Of Human Bondage (42 page)

  But one day she came up to him, and with a scarlet
face asked whether she might speak to him afterwards.

  "Of course, as much as you like," smiled Philip.
"I'll wait behind at twelve."

  He went to her when the day's work was over.

  "Will you walk a little bit with me?" she said,
looking away from him with embarrassment.

  "Certainly."

  They walked for two or three minutes in silence.

  "D'you remember what you said to me the other day?"
she asked then on a sudden.

  "Oh, I say, don't let's quarrel," said Philip. "It
really isn't worth while."

  She gave a quick, painful inspiration.

  "I don't want to quarrel with you. You're the only
friend I had in Paris. I thought you rather liked me. I felt there
was something between us. I was drawn towards you – you know what I
mean, your club-foot."

  Philip reddened and instinctively tried to walk
without a limp. He did not like anyone to mention the deformity. He
knew what Fanny Price meant. She was ugly and uncouth, and because
he was deformed there was between them a certain sympathy. He was
very angry with her, but he forced himself not to speak.

  "You said you only asked my advice to please me.
Don't you think my work's any good?"

  "I've only seen your drawing at Amitrano's. It's
awfully hard to judge from that."

  "I was wondering if you'd come and look at my other
work. I've never asked anyone else to look at it. I should like to
show it to you."

  "It's awfully kind of you. I'd like to see it very
much."

  "I live quite near here," she said apologetically.
"It'll only take you ten minutes."

  "Oh, that's all right," he said.

  They were walking along the boulevard, and she
turned down a side street, then led him into another, poorer still,
with cheap shops on the ground floor, and at last stopped. They
climbed flight after flight of stairs. She unlocked a door, and
they went into a tiny attic with a sloping roof and a small window.
This was closed and the room had a musty smell. Though it was very
cold there was no fire and no sign that there had been one. The bed
was unmade. A chair, a chest of drawers which served also as a
wash-stand, and a cheap easel, were all the furniture. The place
would have been squalid enough in any case, but the litter, the
untidiness, made the impression revolting. On the chimney-piece,
scattered over with paints and brushes, were a cup, a dirty plate,
and a tea-pot.

  "If you'll stand over there I'll put them on the
chair so that you can see them better."

  She showed him twenty small canvases, about eighteen
by twelve. She placed them on the chair, one after the other,
watching his face; he nodded as he looked at each one.

  "You do like them, don't you?" she said anxiously,
after a bit.

  "I just want to look at them all first," he
answered. "I'll talk afterwards."

  He was collecting himself. He was panic-stricken. He
did not know what to say. It was not only that they were ill-drawn,
or that the colour was put on amateurishly by someone who had no
eye for it; but there was no attempt at getting the values, and the
perspective was grotesque. It looked like the work of a child of
five, but a child would have had some naivete and might at least
have made an attempt to put down what he saw; but here was the work
of a vulgar mind chock full of recollections of vulgar pictures.
Philip remembered that she had talked enthusiastically about Monet
and the Impressionists, but here were only the worst traditions of
the Royal Academy.

  "There," she said at last, "that's the lot."

  Philip was no more truthful than anybody else, but
he had a great difficulty in telling a thundering, deliberate lie,
and he blushed furiously when he answered:

  "I think they're most awfully good."

  A faint colour came into her unhealthy cheeks, and
she smiled a little.

  "You needn't say so if you don't think so, you know.
I want the truth."

  "But I do think so."

  "Haven't you got any criticism to offer? There must
be some you don't like as well as others."

  Philip looked round helplessly. He saw a landscape,
the typical picturesque `bit' of the amateur, an old bridge, a
creeper-clad cottage, and a leafy bank.

  "Of course I don't pretend to know anything about
it," he said. "But I wasn't quite sure about the values of
that."

  She flushed darkly and taking up the picture quickly
turned its back to him.

  "I don't know why you should have chosen that one to
sneer at. It's the best thing I've ever done. I'm sure my values
are all right. That's a thing you can't teach anyone, you either
understand values or you don't."

  "I think they're all most awfully good," repeated
Philip.

  She looked at them with an air of
self-satisfaction.

  "I don't think they're anything to be ashamed
of."

  Philip looked at his watch.

  "I say, it's getting late. Won't you let me give you
a little lunch?"

  "I've got my lunch waiting for me here."

  Philip saw no sign of it, but supposed perhaps the
concierge would bring it up when he was gone. He was in a hurry to
get away. The mustiness of the room made his head ache.

  In March there was all the excitement of sending in
to the Salon. Clutton, characteristically, had nothing ready, and
he was very scornful of the two heads that Lawson sent; they were
obviously the work of a student, straight-forward portraits of
models, but they had a certain force; Clutton, aiming at
perfection, had no patience with efforts which betrayed hesitancy,
and with a shrug of the shoulders told Lawson it was an
impertinence to exhibit stuff which should never have been allowed
out of his studio; he was not less contemptuous when the two heads
were accepted. Flanagan tried his luck too, but his picture was
refused. Mrs. Otter sent a blameless Portrait de ma Mere,
accomplished and second-rate; and was hung in a very good
place.

  Hayward, whom Philip had not seen since he left
Heidelberg, arrived in Paris to spend a few days in time to come to
the party which Lawson and Philip were giving in their studio to
celebrate the hanging of Lawson's pictures. Philip had been eager
to see Hayward again, but when at last they met, he experienced
some disappointment. Hayward had altered a little in appearance:
his fine hair was thinner, and with the rapid wilting of the very
fair, he was becoming wizened and colourless; his blue eyes were
paler than they had been, and there was a muzziness about his
features. On the other hand, in mind he did not seem to have
changed at all, and the culture which had impressed Philip at
eighteen aroused somewhat the contempt of Philip at twenty-one. He
had altered a good deal himself, and regarding with scorn all his
old opinions of art, life, and letters, had no patience with anyone
who still held them. He was scarcely conscious of the fact that he
wanted to show off before Hayward, but when he took him round the
galleries he poured out to him all the revolutionary opinions which
himself had so recently adopted. He took him to Manet's Olympia and
said dramatically:

  "I would give all the old masters except Velasquez,
Rembrandt, and Vermeer for that one picture."

  "Who was Vermeer?" asked Hayward.

  "Oh, my dear fellow, don't you know Vermeer? You're
not civilised. You mustn't live a moment longer without making his
acquaintance. He's the one old master who painted like a
modern."

  He dragged Hayward out of the Luxembourg and hurried
him off to the Louvre.

  "But aren't there any more pictures here?" asked
Hayward, with the tourist's passion for thoroughness.

  "Nothing of the least consequence. You can come and
look at them by yourself with your Baedeker."

  When they arrived at the Louvre Philip led his
friend down the Long Gallery.

  "I should like to see The Gioconda," said
Hayward.

  "Oh, my dear fellow, it's only literature," answered
Philip.

  At last, in a small room, Philip stopped before The
Lacemaker of Vermeer van Delft.

  "There, that's the best picture in the Louvre. It's
exactly like a Manet."

  With an expressive, eloquent thumb Philip expatiated
on the charming work. He used the jargon of the studios with
overpowering effect.

  "I don't know that I see anything so wonderful as
all that in it," said Hayward.

  "Of course it's a painter's picture," said Philip.
"I can quite believe the layman would see nothing much in it."

  "The what?" said Hayward.

  "The layman."

  Like most people who cultivate an interest in the
arts, Hayward was extremely anxious to be right. He was dogmatic
with those who did not venture to assert themselves, but with the
self-assertive he was very modest. He was impressed by Philip's
assurance, and accepted meekly Philip's implied suggestion that the
painter's arrogant claim to be the sole possible judge of painting
has anything but its impertinence to recommend it.

  A day or two later Philip and Lawson gave their
party. Cronshaw, making an exception in their favour, agreed to eat
their food; and Miss Chalice offered to come and cook for them. She
took no interest in her own sex and declined the suggestion that
other girls should be asked for her sake. Clutton, Flanagan,
Potter, and two others made up the party. Furniture was scarce, so
the model stand was used as a table, and the guests were to sit on
portmanteaux if they liked, and if they didn't on the floor. The
feast consisted of a pot-au-feu, which Miss Chalice had made, of a
leg of mutton roasted round the corner and brought round hot and
savoury (Miss Chalice had cooked the potatoes, and the studio was
redolent of the carrots she had fried; fried carrots were her
specialty); and this was to be followed by poires flambees, pears
with burning brandy, which Cronshaw had volunteered to make. The
meal was to finish with an enormous fromage de Brie, which stood
near the window and added fragrant odours to all the others which
filled the studio. Cronshaw sat in the place of honour on a
Gladstone bag, with his legs curled under him like a Turkish
bashaw, beaming good-naturedly on the young people who surrounded
him. From force of habit, though the small studio with the stove
lit was very hot, he kept on his great-coat, with the collar turned
up, and his bowler hat: he looked with satisfaction on the four
large fiaschi of Chianti which stood in front of him in a row, two
on each side of a bottle of whiskey; he said it reminded him of a
slim fair Circassian guarded by four corpulent eunuchs. Hayward in
order to put the rest of them at their ease had clothed himself in
a tweed suit and a Trinity Hall tie. He looked grotesquely British.
The others were elaborately polite to him, and during the soup they
talked of the weather and the political situation. There was a
pause while they waited for the leg of mutton, and Miss Chalice lit
a cigarette.

  "Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair," she said
suddenly.

  With an elegant gesture she untied a ribbon so that
her tresses fell over her shoulders. She shook her head.

  "I always feel more comfortable with my hair
down."

  With her large brown eyes, thin, ascetic face, her
pale skin, and broad forehead, she might have stepped out of a
picture by Burne-Jones. She had long, beautiful hands, with fingers
deeply stained by nicotine. She wore sweeping draperies, mauve and
green. There was about her the romantic air of High Street,
Kensington. She was wantonly aesthetic; but she was an excellent
creature, kind and good natured; and her affectations were but
skin-deep. There was a knock at the door, and they all gave a shout
of exultation. Miss Chalice rose and opened. She took the leg of
mutton and held it high above her, as though it were the head of
John the Baptist on a platter; and, the cigarette still in her
mouth, advanced with solemn, hieratic steps.