. This sense of power, this
subjugation of his material, made his old foiled strivings and strivings
incomprehensible, incredible!

Meanwhile the domesticity of the house at the corner invaded his studio,
and surrounded him with comforts and attentions that but threw up the
more vividly the issues he sought to preclude. But he kept stifling down
his rebellion; struggling to accept the position unreservedly, though
sick with the sense of hypocrisy. He laughingly surrendered to Alice a
duplicate key of the studio in token of their good-fellowship, and she
and her mother devoted themselves to the loving task of smoothing his
path, letting no point that might ruffle his inspiration elude their
vigilance. Their whole life and activities seemed to converge to the
studio. Mrs. Robinson kept discreetly in the background, though her
brain planned and her tongue discussed, and she often went joyfully
a-purchasing. Shortly before one o'clock Alice would march across,
attended by a servant carrying his lunch, of temptations compact,
imprisoned in shining caskets; and by the time Wyndham was ready to sit
down, his table would be nicely set out, and the temptations spread to
his view.

Many precious minutes were thus saved for him, and his train of ideas
was luxuriously unbroken. This tact and thoughtfulness was
characteristic of all the devotion that was cherished on him. Wyndham
deeply appreciated its quality, and despite the pressure--with
sending-in day looming barely three months ahead--gratitude no less than
conscience drove him to acknowledgement, to contrive that the artist
should not entirely swallow up Miss Robinson's future husband; though
her expectations were considerately of the slightest. Thus his negative
policy was answering effectively. With the passage of the days, he found
himself sliding into a lethargy of acquiescence in the position. The
mere physical fatigues of his labours dulled the unrest within him, and
his brain fermented incessantly with the problems of masses and values
which his great canvas still pressed upon him. He was glad he found it
possible at last to be accepting all outer things so calmly. He told
himself repeatedly: "Your revolt is over. You have decided there can be
no break. So be as decent and affectionate as you can."

Thus his attentions seemed to her gallant and charming, to hold their
touch of poetry. Flowers and bonbons, a book of verses or a novel were
frequent tributes: after his work was done they went into town
occasionally to a concert or a theatre, and if his conversation was of
the theme with which his mind was most saturated, she did not regard
that as otherwise than a compliment.

And so these winter days sped, and January was running its course. And
out of this not unsuccessful routine there came to him the sense that
his life was very full and singularly complete. Of perturbation or
unforeseen excitement there was never a thrill. The only moment that
held a flutter for him was when Mr. Shanner descended on the Robinsons,
grey, decorous, and austere; congratulated the pair with an ashen smile,
in the honeyed accents that had charmed so many diplomatists; and
bestowed solemn formal attentions on the engaged lady throughout the
evening.

The whole plot of his drama had in verity been revealed, was Wyndham's
frequent reflection; and with that final comedy-scene the curtain had
seemed to fall, and he knew all that there was to know.

But his own wretched money affairs were soon to give him food for
pondering. Alice's portrait had gone home in a splendid frame to find a
temporary resting-place before being tossed to the Academy; and Mr.
Robinson, though seeing him face to face almost daily, delicately sent
his cheque by post. Wyndham grasped it with relief: but it proved merely
the illumination that accentuated the darkness. For overdue rent and
many other calls made it melt away with terrifying swiftness; and
Wyndham had indebted himself to the family jeweller for presents to Miss
Robinson. Impecuniosity approached him again with no vague menace;
kicked him brutally out of his ostrich-like attitude. Nevertheless he
shrank in terror from the definite thought of pressing forward the
marriage; though, in the clear light of these latter self-communings,
money was the sole reason why he had sought it. Not only did he fear
that life of simulation with a sickness immeasurable: but he foresaw
endless money humiliations at the very outset.

He would fulfil his promise honourably, whatever the spiritual cost of
it! But he could not face money humiliations in the eyes of his
inferiors! A thousand times "no"! He must trust, despite all, to his own
strength and performance!--he would do brilliantly with his pictures in
the spring!--he would follow up the success and conquer London! He waved
aside all his past disasters: he saw his good star in the ascendant,
shining--he fixed his eyes on it fanatically. It was an irony of ironies
that, after his great surrender, his pride should still flame up
unconquered. Before the moral tragedy of love yoked to mockery, he might
bow his head in resignation; but Miss Robinson's fortune loomed up as a
ridiculous and contemptible complication in a situation already nigh
impossible.

The metaphor of the vulture was often back in his mind now! The heap of
carrion!--he had stooped for the sake of it, and it was now even more
loathsome than his former morbid perception of it. His poverty seemed
suddenly unbearable. In the past he had endured it. Now, for the first
time, he was ashamed of it.

So he spoke to the Robinsons of a six months' engagement or
thereabouts--which, to their ideas, was reputable and in order; and then
felt he had time before him to fling down the gauntlet to fortune again.

But in estimating his resources he had counted without his new allies.
Alice whispered into her father's ears her conviction that he might
easily influence commissions for her _fiance_; and, after thinking about
it, Mr. Robinson felt he would like to have a try.

A rich, powerful Insurance Corporation had voted a portrait of its
retiring president for the adornment of its board-room. Mr. Robinson set
to work astutely, and the commission came to Wyndham. Item, three
hundred guineas. But, before this new portrait had progressed very far,
Wyndham had fascinated his subject--a tall, white-bearded merchant
prince who sat to him with mysterious insignia, and resplendent chains
and emblems. "A marvellous young fellow," he confided to Mr. Robinson.
"I must really congratulate you on him--it's a treat to be in his
society. And gifted! That great picture of Hyde Park Corner is worthy of
Raphael." And for the pleasure of his company, and out of admiration for
his talent, this bluff, good-natured president had at once arranged for
paintings of himself and his wife for his own dining-room.

He generously and spontaneously made the fee seven hundred guineas.
"There are two of us this time, and why should I get off cheaper than
the Insurance Company?" he asked genially; in a spirit rare enough in
the twentieth century, but nothing out of the way in the days of the
grand patrons. "Besides, you're worth it," he roared out bluffly. "And
the privilege of going down to posterity in your society can hardly be
appraised at all."

Wyndham relished the compliment, though wincing inwardly at the thought
that the wind that blew him good came always from the same quarter: yet
in view of other important sitters he began to think of a more
accessible studio.

"Why not a house with the studio?" suggested the Robinsons. "You could
move in now, and furnish the rooms at your leisure, so as to have them
ready for the marriage."

Wyndham fell in with the idea. He thought the locality had better be
Chelsea, somewhere near the Embankment; a long distance from Hampstead,
it was true, but an ideal situation for an artist. Somehow the sense of
the distance, as he lingered on it, was not unacceptable. Alice
flinched. "We could still look after you," she murmured bravely.

"Besides, I could easily cut to and fro in a hansom," put in Wyndham.

So off the old pair started at once on the quest, drawing some renewal
of zestful youth from its absorbing interest. One day they reported a
stroke of fortune; they had come upon the ideal thing. The rent was not
impossible, and the tenant could have the option of purchasing the
freehold. The next evening they took Wyndham to see it--a charming
artist's house in Tite Street, with a broad frontage and a luxurious and
unconventional interior. On the entrance floor--an unusual hall and
three fine rooms. Above--a great studio and another excellent room.
Below were the domestic regions with many household refinements, and
bedrooms for the servants. Wyndham and Alice were enchanted.

Mr. Robinson was anxious to purchase this property outright as his
promised wedding-gift; but Wyndham, again shrinking inwardly,
diplomatically deferred the project. So the lease was signed, and the
removal at once effected. Wyndham's belongings were swiftly installed on
the upper floor of the house, at the loss of only a single day to him;
and, leaving him to his labours, the others, in the enjoyment of their
unlimited leisure, saw that the hall and stairway were made presentable
for callers.

But at this point Wyndham came to a dead stop with his labour-canvas, to
which he had of late devoted his mornings entirely, keeping the
afternoons for his sitters. He saw that it was imperative he should now
make some fresh sketches on the spot. But to regain his exact vision he
must have access to the old window in Grosvenor Place. Yet the very
thought of the house and the memory of those former visits had a
strange shattering effect on him. And some warning voice rose sternly,
bade him not renew these old associations.

He reasoned the matter out, and hesitation seemed absurd. For the sake
of his picture, it was essential he should occupy a certain point of
view. Though he had let the acquaintanceship lapse entirely ever since
Lady Betty's marriage, access to that point of view was no doubt a
simple matter. A mere letter of request, and the old earl would readily
give his permission. This time he would probably come and go without
seeing anybody at all.

Wyndham sat down to write the letter, the interest of the composition
ousting for the time his irrational misgivings. He recalled himself to
the earl's recollection, explained that the picture for which he had
made the former sketches had unavoidably been put aside; but now that he
was at last able to take it up again he desired to make some fresh
sketches, and begged the use of his old post of vantage for a few
mornings. He concluded with the hope that the earl was in the best of
health, and sent his respects and remembrances to his daughter, should
the earl be seeing her just then.

It was the merest courtesy on his part to show he had not forgotten Lady
Betty! After all, their lives were so entirely alien now!

He addressed and stamped the letter; then his strong instinct against
the whole proceeding reasserted itself. He rose and paced about. The
warning voice said, "Keep away from Grosvenor Place. No good will come
of it." "But it's absurd," he said aloud. "The thing's an absolute
necessity--I can't throw over the picture at this stage. My whole
artistic future depends upon it. What harm can possibly arise from my
going there? Lady Betty? Why, she's a matron by now! And probably not
even in England. And if she were, what is she to me now? And at any rate
I am certainly nothing to her. If I stumbled up against her the very
first morning I went there, we should still be far as the poles asunder.
She was certainly a wonderful girl, and I of course fell headlong in
love with her. Put any impressionable fellow with poetic ideals in the
way of a lovely, clever girl and I suppose he's bound to feel cut up
when somebody else marries her. But it's all as dead as King John now.
I'll go there and do my work and wind up with a letter of thanks."

He put on his hat and coat, and took up the letter. "Don't go there,"
repeated the voice. "No good will come of it."

"Rubbish!" he said. "I can't chuck up the picture. It's all right."

He went downstairs and out into Tite Street, a little confused by all
this current of doubt and reasoning, and by no means absolutely sure of
himself. But, annoyed at realising this, he began to go forward
sturdily, and flung the letter into the first pillar-box he
encountered.




XVI


As Wyndham read the reply to his letter, it seemed as if the kind, bluff
voice of the old earl were itself speaking. "A few mornings! Come along
and make your nice little sketches for the next half-century. We have
often thought of you, and wondered what you were up to. I think we may
say with truth that we've missed you. This is a dull house now, and I
suppose I'm getting old and dull myself. At any rate I've many a twinge
in the joints, and am inclined to shut myself up in my library, though
I'm never much of a reader." Then there was a PS. "Somebody or other
tells me that you are contemplating matrimony. Well, you're a brave
young fellow, and I like you for it. I congratulate you, and wish you
luck."

As the next morning turned out fairly clear, Wyndham took his materials
with him into a hansom, and rang the bell at Grosvenor Place at about
ten o'clock. Not only had he decided that his misgivings were entirely
morbid, but as a matter of course he had been quite open with the
Robinsons about the arrangement. He had indeed explained to Alice some
considerable time ago that he should in all likelihood find it necessary
to make these fresh sketches on the very scene of the picture. It did
not seem anything out of the way to her; she regarded it as a pure
matter of work. It was sufficient that she understood his disappearance
from the studio in the midst of these busy times. And as he had made it
a point that she should possess a key of the new house just as she had
had one of the old studio, she and her mother could come and go as they
pleased in his absence, and proceed with their engrossing business of
embellishing his hall and stairway.

But as he set foot in the house at Grosvenor Place after this long
interval of years, Wyndham could not maintain his reasoned conviction of
the simplicity and insignificance of the occasion.

He had the very real thrill of embarking on some extraordinary
adventure; even of stepping outside his own existence--that theatre
where he had been the spectator of his own fate, whose curtain--fire-proof
--had already fallen on a played-out drama. But here was a strange
theatre, with a curtain to rise, fascinating with promise of other drama
to be revealed; yet the stillness and the dim light cast some spell of
awe upon him.

A hand seemed to clutch at him and pull him back out of the house at the
last moment. He was penetrating here against the warning of his deeper
self; his heart beat fast not merely with the consciousness of
imprudence, but of downright disloyalty to the settled destiny before
which he had bowed his head so profoundly. The warning voice, too, was
stern; but t

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