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Thorley Weir

by E. F. Benson · English · Gutenberg #46258 · 516,613 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Thorley Weir

Author: E. F. Benson


        
Release date: July 12, 2014 [eBook #46258]
                Most recently updated: October 24, 2024

Language: English

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THORLEY WEIR

by

E F. BENSON

Author of "The Image in the Sand," "Paul," etc.







Philadelphia & London
J. B. Lippincott Company
1913




CONTENTS

    I
    II
    III
    IV
    V
    VI
    VII
    VIII
    IX
    X



CHAPTER I.


The hottest day of all days in the hottest June of all Junes was
beginning to abate its burning, and the inhabitants of close-packed
cities and their perspiring congregations cherished the hope that
before long some semblance of briskness might return into the ardent
streets. Providence, it would appear, justly resentful at the
long-continued complaints that hot summers were altogether a thing of
the past, had determined to show that something could still be done in
that line, but this rejoinder, humorous at first, had long ago ceased
to amuse. From morning till night for the last six weeks an unveiled
sun had shed a terrific ray on to the baked pavements and reverberating
house-walls, but to-day had beaten all previous records, and a solemn
glee pervaded the meteorological offices, the reports of which seemed
to claim a sort of proprietary credit in the readings of their
incredible thermometers.

Under these conditions it was with a sigh of relief that Arthur
Craddock subsided into the corner-seat of a first-class smoking
carriage at Paddington, finding that it was smoking, figuratively
speaking, in less specialized a sense than that intended by the
railway-company, for it had been standing for an hour or two in the
sun outside the station. But he had clear notions about the risk of
chill even on so hot a day, and when the train moved out from the dusky
glass vault, he drew up the window beside which he sat, for it was
impossible for him to take a seat with his back to the direction of
progress, since the sight of receding landscape always made him feel
slightly unwell. But, as he was alone in his carriage, there was no
reason why he should not refresh his clay-coloured face with a mist of
wall-flower scent which he squirted delicately over his forehead and
closed eyes from a bottle in his silver-mounted dressing-case. Then he
pulled down all the blinds in his carriage and sitting quite still in
this restorative gloom indulged in pleasant anticipations.

He was a very large stout person, wearing his hair, which was beginning
to grow thin, though no hint of greyness invaded its sleek blackness,
conspicuously long. Round his ears and the back of his head it was
still thick, but it no longer felt capable of growth on the top of
his high peaked head, and in consequence he brushed it from the
territories on the left side of his head over the top of his bald
skull, and mingled the extremities of these locks with those that
grew on the territories on the right of his head. It might thus be
hoped that short-sighted and unobservant persons would come to the
gratifying conclusion that the thatch was complete. He wore a small
reddish moustache which in the centre of his immense colourless face
might remind a Biblical beholder of the Burning Bush in the desert of
Sin, for he looked vaguely debauched (which he was not) and overfed
(which was probable to the verge of certainty). His hands, of which
he was exceedingly proud, were small and white and plump; they were
carefully manicured and decorated with a couple of rings, each set with
a large cabochon stone. When, as now, they were not otherwise occupied,
he habitually used one of them to caress the side of this desert of
Sin, as if to make sure that no whisker was surreptitiously sprouting
there. In dress, though he was certainly old enough to know better, he
affected the contemporary style of a fashionable young man, and his
brown flannel suit had evidently the benediction of the tailor fresh
upon it. His tie, in which was pinned a remarkably fine pearl, was
slightly more vivid than his suit, but of the same colour as his socks,
a smooth two inches of which appeared below his turned-up trousers, and
his shirt had a stripe of the same colour as his tie. No watch-chain
glittered on the amplitude where it would naturally repose, but on his
left wrist he wore a narrow band of gold braid with a lady's watch set
in it. A white straw hat and brown shoes were the alpha and omega of
his costume.

Though his face was singularly unwrinkled, except for rather heavy bags
of loose skin below his eyes, it was quite evident that Arthur Craddock
had left youth far behind him, but it would have been an imprudent man
who would have wagered as to his ability to guess it within the limits
of four or five years, for his corpulence was of the somewhat gross
sort that may come early to an inactive man, in whose sedentary day
dinner is something of an event. But it would not have required a very
subtle physiognomist to conjecture for him an alert and athletic mind.
His small grey eyes, which were unsurmounted by any hint of eyebrow,
were, though a little red and moist, of a singular intensity in focus,
and as active in poise and dart as a hovering dragon-fly, while even
in repose they wore a notably watchful and observant look. His hands,
too, which afforded him so constant a gratification, were undeniably
the hands of an artist, long-fingered in proportion to the palms, and
taper-nailed. Artist he was, too, to the very tips of those pink and
shining triumphs of the manicurist, and though he neither painted nor
played nor set forth on adventures in romance or poetry, his judgment
and perception in all such achievements on the part of others was a
marvel of unerring instinct, and was solidly based on an unrivalled
knowledge of the arts. Not only, too, could he appreciate and condemn
with faultless acumen, but side by side with that gift, and totally
distinct from it, he had an astonishing _flair_ for perceiving what
the public would appreciate, and just as he was seldom at fault in
true artistic judgment, so also was he an accurate appraiser of the
money-earning value of play or picture. He was, it may be stated, not
unconnected with the artistic columns of the daily press, and the
frequent articles he contributed to three leading papers on pictures,
concerts and plays, were often masterpieces of criticism, while at
other times and for other reasons he plentifully belauded work in
which, though he might artistically despise it, he was financially
interested. His critical powers and the practical use to which he put
them in purchases and in these penetrating paragraphs had proved most
remunerative to him during these last fifteen or twenty years, and he
had already laid by a very comfortable provision for his declining
days, which he sincerely hoped were as yet very far off. He was fond
of money, and, very wisely, had not the least objection to spending it
in works of art which gave him pleasure, especially when his judgment
told him that they would go up in value. Then, if a picture or a bronze
could be sold again at a much higher price than that which he paid
for it, he would part with it without any agony of reluctance. These
transactions were conducted unobtrusively and it occurred to nobody to
call him a dealer. If such a supposition ever occurred to himself, he
put it from him with the utmost promptitude. But every quarter he paid
the rent of Thistleton's Gallery in Bond Street, from which so many of
the English masters set forth on their voyage to the United States.

His immediate anticipations, as has been already remarked, were
pleasurable, for the Thames-side house at Thorley where he was to dine
and sleep would certainly be a refreshing exchange from the baking
airlessness of town. It was true that there would be nothing special in
the way of dinner to look forward to, for his host Philip Wroughton was
a penurious dyspeptic of long but hypochondriacal standing, and Arthur
Craddock, made wise by a previous experience, had directed his valet to
take with him certain palatable and nutritious biscuits in case dinner
proved to be not only plain in quality but deficient in quantity. But
there were two attractions which he was sure of finding there, each of
which more than compensated the certain short-comings of the table.
These were Philip Wroughton's daughter and Philip Wroughton's Reynolds:
briefly, he hoped to possess himself of both.

It was impossible to decide between the rival excellencies of these.
The Reynolds picture was exquisite: it represented his host's
great-grandmother. But Joyce Wroughton his host's daughter might
have sat in person for it, and the artist would have congratulated
himself on having so supremely caught the frank charm and vigour of
her beauty. More than most of the master's portraits it set forth a
breezy and glorious vitality; it was as if Diana and an Amazon had
been ancestresses to the sitter, in so swift and active a poise the
slim white-clad figure paused with head turned and beckoning hand and
smile before it passed up the glade of dark-foliaged trees behind it.
How often had Craddock seen Joyce Wroughton in just such a momentary
attitude as she swung across the lawn from her punting on the river,
and turned to call her collies lest they should enter the tent where
her father sat and disturb him at his employment of doing nothing at
all. Craddock, sluggish of blood and corpulent of limb, found a charm
of wonderful potency in the girl's lithe and athletic youth, and his
own subtle intricate-weaving mind admired hardly less the serenity and
simplicity of hers, which seemed as untroubled and unmorbid as that
which he would conjecture for some white Hellenic marble. It cannot be
truthfully stated that in the common acceptance of the word he was in
love with her, but he immensely admired her, and, being of the age when
a man says to himself that if he intends to marry he must without delay
put out from the harbour of his bachelorhood, he had decided to set his
sails. She, only just twenty years of age, was more than a quarter of
a century his junior, but this seemed to him a perfectly satisfactory
chronology, since for full twenty years more her beauty would but ripen
and develop.

His desire to possess himself of the Reynolds portrait was in a sense
more altruistic, since he did not propose to keep it himself. He was
prepared to offer to the present owner of it what would certainly
appear to one not conversant with salesrooms a very generous price, and
he was also prepared to take a far more generous price for it himself
from an American friend who was victim to a trans-Atlantic ambition to
possess a dozen portraits by this master. He scarcely knew a picture
from a statue, but he wanted pictures, and Craddock in previous
transactions with him had learned not to be shy of asking enormous sums
for them, since Mr. William P. Ward's comment was invariable, laconic
and satisfactory. "I'm sure I'm very much indebted to you," was all he
said, and proceeded to discharge his indebtedness.

Craddock's precautions with regard to the sun that beat on the carriage
windows were quite successful, and he felt cool and presentable when
he was shown into this riverside house and out again onto the lawn that
bordered the Thames where tea was laid under the big plane tree that
shaded a drowsy area of cool green. Joyce, inimitable save for the
foreshadowing Sir Joshua, rose to receive him, forgetting to turn off
the water from the urn which was ministering to the teapot. Upon which
a thin hand came out of an encompassing chair, and a rather fretful
voice said:

"The tea will be drowned, Joyce. Oh, is that Mr. Craddock? Charmed."

Having saved the tea from drowning, Philip Wroughton gave Craddock a
sufficiently cordial welcome. He did not rise from his basket chair,
but extended a welcoming hand. He had a footstool to keep his feet from
any risk of damp from the scorched and arid grass, and a thin plaid
shawl was laid across his knees, as a preventative of miasmic humours
reaching those joints. In person he was a wizen bird-eyed little man,
fleshless and hollow-cheeked, and grey-haired, and by the side of his
daughter he looked like a dried Normandy pippin compared to a fresh
apple, sun-tinted and vivid-skinned. Beside him, chiefly concealed from
view by the scarlet sunshade which cast a red glow on to her face, sat
his mother, old Lady Crowborough, who was by far the most juvenile of
any company in which she found herself. Not being on speaking terms
with her elder son (though she spoke about him a good deal) she stayed
with Philip whenever she found it convenient, and gave him a great deal
of good advice, which he seldom acted upon. She delighted in her age,
which she habitually exaggerated, and had now for several years said
that she was ninety, though as a matter of fact she would not attain
that agreeable age for several years yet. She was remarkable for her
shrewdness, her memory and her health, and wore a rather girlish and
simple costume with a flapping linen sun-bonnet. Time, that inexorable
accountant, seemed to have passed over her page, and her face was still
marvellously soft and unwrinkled, and her sight and hearing were yet
acute and undimmed. Arthur Craddock had not expected to find her here,
and he was not sure that the discovery pleased him, for she always
produced in him a sensation of being detected.

Philip Wroughton continued his low-voiced and languid phrases of
welcome.

"Charmed to see you," he said. "You know my mother, do you not? It is
good of you to come down and see us in our retreat. I, with my wretched
health, as you know, cannot leave home, and Joyce really prefers the
river and her dogs and perhaps the society of her poor old father to
the distractions of town. Eh, Joyce?"

Joyce might or might not have endorsed the filial sentiments thus
attributed to her, but her opportunity of doing so was snatched from
her by her grandmother who endorsed none of these things.

"It's all stuff and nonsense about your health, Philip," she said. "You
would be as strong as me if you only would put your medicine bottles
into the grate, and eat good nourishing food, instead of the slops
you stuff yourself with. And as for Joyce preferring to spend her time
with you, instead of dancing and flirting with all the agreeable young
fellows in London, you know quite well that it's you who keep her mewed
up here to carry your cushions and pour out your medicines and put up
your umbrella."

Joyce interrupted this recital of menial duties with a laugh.

"Granny, darling," she said, "how many lumps of sugar?"

"Three if they're decent big ones," said Lady Crowborough with
decision. "Tell us what's going on in town, Mr. Craddock."

Arthur Craddock habitually made himself agreeable when it was worth
while, and here he had three persons whom he desired to stand well
with--Philip Wroughton for the sake of the Reynolds, Joyce for her own
sake, and Lady Crowborough for reasons of self-protection.

"A burning fiery furnace is going on in town, my dear lady," he said.
"The heat has been a torture, and I only hope I have been expiating
some crime. The worst of it is that I have searched my memory without
any success for something I have done to deserve these flames. But I
seem to have been almost priggishly virtuous. What do you think I can
have done, Miss Joyce?"

Joyce put the three decent lumps into her grandmother's tea, and
laughed again. She always felt a certain slight physical repulsion for
this stout white man, though she recognised his agreeable qualities.

"Ah, how can I tell?" she said. "You have not made me your confessor."

Mr. Craddock remembered that he would probably not get very much
dinner, and took a large soft bun with sugar on the top of it.

"I instantly offer you the post," he said, "though I can still think
of nothing to confess. You will have a sinecure. And yet after all it
was one's own choice to stop in town, and certainly there have been
pleasant things going on. I suppose, too, that at this moment the
keenness of my pleasure in sitting on this delicious lawn in the shade
and coolness of your beautiful plane tree is enhanced by the contrast
with the furnace I have escaped from. And will you take me out again
in your punt after tea, as you did when I was here last? All the way
down I have had a prospective vision of you looking like a Victory off
some Greek frieze with your punt-pole, and of myself reclining on the
cushions like--like a middle-aged but unintoxicated Silenus."

This speech, since not addressed to Lady Crowborough, was too lengthy
for her taste.

"Nasty uncomfortable things are punts," she observed, "going crawling
along with one person poking and fuddling away among the mud and eels
at the bottom of the river, and dribbling the water from the pole over
the other. Joyce made me go out with her yesterday, and one of her
great dogs sat on my lap, and the other panted and slobbered over my
frock, while the sun frizzled the marrow out of my bones. If I must go
on the river, give me a motor-boat that takes you along instead of
going backwards half the time."

"I think I shall not find it too chilly in the punt to-night, Joyce,"
said her father, "if I take the shawl that is next thickest to the one
I have here. Or perhaps it would be more prudent to take both. Will you
see to that, my dear, when you have finished tea, and tell them also to
put dinner a quarter of an hour later. Then I shall be able to rest for
a little after we get in. Let us start very soon. Bring Mr. Craddock
one of my shawls, too; he will be likely to find it chilly after the
heat of town. A Shetland wool shawl, Mr. Craddock, I find keeps one
warm without any feeling of weight."

Lady Crowborough's impatience at her son's hygienic precautions fizzed
and spurted again at this.

"And bring me my cough-drops, Joyce," she said, "and my goloshes, and
my little fur-cape, and a digestive pill, and my liver-mixture. And
don't forget to take some cotton wool, to put in your ears, and the
eye-lotion. Lord save us, Philip! You and your Shetland shawls!"

"I envy you your robustness, dear mother," said he. "I only wish you
had bequeathed me more of it."

Lady Crowborough had finished tea, and accompanied Joyce on her errand
of Shetland shawls, thus leaving the two men together.

"Joyce will bring the punt around in ten minutes," said her father,
"and in the interval I shall be glad to have a chat with you, Mr.
Craddock. I have been considering the question of selling the
Reynolds, if you remember our talk when you were last here, and I have
come to the conclusion that it is really my duty to do so. I feel that
I ought to spend next winter in some warm and sunny climate, where I
may have a chance of recovering some measure of my ruined health. But
that of course would cost money, and my wretched poverty puts it out
of the question for me, unless I can sell some such possession. Joyce,
too, poor girl, will enjoy a greater stir and gaiety than I can give
her here. There is little enough of it in her life, though I know she
finds compensation from its absence in the sedulous care with which she
insists on looking after me. I dare say there will not be many more
years of invalid-nursing before her. All I can do is to make them as
little tedious as may be. Indeed, it is chiefly for her sake that I
contemplate the sale of this picture."

He paused a moment and lit a curiously-smelling cigarette which
counteracted a tendency to hay-fever. Like many people he was strangely
credulous about his own statements, and came to believe them almost as
soon as they were made. Indeed, on this occasion, before his cigarette
was well alight, he fancied that in part at any rate his plans of
wintering in some warm climate had been made for Joyce's sake.

"I think you mentioned some number of pounds you thought you could get
me for my great-grandmother's picture," he said. "Five thousand? Was
that the amount? I have no head for figures. Yes. And an American, was
it not? I hate the thought of my picture going to America but poor men
like me must not mind being kicked and plundered by the golden West.
Probably it would be hung up in some _abattoir_, where oxen are driven
in at one end, and tinned meat taken out at the other. And for once my
mother agrees with my determination to sell it. She says that I cannot
afford to have such a large cheque hanging framed in my study."

Arthur Craddock did not find much difficulty in sorting the grain from
the husk, in this very characteristic speech. But he wisely treated it
all as grain.

"I know well your solicitude for Miss Joyce's happiness," he said. "And
I need not tell you how much it honours you. But with regard to the
future home of your delightful picture I can assure you that there is
no _abattoir_ awaiting it. Mr. Ward has half a dozen Reynolds already,
and some very notable examples among them. And, as I told you, I think
there is no doubt he would give five thousand for it."

He caressed the side of his face, and finding no disconcerting whisker
there, wondered how much he would actually venture to charge Mr. Ward
for the picture.

"In fact I offer you five thousand for it here and now," he said. "Ah,
here is Miss Joyce in her punt coming for us."

Philip Wroughton dismissed this insignificant interruption.

"Then call to her, Mr. Craddock," he said, "if you will be so good and
tell her we shall be ready in five minutes. I cannot raise my voice
above the ordinary tone of speech without excruciating pain. She will
take a little turn in her punt, and come back for us. You will excuse
me if I shut my ears when you shout; a loud noise tears my nerves to
ribands."

Arthur Craddock got up.

"I will go and tell her," he said.

"So good of you: I am ashamed to trouble you," said Wroughton, not
moving.

He walked down to the edge of the lawn, where was the landing-stage.

"We are talking business, Miss Joyce," he said, "so will you come back
for us in five minutes. You have just stepped off some Greek frieze of
the best period, let me tell you. I long to recline like a teetotal
Silenus of the worst period on those cushions. In five minutes, then?"

Joyce leaned towards him on her punt-pole and spoke low.

"Oh, Mr. Craddock," she said. "Are you talking about the Reynolds?
Father told me he was thinking of selling it. Do persuade him not to. I
am so fond of it."

She gave him a little friendly nod and smile.

"Do try," she said. "Yes, I will come back in five minutes. There's a
swans' nest among the reeds down there, and I will just go to see if
the cygnets are hatched out yet."

Wroughton looked languidly at him on his return.

"Joyce has a ridiculous affection for that portrait," he said, "and I
have a reasonable affection for it. I can't afford to look at it: I am
far more in need of a suitable winter climate than of any work of art.
Yet sometimes I wish that these Pactolus-people had left us alone."

This was not a strictly logical attitude, for it was obviously possible
to refuse the offer, and leave the Pactolus-people alone. Nothing
more than an opportunity had been offered him, of which he was free
to take advantage or not, just as he chose. As for Craddock, he felt
himself advantageously placed, for if he upheld Joyce's wish, he would
ingratiate himself with her, while if the sale took place, he would
reap an extremely handsome profit himself. For the moment the spell of
the riverside Diana was the most potent.

"I can understand Miss Joyce's feeling," he said, "and yours also,
when you wish that the Pactolus-people as you so rightly call them had
left you alone. I respect those feelings, I share and endorse them.
So let us discuss the question no further. I will tell my friend that
I cannot induce you to part with your picture. No doubt he will find
other owners not so sensitive and fine as you and Miss Joyce. Of course
he will be disappointed, but equally of course I gave him to understand
that I could in no way promise success in the enterprise."

Even as he spoke the balance wavered. He could tell Joyce that he had
urged her father not to part with his picture, and her gratitude would
be earned, and he knew that he wanted that more than he wanted to
gratify her by his success. Thus it was satisfactory to find that he
had not disturbed the stability of Wroughton's determination, and his
profit was safe also.

"Ah, that is all very well for you," said Wroughton, "with your robust
health and your ignorance of what it means to be so poor that you
cannot afford the alleviation which would make life tolerable. Beggars
cannot afford to be so fine. Even Joyce does not know what I suffer in
this miserable swamp during the winter months. But I am convinced she
cannot have her father and the picture with her, for I am sure I should
never survive another winter here."

His thin peaked face grew soft with self-pity, which was the most
poignant emotion that ever penetrated to his mind.

"She would bitterly reproach herself," he went on, "if after I am gone,
she conjectured that I might have been spared to her a little longer if
I had been able to spend the winter months in a climate less injurious
to me. She does not really know how ill I am, for of course I do not
speak to her about that. I want to spare her all the anxiety I can, and
in speaking to her of my project of spending the winter in some sunny
climate, in Egypt or on the Riviera, I have laid stress only on the
pleasure that such a visit will give her. No, no, Mr. Craddock, my poor
Joyce and I must put our pride in our pocket; indeed there is nothing
else there. I will close with your American friend's offer: my mind is
made up. Naturally I should want a good copy of the picture made for
me without cost to myself. It might be possible for you in your great
kindness to arrange that for me. You might perhaps make it part of the
condition of sale: five thousand pounds and a good copy."

Craddock waved this aside. He had delicately disposed of another bun.

"That is easily arranged," he said, wiping his fingers that were a
little sticky with the sugar on his fine cambric handkerchief. "I feel
sure I can guarantee his acceptance of your terms."

Philip Wroughton coughed gently once or twice. He always said that
questions concerning money were distasteful to him. It is quite true
that they were so, when they concerned his parting with it.

"And am I right in supposing that you would expect whatever the usual
commission happens to be?" he asked. "If so, shall I pay it, or your
friend?"

Craddock interrupted him with the promptitude born of horror at such a
suggestion.

"I beg you not to hurt my feelings by proposing anything of the kind,"
he said.

Philip Wroughton instantly and with apologies withdrew his inhumanity.

       *       *       *       *       *

By this time Joyce had returned from her expedition to the swans' nest
and was waiting for them. She had already put into the punt a selection
of grey Shetland shawls, with a quantity of cushions, and the task of
making her father quite secure and comfortable next demanded all her
patience and serenity. But she had to make one more expedition to the
house to get his white umbrella, for the heat of the sun not yet set
might easily penetrate the black one which he had brought with him.
He needed also a fly-whisk in case the midges became troublesome, a
binocular glass, and the very careful disposition of cushions so that
no draught could conceivably come through the cane back against which
he reclined. Then, when he was quite settled, Craddock got in, and
Joyce pushed out into the stream leaving two pairs of pathetic dogs'
eyes wistfully regarding her from the bank. But it was impossible to
take Huz and Buz, his brother, when her father was in the punt, for
they fidgeted him on these hot days with their panting, and could not
be relied on to keep perfectly and permanently motionless.

Joyce, as was usual with her, was bareheaded, and was clad in a very
simple home-made skirt of butcher's blue much stained with water and
bleached with sun, and a white flannel blouse the arms of which she
had rolled up to above her elbows; but Craddock, who was a skilled
appreciator with regard to female apparel, would not have had her
change her really elementary garments for the most sumptuous and
glittering fabrics. In general, he entirely believed that a woman's
beauty is enhanced by the splendour of her attire, and saw the value
of satin and tiaras. But there was something so completely satisfying
and suitable in this rough river-dress that he would not have added
any embellishment to it, nor have expunged a single water-stain or
sun-bleach. The girl's superb slim figure, divine in the elasticity of
its adolescence, now bending to her stroke, now rigidly erect again
as she trailed her pole back through the frilled water, stood out in
the simplicity of Attic relief with its plain white and blue against
the reflected greens and browns which the trees and shady places cast
onto the polished mirror of the water. Her arms bare to above the elbow
showed the full roundness and soft, slim strength of her beautiful
limbs, and for the most part, except when she turned at the end of her
stroke, her face was in profile to him, giving him the short, straight
nose of the Reynolds picture, the fine mouth with generous underlip a
little drooping, and the firm oval of the curve from chin to ear. Here
in the stern, while she made these magnificent sweeps and curtsies with
her punt-pole, were sitting her father and himself, and he had no need
to glance at Mr. Wroughton, or to think consciously of himself with his
obese and middle-aged figure in order to remind himself of the glorious
contrast between the passengers and the splendour of their long-limbed
conductress. She was Thames, she was June, she was the enchanted
incarnation of all that was immortally young and beautiful, and though
naturally vain, he felt delighted to be part of her foil, to set her
off more than any "silk and fine array" could have done. For the first
time he hardly knew whether he did not admire the Reynolds portrait so
much because it was so like her. There was the same spirit of wind and
woodland and sunshine and joyous serenity about it. The type was here
incarnate, and he bathed his mind in it, washing off, temporarily at
least, the merchandise and tittle-tattle of its normal environment.
Surely this admiration of his touched ecstasy, touched love.

There soon came a turn in this sunny fluid reach of Thorley, and Mr.
Wroughton, without imprudence, furled his white umbrella, and adjusted
his binoculars for a languid survey of the shadowed river. On one
side a wood of tall virginal beeches clad the hill-side down to the
edge of the towing-path, and the huge curves of aspiring tree-tops
climbed unbroken to the summit of the hill. A fringe of hawthorn-trees,
cascades of red and white, bordered this fairyland of forest, and
below the towing-path a strip of river-fed grasses and herbs of the
water-side were fresh and feathery. Spires of meadow-sweet reared their
stiff-stemmed umbrellas of cream-colour, and loosestrife pointed its
mauve spires into the tranquil air. The dog-rose spread its maiden-hued
face skywards, with defence of long-thorned shoots, and lovely sprays
with half-opened chalices hung Narcissus-like above the tranquil tide.
Below the water waved secret forests of river-weed, with darting fishes
for birds in the drowned branches, that undulated in the stream, and
here and there tall clumps of rushes with their dry brown blooms wagged
and oscillated mysteriously to the twitchings of unseen currents. To
the left the ground was low-lying in stretch of tree-bordered meadow,
and from not far in front of them the sleepy murmur of Thorley weir
sounded with the cool melodious thunder of its outpoured and renewed
waters. Willows fringed the banks, and glimpses of meadow behind
them, lying open to the level rays of the declining sun, shone with
their rival sunlight of buttercup and luxuriant marsh marigold. Birds
were busy among the bushes with supper, and resonant with even-song,
and jubilant thrushes were rich with their rapturous and repeated
phrases. And Arthur Craddock with his swift artistic sense, not too
sophisticated for simplicity, saw with an appreciation that was almost
tremulous how all this benediction of evening and bird-song and running
water was reflected and focussed in the tall bending figure of this
beautiful girl, and in her vigour and in the serenity of her brown
level eyes. She was in tune with it, beating to its indwelling rhythm,
a perfect human instrument in this harmony and orchestra of living
things, part of it, thrilling to it, singing with it....

And the fact that he saw this so strongly, appreciated it so justly,
measured the myriad miles he was distant from loving her. An infinite
hair-breadth placed him further from love than is the remotest star
from the revolving earth.

They glided up opposite a juncture of streams. To the right lay the
main body of the river towards Thorley lock, to the left a minor stream
hurried from the low-thundering weir. Joyce pushed strongly outwards
on the right of the punt, and turned it with frill of protesting water
into the narrower and swifter stream, willow-framed on both sides. Here
there was shallower and more rapid water, that gleamed over bright
gravel-beds, and even as they turned a king-fisher ashine with sapphire
and turquoise wheeled like a jewelled boomerang close in front of
them, giving a final hint of the gleaming romance and glory that lies
so close below the surface of the most routined and rutted life. They
made a sharp angle round a corner, and close in front of them was the
grey spouting weir, and the deep pool below it, lucid with ropes and
necklaces of foam and iridescent bubble. A long spit of land jutted out
into the river and on it was a grey canvas tent.

Joyce had been punting on the right of the boat with her back to this,
but just as they came opposite to it, the shifting current of the
stream thrown across it by this spit of land made it advantageous to
change the sides of her poling, and from close at hand she saw the
tent and the presumed inhabitants thereof, two young men, one perhaps
eighteen years old, the other some four or five years his senior.
They were as suitably clad as she and more scantily, for a shirt
and a pair of trousers apiece, without further decoration of tie or
shoe or sock, was all that could be claimed for either of them. The
younger was utterly intent on some elementary cooking-business over a
spirit-lamp; the elder with brush and palette in hand was frowningly
absorbed in a picture that stood on an easel in front of him. So
close to the river-bank was the easel set, that it was impossible not
to apprehend the vivid presentment that stood on it: there was the
weir and the nude figure of a boy on the header-board in the act of
springing from it into the water. Then at the moment when the punt
was closest, the artist, hitherto so intent on his picture that the
advent of the punt was as unnoticed by him as by the boy who bent over
the spirit-lamp, looked away from his canvas and saw them. Thereat he
attended no more to his work, but merely stared (rudely, if it had
not been instinctively) at Joyce with young eager eyes, half-opened
mouth, vivid, alert, and suitable to the romance of the river-side
and the pulse of the beating world. It seemed right that he should be
there; like Joyce and the willow-trees, he belonged to the picture that
would have been incomplete without him, young and smooth-faced, and
barefooted and bright-haired.

On the instant the cooking-boy spoke, high and querulously.

"Oh, Charles," he said, "this damned omelette won't do anything. It's a
sort of degraded glue."

Joyce laughed before she knew she had laughed, with her eyes still
on Charles. Indeed she hardly knew she laughed at all, any more than
a child knows, who laughs for a reason as primal as the beat of the
heart. The blood flows.... Then, still primally, she saw his responsive
amusement, and as they laughed, a glance as fresh as the morning of
the world passed between them. She had looked at him no longer than
it took her to pull her punt-pole up to her side again, then turning
her head, in obedience to the exigence of another stroke, she looked
away from him. But it seemed to her that that one moment had been from
everlasting. It was the only thing that concerned her, that meant
anything.... And the strange fantastic moment was passed. Craddock's
voice terminated it.

"Your glasses for a second, Mr. Wroughton," he said, and without
waiting for verbal permission he snatched them up with a quickness of
movement that was rare with him, and had one fleeting look at Charles'
picture. The next stroke of the punt-pole took them round the spit of
land into the bubble and foam of the bathing-pool below the weir.

Joyce skirted round this, keeping in shallow water and out of the
current. A backwash of water made it unnecessary for her to exert
herself further for a moment, and she turned full-face to the two men.
Something within her, some indwelling beat of harmony with the simple
and serene things of the world, made a smile, as unconscious as her
laugh had been, to uncurl her lips.

"What a jolly time those two boys are having," she said. "I hope the
omelette will cease to be degraded glue. And, Mr. Craddock, wasn't
Charles--the cook called him Charles--wasn't Charles painting rather
nicely? Did you see?"

Certainly Craddock had seen, though he wanted to see again, but it was
her father who answered.

"I think we will turn and go home, Joyce," he said. "It will be chilly
at sunset. What have you done with my second shawl?"

Joyce laid down the dripping punt-pole.

"Here it is," she said. "Will you have it over your shoulders or on
your knees?"

The bows of the punt were caught by the weir-stream, and the boat swung
swiftly round.

"Take care, Joyce," he cried. "You will have us swamped. And you should
not put down your punt-pole in the boat. It has wetted me."

Joyce spread the second shawl over his knees, and tucked the edges of
it round him.

"No, dear, it hasn't touched you," she said, "and we aren't going to be
swamped."

She took up her pole again, and a couple of strokes sent them swiftly
gliding down the rapid water. Next moment they were again opposite the
tent; one boy was still stirring the deferred omelette, the artist
with brush still suspended had his eyes fixed on their punt. Once
again Joyce's glance met his, and once again Arthur Craddock picked
up Wroughton's glasses, and got a longer look at the picture on the
easel, before they floated out of range. He was even more impressed
by this second glance; there was a vitality and a sureness about the
work which was remarkable. For the moment the thought of the Reynolds,
and even Joyce herself, blue and white with the background of feathery
willow trees, was effaced from his mind. Certainly the boy could
paint, and he was for ever on the look-out for those who could paint,
more particularly if they were young and unknown. He felt certain
he had never seen work by this young man before, for he could not
have forgotten such distinctive handling. As certainly he would see
artist and canvas again before he left Thorley. This was the sort of
opportunity with which his quick unerring judgment was occasionally
rewarded. There might be a bargain to be made here.

Philip Wroughton was in amazingly genial humour that night, and read
them extracts about the climate of Egypt from a guide-book. He had
quite an affecting and tender little scene with Joyce, in the presence
of Arthur Craddock on the subject of the sale of the picture, and had
told her with a little tremble of his voice that it was for her to
choose whether she would part with the portrait or himself, according
to the formula he had already employed in discussing the matter with
Craddock. On this second repetition it had gained reality in his
mind, and Joyce with her sweet indulgence for all that concerned her
father did him the justice of recognizing that to him this tissue of
imagination was of solid quality. Somehow the prospective loss of the
picture, too, did not weigh heavily with her, for she was conscious
of a sunlight of inward happiness which could not be clouded by any
such event. She had no idea from whence it sprang, it seemed to be
connected with no particular happening, but was like one of those hours
of childhood which we remember all our lives when we were intensely
and utterly happy for no definite reason. Never, too, had she seen her
father more alive and alert, and he went so far as to drink nearly a
whole glass of the bottle of champagne which he had opened for his
guest, to wish prosperity and a happy home for the portrait. But, in
this established imperfection of human things, he had slight qualms on
the wisdom of this daring proceeding, and bade himself remember to take
a little digestive dose as soon as dinner was over.

"With a good copy here in its old place," he said, "I have no doubt
that we shall not really miss it. Joyce, my dear, these beans are not
sufficiently cooked. And, Mr. Craddock, I hope you will arrange that
the transaction shall be quite private. We, Joyce and I, do not want
the fact that I have had to sell the picture publicly known."

Lady Crowborough gave a little shrill laugh at this, without
explanation of her amusement.

"It shall not be spoken of at all," said Craddock, "nor of course will
the picture be seen in London. It shall go straight from your house to
Philadelphia. Why, even your servants need not know. The copy will one
morning take the place of the original, which I will arrange shall not
be moved until the copy is ready. I will get a copyist to do the work
here, if that is agreeable to you. Mr. Ward naturally will want to see
his picture before the purchase is complete, but you need not see him.
He will call at a time convenient to yourself. But should you care to
see him, you will find him a very agreeable fellow."

Mr. Wroughton held up his hand which was thin almost to transparency.

"No, spare me the sight of my executioner," he said.

"I don't know where you get all these fine feelings from," remarked his
mother. "Not from my side of the family. I'll see Mr. Ward for you, and
see if I can't get him to buy some garnets of mine that I never wear. I
shall like a month or two in Egypt with you, Philip."

"Too long a journey for you, mother, I am afraid," said Philip hastily.

"There! I knew you'd say something mean," said she, rising. "Well, I've
finished my dinner, and I shall get to my Patience."

The night had fallen hot and starry and still, and though it was not
to be expected that Mr. Wroughton should risk himself in the air
after dinner, Craddock and Joyce at his suggestion strolled down to
the river's edge in the gathering dusk. The even-song of birds was
over, and bats wheeled in the darkening air, and moths hovered over
the drowsy fragrance of the flower-beds. From somewhere not far away
sounded the tinkle of a guitar accompanying some boyish tenor, and
Joyce without thought, found herself wondering whether this was the
voice of Charles of the unknown surname, or the anonymous fashioner of
the omelette. The tune was tawdry enough, a number from some musical
comedy, and though the performer had no particular skill either of
finger or throat, the effect was young and fresh, and not in discord
with the midsummer stillness. Something of the same impression was made
on Arthur Craddock also, who listened with an indulgent smile on his
big face that gleamed whitely in the faded day and dimness of stars.

"He does not know how to play or sing very much," he said, "but it is
somehow agreeable though a little heart-rending to my middle-age. He is
clearly quite young, his voice is unformed yet, and I should guess he
is thinking of Her. Enviable young wretch! For though, Miss Joyce, we
miserable ones go a thinking of one or another Her all our lives, they
cease to think of us, just when we need them most."

There was considerable adroitness in this speech as a prelude to
greater directness, and he looked at her out of his little grey eyes
with some intentness. She seemed more Diana-like than ever in this
grey glimmer of starlight: it really seemed possible that she would
spring up from the earth to meet the tawny moon-disc that was even now
just rising in the East, and charioteer it over the star-scattered
fields of heaven. She seemed dressed for her part as Mistress of the
Moon, all in white with a riband of silver in her bright hair.

"But what of us?" she said lightly. "Do not you men cease to think of
us even before we are middle-aged?"

Suddenly it struck Craddock that no more heaven-sent opportunity for
carrying out the second of the purposes that had brought him down here,
could possibly be desired. He was in luck to-day, too: the business
of the portrait had been carried through so smoothly, so easily. But
immediately he became aware that he was not, in vulgar parlance, quite
up to it. He needed support, he needed her father's consent, but above
all he needed the imperative call, the hunger of the soul. Clearly,
too, her words did not refer, however remotely, to herself and him,
he felt that they were spoken quite impersonally. And immediately she
changed the subject.

"I have to thank you," she said, "for trying to dissuade my father from
selling the portrait. He told me you had suggested that he should not.
That was kind of you."

He caressed the side of his face with the usual gratifying result.

"I found his mind was made up," he said, "though in accordance with
your request I suggested he should not sell it. Always command me,
Miss Joyce, and I will always fly on your quests. I am aware that I do
not look particularly like a knight-errant, but there are motor-cars
and railway-trains nowadays which transport us more swiftly and less
hazardously than mettlesome chargers, especially if we can't ride."

He had again made himself an opening, but again he found when he came
close that it was barricaded to him. But this time some hint of his
intentions, though he could not manage to carry them into effect, was
communicated to her, and conscious of them, and uncomfortable at them,
she again changed the subject.

"Oh, I am not going to ask you to take the train to-night," she said.
"The most I shall ask of you is that you play bézique with my father by
and by. I play so badly that it is no fun for him. Hark, the singing is
coming closer."

They had come to the landing-stage at the far end of the lawn, and
looking up the tranquil lane of the river Joyce saw that the sound
came from a Canadian canoe which was drifting downstream towards them.
The boat itself was barely visible in the shadow of the trees: it was
conjectured rather than seen by the outline of shirt-sleeves that
outlined it, and it was on the further side of the stream. By this time
the moon had swung clear to the horizon, and though the boat was still
shadowed, Joyce and Craddock standing on the lawn were in the full
white light. At the moment the musical comedy song came to an end,
and the voice of some imprudent person from the canoe, forgetting the
distinctness with which sound traverses water, spoke in a voice that
was perfectly audible to Joyce, though not to Craddock.

"Charles, there's the girl of the punt and her fat white man," it
observed.

Charles was more circumspect. His answer was a murmur quite inaudible,
and instantly he thrummed his guitar again. The melody was new to
Joyce, and though he might not have great skill in singing, he had a
crisp enunciation, and the delicious old words were clearly audible:

  "See the chariot at hand here of Love
   Wherein my Lady rideth."

Louder and more distinct every moment, as the canoe drifted closer
came the beautiful lyric. The singer was not using more than half his
voice, but as the distance between canoe and audience diminished,
the light boyish tenor was sufficiently resonant to set the windless
air a-quiver. Just as the canoe emerged into the blaze of moonlight
opposite came the final stave, and the white-shirted singer sang from a
full and open throat:

  "Or have smelt o' the bud o' the briar?
   Or the nard in the fire?
   Or have tasted the bag of the bee?
   O, so white, O, so soft, O, so sweet is she!"

The silence of the night shut down like the lid of a jewel-box. Then
after a little while came the drip of a paddle, and the canoe grew
small and dim in the distance down-stream.

"Those jolly boys again," said Joyce.

Arthur Craddock heaved a long sigh, horribly conscious of his years and
riches, and Joyce heard the creak of his shirt-front.

"That young man has diplomatic gifts," he said. "It is clear that he
intended to serenade you, and he chose the far side of the river,
so as to make it seem that he had no intention of any kind. It is
a reasonable supposition that if serenading was his object, and it
certainly was, he might be supposed not to see you standing here. So he
serenaded with the open throat. If I tried to do the same, which sorely
tempts me, I should only convince you that I had not an open throat but
a sore one. Nobody has ever heard me sing, not even when I was as young
as that white shirted youth in the canoe. He will paddle back to his
tent before long, unless you stay here visible in the moonlight, and
dream steadily about you till morning."

Joyce laughed.

"Oh, what nonsense, Mr. Craddock," she said, knowing in the very secret
place of her girl's heart that it was not nonsense at all. "Boats with
guitars and singers go by every night, and often half the night. They
can't all be serenading me."

"I cannot imagine why not. A Mormonism of serenading young men is not
illegal. I would join them myself, Miss Joyce, if I could sing, and
if I did not think that any Canadian canoe in which I embarked would
instantly sink."

Philip Wroughton, in addition to the glass of champagne he had drunk
at dinner permitted himself the further indulgence of sitting up for
nearly an hour beyond his usual bedtime to talk to his guest and read
more about the delectable climate of the Upper Nile. While Craddock and
Joyce were out in the garden, a train of thoughts had been suggested to
him by his very shrewd mother before she began her Patience, which he
was preparing to indicate ever so lightly to that gentleman after Joyce
had gone upstairs. "He's got your picture, Philip," said that observant
lady, "and now he's after your daughter. Why don't you send Joyce up
to town for a month, and give the girl a chance? You're a selfish
fellow you know, like all Wroughtons." But she had not succeeded in
provoking him to a retort, nor had she affected the independence of
his own conclusions. It required no great perspicacity to see that
Craddock was considerably attracted by the girl, and it seemed to her
father that she might easily marry less suitably for him. She had led
a very solitary and sequestered life with him, and he did not propose
to alter his habits in order that she might come more in contact with
the world. True, in this projected Egyptian winter she was likely to
meet more young men than she had ever come across in her life before,
but he could not imagine any one who would suit him (as if it was
his own marriage that was in contemplation) better than Craddock.
Philip found him quiet and deferential and agreeable, and since it was
certainly necessary that Joyce and her husband (if she was permitted
to marry) should be with him a good deal, these were favourable
points. He detested young men with their high spirits and loud laughs
and automatic digestions, and he did not for a moment intend to have
such a one about the house. Furthermore Craddock was certainly very
well off (Philip would have had a fit if he had known that he and his
picture were in the act, so to speak, of enriching him more) and it was
clearly desirable to have wealth about the house. Possibly some one
more eligible might discover himself, but Philip had little difficulty
in convincing himself that he would be failing in his duty towards his
daughter if he did not let Craddock know that his attentions to Joyce
were favourably regarded by her father. But if his meditations were
stripped of the fabric of unrealities, until truth in bare austerity
was laid open, it must be confessed that he planned Joyce's possible
marriage with a single eye for his own comfort.

A game of bézique succeeded Craddock's stroll with Joyce and a
cigarette with a whisky and soda consoled him for the withdrawal of the
ladies.

"And you have positively to go up to town again to-morrow," said
Philip. "Cannot we by any means persuade you to stay another night?
You in your modesty have no idea what a refreshment it is to us in our
retirement to get a whiff of air from the busy bustling world. Yes, I
may say 'us,' for my dear little Joyce was so pleased at your coming.
Would you not be more prudent to close that window? I am sure you are
sitting in a draught."

This, of course, meant that Philip was, and Craddock did not
misunderstand.

"I was saying that Joyce was so pleased," repeated her father.

"I ask nothing better than to please Miss Joyce," said Craddock.

"You do please her: I am sure of it. Dear Joyce! I know it cannot be
long that I shall be able to give her a home. Her future continually
occupies my thoughts. I daresay she will meet someone when we winter
in Egypt who will attract her. She is not ill-looking, is she? I think
there must be many suitable men whom she would be disposed to regard
not unfavourably. Yes, yes."

It was all spoken very softly and tunefully: the calm sunset of
declining day seemed to brood over it. The effect was that Arthur
Craddock got up and paced the room once or twice in silence.

"Will you give me your permission to ask Miss Joyce if she will make me
the happiest of men?" he asked.

"My dear friend!" said Philip, with hand outstretched.




CHAPTER II.


Dawn was brightening in the sky though the sun was not yet risen when
Charles Lathom awoke next morning in the tent by the river-side. Close
by him in the narrow limits of their shelter his brother Reggie was
lying on his back still fast asleep with mouth a little parted, a
plume of tumbled hair falling over his forehead, and a bare brown arm
and shoulder outside the sheet in which he was loosely wrapped. Late
last night, after they had got back from their moonlit drift down the
river, Reggie, who, to do him justice, had done all the paddling so
as to leave Charles free to serenade, saw the propriety of one dip in
the pool below the weir before bed, and had come back into the boat
dripping and refreshed and glistening, and without further formality
of drying, had curled himself up and gone to sleep with a mocking
reference to the lady of the punt. The picture of him taking a header
into the pool, now on the point of completion, leaned against the
tent-side, and a couple of bags gaping open and vomiting clothes and
brushes, and a box of provisions, the lid of which did duty for a
table, completed the furniture of the tent. Charles got up quietly,
so as not to disturb the sleeper, and went out into the clean dewy
morning. The thickets behind their encampment were a-chirrup with the
earliest bird-music of the day, and high up in the zenith a few wisps
of cloud that had caught the sun not yet risen on the earth itself,
had turned rosy with the dawn. The spouting of the weir made a bass for
the staccato treble of the birds, but otherwise the stillness of night
was not yet broken. Little ripples lapped at the side of the Canadian
canoe drawn half out of the water onto a bank blue with forget-me-not,
and a tangle of briar-rose with cataract of pink folded petals hung
motionless over the water. Then with a sudden shout of awakened colour
the first long level rays of the sun sped across the meadows, and with
the sigh of the wind of dawn the world awoke.

The morning light was what Charles needed for his picture, but
not less did he need his brother, for the painting of the braced
shoulder-muscles of his arms as they pointed above his head for the
imminent plunge. Sun and dappled shade from the trees that bounded the
meadow just beside the weir fell onto his naked body, making here a
splash of brilliant light, here a green stain of sunlight filtering
through the translucent leaves, while his face and the side of his
body seen almost in profile were brilliantly illuminated by the glint
from the shining pool below him. But underneath these surface lights
there had to be indicated the building and interlacement of the firm
muscles and supple sinews of his body. He had all but finished them,
he had all but recorded what he saw, but it was necessary that Reggie
should stand for him just a little while more. Meantime, since it was
still so early, and his brother still so profoundly dormant, there was
a little more work to be done to the ecstatic dance of sunlight on the
pool. Just at the edge the shadow of the wall of the weir lay over it,
and it was deep brown with a skin of reflected blue from the sky, but
a few yards out the sun kindled a galaxy of golden stars, flowers of
twinkling and dazzling light.

He got his picture out of the tent, set it on its easel, and put a
kettle of water on the spirit-lamp. It was still far too early to have
breakfast, but a cup of tea brought presently to Reggie's bedside might
tend to make him unresentful of being awakened when Charles found he
could get on no further without him. So when this was ready, Charles
rattled the sugar in its tin loud enough to wake not one only but seven
sleepers, and Reggie sat up with a justifiable start.

"What the deuce----" he began.

"Sorry," said Charles. "I'm afraid I made rather a row. But I've made
some tea, too. Have a cup?"

"Of course. Is it late?"

"Well, no, not very. I've been up some little time painting. But I
can't get on any more without you!"

Reggie gave a great yawn.

"I suppose that means you want me to turn out, and stand with my arms
up on that header-board. It's lucky I have the patience of an angel."

"Archangel," said Charles, fulsomely. "You've been a real brick about
it."

"And will you get breakfast ready if I come now?"

"Yes, and I'll make both beds."

Reggie accordingly got up and glanced at the picture as he passed it on
his way to the header-board.

"I suppose I am like a dappled frog, if you insist on it," he said,
"but a devilish finely-made young fellow."

"Absolute Adonis," said Charles humbly. "Oh, Reggie, stand exactly like
that as long as you possibly can. That's exactly right."

The work went on in silence after this, for the modelling of muscle and
flesh below this checker of light and shade and reflection was utterly
absorbing to the artist. He had tried all ways of solving this subtle
and complicated problem: once he had put in the curves and shadows of
the tense muscles first, and painted the diaper of sun and shade on
the top of it, but that made the skin thick and muddy in texture. Once
he had mapped the sunlight and surface shadows first and overlaid them
with the indicated muscles, but this seemed to turn the model inside
out. Then only yesterday he had seen that the whole thing must be
painted in together, laid on in broad brushfuls of thin paint, so that
the luminousness and solidity should both be preserved, and this method
was proving excitingly satisfactory. Often during this last week he had
almost despaired of accomplishing that which he had set himself to do,
but stronger than his despair was his absolute determination to record
what he saw, not only what he knew to be there. It was impossible
for his brother to hold this tiring pose for more than a couple of
minutes, and often it was difficult to get its resumption accurately.
But this morning Reggie seemed to fall or rather stretch himself into
the correct position without effort, and Charles on his side knew that
to-day he had the clear-seeing eye and the clever co-ordinating hand.
For an hour of pose and rest Reggie stood there, and then Charles
stepped a few yards away from his canvas, and stood a moment biting the
end of his brush, and frowning as he looked from model to picture and
back again. Then the frown cleared.

"Thanks most awfully, Reggie," he said. "It's done: good or bad, it's
done."

Reggie gave a great shout, and disappeared altogether in the pool.

       *       *       *       *       *

Charles made breakfast ready according to agreement, and the two sat
for a while afterwards in the stupefaction of out-door content.

"This week has gone on wings," said Reggie, "and it's an awful
melancholy thing to think that this is my last day here. But it's been
a beauty of a week, I'm no end grateful to you for bringing me."

Reggie had the caressing moods of a very young thing. As he spoke
he left his seat and established himself on the ground leaning back
against his brother's knees and anchoring himself with a hand passed
round his leg.

"I should have had to stew in Sidney Street for my week of holiday," he
went on, "if it hadn't been for you. It was ripping of you to let me
come."

"It's I who score," said Charles. "You've earned your keep all right. I
should have had to hire a model otherwise, or have done without one."

"Oh, well, then, we both score."

Reggie threw away the end of his cigarette and abstracted Charles' case
from his pocket.

"I must go up to town this afternoon," he said, "for Thistleton's
Gallery opens again to-morrow morning. And there I shall sit, all July,
at the receipt of custom and sell catalogues and make the turn-stile
click and acknowledge receipts ... oh, a dog's life. Jove, what a lot
of money some of those fellows have! There was an American who came in
last week and went around the gallery with a great fat white man called
Craddock who often comes and shows people round. I rather think he is
Thistleton, and owns the place. I say, Charles----"

Reggie broke off suddenly.

"Why, I believe it was he who was in the punt last night," he said,
"and was standing on the lawn with that girl you sang at----"

"Didn't notice him particularly," said Charles.

"No, you were noticing somebody else particularly. But I feel sure it
was he. As I say, he was taking an American round last week, who bought
a couple of little Dutch pictures. He stopped at my desk on the way out
and borrowed my pen and wrote a cheque for £5000 right straight off,
without coughing. I remember he said he was going to post-date it. But
he didn't tip me."

"I don't quite know what this is all about," remarked Charles.

"Nor do I. I hoped it was just agreeable conversation. Don't you find
it so? But I bet you what you like that the fat white man in the punt
was Craddock."

Reggie lay further back against his brother's legs.

"I see a great tragedy ahead," he said, "with inquests and executions.
Craddock is about to marry the girl of the punt, and Charles will cut
his throat, and----"

"Whose throat?" asked Charles.

"His own or Craddock's; perhaps Craddock's first and his own
afterwards. Then there will be a sensational trial, and I can't bother
to make up any more. Are you going to paint all the morning, Charles?"

"No, none of it. It's enough for to-day to have finished you. I shall
stop down here a day or two more and do another sketch after you have
gone. I'm at your disposal this morning."

"Then let us do nothing for a long time, and then bathe for a long
time, and then do both all over again. Lord, I wish I was an artist
like you, instead of a doorkeeper, to stop about all day in delicious
places, and do exactly what you like best in the world, which is to
paint."

"It would make it completer if anybody wanted best in the world to buy
what I had painted," remarked Charles.

"But you sold two water colours the other day for three pounds each,"
remarked the consolatory Reggie. "That's as much as I earn in a month."

"It might happen oftener," said Charles. "By the way, I heard from
Mother last night."

"A nice woman," said Reggie.

"Quite. She sent me another sovereign in case funds had run low. When
you get back you will find she has been living on tea and toast because
she didn't feel hungry."

Reggie gave a huge sigh.

"I wish a man might marry his mother," he observed. "I should certainly
marry her and we would ask you and the punt-girl to stay with us."

"Very kind," said Charles.

       *       *       *       *       *

These two young men who were enjoying so open-aired a week of June
by the Thames-side were the only children of the widow whom they
kindly agreed to regard as a "nice woman." They had been brought up
in easy and well-to-do circumstances, and educated at public schools,
until the suicide of their father a little more than a year ago had
disclosed a state of affairs that was as appalling as it was totally
unexpected. He was a jobber on the stock-exchange and partner in a
firm of high repute, but he had been privately indulging in a course
of the wildest gambling, and he could not face the exposure which he
knew could no longer be avoided. The sale of the pleasant country
home at Walton Heath, and the disposal of all that could be converted
into cash had been barely sufficient to make an honourable settlement
of his unimagined debts. Neither his wife nor either of the boys had
ever dreamed of the possibility of such a situation: never had it
appeared that he had had the slightest anxiety with regard to money.
His self-control had been perfect until, as with the breaking of some
dam, it had given way altogether in ruin and destruction. Till that
very moment he had been the gayest and youngest of that eager little
family party, all of whom brought an extraordinary lightness and zest
to the conduct of their unclouded lives. Charles had already left
school for a three years when the stroke fell, and was studying in a
famous _atelier_ in Paris, while Reggie, still at Marlborough, was
devoting as much time as he could reasonably be expected to spare from
athletic exercises to the acquiring of foreign tongues with a view
to the diplomatic service. They had both been instantly sent for by
their mother, who met his death with a fortitude that never wavered.
It was not long that they had to wait for the explanation of the
utterly unlooked-for catastrophe, for a very short examination of his
private papers showed the extent of his defaulting and the imminence of
the crash. Willingly, had it been possible, would she have kept from
her sons the knowledge that he had killed himself, bearing alone the
unshared secret, but an explanation of accident was impossible. Equally
impossible was it to conceal the miserable cause of it.

It was on the evening of Charles' return from Paris, as they sat in
the still house that till to-day had always rung with jollity, while
heathery sweetness and the resinous odour of pines came in at the open
windows, that she told them everything, quite shortly, and when that
was done and they were still half stunned with the sudden horror that
had blackened life, she rallied her own courage by awakening theirs.

"You know it all, my darlings," she said, "and now whenever you think
of it, and for a long time it will always be in your thoughts, you must
think of it all as some dreadful mistake that dear Dad made, something
he never meant at all. He got his troubles muddled up in his head till
he didn't know what he was doing. He felt he couldn't bear it, just
as sometimes he used to call out when we were playing some silly game
like Animal Grab 'I can't bear it: I can't bear it.' Oh, Charles, my
darling, don't cry so awfully. We've got to go straight ahead again,
with all our courage undismayed, and show that we can face anything
that God chooses to send us."

She waited a little, comforting now one and now the other.

"It was all a mistake," she went on, "and we must never allow ourselves
to think that it was the dear Dad we knew who did it. He wasn't
himself: trouble had made him forget himself and all of us just for a
moment. We will think about that moment as little as we can, and then
only as a mistake, but we will think constantly and lovingly of the
dear Dad we have known all these years, who was so loving and tender
to all three of us, and whom we knew as so gay and light-hearted. We
will have him constantly in our thoughts like that, this and all the
loving-kindness of the years in which we laughed and loved together.
And if we can't help, as we shan't be able to do, thinking with a sort
of wondering despair of that blunder, that mistake, we must remember
that, somehow or other, though we can't explain how, it is and was even
then in the hands of God."

It had been no vague piety or bloodless resignation that had inspired
her then, nor in the year that followed, and it had required a very
full measure of the essential spirit of youth, which never sits down
with folded hands, but despises resignation as it despises any other
sort of inaction, to bring them all to the point where they stood
to-day. Whether the boys helped their mother most, or she them, is
one of those problems of psychological proportions into which it is
unnecessary to enquire, since each had been throughout the year,
essential to the others. For if there had been no jolly boys coming
home at evening to Mrs. Lathom in their lodgings in the meagre
gentility of Sidney Street, she could no more have got through her
industrious day with hope never quenched in her heart than could they
if there had been no mother waiting to welcome them. She without
waiting a day after they moved to London invested a few pounds of
their exiguous capital in buying a typewriting machine, and before
long, by dint of unremitting work was earning a wage sufficient, with
Reggie's office salary, to keep the three of them in independence and
adequate comfort, as well as to pay for a slip of a dilapidated studio
in a neighbouring street, where Charles toiled with all the fire of
his young heart and swiftly-growing skill of hand at his interrupted
studies.

It was for him, of all the three, that life was most difficult since
he was an expense only to the others and it required all the young
man's courage to persevere in work which at present brought in almost
nothing. But his mother's courage reinforced his: while it was possible
for him to continue working, it would be a cowardly surrender to give
up tending the ripening fruit of his years in Paris, and let the tree
wither, and turn his brushes, so to speak, into pens, and his palette
into an office stool. Besides, he had within him, lying secret and shy
but vitally alive, the unalterable conviction of the true artist that
his work was ordained to be art, and that where his heart was there
would sufficient treasure be found also. But it was hard for him, even
with the endorsing sincerity of his mother's encouragement, to continue
being the drone of the hive so far as actual earning was concerned,
and it had demanded the utmost he had of faith in himself and love for
his art to continue working with that ecstasy of toil that art demands
at all that which his education needed, and not to grudge days and
weeks spent in work as profitless from the earning point of view as he
believed it to be profitable in his own artistic equipment. Drawing had
always been his weak point, and hour after interminable hour from casts
or from the skeleton, properties saved from the lavish Paris days,
he would patiently copy the framework of bones and patiently clothe
them in their appropriate muscles and sinews. As must always happen,
long weeks of work went by without progress as noticed by himself,
until once and once again he found himself standing on firm ground
instead of floundering through bogs and quick-sands which endlessly
engulfed his charcoal and his hours, and knew that certain haltings and
uncertainties of line troubled him no longer. But he made no pause
for self-congratulation but continued with that mingling of fire and
unremitting patience which is characteristic of the true and inspired
learner. Colour and the whole complex conception of values, which go
to make up the single picture, instead of a collection, however well
rendered, of different objects was naturally his: he had by instinct
that embracing vision that takes in the subject as a whole.

The heat of the morning disposed to quiescence, and the two boys with
the spice of meadow-sweet and loosestrife round them, and the coolness
of the running water, drowsily booming, to temper the growing swelter
of the day, talked lazily and desultorily, concerned with these things,
for a long time after breakfast was over. But they were vividly
concerned with them no more: to each the opening pageant of life was
more engrossing than the tragedy of the past, being young they looked
forward, where the middle-aged would have dwelt with the present, and
the old have mumbled and starved with the past. But to them it was
but dawn, and the promise of day was the insistent thing, and there
was no temptation to dwell in ruins, and conjure back the night. But
before long the itch for activity, in spite of their resolve of a
lazy morning, possessed each, and Reggie fervidly washed up the used
crockery of breakfast, while Charles went up the few yards of path that
lay between the tent and the side of the weir, to behold again the
picture he had left standing on its easel. In his heart he knew it was
finished, but in the eagerness of his youth he almost looked forward
to some further brushful of inspiration. He would not touch what he
knew was good: he hoped only to find something that could be touched
with advantage.

He turned a sharp corner, where willows screened the weir; his picture
was planted within a dozen yards of him. But between him and his
picture was planted a big white-faced man who was regarding it so
intently that he did not hear the swish of the parted willows. It was
not till Charles was at his elbow that Craddock turned and saw him.

And he put into his manner the deference which he reserved for
duchesses and talent.

"I have come to your private view," he said, "without being asked, and
it was very impertinent of me. But really this is my second visit. I
had my first private view yesterday, when I looked at your picture from
a punt in which I happened to be. I had just a couple of glimpses at
your work before this. You have been very fortunate in your inspiration
since then. The Muse paid you a good visit this morning."

Charles said nothing, but his eyes questioned this intruder, giving
him a tentative welcome. But before the pause was at all prolonged
the tentative welcome had been changed into a wondering and tremulous
expectancy. Were there fairies still by the Thames-side? Was this fat
white man to prove a fairy?

"You have painted an admirable picture," continued the possible fairy,
"and the handling of the most difficult part of all--of course you know
I mean the lights and shadows on that delightful figure--is masterly.
Of course there are faults, plenty of them, but you can see, and you
can draw, and you can paint."

Craddock saw Charles' lip quiver, and heard that it cost him an effort
to command his voice.

"Not really?" he stammered.

"Unless I am much mistaken, and it has been the business of my life to
seek out those who can see and draw and paint. Now I don't know your
name, and assuredly I have never seen your work before, and since it is
my business also to know the names and the works of all young men who
can paint, I imagine that you have your artistic début, so to speak,
still in front of you. But I shall be exceedingly grateful to you if
you will sell me your picture, straight away, here and now. And if you
won't let me have it for fifty pounds, I shall have to offer you sixty."

Charles looked vaguely round, first at Craddock then at his picture,
then at the spouting weir, almost expecting to see them melt, as is the
manner of dreams, into some other farrago as fantastical as this, or
dissolve altogether into a waking reality.

"Do you really mean you will give me fifty pounds for it," he asked.

"No: I will give you sixty. But don't touch it again. Take my word for
it that it is finished. Or did you know that already?"

"Oh, yes," said the boy. "I finished it an hour ago. But I came back to
make sure."

"Well, then, when you leave your encampment here, will you please
send it to me at this address? That is to say, if I am to have the
privilege of purchasing it."

This repetition gave reality to the interview: people in dreams were
not so persistent, and Charles gave a little joyous laugh, as Craddock
took a card out of his pocket and gave it to him.

"Or were you thinking of exhibiting it?" he asked.

"I was meaning to have a try with it at the autumn Exhibition of the
'Artists and Etchers,'" said Charles.

"I have no objection to that, provided you will let me have a little
talk with you first, and put certain proposals before you."

He looked at the picture again, and saw more surely than ever its
admirable quality. It had unity: it was a picture of a boy just
about to plunge into a sunlit pool, not a boy, and a pool, and some
sunlight, a mere pictorial map, or painted enumeration of objects.
It was all tingling with freshness and vitality and the rapture of
early achievement: no artist, however skilled, if he had outgrown his
youthful enthusiasm could have done it like that, though he would
easily have produced a work more technically faultless. Eagerness,
though wonderfully controlled, burned in it; the joy of life shouted
from it. And when he looked from it to the tall shy boy whose grey eyes
had seen that, whose long fingers had handled the brushes that recorded
it, he felt sure he would not go far wrong in his own interests in
making a proposal to him that would seem to him fantastical in its
encouraging generosity. Indeed he felt that there was no element
of chance in the matter, for there could be no doubt about this
young man's temperament, which lies at the bottom of all artistic
achievement, and in this case was so clearly to be read in those eager
eyes and sensitive mouth. Naturally he had a tremendous lot to learn,
but a temperament so full of ardent life and romantic perception as
that which had inspired this idyll of youth and sunshine and outpouring
waters would never rest from the realization of its dreams and visions.

He looked at his watch and found he had still half an hour before he
need to go to the station.

"Can you give me a few minutes of your time now?" he said.

"Of course. I will just tell my brother that I can't come with him at
once. We were going on the river."

"Do. Tell him to come back for you in half-an-hour. That is he, I
suppose, on the header-board."

Charles went quickly down the little path to the tent.

"O, Reggie," he said. "The fat white man has come and bought my
picture. Absolutely bought it. It's real: I'm just beginning to believe
it."

Reggie stared for a moment. Then, for he had a poor opinion of his
brother's business capacities, "How much?" he demanded.

"Sixty pounds. Not shillings, pounds. And he wants to talk to me now,
so come back for me in half-an-hour. He says I can paint, and somehow I
think he knows."

"Bless his fat face," said Reggie. "We'll let him have it at his own
price. Anything for the model? I think the model deserves something."

"He shall get it," said Charles.

Reggie caught hold of his brother by the shoulders, and danced him
round in three wild capering circles.

       *       *       *       *       *

Arthur Craddock had sat himself down on the steps that led to the
header-board waiting for Charles' return. He had turned the picture
round, so that he saw it in a less perplexing light, and found that
he had no need to reconsider his previous conclusions about it. It
was brimful of lusty talent, and there seemed to him to be a hint of
something more transcendent than talent. There was a really original
note in it: it had a style of its own, not a style of others, and
though he felt sure that the artist must have studied at Bonnart's in
Paris, there was something about the drawing of it which had never
been taught in that admirable atelier. And the artist was so young:
there was no telling at what he might not arrive. Craddock had a true
reverence for genius, and he suspected genius here. He also had a
very keen appreciation of advantageous financial transactions, which
he expected might be gratified before long. For both these reasons he
awaited Charles' return with impatience. He was prepared to make his
proposal to him at once, if necessary, but he felt he would prefer to
see more of his work first.

Charles did not tax his patience long: he came running back.

"Let us begin at the beginning, like the catechism," said Craddock.
"What is your name?"

"Charles Lathom."

"And mine is Arthur Craddock. So here we are."

Craddock was capable of considerable charm of manner and a disarming
frankness, and already Charles felt disposed both to like and trust him.

"Your work, such as I have seen of it," Craddock went on, "interests me
immensely. Also it makes me feel a hundred years old, which is not in
itself pleasant, but I bear no grudge, for the means"--and he pointed
at the picture, "excuse the effect. Now, my dear Lathom, be kind and
answer me a few questions. You studied with Bonnart, did you not?"

"Yes, for two years."

"Only that? You used your time well. But who taught you drawing?"

Charles looked at him with a charmingly youthful modesty and candour.

"Nobody," he said. "I couldn't draw at all when I left Bonnart's. Of
course I don't mean that I can draw now. But I worked very hard by
myself for the last year. I felt I had to learn drawing for myself: at
least Bonnart couldn't teach me."

"And have you copied much?"

"I copy in the National Gallery. I try to copy the English masters."

"There is no better practice, and you will do well to keep it up,
provided you do plenty of original work too. But of course you can't
help doing that. I should like to see some of your copies, unless you
have sold them."

Charles laughed.

"Not I, worse luck," he said. "Indeed, I have only done bits of
pictures. You see----"

He was warming to his confession: the artist within him bubbled
irrepressibly in the presence of this man who seemed to understand him
so well, and to invite his confidence.

"You see, I didn't care so much about copying entire pictures," he
said. "It wasn't Reynolds' grouping--is that fearfully conceited?--that
I wanted to learn and to understand, but his drawing, ears, noses,
hands--I find I can manage the composition of my picture in a way
that seems to me more or less right, and can see the values, but the
drawing: that was what I wanted to get. And it has improved. It was
perfectly rotten a year ago."

A further idea lit its lamp in Craddock's quick brain.

"You shall show me some of your studies," he said. "And should you care
to copy a Reynolds, I feel sure I can get you a good commission, if
your copies are anything like as good as your original work. Do tell me
anything more about yourself, that you feel disposed to."

Charles brushed his hair back off his forehead. Craddock's manner was
so supremely successful with him that he did not know that it was
manner at all. He felt he could tell him anything: he trusted him
completely.

"I studied with Bonnart for two years," he said, "and then there came
a crash. My father died, and we were left extremely poor; in fact, we
were left penniless. Perhaps you remember. My mother earns money, so
does Reggie, my brother. But for this last year, you see, it is I whom
they have been supporting. They wanted me to go on working, and not
mind about that. So I worked on: I have been very industrious I think,
but till now, till this minute, I haven't earned more than a pound or
two. That's why----"

Charles had to pause a moment. The reality and significance of what was
happening almost overwhelmed him. Sixty pounds meant a tremendous lot
to him, but the meaning of it, that of which it was the symbol meant so
infinitely more.

"That's why I could hardly believe at first that you wanted to buy my
picture," he said. "It seemed too big a thing to happen. It's not only
the fact of sixty pounds, it's your belief that my picture is worth it,
that I can paint. But if nobody ever wanted to buy or saw any merit in
what I did, I don't believe I could help going on working."

He was sitting on the ground just below the steps which Craddock
occupied, and he felt a kind hand on his shoulder, as if to calm and
fortify his voice which he knew was rather unsteady.

"So I guessed," said Craddock, "but it is just as pleasant to find
that somebody does believe in you, and I assure you that I am only
the first of many who will. Now about our arrangements--I will give
you ten pounds at once to show you I am in earnest about buying your
picture----"

"O, good Lord, no," interrupted Charles.

"I should prefer it, and I will send you the balance from town. Now
will you come up there to-morrow and show me what you call your bits
of things? Show me them the day after to-morrow, and shall we say ten
in the morning? You must give me the address of your studio and I will
come there. Bring up your picture with you, but get some boy from the
village to look after your tent and belongings for a night or two, if
you prefer this to rooms. Very likely you will want to occupy it again.
The Reynolds of which I spoke is in a house near."

Craddock got up and pulled out a Russia-leather pocketbook.

"Here is my earnest money," he said. "Your studio address? Thanks."

Charles' heart was so full that it seemed to choke his brain and his
power of utterance. The first ineffable moment of recognition, dear
even to the most self-reliant of artists, had come to him, and until
then he had not known how nearly he had despaired of its advent. He
held out his hand, and smiled and shook his head.

"It's no use my trying to thank you," he said, "for there are no words
that are any use. But I expect you know."

As has been said, Arthur Craddock had a profound reverence for talent
quite apart from his keen pleasure in advantageous bargains, and his
answer, dictated by that was quite sincere.

"The thanks must pass from me to you," he said. "People like myself who
are unable to create, find their rewards in being able to appreciate
the work of those like yourself. Pray do not think of me as a patron: I
am a customer, but I hope I may prove to you that I am a good one. Ten
o'clock, then, the day after to-morrow."

Craddock had the invaluable mental gift of attending with a
thoroughness hermetically sealed from all other distractions to the
business on hand. Nor did he let his mind dribble its force into other
channels, when he wanted the whole of it to gush from one nozzle,
and in this interview with Charles Lathom he had summoned his whole
energy, though the expression of it was very quiet, to winning the
boy's confidence, and making himself appear as a discerning and
generous appreciator. It would have seemed to him a very poor policy
to obtain this picture, as he could no doubt have done, for a quarter
of the price he had offered for it, while on the other hand, it was
unnecessary to offer twice that price (which he would willingly have
done) since he could make the impression that was needful for his
future scheme, at the lower figure. Economy was an excellent thing,
but there was no mistake more gross than to economize at the wrong
time. He was satisfied as to this, and now he dismissed the subject of
Charles and his picture quite completely, and turned his whole thoughts
elsewhere.

There were several directions in which it might profitably have turned;
he turned it to one in which any possible profit was remote. That
morning, before he made this visit to Charles, Craddock had proposed
to Joyce, who had refused him. He had not taken, and did not now
take her refusal as final, and told her so, but it had considerably
surprised him. He knew well how restricted a life she led at home, how
subjected she was to her father's peevish caprices and complaints, how
cut off she was from the general diversions of life, and this, added
to her father's assurance that he "pleased her" was sufficient to make
him frankly astonished at her rejection of him, and her refusal to
walk through the door which he held open for her, and which provided
so easy an escape from all these disabilities. He had put before her,
though not pompously, these advantages, he had mentioned that her
father endorsed his application, he had not omitted to lay stress on
his devotion to her, and had ascertained that there was no rival in
the field of her maidenly preference. It is true that he was not in
love with her, but, acute man though he was in all that concerned the
head, it never entered into his mind, even now, as he drove to the
station, and thought intently about the subject, that this omission
could have had anything to do with his ill-success. It is quite
doubtful whether, even if he had been desperately in love with her,
Joyce would conceivably have given any different answer, but, as it
was, the omission was so fatal to her instinct, that there could not
be a moment's struggle or debate for her. She was not even sorry for
him, for clearly there was nothing real to be sorry for. Otherwise, she
would have sincerely regretted her inability to accept him, for, in
spite of a certain physical distaste which she felt for him, she liked
him, and admired his quickness and cleverness. Had her father told her
that Craddock was going to live with him, she would have hailed him
with a genuine welcome. But quite apart from her feeling towards him,
there was the insuperable barrier of his want of feeling towards her.
Of that barrier, of the possibility of her knowing it, he, with all his
cleverness, had no idea. But to Joyce the whole matter was abundantly
evident; she knew he did not even love her, and his love for her was
the only thing that could have made her acceptance of him ever so
faintly possible. Without that all other reasons for marrying him were
fly-blown; no debate, no balancings were conceivable. The scale dinted
the beam with its unchecked kick.

He thought over this ill-success, guessed without getting within miles
of the truth at the primary reason for it, as he drove through the
white sunshine from his interview with the astounded and grateful
Charles, and almost immediately became aware that in the last hour,
his feelings for Joyce had undergone a curious intensification.
Inspired, as he had been all his life by desires that were entirely
material, he had been used, by the aid of his clever brain, to compass
and possess them. Often, of course, he had not been able for the mere
wanting, to obtain the coveted object, and hitherto, it had almost
invariably happened that this temporary check stirred him up to such
further efforts as were necessary. A wish denied him hitherto, had
connoted a wish intensified, and since there is a great deal of truth
latent in the commonplace that to want a thing enough always earns
the appropriate reward of desire, he had not often fainted or failed
before reaching his goal. Even now, though up till now his desire for
Joyce had been scarcely more than a wish, it seemed to him different
from all other wishes; it was becoming a desire as simple and primal as
hunger for food or sleep.... Some internal need dictated it. This was
disturbing, and since he had other immediate work on hand, he turned
his attention to a typewritten manuscript, of which he had read part,
last night; he proposed to finish it in the train.

Craddock, as has been said, had a mind profoundly critical and
appreciative: he had also quite distinct and segregate, an astonishing
_flair_ for perceiving what the public would appreciate. Often he
bought pictures which from an artistic point of view he thought
frankly contemptible because he saw signs so subtle that they were
instinctively perceived rather than reasoned--that the public was going
to see something in either an old outworn mode, or in some new and
abominable trickery. He then transferred his purchases to Thistleton's
Gallery, and gladly parted with them on advantageous terms. But
this _flair_ of his was by no means confined to mere pictorial
representations, and he was always glad to read a novel or a play in
manuscript, with a view to purchasing it himself, and disposing of
his acquired rights to publisher or playwright. Living as he publicly
did in the centre of things, an assiduous diner out and frequenter of
fashionable stair-cases, he yet had a quiet and secret life of his
own as distinct from the other as are the lives of inhabitants in
adjoining houses, whose circle of friends are as diverse as bishops
from ballet-dancers. He preferred to deal in the work of men who were
young or unknown, and at present had not been able to get producers
for their possible masterpieces. He was thus often able by liberal
offers to secure an option of purchase (at a specified figure) over
the output of their next few years. Often to the sick-heartedness of
their deferred hopes, such prospects seemed dictated by a princely
liberality, and they were gladly accepted. Scores of such plays he read
and found wanting, but every now and then he came across something
which with judicious handling and backed by the undoubted influence
he had with the public through the press, he felt sure he could waft
into desirable havens. Only this morning by the weir-side he had found
a gem of very pure ray, which he believed to be easily obtainable,
and now as he read this manuscript in the train, he fancied that his
jewel-box need not be locked up again yet. The public he thought to be
tired of problem-dramas: they liked their thinking to be peptonized for
them, and presented in a soft digestible form. Just at present, too,
they had no use for high romance on the one hand, or, on the other,
subtle situations and delicate unravellings. They wanted to be shown
the sort of thing, that, with a little laughter and no tears, might
suitably happen to perfectly commonplace, undistinguished (though not
indistinguishable) persons, and in this comedy of suburban villadom,
with curates and stockbrokers and churchwardens behaving naturally
and about as humorously as they might be expected to behave without
straining themselves, he felt sure that he held in his hand a potential
success on a large scale.

The author was young and desperately poor: he had already had a play
on the boards at the first night of which Arthur Craddock had been
present, which had scored as complete a failure as could possibly have
been desired to produce suitable humility in a young man. But Craddock,
who always thought for himself instead of accepting the opinions of
others, had seen what good writing there was in it, how curiously deft
was the handling of the material, and knew that the failure was largely
due to the choice of subject, though ten years ago it would probably
have been welcomed as vigorously as it was now condemned. It was an
excellent play of ten years ago, or perhaps ten years to come, with
its lurid story too difficult for the indolent theatre-goer of this
particular year to grasp, and its climax of inextricable misery. He had
therefore immediately written to Frank Armstrong, the author, and at
an ensuing interview told him what, in his opinion, were the lines on
which to build a popular success. Then, guessing, or, rather knowing,
that Armstrong must have attempted drama many times before he had
produced so mature a piece of work as the unfortunate "Lane Without a
Turning," he said:

"I daresay you have something in your desk at home, rather like what I
have been sketching to you, which you have very likely failed to get
produced before now. Send it to me, and let me read it."

It was this play "Easter-Eggs" which Craddock finished as the train
slowed down into Paddington Station. It could not be described as so
fine a play as that which had achieved so complete a failure, but it
had all that the other lacked in popular and effective sentiment.
Even to a man of Craddock's experience in the want of discernment in
theatrical managers, it was quite astounding that it had ever been
refused, but he could guess why this had been its fate. For there
was no "star-part" in it; there was no character, overwhelmingly
conspicuous, who could dominate the whole play and turn it into a
"one-man" show. The success of it must depend on level competent
acting, without limelight and slow music. It was a domestic drama
without villain or hero or dominating personality, and when he again
read over the list of acting managers to whom Frank Armstrong had
submitted it, he saw how absurd it was to suppose that Tranby or Akroyd
or Miss Loughton could ever have considered its production. But he saw
also how a company of perfectly-unknown artists could admirably present
it, with a great saving of salaries. It needed moderate talent evenly
distributed, and one part mishandled would wreck it as surely as would
some ranting actor-manager who tried to force a dominant personality
into the play, and only succeeded in upsetting the whole careful
balance of it. Even as Craddock drove back to his sumptuous and airless
flat in Berkeley Square he jotted down a half-dozen names of those who
filled minor parts in star-plays quite excellently. He wanted them
without the stars.

And then quite suddenly, his mind, usually so obedient, bolted, and
proceeded at top-speed in quite another direction. Without intention,
he found himself wondering what Joyce was doing, whether she would have
told her father about his proposal, or confided in that astutest of
grandmothers, whether she was in the punt with panting dogs, or still
troubled with the undoubted indisposition of Buz, who had not been at
all well, so she had told him, this last day or two. Her life seemed
to him a deplorable waste of heavenly maidenhood, partly owing to a
selfish father, partly, now at least, because she had not consented to
waste it no longer. Youth lasted so short a time and its possessors
so often squandered it on things that profited not, ailing dogs, for
instance, and swans' nests among the reeds.

Then he caught sight of his own large face in the mirror of his motor,
and felt terribly old. He, too, had squandered his youth in the
amassing of knowledge, in all that could have been acquired when the
leap of the blood thrilled less imperatively, in the passion devoted to
passionless things, in the mere acquisition of wealth, in the formation
of his unerring taste and acumen. But he knew that his blood had tuned
itself to a brisker and more virile pulse, since Joyce had shaken
her head and smiled, and been a little troubled. Or was it over the
indisposition of Buz that she was troubled?

Then, arriving at his flat, he became his own man again, and cordially
telephoned to Frank Armstrong to have lunch with him.




CHAPTER III.


An hour later Frank Armstrong was sitting opposite Craddock eating
lunch with the steadfast and business-like air of a man who was not
only hungry now, but knew from long experience that it was prudent to
eat whenever edibles could be had for nothing. Some minutes before
Craddock had suggested a slice of cold meat to give solidity to the
very light repast that was so suitable to the heat of the day, and
since then Armstrong had been consuming ham and firm pieces of bread
without pause or speech. But nobody was less greedy than he; only,
for years of his life he had been among the habitually hungry. In
appearance he was rugged and potentially fierce: a great shock of black
hair crowned a forehead that projected like a pent-house over deep-set
angry eyes, and it might be guessed that he was a person both easy
and awkward to quarrel with, for his expression was suspicious and
resentful, as of some wild beast, accustomed to ill-usage, but whom
ill-usage had altogether failed in taming. But though this ugliness
of expression was certainly the predominant characteristic of that
strong distrustful face, a less casual observer might easily form the
conclusion that there were better things below, a certain eagerness, a
certain patience, a certain sensibility.

He looked up at Craddock after a while, with a queer crooked smile on
his large mouth, not without charm.

"I will now cease being a pig," he said. "But when one is really hungry
one can't think about anything else. It is no more hoggish, really,
than the longing for sleep if you haven't slept for nights, or for
water when one is thirsty. I had no breakfast this morning. Now what
have you got to talk to me about?"

Craddock was a strong believer in the emollient effects of food, and
had determined to talk no business till his client was at ease in a
chair with tobacco and quiescent influences.

"Ah, no breakfast!" he said. "I myself find that I work best before I
eat."

Frank Armstrong laughed.

"I don't," he said. "I work best after a large meal. No: I did not have
breakfast, because it would have been highly inconvenient to pay for
it. There are such people, you know. I have often been one of them."

Arthur Craddock found this peremptory young savage slightly alarming.
For himself he demanded that social intercourse should be conducted
in a sort of atmosphere of politeness, of manners. Just as in
landscape-painting you had to have atmosphere, else the effect was of
cast-iron, so in dealings with your fellow-men. There should be no such
things as edges, particularly raw ones. He thought he had seldom seen
anybody so unatmospheric.

"My dear fellow," he said. "Do you mean that you have been actually in
want of money to pay for food? Why did you not tell me? You knew what
an interest I took in you and your work."

Frank looked at him quite unatmospherically.

"But why should my having breakfast matter to you?" he said. "You
wanted my work, if you thought it good: if not, I was no more to you
than all the rest of the brutes who go without breakfast. Now about the
play. At least, I don't suppose you asked me to lunch in order to talk
about breakfast. I quite expect you to tell me it's twaddle, indeed, I
know it is. But does it by any chance seem to you remunerative twaddle?"

Craddock really suffered in this want of atmosphere. He gasped,
mentally speaking, like an unaccustomed aeronaut in rarefied air.

"Ah, I can't agree with you that it is twaddle," he said. "The plot
no doubt is slender, but the dialogue is excellent, and you show
considerable precision and fineness of line in the character-drawing."

"But what characters?" said the candid author. "The curate, the
housemaid, the churchwarden. Lord, what people, without a shred of
life or force in them. But it answered your description of what
theatre-goers liked. I wrote it last year, in a reaction after the
'Lane without a Turning.'"

"Ah, was that it?" said Craddock. "It puzzled me to know how a boy like
you--you are a boy, my dear fellow--could possibly write anything so
bitter and hopeless as that, and something so quietly genial as 'Easter
Eggs.'"

"Easily enough. I myself wrote the one: it was me, and as I found
out, nobody liked it. 'Easter Eggs' is merely my observation of a
quantity of blameless chattering people. I lived in Surbiton when I
was quite a boy. They were rather like that: there were teaparties
and sewing-societies to relieve distress among the poor. Packets of
cross-overs used to be sent to Cancer Hospitals. Let's get back to the
subject. Remunerative or not?"

"Without doubt remunerative," agreed Craddock again gasping.

"But I have given three of our leading actors the opportunity of
remunerating themselves and me, and they won't touch it. Are their
souls above remuneration, and do they only want topping high art?"

Arthur Craddock did not see his way to telling Armstrong that he had
sent his play to exactly those managers who would be quite certain to
refuse it, because that was information which he had excellent reason,
if he was to conclude an advantageous bargain, for keeping to himself.

"Nevertheless, I am right about your play," he said, "and Tranby and
Akroyd are wrong."

Frank shrugged his shoulders.

"So you tell me," he observed.

"Yes, and I am willing to back my opinion. I will here and now buy this
play from you and pay for it at a figure which you will not consider
ungenerous, considering it is a pure speculation on my part. But there
are certain conditions."

Frank Armstrong pulled his chair up closer to the table, and put his
elbows on it. Craddock could see that his fingers were trembling.

"Name your conditions, if you will be so good," he said. "Perhaps you
would also tell me more about the not ungenerous figure."

Craddock held up a white plump hand of deprecation. He positively could
not get on without manners and life's little insincerities. As this
young man seemed to have none of them, he had to supply sufficient for
two. He was glad to observe that signal of nervousness on Armstrong's
part: it argued well for the acceptance of his bargain.

"You are so direct, my dear fellow," he said. "You demand a 'yes' or a
'no' like a cross-examining counsel. You must permit me to explain the
situation. I take a great interest in your work and in you, and I am
willing to run a considerable risk in order to give your work a chance
of being fairly judged and appreciated. Now there is nothing more
difficult to gauge than the likings of the public, and while I tell you
that your play will be without doubt remunerative, I may be hopelessly
in error. But I see in it certain qualities which I think will attract,
though in your previous play, which, frankly, I think a finer piece of
work than this, the public was merely repelled. But here----"

Armstrong's elbow gave a jerk that was quite involuntary.

"Shall we come to the point?" he said. "Of course this is all very
gratifying, but we can talk about the play's merits afterwards. How
much do you offer me for 'Easter Eggs' and on what conditions?"

Craddock drummed with his plump fingers on the table. Looking across at
the strong rough face opposite him he could see suspense and anxiety
very clearly written there. He felt a rather nasty pleasure in that:
it was like poking up some fierce animal with a stick, where there are
bars between which prevent its retaliating violence. But perhaps it
would be kinder to put it out of its suspense, for Armstrong wanted to
know this more than he had wanted lunch even.

"I offer you £500 down for all rights of your play," he said, "on
conditions that you let me have three more of your plays within the
next three years at the same price, should I choose to buy them."

Armstrong did not take his eyes off him, nor did the stringency of
their gaze relax.

"Did you say £500?" he asked in an odd squeaky little voice.

"I did."

Then the tension relaxed. The young man got up and rubbed the backs of
his hands across his eyes.

"If I'm asleep," he said, "I hope I shan't wake for a long time. It's
deuced pleasant. I don't quite know what five hundred pounds mean--I
can't see to the end of them. I thought perhaps you were going to offer
me £50. I should certainly have accepted it. Why didn't you?"

This was a good opportunity for Craddock.

"Because I do not happen to be a sweater," he said, "and because like
an honest man I prefer paying a fair price for good work."

Armstrong gave a great shout of laughter.

"And because there isn't much difference to you between fifty pounds
and five hundred," he said.

He paused.

"I beg your pardon," he said. "I had no business to say that. But I
don't understand your offer. By the way, of course I accept it."

Craddock had tried to look hurt when this rather ruthless suggestion as
to the reason for his generosity was made, but he did not feel within
himself that his attempt was very successful, and was glad to look
benign again when Frank Armstrong apologised.

The tremulousness of his hands had ceased, and he looked straight at
his benefactor with his distrustful gaze. Then once more the crooked
rather charming smile came on his mouth.

"Personally, I am sure you rather detest me," he said, "so I suppose it
seems to you worth while financially to run this risk with your money.
So, though I'm bewildered, I tell you frankly, with the prospect of
five hundred pounds, I'm not grateful to you. I wish I was. Of course,
if 'Easter Eggs' makes anything of a hit, you will do pretty well, and
I shall be a popular playwright----"

He broke off a moment, and pushed back his hair.

"Ah, I see: that's where you come in," he said. "You have an option to
buy three more plays by a popular playwright at the same price. Again
if any of the three new ones makes a success, you won't do very badly."

Craddock went on the whisker-hunt for a moment.

"And if 'Easter Eggs' is put on, and fails, as your other play did,"
he observed, "shall I not be considerably out of pocket? And another
failure would not encourage me to exercise my option over any future
work of yours. However, let it be me this time who asks you to come to
the point. Do you accept my offer or not? I may mention that I shall
not renew it. I cannot waste my time over arrangements that come to
nothing."

Armstrong nodded at him with comparative friendliness.

"Good Lord, yes. I accept it," he said. "I told you I should have
accepted £50."

Craddock got up.

"Then if you have finished your lunch, we might draw up an agreement
over our cigarettes."

"Certainly. I daresay you will let me have a cigar, too. And when I've
signed, or whatever I have to do, will you give me a cheque straight
off? I shall have a banking account, I suppose, and I shan't be hungry
again for ever, as far as I can see. By George, I ought to be grateful
to you. But I think the sort of experience I've been through don't give
a fellow much practice in gratitude. Gratitude is an acquired virtue.
It is the prosperous who mainly acquire it."

Craddock patted him on the shoulder.

"My dear fellow, you may leave the cynicism of the Lane that had no
Turning behind you," he said.

Armstrong suddenly drew up his shirt-cuff and showed a long scar healed
years ago which ran nearly up to his elbow.

"That's where my father threw a knife at me once," he said. "It was a
bad shot, for he threw it at my head. It's healed, you might think: it
looks healed. It bleeds inside, though."

This was a savage young beast, it seemed, that Craddock had got hold
of, one who had been set in slippery places, that sloped hell-wards.
Craddock had known some who had learned patience from their sojournings
in such resorts, he had known others who had simply been broken by
it, others again, and of those possibly the joyful and attractive
Charles Lathom was one, who seemed to have taken no colour from
their surroundings, but emerged with their serenity and sweetness
undisturbed. But never yet had he seen anyone who came out of dark
places with mere anger and resentment against his sufferings, and yet
with strength quite unimpaired. Armstrong seemed to him like that: the
flames apparently had but hardened and annealed him. He had suffered
under the lash of circumstance, not stout-heartedly nor with any loss
of spirit, and now when for the first time he saw daylight, ahead, he
was in no wise grateful for the dispersal of the darkness. He did not
hail the sun or melt to the benignancy of its beams: he came out iron,
remembering the hunger of the years that had starved his body and his
soul, without subduing either, for physically he was hard and muscular,
morally he was cynical, expecting from others little except such
emotions as he himself shared, the instinct of self-defence, and the
stoical bearing of such blows as he could not ward off. He was not in
himself kind or unselfish or loving, and up till now he had practically
never come across such qualities in others, and there was really no
reason why he should believe in their existence. Hitherto, nobody as
far as he remembered, had done him a good turn, unless thereby he
reaped a personal benefit, and indeed Armstrong saw little reason why
anybody should; for the world as he had known it, was not run on lines
of altruistic philanthropy. The strong spoiled the weak, and the weak
looked for opportunities of preying on the weaker. The rich paid as
little as they could for the service of the poor, which was obviously
the course that common-sense indicated, while the poor, the workers,
combined so far as was possible, to make the rich pay more. There was
no reason for either side to act otherwise, and thus he was puzzled to
know why Craddock had offered him more than was necessary in order to
get this play from him, and the ensuing contract.

As a matter of fact, Craddock had done so for exactly the same reasons
as that which prompted him to give Charles Lathom sixty pounds for
his sketch: he wanted to earn a sort of blind unreasoning gratitude
from his new client, since clients possessed of this convenient spirit
were far easier to manage and to deal with. But he had failed, and
knew it: this new client, though he looked forward to finding him very
remunerative indeed, could not possibly be considered to be blind with
gratitude. But after all the main point was that he should sign the
contract that embodied Craddock's proposals, which he was perfectly
willing to do, and Craddock's butler, coming in with coffee, witnessed
the transaction. A leaf from Craddock's cheque-book completed it.

       *       *       *       *       *

All the appliances of refrigeration, in the way of electric fans and
outside blinds, were not more than sufficient to keep Craddock's flat
at an agreeable temperature and when, that evening, about six o'clock
Mrs. Lathom put away her typewriter, and the neat piles of manuscript
and transcription which had occupied her all day the heat in the little
sunbaked sitting room in Sidney Street, which at meal times did duty
also as dining-room, was almost overpowering. But she expected the
younger of her two handsome boys to arrive from his holiday on the
Thames with Charles in time for supper, and tired as she was and worn
out with her daily work in this little furnace of a room, her fatigue
forgot itself in thought of and preparation for his home-coming.

Reggie had, on a picture postcard that showed Thorley Weir, advertised
her of the hour of his train's arrival, and before she need busy
herself over the gas-stove that stood in the corner of the passage
outside the sitting-room, and had to be fed with pennies to keep its
flame burning, she found there was a quarter of an hour left her to
rest herself, and if possible to get a few minutes' doze to clear
the heat and heaviness from her eyes. This evening in spite of the
home-coming of one of her darlings, she was conscious of an unusual
despondency, which, quite rightly, she told herself was only physical,
and did not touch her spirits or her essential self. But this utter
fatigue of body apparently reached down to her mind, and she could not
help, since dozing proved an impossible feat, receding backwards into
the ashes and desolation of the past. Yet, when she allowed herself to
do so something stronger than any sense of desolation met her, love and
her womanhood and her motherhood, and the blessing of her boys. And the
tired eyes grew brighter again.

Strawberries had been very cheap that morning, and she had bought a
basket of them which she had laid out on a newspaper on her bed, each
separate, so that they should not bruise each other. She could give
Reggie some toasted cheese as well, and tea and bread and butter. It
was not such a feast as she had planned for him on the evening of his
return, before he went back to his work again at Thistleton's Gallery
next morning, but she had sent the boys a sovereign only the day
before, in order to let them have a plethora of boat-hire and general
jubilance, and until she took the completed copy of the manuscript back
to the office next day, there was nothing more in the way of cash that
could be expended. Womanlike, with all the direct and tender instincts
of womanhood alert, she loved to treat her males to the material
comforts of life. Her love had to express itself not only in affection
but in the edible transcription of it, and while she would not have
denied that Mary had chosen the good part, she had a strong sympathy
with Martha, who showed her love in a fashion less purely spiritual
perhaps, but none the less authentic. To serve, even if the only
monument of service was unbruised strawberries, and the preparation of
toasted cheese, cooked over a smelling gas-stove in the heat of this
broiling evening, did not seem to her an inferior lot. She knew she
had the Mary-love for her boys, but, though she did not reason about
the point, nor even was conscious of it, she believed Martha had not
chosen a bad part, when she put on her apron, so to speak, and got
uncomfortably warm over the kitchen fire.

There were still a few minutes left before she need stir. Reggie's
train was just about arriving now, and it would take him a good
half-hour to walk home. In twenty minutes she could do her best by his
supper, and have the toast and cheese hot and crisp for him, and she
had already put the kettle on: tea would be ready simultaneously. She
knew the chronology of these simple suppers very well.

She sat in a frayed arm-chair. The room looked west, and at this
hour it was not possible to place it entirely out of the sun, and
since there was a little wind blowing in she drew up the blind of the
window, admitting both. It was her hands and her eyes that were so
tired; for a couple of months now it had been something of a strain
to read small writing, and to-day even the clear-cut letters of her
typewriter were hard to focus. Very probably she was in need of
glasses, but an oculist's fee, when expenses so nearly met income, was
not a disbursement to be incurred lightly, and certainly her eyesight
was not always so bad as it had been to-day. The strain of continual
focussing had ruled two vertical lines between her eyebrows, as she had
seen when she went to wash her hands after putting away her machine and
before cooking Reggie's supper. She had seen them there before, but
more faintly. To-day they were deeply carved.

Mrs. Lathom was but a year or two over forty, and she was aware
that wrinkles such as these had no right as yet to set up so firm
a dwelling-house on her face. But they only troubled her as a sign
of eye-strain, a direction-post to the oculist's, and as symbols of
approaching age they concerned her not at all, except in so far that
approaching age might prove a drag on her energies and her work. Yet
it was easy to see that as a girl she must have been beautiful, and
women who have been beautiful as girls are not usually so careless over
the signs of their lost youth. But the moment's glance sufficient to
disentangle from her face the loveliness of its youth, would have been,
except to the most superficial observers, enough to make him desist
from his disentangling, and stand charmed and almost awed at the gifts
the advance of years had brought her which so vastly out-valued the
mere smoothness of line and brightness of colour that they had taken
away. They with the losses and griefs that had visited her had taken
so little in comparison with the love and the patience and the proved
unconquerable serenity which they had brought her. Nor, except that for
the moment, when heat and physical fatigue lay like a mist over her
face, dimming the inward brightness of it, had they robbed her of the
lighter gifts of the spirit, humour and the appreciation of the kindly
merriment that to cheerful souls runs through the web of life like some
gold thread in the windings of a labyrinth. High moral courage and
simple faith are without doubt essential to noble living on whatever
scale, but it is only the puritanically minded who would discount
the piquancy that an appreciation of the comical aspects of a world,
possibly tragic, gives to the business of life. And a certain sparkle
in Mrs. Lathom's grey eyes, a certain twist in her mouth clearly
betokened that she was quite capable of laughing at those she loved
when they behaved in a ridiculous manner. In the end without doubt a
deeper-abiding tenderness would overscore her amusement, but she would
never commit the error of blindly spoiling her idols.

But her ten minutes' rest was over, and she got out of her cupboard
the materials for supper, and went out onto the landing where stood
the gas-stove that browsed on inserted pennies. Mercifully it stood
near the window that looked out on to Sidney Street at the top of
this shabby genteel house, and the generous fumes grafted on to the
faint odour of oil-cloth and a more pronounced smell of other culinary
operations on some lower storey did not hang in stagnation on the
landing. Outside on the pavements and roadway shadowed by the houses,
children, not quite gutter-snipes, but markedly a little lower than
the angels, played about with the eked-out contrivances of childhood,
a pair of ill-running skates shared between two, a small box on wheels
which would hold a baby, and cabalistically labelled squares drawn on
the paving-stones. Opposite there were no houses, for a stiff church
stood in an acre of disused graveyard. Rather sad and spiritless
marriages used sometimes to be officiated there, and on Sunday a great
clamour of four bells brought together a sparser congregation than so
much noise seemed to deserve. Over all lay a grey heat-hazed sky.

Somehow the gas-stove with its accompanying odour of oil-cloth and
another supper below, in which it was now clear that fish was an
ingredient, was more encouraging than those symbols of worship and
mortality. The gas-stove promised supper anyhow, and supper is a
symbol that life not only is not extinct, but that it demands to be
maintained, and Mrs. Lathom turned to the kettle from which steam was
beginning to spurt, and put her saucepan on the bars of the top of the
range. Simultaneously a motor-car hooted outside, and appeared to draw
up, still throbbing, at the house. Then there came an impatient roulade
on the bell, and the moment after the leap of active ascending feet on
the staircase. It was impossible to mistake that tread: nobody in the
house but Reggie came upstairs like a charging brigade, and yet how
should Reggie have taken a motor from Paddington? It could scarcely
be that Charles was ill, that there had been some accident, for then
surely he would have telegraphed: nor did these flying feet sound like
the bearer of ill news. But she left her gas-stove and went to the head
of the stairs, not exactly expecting ill-news, but wanting to know.

Reggie flung himself upon her in his usual tornado of welcome.

"Oh, Mother, things have happened," he said, "and Charles hasn't
decided whether Berkeley Square or Grosvenor Square is the nicest, and
so he'll leave it to you. Yes, quite right: I'm mad, and I've kept the
taxi because Charles orders you to drive out with me and have supper
somewhere. It's his treat. To come to the point, he has sold his
picture right off the easel for sixty pounds--I said pounds--and it
seems that's only the beginning."

"Oh, my dear!" said Mrs. Lathom.

"I know I am, so put on your hat. Goodness, how hot the house is, and
oil-cloth and fish and cheese don't smell as good as Thorley Weir."

Berkeley Square and a ticking waiting taxi and a supper at a
restaurant, while the root of the matter, the fountain head of all
this glory was just sixty pounds, made up an admirable example of
the Charles-Reginald attitude towards money. Both of them seemed to
regard it, the moment that there was any immediate superfluity of it,
as a thing to be got rid of as soon as possible. This Mrs. Lathom
continuously and earnestly and not very successfully tried to combat: a
future rainy day, in the opinion of her sons, was not worth a moment's
thought if the present day was a fine one. But at this moment Mrs.
Lathom also gloriously desired the swift rush through the air, the
sense of shaded lights and tinkle of ice, for she was not in any way
immune from the temptations of these sub-celestial pleasures. And it
was with not any very great firmness that she resisted.

"It's too dear of Charles to have ordered all these nice things," she
said, "but my darling it's out of proportion even to such a fortune as
sixty pounds, for us to go to a restaurant. Send the taxi away, like a
good boy: I was just beginning to cook your supper."

Reggie shook his head.

"Can't be done," he said. "Charles' orders and my promise to obey them
are binding. And the taxi is a-ticking out the sweet little twopences."

Mrs. Lathom made one more effort.

"But it's ridiculous," she said, "and supper will be ready in two
minutes, and oh, Reggie, I am longing to hear all about the sixty
pounds. And there are strawberries: I separated them, so that they
should not spoil each other."

"We will eat them when we come back," said the inexorable Reggie.
"I shan't tell you a word about the sixty pounds unless you come. I
promised Charles. I heard another twopence go then."

A little puff of air came upstairs laden and flavoured with oil-cloth
and fish which would not positively improve if kept, and the curious
"poor" smell that dwells in houses where in winter the windows are not
very often opened for fear of losing the warmth so expensively procured
when coals are high. Mrs. Lathom's resolution wavered.

"One of us has to give way," she said. "Please let it be you, Reggie."

"Can't be done. The taxi is working awful quick, mother."

All opposition collapsed.

"Oh, I will get my hat, you monster," cried she. "It's exceedingly
wrong of me to come, and for that very reason I am going to enjoy it
all the more. How I long to hear about the sixty pounds! Put out that
dreadful gas-stove, darling: we will stop all the tickings."

       *       *       *       *       *

Charles duly arrived next morning with the picture, not yet quite
dry, on the seat opposite him propped up by a melon which he had felt
compelled to buy for his mother. Reggie had already gone off to his
desk at Thistleton's Gallery when he arrived, and she was at work with
her typewriter, and had not heard his step above the clacking of the
busy keys. She turned as the door opened, with surprise and welcome
on her face, and rose, pushing herself up with a hand on the arm of
her chair. A hundred times and more when he came home of an evening
had Charles seen her in exactly that attitude, with all that love and
welcome beaming in her face, but to-day she took his eye in a way she
had never done before. The artist in him, not the affectionate son
only, perceived her. He paused in the doorway without advancing.

"Oh, you picture!" he cried. "How is it I never saw you before. You
are my next model please. Mother, darling, here I am! The melon, yes,
that's for you, and the picture, that's for Mr. Craddock, and me, well,
I'm for both of you."

Charles deposited these agreeable properties.

"And Reggie has told you all there is to be told, I expect," he said,
"but unless I'm mistaken there'll be much more to tell when I've seen
Mr. Craddock to-morrow morning. He's coming to my studio at ten, and
I'm sure things are going to happen. What I don't know. A commission to
copy a Reynolds perhaps, other things perhaps, who knows? But my next
picture is going to be you: you with your typewriter, just getting up
as you did this moment, because Reggie or I came in. Lord, how often
have I seen you do that, and yet I saw it for the first time to-day.
Now I must go and put my studio in order in preparation for to-morrow,
but I shall stop and talk to you for ten minutes first. Yes: that's
Reggie just going to take a header into the Weir. Dappled like a horse,
and spotted like a frog, he says, but if you won't tell anybody,
there's some devilish good work in it. I happen to know because I put
it there. Clever handling in the modelling of the 'Nood,' as Bonnart
used to call it when he talked English, and as for the light and shadow
on his blessed shoulders, I call it a wonder. And if I'm not deceived
it'll be Thorley Weir he's just going to dip into. Oh, mother, I've
grown silly with happiness."

They sat down together on the shabby shiny American cloth sofa, which
Reggie said was guaranteed to slide from under the securest sitter in
ten minutes.

"It's a new world," he went on, "just because somebody who, I am sure,
knows, tells me I can paint, and has already shown himself willing to
back his opinion. You don't know what a nightmare it has been to me all
this year, to be earning nothing while you and Reggie were supporting
me."

She laid her thin white hand on his brown one.

"Ah, my dear, do you think I haven't known all along?" she said.
"Couldn't I see you struggling to keep your heart above water, so
to speak? All this year, my darling, you haven't chattered, as you
chattered just now."

"I suppose not. But I mustn't chatter any more. I've got to get my
studio arranged, and all my bits of things stuck out for Mr. Craddock
to see. I wonder what he wants to come down to see everything for. If
it had been about this Reynolds' copy only he could have asked me to
bring a couple of bits of work up to him. Mother, he is such a good
sort: he was so friendly over it, and considerate and understanding. I
shall come back as soon as I've dusted and cleared up. It won't take
long."

She glanced at the sheets on her desk.

"I think I shall come and help you," she said, "and when we've put
things to rights, I will go on with my work in your studio, dear, if I
shan't be in the way. It gets so baking hot here in the afternoon."

"Hurrah! And while you work I shall begin the world-famed picture of
the artist's mother."

"I think you owe yourself a holiday, dear, after finishing that other
picture."

"Pooh! Who wants holidays when he's happy? We'll bring the melon and
the typewriter and the picture along, and have a jubilation."

Charles' studio was but a few hundred yards away down a side street
leading off the Brompton Road, and had not it been called a studio
it might not have been misnamed an attic. Four flights of dark and
carpetless stairs led to it, and its garniture was of the most
rudimentary kind. Carpet and curtains it had none: a dishevelled screen
and torn blind shut the light, when so desired, from its southern
facing window, but in the opposite wall was a big casement giving the
rayless illumination from the north. In one corner the skeleton which
had been arranged in an attitude of dejected thought by Reggie on his
last visit here, had a straw hat tilted back on its skull, on a shelf
by it were casts of a skinless man with flayed muscles, and three or
four reproductions from Greek antiques, an easel, a rough square table
and three or four cane-backed chairs in various stages of disrepair
completed the furniture. In one corner a cupboard let into the wall
was masked by a ragged curtain which bulged suspiciously. Thither
Mrs. Lathom's housewife eyes were led, and she drew it aside with a
contumelious finger.

Horror was revealed: she had scarce believed that any cupboard
could contain so appalling a catalogue of evidence to prove the
utter incapability of a man to live, when left to himself, in a way
consistent with self-respect or tidiness or cleanliness. She had not
been to his studio for a month past, and to-day she would cheerfully
have sworn that for all these weeks Charles had never touched the
cupboard except to stow away in it some new and disgraceful object.
Crockery and knives and forks, some clean, some dirty, were lodged
there, there were twisted and empty tubes that had contained colour,
there was a hat without a brim and a jug without a handle, irregular
shapes done up in newspaper, bottles of medium, tin tacks, sheets of
paper with embryonic sketches, painting rags, half-used sticks of
charcoal, remains of food, remains of everything that should have been
cast into the dust-bin.

It was a withering face she turned on Charles.

"I should not have survived it if Mr. Craddock had seen in what a
pig-sty you choose to live, Charles," she said. "I should have died
of shame. It's little work I shall do this morning in the way of
typewriting. Water and dusters and a scrubbing-brush, please."

Charles twitched the curtain over the cupboard again. Something fell
behind it as he did so, and his mother groaned.

"It's little work you shall do in the way of cleaning up my messes,"
he said. "There's a charwoman about who brushes and scrubs and makes
everything resplendent for half-a-crown per resplendency. On my word
of honour she shall dust and clean. But you might help me to dust my
sketches and put them out, mother. I got her to tidy-up once, and she
wiped off a complete oil-sketch which was still wet."

Mrs. Lathom looked round.

"Of course I will," she said, "but oh, Charles, what squalor! A
torn blind, and a broken screen, and three chairs all of which want
reseating. And to think of Reggie and me last night stuffing ourselves
at a restaurant with your money."

"Where shall we sup to-night?" asked Charles, bringing out a pile of
canvasses.

"At twenty-three Sidney Street. Give me a duster. My dear, what a
quantity of paintings."

An hour was sufficient to make Charles' private view presentable,
and to display all his sketches, finished and unfinished, round the
wainscot of his walls. Then without pause he put a new canvas on his
easel, and bribed by his promise not to spend more than five shillings
on their supper to-night, Mrs. Lathom consented to abandon her own work
for an hour and sit for him. He put her typewriter on the table, and
made her rehearse.

"It's like an instantaneous photograph," he said, "at least that is
what the picture is going to be like. Oh, do attend, mother, and not
look at the skeleton. Reggie stuck it there with a straw hat on it:
it doesn't matter. You may dust it afterwards. Now! Tinkle with your
typewriter, and then all of a sudden Reggie or I come in here to your
right, and you put your hand on the arm of your chair, and get up
saying, 'Gosh, what a surprise and how nice!' Does your poor mind take
that in at all? It's rather important."

Mrs. Lathom sat down in obedience to this peremptory son. She clacked
her machine, and turned woodenly round, with a smile as wooden as her
gesture.

"No, not at all like that," said Charles. He had set his easel up,
and was waiting with poised charcoal. "Can't you manage to get up,
as you did when I came in this morning? Exercise your imagination.
Look surprised! Will you try again? You are working hard with your
typewriter: is that clear? You are thinking that there is a debt of
sixty pounds to clear off, and that Reggie is very ill. Then on a
sudden the door opens, here to your right, and Reggie comes in, quite
well, bursting with health, and a stack of sovereigns. Do attend, think
of what I tell you to think of. Then you get up, and say 'Darling
Reggie!' I shall say, 'One, two, three,' and then do it, and then stop
just in the position I have told you. Never mind about your face."

Charles took up his charcoal again, and stood with hand poised.

"One, two, three," he said.

She got up, and the seconds added themselves into minutes. There was
no sound at all except the dry grating of the charcoal on the canvas.
Otherwise the austere stillness of the actual creation of art filled
the room. Once again, as on the morning of yesterday, Charles knew his
hand was attuned to his eye, and his eye attuned to the vision that lay
behind it. Rapidly and unerringly the bold strokes grated across the
canvas. Then they ceased altogether.

"You beautiful woman," said Charles. "I've got you. You can't escape me
now."

Then his face which had been grave and frowning lit into smiles.

"Mother darling," he said. "I'm going to make such a queen of you with
your shabby old dress and your eyes of love. Now for a treat you may
dust the skeleton for ten minutes, and then you must give me your face
again. I see it: I see it all."

He rummaged behind the terrible curtain, and found a palette and a
couple of brushes. He squirted onto it worm casts of colour, and filled
his tin with turpentine.

It was a medium-sized canvas he had chosen, about three feet six by
three feet, and with big brushfuls of colour very thinly laid on,
he splashed in the dull neutrality of greys and browns to frame his
figure, making notes rather than painting. A blot of black indicated
the typewriter, and then with greater care he filled in the black of
her dress, and smeared in the white of the apron she wore with body
colour. This took but ten minutes for his bold brush, and then standing
a little back from it, he half-closed his eyes and looked a long time
at it to see whether the value of background to figure, and figure to
background, were as he meant them to be. He did not want the figure to
jump out from its place, for even as she rose to greet the incomer with
that face of loving welcome, her left hand still hovered with fingers
outstretched over her typewriter. It had to be felt that the greeting
over, her work must occupy her again. She had not detached herself
from it, for all the leaping-forth of her heart in shining eyes and
smiling mouth. As yet the figure was a little too near the spectator, a
little too far off from its background, and while he puzzled over this
the solution struck him. A little more emphasis given to the chair, the
arm of which she grasped gave him what he wanted: she belonged to the
chair and it anchored her in her place.

Charles suddenly threw back his head and laughed.

"Oh, jolly good!" he exclaimed, "and I don't care if nobody else agrees
with me. Mother, leave that silly skeleton, please, and get back to
your place. You may sit down, but turn your face towards me, and
remember that Reggie is just coming in, and you've thought he was ill
and----"

Charles' voice suddenly ceased, and he stared at his mother as she
obeyed these instructions with eyes as of some inspired seer. Very
slowly his hand moved to his brush which he had laid down, very slowly
and quietly as if afraid of startling away the vision which he saw, he
mixed his paint, and laid on the first brushful in planes of colour
bold and firm and defined. Between the strokes he paused a long while,
but the actual application was but the work of a second. But it was in
these pauses when he stood with drooping mouth, head thrust forward,
and eyes that seemed as if they burned their way into that beloved face
that his work was done. To record what he saw was far less an effort
than to see. The insight was what demanded all the fire and effort and
imagination which possessed him. He had set himself to divine and to
show what motherhood meant.

For half an hour he worked thus, he, too absorbed for speech, she wise
enough not to risk an interruption. Then from mere fatigue of brain and
eye with this sustained white-heat effort, he felt his power of vision
slipping from him, and laid his palette down.

"Come and look at it," he said to his mother.

The face was but roughly put in as yet, but the spirit of the face was
there.

"Oh, Charles, dear," she said. "That is just how I love Reggie and you.
How did you guess?"

He took her face in his hands and kissed her.

"Guess? I didn't guess," he said. "You told me: your face told me."

       *       *       *       *       *

Charles was not to be induced to leave his picture while daylight
lasted, but he wheeled it round with its face to the wall, before he
shut up his studio for the night. He was not sure whether he wished
Craddock to see it in its present stage: somehow, it seemed to him
private, not for everybody, until it had been clothed, so to speak,
in paint. He felt shy, though at the same time he told himself he was
merely fantastical at exhibiting so crude a confidence ... and while he
was in two minds about it next morning, he heard his visitor's footstep
on the bare and creaky staircase outside. The last flight of steps as
he knew well was a mere trap to the ignorant, with the darkness of it,
and its angles and corners, and he set his door wide to give light to
his visitor. Then, just before Craddock came in, he told himself he
was ridiculous in imagining that there could be privacy in a portrait,
and wheeled the easel round so that it stood just opposite the door.

Craddock, large and white and gently perspiring, emerged from the
stairs with outstretched hand, and--

"Good morning, my dear fellow," he said. "It is very well for Art to
sequester herself and live alone, but four flights of break-neck stairs
are really an exaggerated precaution against intrusion. However, here I
am----"

Suddenly he caught sight of the portrait and he dropped Charles' hand
without another word, and stared at it. The silent seconds grew into
a minute, and more than a minute passed without a sound. Hard and
commercial and self-seeking as Craddock was he had the saving grace of
true reverence for genius, and there was not the smallest question in
his mind that it was a master's work that stood before him. There was
no need to ask who was this tired and beautiful woman, for no one but
her son could have painted a woman so, and have divined that unique
inimitable love that no woman ever felt even for husband or lover, but
only for those who have been born of her body and her soul. It was that
tenderness and love, no other, that Charles had seen, and for none but
a son could it have glowed in that worn and lovely face.

Craddock was immensely touched. He had expected a good deal from this
visit to Charles' studio, but he had never dreamed of so noble, and
simple a triumph, as that unfinished portrait presented. And when at
length he turned to Charles, his eyes were moist, and he spoke with a
simplicity that was quite unusual to him.

"That is very true and beautiful," he said. "You are fortunate to have
a mother to love you like that."

Charles gave an exultant laugh.

"Then I have shown that?" he asked, his shyness entirely vanishing
before this penetrating person Where was the point of being shy when a
man understood like that?

"Indeed you have," said Craddock. "And you have shown it very tenderly
and very truly. It required a son to show it."

He looked again at the eager welcoming face on the canvas, and from it
to the face of the boy beside him, and asked himself, impatiently, what
was this mysterious feeling of perception that underlay and transcended
all technique. Here was a portrait with perhaps two days' work only
(it happened to be less than that) expended on it, and even now it had
arrived at a level to which mere technique could never lift it. Love
and the inspiration that love gave it caught it up, gave it wings,
caused it to soar.... Yet how, why? There were hundreds and hundreds
of artists, who as far as mere technique went, could paint with the
same precision and delicacy: why should not any of them have put on the
brushful just so? Yet even in the most famous of all portraits of the
artist's mother, there was not such a glow of motherhood.

Then he turned from it abruptly. He had not come here merely to admire,
though he hoped that he should admire. He had come on a business
proposal, which should satisfy both himself and the young man to whom
it was made, and he began examining the smaller canvases which Charles
and his mother had displayed round the room. Here were a couple of
studies of Thorley Weir, here half a dozen sketches of Reggie prepared
to take his plunge, with details thereof, a raised arm, a bent knee,
the toes of a foot pressed heavily in the act of springing. There were
copies of casts, there were portraits and numerous transcriptions of
leg-bones, arm-bones, ribs, with muscles, without muscles, and all
betokened the same indomitable resolve to draw. Then there were the
copies or bits of copies from masterpieces in the National Gallery:
half a dozen heads of Lady Hamilton as a Bacchante, and in particular
Philip IV. of Spain, quantities of Philip IV.--his head sometimes,
sometimes a dozen of his left eyebrow with the eye beneath: his right
hand, a finger of his right hand, the thumb of his right hand: could
they have been put together like the dry bones of Ezekiel's vision,
there would be a great army of Philip IV. And in none was there any
sign of impatience: the Argus of eyes was drawn for a purpose; and
till that purpose was achieved, it was evident that the artist was
prepared to go on copying eyes until his own were dim. Admirable also
was the determination to achieve the result by the same process as
that employed by the master: to get the general effect was clearly not
sufficient, else there would not have been so copious a repetition.

An examination of a quarter of these delicate copies was sufficient for
Craddock's purpose in looking at them. His only doubt was whether it
was not mere waste of time to give this youth more copying work to do.
But the study of a picture so admirable as Wroughton's Reynolds could
hardly be waste of time for anybody. Also, he was not sure whether his
involuntary tribute to the unfinished portrait had not been too strong:
he did not wish Charles to think of himself as one with the world at
his feet.

"I see you have got a sense of the importance of copying method," he
said, "and I feel sure you will be able to produce an adequate copy of
the Reynolds I have in mind. Now you will see why I told you to leave
your camp at Thorley Weir unbroken, for the picture in question is at
the house a little lower down the river, the Mill House. Probably you
know it: the lawn comes down to the water's edge."

Certainly Charles knew it. Involuntarily there sounded in his brain a
song he knew also, "See the Chariot at Hand." Decidedly he knew it.
But an infantine caution possessed him, and he raised and wrinkled his
eyebrows.

"I think I do," he said. "Is there a big tree on the lawn? And are
there usually some dogs about?"

"Yes, and a charming young lady who looks after them. Now I can't offer
you very much for the work, but if £50 tempts you at all, I can go as
far as that. I should not recommend you to do it at all, if I did not
think it would be good for you. What do you say?"

Charles drew a long breath.

"I--I say 'yes,'" he remarked.

"Let us consider that settled then. I will telegraph for the exact
size of the picture, and you can take your canvas down. I should start
to-morrow, if I were you. Ah, and talking of £50, here is another
specimen of £50 which I already owe you. I advanced you ten, did I not?
I will take my picture away with me if I may."

The crisp crinkling notes were counted out, and Charles took them up
and stood irresolute. Then by an effort the words came.

"You can't know," he said, "what you've done for me, and I feel I must
tell you----"

The notes trembled and rustled in his hand.

"You've given me hope and life," he said. "I--I don't think I could
have gone on much longer, with the others working and earning, and me
not bringing a penny back. You've done all that. You've put me on my
feet."

Craddock felt for his whisker in silence a moment. To do him justice
there was a little struggle in his mind, as to whether he should put
the proposal he had come here to make, or do what his better self,
the self that reverenced the unfinished portrait, prompted him to do.
Yet for a year now this boy had been toiling and struggling unaided
and undiscovered. None of all those who must have seen him copying
in the National Gallery had seen what those eyes of Philip IV., those
repeated fingers and thumbs implied: none had ever suspected the fire
and indomitable patience of those admirable sketches. It was but just
that he, who had recognised at once what Charles already was and might
easily become, should reap the fruits of his perspicuous vision. And
the offer he was about to make would seem wildly generous too to his
beneficiary.

"My dear Lathom," he said. "I hope to put you much more erect on your
feet. I haven't said anything of what I came to say. Now let me put my
whole proposal before you."

He paused a moment.

"It is quite impossible for you to continue in your studio here," he
said. "You are a painter of portraits, and what sitter will come up
those stairs? Your admirable portrait of your mother will certainly
be seen next year, at some big exhibition, and certainly people will
enquire for the artist. But it is mere folly for you to live here: You
must be more accessible, more civilised. Some fine lady wants to be
painted by you, but will she survive, or will her laces survive these
stairs? Will she sit on a chair like this for an hour together, and
look at a torn blind? I know what you will say: quite sensibly you will
say that you can afford nothing better. But I can afford it for you. I
will start you in a proper studio, well furnished and comfortable, and
as it should be. Why, even a dentist has a comfortable chair for his
sitter, and a waiting-room with papers, and a servant who opens the
door."

Again Craddock paused, for he had caught sight of the unfinished
portrait again, and felt desperately mean. But the pause was very short.

"I will start you decently and properly," he said, "and I will not
charge you a penny. But I want a return, and you can make me that
return by your paintings. I propose then that you should promise to let
me have a picture of yours every year for the next three years at the
price of £100. Do you understand? In a year's time or before, I can
say to you, pointing to a picture, 'I will take this for this year.' I
can say the same next year: I can say the same the year after. You get
your studio and all appurtenances free: you also get a hundred a year
for certain, provided you only go on painting as well as you paint now.
I shall get three pictures by you at a price which I honestly believe
will be cheap in three years' time. I tell you that plainly. I think
your pictures will fetch more than that then."

Craddock caressed the side of his face a moment.

"I shall also," he said, "have had the pleasure and the privilege of
helping a young fellow like yourself, who I believe has a future in
front of him, to get a footing in that arena, where attention is paid
to artistic work. I have a certain command of the press. It shall
assuredly be exercised on your behalf. You have heard of struggling
geniuses. I do not say you have genius, but you have great talent, and
I shall have enabled you to work without the cramp and constriction of
poverty as you paint. Now, you need not tell me now what you decide.
Think it over: talk it over with that beautiful mother, whom I hope I
may see some day. It is just a business proposal. On the other hand, if
you feel no doubt as to your answer, if you are going to tell me to go
to the deuce for certain----"

Charles took two quick steps towards him.

"I accept," he said, "how gladly and thankfully I can't tell you. But
you might guess ... I think you understand so well ..."

Craddock, laid his hand on the boy's shoulder.

"Then there's our little private bargain," he said. "Tell your mother
and that bathing boy, of course. But we'll not talk about it otherwise.
Our little agreement, yours and mine. I don't think we shall either of
us repent it."

"It won't be me who starts repenting," said Charles joyously.




CHAPTER IV.


Charles was in camp again at the little peninsula fringed with
meadow-sweet and loosestrife below Thorley Weir, scarcely hearing, far
less listening to its low thunder, diminished by the long continuance
of the drought, scarcely seeing, far less looking at the dusky crimson
behind the trees which showed where the sun had set. Probably his
unconscious self, that never-resting observer and recorder of all the
minutest unremembered incidents of life, saw and took note, but though
his eyes were open and his ears alert, his conscious brain was busy
with what concerned him more vividly than those things. Besides, in a
way he had already made them his own; he had painted them half a dozen
times in sketches and studies, he had guessed their secret, learned the
magic of their romance, and they were his. All that was not his, all
the life that was expanding and opening about him, could not but claim
and receive this surrender of his brain and his heart.

He had come back here two days ago, and on the morning following, had
presented his card at the Mill House to a parlour-maid who had taken it
in, leaving him and the canvas easel and paint-box he had brought with
him to grill at the door. This rather haughty young person returned
after a while and bidding him follow, took him upstairs into what
looked like a disused nursery, overlooking the lawn and river, and
pointed at a picture propped against the end of a sofa.

"Mr. Wroughton hopes there is everything you require," she said, "and
please to ring if you want anything."

She rustled out of the door, which she closed with elaborate
precaution, exactly as if Charles had fallen into the sleep which was
necessary for his recovery.

Charles' grave grey eyes had been twinkling with amusement, as he was
thus led through an empty house, and stowed away like a leper, in this
sequestered chamber, and, left alone, a broad grin spread over his
face. Then before looking at the picture which stood with its face
towards the end of the sofa, his eye made an observant tour of the
room. Certainly it had been a nursery, for here stood a doll's house,
here a child's crib, here a chair with a confining bar between the
arms, so that no child imprisoned there could by any means escape. But
there were signs of a later occupancy, a couple of big arm-chairs, and
a revolving book-case stood there also, on the top of which evidently
in recent use lay a writing-pad with ink-bottle and pen-tray attached.
Also there was that indefinable sense in the air, manifest subtly but
unmistakably that the room was still in use....

A rap at the door which indicated not "May I come in?" but "I am coming
in," interrupted this short survey, and the parlour-maid entered.
She cast a vulturine glance round the room: she saw and annexed the
writing-pad. But again before leaving she spoke like a Delphic oracle
up-to-date.

"If you desire to rest or smoke there is the garden," she observed.

Now Charles had already drawn his conclusions about the room, and he
resented the removal of the writing-pad by anybody but its owner. For
it required but little constructive imagination to reform the history
of this room. Surely it had been the nursery of the girl of the punt,
and was still used by her as a sitting room. She ought to have come
and got her blotting-pad herself. However, she had done nothing of the
sort, and in the meantime it was his business not to dream dreams, but
see and reproduce another painter's vision. He took hold of the picture
that stood against the end of the sofa, turned it round, then gave a
short gasp of amazement. For here was the girl of the punt, inimitably
portrayed. Just so and in no other fashion had she turned opposite
their tent, and looked at Charles while his brother execrated that
which should have been an omelette. There was no question that it was
she: there was no question either that it was a superb Reynolds.

Instantly the artistic frenzy awoke: the dream that lay deep down in
his young soul, dim and faint and asleep, seemed suddenly to awake and
merge and personify itself in the treasure that it was his to copy.
Instantly the whole room, too, burst into life, when this prototype
of its owner was manifested. Nor, apart from the sweet and exquisite
pleasure that it gave him to work here, had the room been badly chosen:
there was an excellent north light and by drawing down the blinds
of the window opposite, he could secure exactly the illumination he
required. In five minutes he had adjusted his easel, and with his
canvas already mapped faintly out into squares to guide his drawing,
the charcoal began its soft grating journeys.

For a long time he worked on in one absorbed pulsation, and was just
beginning to feel that his arm was momentarily unable to continue
without some pause for rest, when an interruption unlooked for and
for the moment inexplicable occurred. A faint continued scratching,
not impatient but entreating, came at the door, and rightly rejecting
the first idea that had presented itself to him, that the indomitable
parlour-maid, suddenly brought low, besought admittance, Charles opened
to the intruder. A big golden collie stood outside, who sniffed at
him with doubt and hesitancy, and then deciding that he was harmless,
came softly by, and established himself on the sofa. Established there
in the haven where it would be, it thumped gently with its tail, as a
signal of gratitude.

Charles stood with the open door in his hand a moment, but it seemed
impossible to continue drawing into the passage, so to speak, and with
a tremor of anticipation in his wicked young heart, he closed it again.
A parlour-maid could remove a writing-pad, but it might easily require
someone with greater authority to entice away that other possession.
Then before going back to his work, he tested the friendliness of
his visitor, and finding he was welcome, spent a minute in stroking
its ears, and received as thanks a rather dry hot nose thrust into
his hand. Clearly the dog was not well, and with that strange canine
instinct, was grateful for the expression of even a stranger's
sympathy. Then it lay down with muzzle on its outstretched paws, and
eyes wide-open and suffering and puzzled. Charles went back to his
canvas, but he expected further interruptions now.

In a little while they began. Through the open window on the side
towards the river, where he had drawn down the blind, he heard a
footstep on the gravel path below, a whistle, and then a voice calling
"Buz!" Buz heard too, for he pricked a languid ear, and just moved a
languid tail, but did not feel equal to a more active recognition.
Again and once again Buz was whistled for and called, and it seemed to
Charles that he was in the position of an unwilling accomplice, who had
better turn King's evidence. So as quietly as he could, he pulled up
the blind and looked out. Below on the grass stood Buz's mistress, and
perhaps the whisper of the blind had caught her listening ear, for on
the moment she looked up, and saw Charles at the window.

"I beg your pardon," he said, "but I was shown up here, and I think it
must be Buz who asked to come in. He is lying on the sofa."

There was a sudden surprise in the girl's face: it might only be due
to being thus addressed by a stranger from the upper storey. But as a
matter of fact, it was not a stranger quite who addressed her: she
perfectly recognised him, though the surprise was there.

"Oh, thank you," she said. "I will come up to fetch him."

Charles stood there waiting, with his blood somehow strangely a-tingle
and alert. It seemed to him as if this had all happened before, yet he
could not remember what happened next. But it all seemed very natural.
Then he heard her quick step on the stairs and she entered.

She smiled at him rather remotely but not without friendliness, and
certainly without embarrassment.

"Thank you so much," she said. "I could not find him. Buz, dear, come
along."

She stood in the doorway, with head already half-turned to leave the
room again, just as in the hundred-year old portrait of her. Buz
tattooed languidly with his tail.

"I'm afraid he is not very well," said Charles, with the sense of
taking a plunge. "His nose is hot and dry."

"I'm afraid so. The dogs always think of this room as their sick-room
if they don't feel what's called The Thing. Buz, come along."

Buz thought not.

"But won't you leave him here?" said Charles.

Joyce came a couple of steps into the room.

"Oh, I hardly like to," she said. "Won't he disturb you?"

"Not an atom. Do leave him if he feels like stopping. He doesn't object
to me."

That last sentence won Joyce's heart: it was easy to reach it through
her dogs. But she detached herself from Charles again, as it were, and
went up to her ailing dog.

"Buz, darling, I'm so sorry," she said. "You can stop here if you like.
Not quite well? Oh, I'm afraid not well at all."

She bestowed a kiss on Buz's head, who wrinkled puzzled eyebrows at
her. It appeared she could not help him, and he did not understand....
Then she turned to Charles again.

"Please forgive my interrupting you," she said. "And weren't you
painting below Thorley Weir a week ago? Yes: I thought it was you."

Before he had time for more than the bare affirmative, she had left the
room again. And all the way downstairs she mingled with compassion for
Buz, a wonder why she had felt as if she could not help asking that,
although she was perfectly certain it was he.

It was characteristic of Charles that he flew to his drawing again, for
that expressed his feelings better than any mooning reverie would have
helped him to do. He must draw, he must draw, just as an eager young
horse must run, to give outlet to the life that rejoices in its limbs.
Besides, each moment of industry brought him nearer to the painting
of the face and the half turned neck. But before he began again, with
Buz's permission, he kissed the top of his flat golden head, and went
to his work with a heightened colour, feeling a little ashamed of
himself.

       *       *       *       *       *

Perhaps an hour passed, while from the house came no sound at all
nor any from the room where Charles worked, except the scrape of his
charcoal, and the rather quick uneasy breathing of the dog. Then came
an interruption which did not excite him in the least, for he had not
forgotten the manner of access peculiar to the parlour-maid.

"Will you be working here this afternoon, sir, Mr. Wroughton wants to
know," she said. "And if so will you take some lunch?"

Charles' foolish heart leaped.

"I should be delighted to," he said.

Again silence descended. Then, with a heart that leaped down again, he
heard a subdued clink on the stairs. It was even so--then re-entered
the parlour-maid with a neat tray on which was set an adequate and
austere refreshment. And as Charles ate his excellent cold mutton and
rather stringy French beans, he grinned largely at his mental picture
of himself as the prisoner in solitary confinement, who might take
exercise in the prison yard when he wanted to smoke. But Buz shared
his confinement, and the apparition of Buz's mistress was not unknown.
By and by he would take his exercise.... And then again the glory of
the Reynolds portrait, the exquisite satisfaction, too, of being able
to see, from his studies in the National Gallery, the manner of its
doing, and the knowledge that he could, owing to his long and careful
practice, put on the paint somewhat in that manner, swallowed up his
entire consciousness again.

A gong sounded from below, and Buz from mere force of habit, knowing
this was dinner-time, got off his sofa, before he realized that dinner
was of no use to him. He went but a few steps towards the door, then
turned, and sat down in front of Charles, seeking his eyes with his
own, mournful, not understanding, mutely beseeching to know what was
the matter, asking him to help. Charles tried to convey comfort, and
Buz acknowledged his efforts by a few heavy sighs breathed into his
caressing hands. Then walking stiffly and painfully he went back on
to his sofa again. But Charles felt as if he had been taken into the
poor beast's confidence: Buz had enlisted him to give such aid as was
possible.

The room had grown very hot in the last hour with the unflecked
outpouring of the sun on its roof, and Charles thought with a touch
of not more than secondary rapture of the cool liquid embrace of his
weir. But a more primary ecstasy was in the foreground, and putting
aside his charcoal, he could not resist getting out his paints and
rioting with loaded brushfuls over the expanse of the faded blue of
the sky that toned into pale yellow above the low horizon to the right
of the picture. On the left rose a thick grove of dark serge-clad
trees against which was defined that exquisite head, and to which
there pointed that beckoning hand. Who was the unseen to whom she
beckoned with that gracious gesture, yet a little imperious? To what
did she beckon him? Perhaps only--and that would be the best of
all--to a saunter through the twilight woods with her alone, away from
such crowds as might be supposed to throng the stone terrace, seen
glimmeringly to the front of the picture, to a talk, sitting on the
soft moss, or on some felled tree-trunk, in low voices, as befitted
the quietness of the evening hour, to an hour's remission from the
gabble and gaiety of the world. Or was it he, the unseen onlooker, who
had asked her to give him half an hour ... he had something he wanted
to tell her--Charles could picture him in his satin coat and knee
breeches, stammering a little, a little shy--something for her ear
alone....

Then the mere quality of the splendid work struck and stung him afresh.
What depth of clear and luminous twilight was tangled among the trees
that cast tides of long shadows, clear as running water over the lawn!
The grass had been painted first, and the shadow laid over it.... It
was impossible not to daub in some of that. No one had ever _seen_
quite as Reynolds saw, not quite so simply and comprehensively. And
then suddenly despair benumbed his fingers: it would be a profanity,
were it not so grotesque to think of copying such a wonder. And at
that Charles became aware that both hand and eye were thoroughly and
deservedly tired. Also that he had a searching and imperative need for
tobacco. It was decidedly time to seek the prison yard.

The sun had ceased pouring in at the window when he had raised the
blind to turn King's evidence with regard to Buz, and now a cooler
breeze suggestive of the coming of evening sauntered in. It was this
perhaps that had refreshed the sick dog, for when Charles opened the
door Buz shambled off the sofa and followed him downstairs. There
was no difficulty about finding the way into the garden, for it lay
straight in front of him at the foot of the stairs, and still seeing
no signs of life, he crossed the lawn and walked on a grass path down
between two old yew hedges, Buz still at his heels, towards the river.
Then turning a corner he stopped suddenly.

On a low chair sat a very old lady. Suitably to this hot day she was
dressed in a little print gown, with a linen sunbonnet, and looked
exactly like the most charming of Kate Greenaway's gallery. She was
employed, without the aid of spectacles, on a piece of fine needlework
that looked rather like baby-linen but was probably for her own
embellishment; Joyce, full length on the ground, was reading to her.

She instantly dropped her work. Never, in all her life, had she failed
to make herself agreeable to a good-looking young man, and she was not
going to begin now. Joyce had half-raised herself also and gave Charles
a half smile of welcome, which she augmented into a most complete one
when she saw Buz.

"Buz, dear!" she said.

Lady Crowborough did not quite say "Charles, dear," but she easily
might have if she had known his name.

"Joyce, introduce him to me," she said.

Joyce looked at Charles, raising her eyebrows, and quite taking him
into the confidence of her smile and her difficulty.

"It's the----" she nearly said "boy," but corrected herself--"it's
the gentleman who is copying the Reynolds, granny," she said. Then to
Charles, "May I introduce you to Lady Crowborough."

Lady Crowborough held out her little smooth thin hand.

"Charmed to see you," she said. "Of course, I knew what my silly
granddaughter has told me. Such a to-do as we've had settling where you
were to paint, and where to stow all Joyce's bits of things, and what
not."

Charles had excellent manners, full of deference, and void of
embarrassment.

"And my name's Lathom," he said, as he shook hands.

"Well, Mr. Lathom, and so you've come out for a breath of air,"
continued the vivacious old lady. "Get yourself a chair from the tent
there, and sit down and talk to us. Only go quietly, else you'll wake
up my son, who's having a nap there, and that'll cause him indigestion
or perspiration or a sinking, or I don't know what. Perhaps Joyce had
better get it for you: she won't give him a turn, if he happens to
wake."

"Oh, but I couldn't possibly----" began Charles.

"Well, you can go as far as the tent with her, while she pops round the
corner and carries a chair off, and then you can take it from her. But
mind you come back and talk to us. Or if you want to be useful you can
go to the house and tell them I'm ready for tea, and I'll have it here.
Ring the first bell you see, and keep on ringing till somebody comes.
The whole lot of them go to sleep here after lunch. Such a pack of
nonsense! What's the night for, I say. And then instead of dropping off
at the proper time, they lie awake and say a great buzzing, or a dog
barking, or a grasshopper sneezing prevented their going to sleep."

Charles went swiftly on his errand, and accomplished it in time to
join Joyce outside the tent and take the chair from her. Already the
comradeship which naturally exists between youth and maiden had begun
sensibly to weave itself between them: in addition Charles had been
kind to Buz and seemed to understand the significance of dogs.

"It was good of you to let my poor Buz stop with you," she said. "He
has adopted you, too, for he came out when you came, didn't he?"

"Yes: I hope he feels better. What's the matter?"

"I don't know, and the vet doesn't know, and the poor lamb himself
doesn't know. He's old, poor dear, and suffers from age, perhaps like
most old people, except darling Grannie. I shall send for the vet again
if he doesn't mend."

They had come within earshot of Lady Crowborough, who was profoundly
indifferent to the brute creation. She preferred motors to horses,
mousetraps to cats, and burglar-alarms to dogs. She was equally
insensitive to the beauties of inanimate nature, though her intense
love, contempt, and interest for and in her fellow creatures quite made
up for these other deficiencies.

"Now you're talking about your dog, Joyce," she said. "I'm sure I wish
he was well with all my heart, but if his life's going to be a burden
to him and you, I say, put the poor creature out of his pain. A dab of
the stuff those murderers use in the East End and the thing's done.
I say the same about human beings. Let the doctors do the best they
can for them, but if they're going to be miserable and a nuisance to
everybody, I should like to put them out of their pain, too. Give 'em
time to get better in, if they're going to get better, but if not snuff
them out. Much more merciful, isn't it, Mr. Lathom? I hope they'll
snuff me out before I'm nothing but a mass of aches and pains, but they
haven't got the sense, though I daresay they'll so stuff me up with
drugs and doctor's stuff that I shall die of the very things that were
meant to cure me."

Joyce giggled.

"Darling Granny!" she said. "You wouldn't like it if I came to you one
morning and said, 'Drink it down, and you'll know no more.'"

"Well, I'm not a nuisance yet with rheumatics and bellyache," observed
Lady Crowborough. "Lor', the medicine your father takes would be enough
to sail a battleship in, if he'd collected it all, instead of swilling
it, and much good it's done him, except to give him a craving for more.
Why, when I was his age, a good walk, and leave your dinner alone if
you didn't want it, was physic enough. But I've no patience with all
this talk about people's insides. It's only those who haven't got an
inside worth mentioning, who mention it. And did you come all the way
back from your tent in the heat, Mr. Lathom, to go on painting this
afternoon?"

"Oh, no," said Charles, "they very kindly sent me a tray up with some
lunch on it."

"And you sat there all by yourself, mum as a mouse, and ate up your
tray?" she asked. "You don't do that again, mind! You come and talk to
me at lunch to-morrow. I never heard of such a thing! Joyce, my dear,
pour out tea for us. I want my tea and so does Mr. Lathom. I warrant
he got nothing for lunch but a slice of cold mutton and a glass of
sarsaparilla if your father had the ordering of it. Now I hear you live
in a tent, Mr. Lathom? Tell us all about it. Ain't you frightened of
burglars?"

"There's nothing to steal except a tin kettle and me," said Charles.

"Well, that makes you more comfortable, no doubt. Joyce, my dear,
it's no use giving me this wash. Put some more tea in, and stir it
about, and let it stand. I like my tea with a tang to it. And your
tent doesn't let the rain in? Not that I should like to sleep in a
tent myself. I like my windows closed and my curtains drawn. You can
get your air in the daytime. The outside air is poison to me, unless
it's well warmed up in the sun. But I should like to come and see your
tent."

She regarded Charles with strong approval: he was certainly very good
to look upon, strong and lean and clear-skinned, and he had about him
that air of manners and attentiveness which she missed in the youth
of to-day. He sat straight up in his chair when she talked to him and
handed her exactly what she wanted at the moment she wanted it.

"Ah, but do come and see it," he said. "Mayn't I give you and Miss
Wroughton tea there some afternoon? I promise you it shall be quite
strong."

"To-morrow," said Lady Crowborough with decision. "I'll go in the punt
for once, and Joyce shall push me along."

       *       *       *       *       *

Charles excused himself soon after, in order to get another hour of his
work, and he was scarcely out of earshot when Lady Crowborough turned
to Joyce.

"Well, my dear," she said. "I don't know what you've done, but I've
fallen in love with that young man. And to think of him having his
lunch all alone, as if he was your father's corn-cutter or hairdresser.
When Philip awakes, he shall know what I think about such rubbish!
Where's my cup? I don't want to tread on it as I did yesterday. Why,
Mr. Lathom's put it back on the table for me!"

"I think he's a dear," said Joyce. "And he was so nice to poor Buz."

"Don't begin again about your dog now," said Lady Crowborough, "though
I daresay Mr. Lathom has been most attentive to him and no wonder."

With which rather Delphic utterance, she picked up her needlework
again, while a smile kept breaking out in chinks, as it were, over
her face. For though she liked presentable young men to be attentive
to her, she liked them also to be attentive to any amount of their
contemporaries. Young men did not flirt enough nowadays to please her:
they thought about their insides and that silly Scotch golf. But she
had noticed the change of expression in Charles' respectful eyes when
he looked at Joyce. She liked that look. It was many years since she
had seen it directed to her, but she kept the pleasantest recollection
of it, and welcomed the sight of it as directed at another. And in her
opinion, Joyce well deserved to have a handsome young fellow looking
at her like that, she, so strictly dieted on the somewhat acid glances
of her father. A little judicious flirtation such as Lady Crowborough
was quite disposed to encourage, would certainly brisken the house up a
bit. At present, in spite of her own presence there, it seemed to have
no more spring in it than unleavened bread.

Next day, according to the indisputable orders of Lady Crowborough,
Charles had taken his lunch with the family, and though Philip
Wroughton had thought good to emphasize the gulf which must exist
between his family and a young man who copied their portraits for them,
by constantly using the prefix "Mr." when he spoke to Charles, the meal
had gone off not amiss. Irrespective of Lady Crowborough there was
the inimitable lightness of youth flickering round it, a lightness
which Joyce by herself felt unable to sustain, but which instinctively
asserted itself when a little more of the proper mixture was added.
Afterwards Charles had paddled back to his encampment in order to
prepare for his visitors, and soon after, while Philip slept the sleep
of the dyspeptic, his daughter and mother left in the manner of a
riverside Juliet and a very old nurse, to go to what Lady Crowborough
alluded to as "the party." She had dressed herself appropriately in
a white linen frock with little rosebud sprigs printed on it, and an
immense straw hat with a wreath of rose to embellish it. She had a
horror of the glare off the water, which might cause her to freckle,
and wore a thick pink veil, which, being absolutely impenetrable,
served the additional purpose of keeping the poisonous air away from
her. Her whole evergreen heart rejoiced over this diversion, for not
only was she going to have tea with her handsome young man--"my new
flirt," as she daringly called him--but, having had a good go of
flirtation herself, she was prepared to encourage the two young people
to advance their intimacy. Most of all she hoped that they would fall
in love with each other, and was then prepared to back them up, for
she had guessed in the twinkling of an eye that Craddock had Philip's
consent in paying attentions to Joyce, and with her sympathies for
youth so keen, and her antipathy for middle-age so pronouncedly
contemptuous, she altogether recoiled from the idea of Joyce ever
having anything to do "with that great white cream-cheese" as she
expressed it to herself. She found the cream-cheese agreeable enough
at lunch and dinner to give her the news of the town, and a "bit of
tittle-tattle" in this desert of a place, but she had no other use for
him, either for herself or her granddaughter.

Charles received them at the edge of his domain, ankle-deep in
forget-me-nots, and conducted them a distance of three yards to the
shadow of his tent where tea was spread. There were two deck-chairs
for the visitors, the box of provisions with a handkerchief on the
top for table, and a small piece of board for himself. He had pinned
up against the tent side two or three of his sketches, and his sole
tumbler stood by the tea things with a bunch of forget-me-nots on it.
He made no apologetic speeches of any description about the rudimentary
nature of the entertainment, because he was aware that he had nothing
else to offer them. Besides the tea was strong, and there was a pot of
strawberry jam.

"Joyce'll be saying she must live in a tent, too," remarked Lady
Crowborough withdrawing her veil. "Upon my word, Mr. Lathom, I like
your dining-room very much. That thicket behind cuts the beastly wind
off. That's the colour I like to see tea."

"It's been standing a quarter of an hour, Lady Crowborough," said
Charles with his respectful glance. "Are you sure it's not a
little--well--a little thick?"

"Not a bit--Joyce and you may add water to yours if you like. And are
those sketches yours? They seem very nice, though I don't know a
picture from a statue."

She looked at them more closely.

"And has Joyce been sitting to you already?" she asked, in a tremor of
delight. (They _had_ been sly about it!)

The ingenious Charles looked mightily surprised.

"Oh, that?" he said, following her glance. "That's only a little
water-colour sketch I did of the head of the Reynolds picture. But it
is like Miss Wroughton, isn't it?"

It was indeed: so for that matter was the Reynolds.

Lady Crowborough was a little disappointed that Joyce hadn't been
giving clandestine sittings, but she knew as well as Charles himself
that he had executed this admirable little sketch with Joyce, so to
speak, at his finger-tip, and not her great-great-grandmother, and her
new flirt rose higher than ever in her estimation.

"And when will you have finished your copying?" she asked.

Here again Charles did not fail.

"I can't possibly tell," he said. "When I came down I imagined it would
take a week or ten days, if I worked very hard. But I see how utterly
impossible it will be to do it in anything like that time. But it's
lovely work. I don't care how long it takes."

"Bless me, how sick and tired you'll get of it," said she.

"Not if you'll come and have tea with me, Lady Crowborough," said this
plausible young man.

Lady Crowborough grinned all over: she knew just how much this was
worth, but she liked it being said.

"Well, anyhow this American, Mr. Ward, is quick enough about his part
of the bargain," she said. "My son received his cheque this morning,
sent by your friend Mr. Craddock, Joyce, my dear. Five thousand pounds!
There's a sum of money!"

Charles paused a moment, some remembrance of an American and a cheque
for £5000 stirred in his brain, without his being able to establish the
connection.

"What? Has he got it for five thousand pounds?" he asked.

"Yes: plenty, too, I should say, for a bit of canvas and a lick or
two of paint on it. I'm sure when you have finished his copy none of
us would be able to tell the one from the other. Isn't five thousand
pounds a good enough price, Mr. Lathom?"

"Well, it's a very good picture," said Charles.

Joyce was watching him, and saw the surprise in his face.

"Why did Mr. Craddock send father the cheque?" she asked.

"Lord, my dear, I don't know," said Lady Crowborough. "Cheques and
Bradshaws are what I shall never understand. I suppose it was what my
bankers call drawn to Mr. Craddock. His name was on the back of it
anyhow. Whenever I get a cheque, which is once every fifty years, I
send it straight to my bank, and ask them what's to be done next, and
it always ends in my writing my name somewhere to show it is mine, I
suppose. But as for Bradshaw, it's a sealed book to me, and I send my
maid to the station always to find out."

Suddenly Charles remembered all about this American and the cheque
for five thousand pounds, and the slight film of puzzle, uncertainty,
though nothing approaching suspicion, rolled off his mind again. Reggie
a week ago had mentioned the drawing of this post-dated cheque at
Thistleton's Gallery. It was all quite clear. But undoubtedly this Mr.
Ward had obtained his picture at a very reasonable figure. Then, as if
to abjure what had never been in his mind, he spoke, not more warmly
than his heart felt, about Craddock.

"Mr. Craddock has been tremendously good to me," he said. "It's
scarcely a week ago that he first saw me, when I was painting here one
afternoon, and you brought him by in the punt, Miss Wroughton. The very
next day he bought my picture off my easel----"

"Well, I hope he gave you five thousand for it, too," said Lady
Crowborough.

Charles beamed at her: she had finished her second cup of positively
oily tea, and was smoking a cigarette with an expression of extreme
satisfaction.

"He did more for me than that, Lady Crowborough," he said, "he gave
me a chance, a start. Then he came to see my studio, and gave me the
commission to paint this copy. And then----"

Charles' simple soul found it hard to be silent, but he remembered
Craddock's parting admonition.

"And then, my dear?" asked Lady Crowborough.

"Then he's made me feel he believes in me," he said. "That's a lot, you
know, when nobody has ever cared two straws before. By Jove, yes, I owe
him everything."

Certainly her new flirt was a charming young fellow, and Lady
Crowborough saw that Joyce approved no less than she. She felt he was
probably extremely unwise and inexperienced, and would have bet her
veil, and gone back veilless, the prey of the freckling sun, that
Craddock had made some shrewd bargain of his own. It was now time for
her flirt to have an innings with Joyce. She was prepared to cast all
the duties of a chaperon to the winds, and inconvenience herself as
well in order to secure this.

"Well, I've enjoyed my tea and my cigarette," she said, "and all I've
not enjoyed is Joyce's punt. I shouldn't wonder if it leaked, and the
gnats on the river were something awful. They get underneath my veil
and tickle my nose, and I shall walk home across the fields, and leave
you to bring the punt back, my dear. And if you've got a spark of good
feeling, Joyce, you'll help Mr. Lathom wash up our tea things first."

And this wicked old lady marched off without another word.

Joyce and Charles were left alone, looking exactly like a young god
and goddess meeting without intention or scheme of their own, in some
green-herbaged riverside in the morning of the world. They did the
obvious instinctive thing and laughed.

"Everyone does what darling Grannie tells them," said Joyce, "so we had
better begin. The only suggestion I make is that I wash up, because I'm
sure I do it better than you, and you sit down and sketch the while,
because I shouldn't wonder if you do it better than me."

"But I wash up beautifully," said Charles.

"I think not. There was egg on my tea-spoon."

"I'm sorry. Was that why you didn't take sugar?"

"Yes."

"Have some now by itself?" said he.

"I think I won't. Where's a tea-cloth?" Charles wrinkled his brows.

"They dry in the sun," he said. "We thread them, tea-cups that is, on
to the briar-rose."

"And the plates? Do begin sketching."

"They dry also. They are placed anywhere. But one tries not to forget
where anywhere is. Otherwise they get stepped on."

Charles plucked down the Reynolds head from the tent wall.

"I began it from the picture," he said, "but may I finish it from you?
If you wash up by the forget-me-nots, and I sit in the punt, at the
far end, I can do it. Oh, how is Buz to-day? He didn't come up to the
nursery."

She neither gave nor withheld permission to finish the head in the way
he suggested, but her eyes grew troubled as she emptied the teapot into
the edge of the water. It was choked with tea-leaves, gorged, replete
with them. He picked up his water-colour box, and climbed out to the
cushions of the punt.

"Buz isn't a bit well," she said. "I've sent for the vet to come again
to-morrow. Oh, isn't it dreadful when animals are ill? They don't
understand: they can't make out why one doesn't help them. Buz has
always come to me for everything, like burrs in his coat and thorns in
his feet, and he can't make out why I don't pick his pain out of him."

"Sorry," said Charles, scooping some water out of the river in his
water-tin, but looking at her. Their eyes met, with the frankness,
you would say, of children who liked one another. But for all the
frankness, only a few seconds had passed before, the unwritten law,
that a boy may look at a girl a shade longer than a girl may look at a
boy, prevailed, and Joyce bent over the tea-cups. She was not the less
sorry for Buz, but ... but there were other things in the world, too.

"I know you're sorry," she said, "and so does Buz, and we both think it
nice of you. And how long really do you think your copy will take? And
what will you do if the weather becomes odious?"

"I shall get a cold in my head," said Charles, drawing his brush to a
fine point, by putting it between his lips.

Joyce looked at him with horror.

"Oh, don't put the brush in your mouth!" she said. "They always used to
stop my doing it at the drawing-school. Some of the paints are deadly
poison."

"Oh, do you paint?" said Charles. "You ought to have painted and I to
have washed up--please stop still for a moment, exactly like that. So
sorry, but I shan't be a minute. Damn!"

An unfortunate movement of his elbow jerked his straw hat which was
lying by him into the Thames: it caught and pirouetted for a moment on
am eddy of water, and then hurried gladsomely down-stream.

"But your hat?" said Joyce in a strangled whisper, as if, being
forbidden to move, she must not speak.

"I'm afraid I've already said what I had to say about that," said
Charles. "Just one second."

He worked eagerly and intensely with concentrated vision and effort of
its realization for half a minute. Then again he used that forbidden
receptacle for paint-brushes, and dragged off the excessive moisture
from his wash.

"Now I'll get it while that dries," he said.

He picked up the punt-pole and ran down the edge of the bank to
recapture his hat. But it had floated out into mid-stream and his
pursuit was fruitless.

"And it looked quite new," said Joyce reproachfully, on his return.
"I'm afraid you are extravagant."

"Just the other way round. It would have been false economy to have
saved my hat--price half-a-crown, and have risked losing the--the sight
I got of you just for that minute while my hat started voyaging. But
now," he said, gleefully washing out his brushes--"now that I've got
you, let the great river take it to the main."

He made the quotation simply in the bubble of high spirits, not
thinking of the context, nor of the concluding and following line,
"No more, dear love, for at a touch I yield." But instantaneously the
sequel occurred to him--for the words were set to a tune which he very
imperfectly sang with his light tenor, and accompanied on his banjo.

"You talk of too many things in one breath, Mr. Lathom," said Joyce.
"You said if the weather broke you would catch cold here, so of course
you must go to the inn in the village, if it rains. Men have no sense:
I believe you would stick on here, while you get congestion and
inflammation and pneumonia. Then you asked me if I painted, and I may
tell you I don't. I used to try: if I have any sketches left the sight
of them would convince you of the truth of what I say."

Charles' art and heart tugged for his whole attention. For another
minute he was silent and absorbed.

"Quite done," he said. "Thank you so much, Miss Wroughton."

Charles looked at her, and all thought of his art passed from him.
She was entrancing, and he suddenly woke to the fact that in the last
quarter of an hour they had made friends.

He came towards her, stripping the sketch off its block.

"Do let me give it you," he said rather shyly. "You see, I shall enjoy
the fruits of your labour, as I shan't have to wash up. It's only fair
that you should have the fruits of mine--at least if you would care for
them at all."

She could not but take in her hand the sketch not yet dry which he
held out to her, and looking at it, she could not but care. Never was
there anything more admirably simple, never had an impression been
more breezily recorded. There was no attempt at making a picture of
it; there were spaces unfilled in, a mere daub of hard edged blue in
the middle of the sky was sufficient note to indicate sky: the weir
was a brown blob, and a brown blot of reflection and a splash of grey,
as if the brush had spluttered like a cross-nibbed pen, showed where
the water broke below. Against it came the triumphant painting of a
head, her own on the head in the Reynolds picture, but so careful, so
delicate--and for the rest of her there was a wash of stained blue for
her dress; a patch of body colour, careless apparently, but curiously
like a tea-cup against it. At her feet was a scrabble of blue lighter
than her dress, but none could doubt that this meant forget-me-nots
... they were like that, though the scrabble of pale blue seemed so
fortuitous. Probably Charles never painted more magically than in
those ten minutes, even when the magic of his brush had become a phrase
in art criticism, a _cliché_. There was all that a man can have to
inspire it there, and the inspiration had all the potential energy of
the bud of some great rose. It had the power of the full blossom still
folded in it, the energy of the coiled spring, the inimitable vigour of
a young man's opening blossom of love.

It was no wonder that she paused when he handed it to her. Her own
face, her own slim body and gesture, as he saw her, leaped at her from
the sketch, and she thrilled to think, "Is that what he sees in me?"
No array of compliments, subtly worded, brilliantly spoken, could
have told her so much of his mind. It was an exquisite maiden that he
saw, and that was she. She could not but see how exquisite he thought
her: she could not fail to glow inwardly, secretly, at his view of
her. Those few minutes' work, at the cost of the straw hat, came as a
revelation to her. He showed her herself, or at least, he showed her
how he saw her. The insatiable and heaven-born love of all girls to be
admired shot in flame through her. Now that she saw his sketch, she
knew that she had longed for that tribute from a man, though till now
she had been utterly unconscious of any such longing. Mr. Craddock
when he proposed to her lacked all spark of such a flame; had even he
but smouldered--She knew she was loved. That in itself seemed almost
terrifyingly sufficient. She let herself droop and lie on it, on the
thought of it ... it was transcendent in its significance.

Her scrutiny lasted but a moment. Then from the sketch she looked
back to Charles again, him who had seen her like that.... And had she
possessed his skill of brush, and could have painted him, there would
have been something in her sketch, as in his, of the glimmering light
that trembles high in the zenith when the day of love is dawning. Back
and forth between them ran the preluding tremor, a hint, a warning
of the fire that should one day break into full blaze, fed by each;
but to the girl, at present, it was but remotely felt, and its origin
scarcely guessed at. To him the tremor was more vibrant, and its source
less obscure; the waters were already beginning to well out from their
secret spring, and he beginning to thirst for them.

The moment had been grave, but immediately her smile broke on to it.

"Oh, that is kind of you," she said. "I shall love to have the sketch.
And I retract: it was worth a lot of straw hats to do that. Perhaps you
have not even lost one. I may overtake it on its mad career as I go
back home. I will rescue it for you, if I come across it, and give it
first aid. I must be getting back now. Thank you ever so much for the
delicious tea, and the delicious sketch. You will be at work again, I
suppose, to-morrow morning?"

       *       *       *       *       *

Such was the history of the two days, which Charles revolved within
him that evening, after he had eaten his supper and sat out by the
water-side, unwitting of the dusky crimson in the west, and the
outpouring weir. Things fairer and more heart-holding than these
absorbed and dominated his consciousness.

       *       *       *       *       *

Day by day his copy of this wonderful Reynolds wonderfully grew
beneath the deftness and certainty of his brush. Though he had said
that it would take much longer than he had originally contemplated,
he found that he was progressing with amazing speed, and though he
would gladly have worked more slowly and less industriously so as to
lengthen out the tale of these beautiful days, it seemed to be out of
his power to keep back his hand. He was dragged along, as it were, by
the gloriously-galloping steeds of his own supreme gift: once in the
room opposite the portrait, he could no more keep his fingers off his
brush, or his brushes off his canvas, than could a drunkard refrain,
alone with his cork-drawn intoxicants. Nor could he, for another and
perhaps more potent reason, keep away from the house where the picture
was, or after a reasonable morning's work lounge away the afternoon on
the river. By cords he was drawn to the Mill House, for there was the
chance (of not infrequent fulfilment) of meeting Joyce: and then he had
to go to his extemporized studio, and the other frenzy possessed him.

But poor Buz had no pleasures in these days and as they went by the
old dog grew steadily worse. He was a constant occupant of the sofa,
where he had established himself on the first morning of Charles'
occupation, and if he was not, as was generally the case, in his
place when Charles arrived of a morning, it was never long before
there came at the door the request for admittance, daily feebler and
more hesitating. Charles had to help him to his couch now, for he was
too weak to climb up by himself, but he always managed a tap or two
with his tail in acknowledgment of such assistance, and gave him long
despairing glances out of dulled topaz eyes, that expressed his dumb
bewilderment at his own suffering, the abandonment of his dismay that
nobody could help him. Once, on entering, Charles found Joyce kneeling
by the sofa, crying quietly. She got up when he entered, and openly
wiped her eyes.

"I'm so glad you don't think me silly," she said, "for I feel sure you
don't. Other people would say, as darling Grannie does, 'It's only a
dog.' Only! What more do you want?"

Charles laid a comforting hand on Buz's head, and stroked his ears.

"I could easily cry, too," he said, "for helplessness, and because we
can't make him understand that we would help if we possibly could. What
did the vet say yesterday?"

Joyce shook her head.

"There's no hope," she said. "There would have to be an operation
anyhow, and probably he would die under it. He wouldn't get over it
altogether in any case. He's too old. Mr. Gray told me I had much
better have him killed, but I can't bear it. I know I ought to, but I
am such a beastly coward. He sent a bottle and a syringe this morning.
There it is on the chimney-piece. I can't bear that the groom or
coachman should do it, or the vet. And I can't do it myself, though
it's just the only thing that I could do for poor darling Buz."

Charles turned from the dog to her.

"Let me do it, Miss Wroughton," he said. "I know what you mean. You
can't bear that a stranger like a coachman should do it. But Buz always
liked me, you know, and rather trusted me. You mean that, don't you?"

Joyce gave a great sigh.

"Yes, oh, just that," she said. "How well you understand! But would you
really do it for me?"

Charles went across to the chimney-piece, and looked at what the vet
had sent.

"Yes, it's perfectly simple," he said. "I see what it is. I did it for
a dog of my own once. It's quite instantaneous: he won't feel anything."

"And when?" said Joyce piteously, as if demanding a respite.

"I think now," said Charles. "He's dying: he won't know anything."

Joyce bit her lip, but nodded to him. Then she bent down over the sofa
once more, and kissed Buz on his nose, and on the top of his head. Then
without looking at Charles again she went out of the room.

This aroused Buz, but before many minutes were past he had dozed off
again. Then Charles filled the 

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