BOOK THREETHE PASSING OF YOUTHIEDWARD TUFNELLAWRETCHEDjourney home, a miserable journey. There had been a high wind, leaving a heavy swell, and Mendel shared the feelings of his brother-in-law, Moscowitsch, concerning the sea. It made him ill, and he never wished to see it again.Oliver sat with her eyes closed while Logan held her hand and whispered to her. The boat was crowded, for it was the first to make the crossing for two days. Detestable people, detestable sea, detestable evil-smelling boat! . . . How lightly they had undertaken the trip to Paris! Only seven hours! But what hours!Mendel’s disgust endured until they reached London. This was home to him, and never, never again would he travel. The discomfort of it was too odious, the shock to his habits too great. In London he did at least know what to avoid, while in Paris there was no knowing when he might be plunged into a dreary, glittering place full of prostitutes and Americans.He was glad to part with Logan and Oliver. They had so much to settle with each other that he felt he was an unnecessary third. Paris had done violence to their relationship. They had gone there light of heart; they had returned oppressed and entangled. . . . And in London it was raining; but that was good, because familiar. It was good to go out into the friendly streets and to see them shining like black rivers, and to see the people hurrying under their dripping umbrellasand the women with their skirts up to their knees.He seemed to have been away a very long time, and yet Paris seemed very far off too, an unreal memory, like a place of which he had read or seen in photographs. He was glad when he mounted a bus and knew that it was bearing him towards his own people.Golda was very excited. She had had a letter from Harry, who had seen his brother in Paris, but had been too shy to speak to him because of his friends.“You should have gone to see your brother,” she said.“How could I?” asked Mendel. “I did not know where he was.”“You speak Yiddish. You could have found him. He has done very well, but he is coming home to us. He does not like to live away from his people, and he says England is best.”And Mendel thought that England was indeed best. For him, then, England meant his mother’s kitchen, with its odd decorations from Tottenham Court Road, its dresser crammed with gilded china and fringed with cut green paper, its collection of his early pictures, almost all hanging crooked, and the hard wooden chair in which Golda sat all day long with her hands on her stomach, dreaming and brooding of her life, which through all her hardships had been sweet because of her beautiful child whom everybody loved and spoiled, as she herself loved and spoiled him because he was not like other children. England was best because it could contain that peace and that beauty, and there was nothing in England to harm it or in envy to destroy it.Mendel could understand his brother wanting to come back to it; for he, too, from all his adventures, returned to its simplicity for strength and comfort.Moscowitsch came in with a Jewish paper. He was in a terrible state of anger and hatred. His eyes flashed and his nostrils quivered as he read out how a Jew in Russia had been accused of killing a Christian boy for his blood, and how over a thousand Jews had been massacred on the instigation of the police.“It grows worse and worse,” he said. “The Jews do not kill. It is the Christians who lust for blood. It is the Christians who are so wicked and dishonest that, when they must be found out, they say it is the Jews, or that the Jews are more wicked than they. It is impossible. But England is good to the Jews. England must send soldiers to Russia or the Jews will be all murdered.”“Yes, it is bad in Russia,” said Golda, nodding her head. “But life is bad everywhere for good people. Only in England one is left alone.”“Well, Mr. Artist!” said Moscowitsch genially. “Made your fortune yet?”“No,” replied Mendel; “but I have been to Paris for my holidays and I stayed in a hotel. Three of us spent twenty pounds.”“So?” said Moscowitsch, impressed. “Have you made it up with the Birnbaum, then?”“No.”“That is not the way to get on, to quarrel with money.”“If he wants money,” said Golda, “he can always get it. What more do you want? There are some letters for you, Mendel.”He opened his letters, and had the satisfaction of telling Moscowitsch that he was asked to paint a portrait for thirty pounds.“Who is it?” asked Moscowitsch. “A lord?” He had an idea that only lords had their portraits painted by hand.“That’s better,” he said. “That’s better thanpainting those pictures that nobody wants. You paint what they ask you and you’ll soon make your fortune, and be able to give your mother dresses covered with beads and tickets for the theatre and china ornaments. And you can be thankful you don’t live in Russia. They wouldn’t let you be an artist there. If you became a student they would send you off to Siberia and you would die in the snow.”It was the first time Moscowitsch had spoken to him since the breach with Birnbaum, and Mendel was at his ease with him again, and glad to be with his people. He knew that Moscowitsch was greatly attached to Golda, and had more than once urged his being taken away from his painting and put to some useful trade.“Oh! I shall very soon succeed,” he said boastfully. “This is only a beginning. You keep an eye on that paper of yours. You will find something else to read besides what Russia does to the Jews. You will see what England does for a Jew when he has talent and honesty.”“They made Disraeli a lord,” said Moscowitsch.“I shall be something much better than a lord.”“They only make painters R.A.”“I shall be much better than that,” said Mendel.“It is like old times,” laughed Golda, “to hear him boasting.”Mendel opened another letter. It was an invitation to become a member of an exhibiting club which considered itself exclusive.“I have been invited to become a member of a club.”That settled Moscowitsch. A club to him was proof of success and social distinction. He and his wife had made the acquaintance of a member of the music-hall profession who had two clubs, and they counted him a feather in their caps. To have a member of a club in the family was almostoverwhelming, and he forgot the sorrows of the Jews in Russia.The portrait commission was from Edward Tufnell, who had lately married and had been adopted as a candidate for Parliament for a northern constituency. Good earnest soul that he was, he regarded himself as responsible for launching Mendel upon the world, and once he had assumed a responsibility he never forgot it. Nothing made any difference to him. He had heard tales of the boy’s wildness, but he accepted responsibility for that too, read up the histories of men of genius for precedent, and acknowledged the inevitability of the flying of sparks from the collision of a strong individuality and the habits of the world.He had always intended to give his protégé a lift, and had tried in vain to badger his father and his uncle, partners in a huge woollen manufactory, into having their portraits painted. They preferred to sink their money in men with reputations. He did not see how Mendel could acquire a reputation except by giving him work to do. On the other hand, he shrank from what he considered the vanity of having his own portrait painted, but his charmingly pretty wife gave him the opportunity he desired.Therefore he invited Mendel to his house in the dales to stay until the picture was finished.A day or two later and Mendel was in the train, being whirled North through the dull, rolling Midlands and the black, smirched valleys of the West Riding. The gloomy sky filled him with terror. At first he thought there was going to be a storm, but there seemed to be no life in the sky, and its strangeness oppressed him. The people in the train spoke a language which seemed almost as foreign as French, and when the train darted through forests of smoking chimney-stacks and helooked down into the grimy, trough-like streets, he was dismayed to think that here were depths of misery compared with which the East End was as a holiday ground. This, too, was England, and he had said that England was best. He remembered Jews in the East End who had fled from the North and said they would rather go back to Russia than return to the tailoring shops and the boot factories. So this vile, busy blackness was the North!For some mysterious reason it made him think of Logan and Oliver, and the thought of them filled him with an added uneasiness. He had not thought of them once since the trip to Paris, and now he felt bound to them, and that they were a weight upon him. They stood out vividly against the murky, lifeless sky. He could see them standing hand in hand, smiling a little foolishly, and a physical tremor shot through him as he thought of the contact of their two hands, thrilling together, pressing together, to tell of their terrible need of each other. . . . This man and this woman. Mendel was haunted by the images of all the couples he knew, and they passed before him like a shadowy procession of the damned, all hand in hand, across the lifeless sky, all shadowy except Logan and Oliver, and then two others, his father and his mother; but they were not hand in hand. They were seated side by side, like two statues, and behind them the lifeless sky broke and opened to show the infinite blue space beyond the clouds.He had changed at the darkest of the chimneyed towns, and the shabby local train went grinding and puffing through a tunnel into a vast green valley. At the first station he saw Edward Tufnell on the platform. He had changed a good deal, and was no longer the lanky, earnest youth of the Settlement, but his eyes still had their steady, serene expression and their sunny, beautiful smile.He flung up his hand as he saw Mendel, smiled, and came fussily, as though he were meeting the Prime Minister himself. He insisted on carrying Mendel’s bag and canvases and made him feel small and young again, as he used to when he went trotting along by Edward’s side on his way to the French class.“It’s a long journey,” said Edward. “You must be tired.”“Oh no! I don’t mind any journey as long as I don’t have to cross the sea.”“It is only two miles now.”They climbed into a dogcart and drove, for the most part at a walk, up a long, winding road that crept like a worm along the flanks of a huge hill.“Glorious country!” said Edward. “I love it. The South doesn’t seem to me to be country at all—just a huge park. One is afraid to walk on the grass. But here there is room and freedom. One understands why the North is Liberal.”“It is too big for me,” replied Mendel. “But then I can’t get used to the country. I’m not myself in it. I feel in it as though I were on the edge of the world and in danger of falling off. Yes. The country seems dangerous to me, and I could never walk along a road at night.”“How odd that is!” laughed Edward. “If I am ever afraid it is in the town. The vast masses of people do really terrify me sometimes, when I think of governing them all.”“They can look after themselves,” said Mendel simply.Over the shoulder of the hill they came on a grey stone house with a walled garden. Edward turned in at the gate, flicked his horse into a trot up the steep drive, and drew up by the front door, in which was standing a dainty little lady in a mauve cotton gown and a wide Leghorn straw hat.“Here he is, my dear!” said Edward. “My wife, Kühler.”“I’m so glad you could come,” said the little lady. “My husband has told me so much about you.”“Not half what he could tell if he only knew,” thought Mendel.“I’m afraid it is a very long way for you to come,” she said, leading him into the house while Edward drove round to the stables. “It is very good of you. We are very quiet here, but you can do just as you like, and I shall always be ready for you when you want me.”She had a very charming voice that seemed to bubble with happiness, and she had the air of being surprised at herself for being so happy. The house was pervaded with her atmosphere, fragrant and good, and every corner seemed to be full of surprise, every piece of furniture looked astonished at finding itself in its place—so perfectly in its place. This fragrant perfection was the more amazing as the outside of the house was more than a little grim, and the hill behind it was dark and ominous, while several of the trees were blasted and chapped with the wind.Mendel had never seen such a house, and when Edward took him up to his room he almost wept with delight at the comfort and sweetness of it all. There was a fire burning in the grate, by the side of which was a huge easy chair. Flowered chintz curtains were drawn across the windows, and the same gay chintz covered the bed. On the wash-hand-stand was a shining brass can of hot water. There were books by the bedside, the carpet was of a thick pile, and the furniture was old and exquisite. . . . He was filled with delight and gratitude.“Yes,” he thought, “England is best! Comfortable England.”And when Edward showed him the big tiledbathroom he had a shiver of dismay, and thought what a dirty, uncouth fellow he was to come among these exquisite people.Mary Tufnell put him at his ease at once and encouraged him to talk about himself. He was frank and gay and amusing, and told her about his adventures and many of his troubles, and even ventured once or twice upon scabrous details.“He is a darling,” she said to Edward. “But how he must have suffered. He is such a boy, but sometimes he seems to me the oldest person I have ever met.”“You must remember that he is a Jew,” said Edward.“He doesn’t let you forget it,” replied she.The portrait was begun the next day. Mendel took a business-like view of his visit. He was there to paint and to make thirty pounds. Every moment that his hostess could spare he seized upon. He painted her in her mauve cotton and Leghorn hat and would not talk while he worked.When the light was gone he was ready for any entertainment they might propose. He did not find either of them particularly interesting, and their unfailing kindness wearied him not a little. They were so invariably good in every thought, word, and deed. It seemed impossible for them to fail. There was no combination of circumstances which they could not surmount with their smiling patience. . . . He thought of them as two people walking along on either side of a road, smiling across it at each other. Nothing joined them. They had never met. There had been no collision. He had overtaken her on the road and had taken her step, her pace. . . . They had just that air. Dear Edward had fallen in with her by the wayside, and she had smiled at him and he was content and held for life. To their mutualgrave astonishment she would have children, and her smile would become a little sad, and with the children she would be an ideal to Edward, like the little Italian Madonnas of whom he had so many photographs all over the house. And between them on the road would march the brave procession of life—kings and beggars, priests and prostitutes, artists and peasants, chariots, and strange engines of peace and war; but they would see nothing of it: they would see only each other, and they would smile and go smiling to the grave.Mendel was at his ease with them and very happy, but suddenly out of nowhere there would arise, as it were, a great stench that pricked his nostrils and set him longing for London. And he would think of Logan and Oliver and ache to be with them, so that he knew that he was bound to them in the flesh. They were embarked upon a great adventure in which he must be with them to the end, for Logan was his friend, with whom he must share even the deepest bitterness. With Edward he could share nothing at all, for Edward was absurdly, incredibly innocent, content to smile by the wayside.He wrote to Logan and Oliver and told them how he was longing to be with them, and how the country filled him with childish fears, and how Paris seemed a thousand miles away and its adventures a thousand years ago. And he was hurt because they did not at once reply.He received two letters one morning. Logan wrote telling him he ought not to waste his time over portraits, and that he must come back to London soon, because the autumn was to see their triumph: nothing about himself, nothing about Oliver. Mendel was disappointed: nobody ever really answered his letters, into which he flung all his feeling.His other letter was from Morrison. His first letter from her. He knew her hand, though hehad never seen it before—round, big, simple. He kept her letter until his day’s work was done, and then he went into the garden to read it. There was an arbour at the end of a mossy walk which led to a crag above a little waterfall. Out of the crag grew a mountain ash, brilliant in berry. This was the most beautiful spot in the garden, and so he chose it for reading the letter.“I want you to forgive me for being so foolish. I want to try again. I hate being beaten, and I think it was only my stupidity that beat me. I have been thinking of you all the time, and I have been troubled about you. What people said had nothing at all to do with it. I admire you more than I can say, and I have been very foolish.“It has been a lovely summer. I have been working hard and feel hopeless about it. Please don’t ask to see my work. While I am at it I am wondering all the time what you are doing.“I am to be allowed to come back to London in October. There is no reason why you should not write to me.”She was there with him, by his side, under the glowing rowan-tree, gazing down at the little white waterfall dashing so merrily down into the pebbled beck. She was there with him, and his blood sang in his veins and his mind began to work, pounding along as it had not done these many weeks. . . . Weeks? Years—more than a lifetime.He went back to his picture and thought it very, very bad. Edward and his wife came in and looked at it dubiously.“Of course,” said Edward, “it is a very jolly picture, but I don’t think you have caught all her charm.”“But the painting of the hat is wonderful,” said Mary.“What do I care?” thought Mendel. “It is you—you as you are, smiling, eternally smilingover your little clean, comfortable happiness, three parts of which you have bought, with your servants and your flowers and your bathroom.”In a day or two he was being whirled back to London, shouting every now and then from sheer exuberance—thirty pounds in his pocket, October to look forward to: October, when London shook off its summer listlessness; October, when She would return; and until October he would run with his eyes on the trail of the burning, creeping passion that bound him to Logan and Oliver.
AWRETCHEDjourney home, a miserable journey. There had been a high wind, leaving a heavy swell, and Mendel shared the feelings of his brother-in-law, Moscowitsch, concerning the sea. It made him ill, and he never wished to see it again.
Oliver sat with her eyes closed while Logan held her hand and whispered to her. The boat was crowded, for it was the first to make the crossing for two days. Detestable people, detestable sea, detestable evil-smelling boat! . . . How lightly they had undertaken the trip to Paris! Only seven hours! But what hours!
Mendel’s disgust endured until they reached London. This was home to him, and never, never again would he travel. The discomfort of it was too odious, the shock to his habits too great. In London he did at least know what to avoid, while in Paris there was no knowing when he might be plunged into a dreary, glittering place full of prostitutes and Americans.
He was glad to part with Logan and Oliver. They had so much to settle with each other that he felt he was an unnecessary third. Paris had done violence to their relationship. They had gone there light of heart; they had returned oppressed and entangled. . . . And in London it was raining; but that was good, because familiar. It was good to go out into the friendly streets and to see them shining like black rivers, and to see the people hurrying under their dripping umbrellasand the women with their skirts up to their knees.
He seemed to have been away a very long time, and yet Paris seemed very far off too, an unreal memory, like a place of which he had read or seen in photographs. He was glad when he mounted a bus and knew that it was bearing him towards his own people.
Golda was very excited. She had had a letter from Harry, who had seen his brother in Paris, but had been too shy to speak to him because of his friends.
“You should have gone to see your brother,” she said.
“How could I?” asked Mendel. “I did not know where he was.”
“You speak Yiddish. You could have found him. He has done very well, but he is coming home to us. He does not like to live away from his people, and he says England is best.”
And Mendel thought that England was indeed best. For him, then, England meant his mother’s kitchen, with its odd decorations from Tottenham Court Road, its dresser crammed with gilded china and fringed with cut green paper, its collection of his early pictures, almost all hanging crooked, and the hard wooden chair in which Golda sat all day long with her hands on her stomach, dreaming and brooding of her life, which through all her hardships had been sweet because of her beautiful child whom everybody loved and spoiled, as she herself loved and spoiled him because he was not like other children. England was best because it could contain that peace and that beauty, and there was nothing in England to harm it or in envy to destroy it.
Mendel could understand his brother wanting to come back to it; for he, too, from all his adventures, returned to its simplicity for strength and comfort.
Moscowitsch came in with a Jewish paper. He was in a terrible state of anger and hatred. His eyes flashed and his nostrils quivered as he read out how a Jew in Russia had been accused of killing a Christian boy for his blood, and how over a thousand Jews had been massacred on the instigation of the police.
“It grows worse and worse,” he said. “The Jews do not kill. It is the Christians who lust for blood. It is the Christians who are so wicked and dishonest that, when they must be found out, they say it is the Jews, or that the Jews are more wicked than they. It is impossible. But England is good to the Jews. England must send soldiers to Russia or the Jews will be all murdered.”
“Yes, it is bad in Russia,” said Golda, nodding her head. “But life is bad everywhere for good people. Only in England one is left alone.”
“Well, Mr. Artist!” said Moscowitsch genially. “Made your fortune yet?”
“No,” replied Mendel; “but I have been to Paris for my holidays and I stayed in a hotel. Three of us spent twenty pounds.”
“So?” said Moscowitsch, impressed. “Have you made it up with the Birnbaum, then?”
“No.”
“That is not the way to get on, to quarrel with money.”
“If he wants money,” said Golda, “he can always get it. What more do you want? There are some letters for you, Mendel.”
He opened his letters, and had the satisfaction of telling Moscowitsch that he was asked to paint a portrait for thirty pounds.
“Who is it?” asked Moscowitsch. “A lord?” He had an idea that only lords had their portraits painted by hand.
“That’s better,” he said. “That’s better thanpainting those pictures that nobody wants. You paint what they ask you and you’ll soon make your fortune, and be able to give your mother dresses covered with beads and tickets for the theatre and china ornaments. And you can be thankful you don’t live in Russia. They wouldn’t let you be an artist there. If you became a student they would send you off to Siberia and you would die in the snow.”
It was the first time Moscowitsch had spoken to him since the breach with Birnbaum, and Mendel was at his ease with him again, and glad to be with his people. He knew that Moscowitsch was greatly attached to Golda, and had more than once urged his being taken away from his painting and put to some useful trade.
“Oh! I shall very soon succeed,” he said boastfully. “This is only a beginning. You keep an eye on that paper of yours. You will find something else to read besides what Russia does to the Jews. You will see what England does for a Jew when he has talent and honesty.”
“They made Disraeli a lord,” said Moscowitsch.
“I shall be something much better than a lord.”
“They only make painters R.A.”
“I shall be much better than that,” said Mendel.
“It is like old times,” laughed Golda, “to hear him boasting.”
Mendel opened another letter. It was an invitation to become a member of an exhibiting club which considered itself exclusive.
“I have been invited to become a member of a club.”
That settled Moscowitsch. A club to him was proof of success and social distinction. He and his wife had made the acquaintance of a member of the music-hall profession who had two clubs, and they counted him a feather in their caps. To have a member of a club in the family was almostoverwhelming, and he forgot the sorrows of the Jews in Russia.
The portrait commission was from Edward Tufnell, who had lately married and had been adopted as a candidate for Parliament for a northern constituency. Good earnest soul that he was, he regarded himself as responsible for launching Mendel upon the world, and once he had assumed a responsibility he never forgot it. Nothing made any difference to him. He had heard tales of the boy’s wildness, but he accepted responsibility for that too, read up the histories of men of genius for precedent, and acknowledged the inevitability of the flying of sparks from the collision of a strong individuality and the habits of the world.
He had always intended to give his protégé a lift, and had tried in vain to badger his father and his uncle, partners in a huge woollen manufactory, into having their portraits painted. They preferred to sink their money in men with reputations. He did not see how Mendel could acquire a reputation except by giving him work to do. On the other hand, he shrank from what he considered the vanity of having his own portrait painted, but his charmingly pretty wife gave him the opportunity he desired.
Therefore he invited Mendel to his house in the dales to stay until the picture was finished.
A day or two later and Mendel was in the train, being whirled North through the dull, rolling Midlands and the black, smirched valleys of the West Riding. The gloomy sky filled him with terror. At first he thought there was going to be a storm, but there seemed to be no life in the sky, and its strangeness oppressed him. The people in the train spoke a language which seemed almost as foreign as French, and when the train darted through forests of smoking chimney-stacks and helooked down into the grimy, trough-like streets, he was dismayed to think that here were depths of misery compared with which the East End was as a holiday ground. This, too, was England, and he had said that England was best. He remembered Jews in the East End who had fled from the North and said they would rather go back to Russia than return to the tailoring shops and the boot factories. So this vile, busy blackness was the North!
For some mysterious reason it made him think of Logan and Oliver, and the thought of them filled him with an added uneasiness. He had not thought of them once since the trip to Paris, and now he felt bound to them, and that they were a weight upon him. They stood out vividly against the murky, lifeless sky. He could see them standing hand in hand, smiling a little foolishly, and a physical tremor shot through him as he thought of the contact of their two hands, thrilling together, pressing together, to tell of their terrible need of each other. . . . This man and this woman. Mendel was haunted by the images of all the couples he knew, and they passed before him like a shadowy procession of the damned, all hand in hand, across the lifeless sky, all shadowy except Logan and Oliver, and then two others, his father and his mother; but they were not hand in hand. They were seated side by side, like two statues, and behind them the lifeless sky broke and opened to show the infinite blue space beyond the clouds.
He had changed at the darkest of the chimneyed towns, and the shabby local train went grinding and puffing through a tunnel into a vast green valley. At the first station he saw Edward Tufnell on the platform. He had changed a good deal, and was no longer the lanky, earnest youth of the Settlement, but his eyes still had their steady, serene expression and their sunny, beautiful smile.
He flung up his hand as he saw Mendel, smiled, and came fussily, as though he were meeting the Prime Minister himself. He insisted on carrying Mendel’s bag and canvases and made him feel small and young again, as he used to when he went trotting along by Edward’s side on his way to the French class.
“It’s a long journey,” said Edward. “You must be tired.”
“Oh no! I don’t mind any journey as long as I don’t have to cross the sea.”
“It is only two miles now.”
They climbed into a dogcart and drove, for the most part at a walk, up a long, winding road that crept like a worm along the flanks of a huge hill.
“Glorious country!” said Edward. “I love it. The South doesn’t seem to me to be country at all—just a huge park. One is afraid to walk on the grass. But here there is room and freedom. One understands why the North is Liberal.”
“It is too big for me,” replied Mendel. “But then I can’t get used to the country. I’m not myself in it. I feel in it as though I were on the edge of the world and in danger of falling off. Yes. The country seems dangerous to me, and I could never walk along a road at night.”
“How odd that is!” laughed Edward. “If I am ever afraid it is in the town. The vast masses of people do really terrify me sometimes, when I think of governing them all.”
“They can look after themselves,” said Mendel simply.
Over the shoulder of the hill they came on a grey stone house with a walled garden. Edward turned in at the gate, flicked his horse into a trot up the steep drive, and drew up by the front door, in which was standing a dainty little lady in a mauve cotton gown and a wide Leghorn straw hat.
“Here he is, my dear!” said Edward. “My wife, Kühler.”
“I’m so glad you could come,” said the little lady. “My husband has told me so much about you.”
“Not half what he could tell if he only knew,” thought Mendel.
“I’m afraid it is a very long way for you to come,” she said, leading him into the house while Edward drove round to the stables. “It is very good of you. We are very quiet here, but you can do just as you like, and I shall always be ready for you when you want me.”
She had a very charming voice that seemed to bubble with happiness, and she had the air of being surprised at herself for being so happy. The house was pervaded with her atmosphere, fragrant and good, and every corner seemed to be full of surprise, every piece of furniture looked astonished at finding itself in its place—so perfectly in its place. This fragrant perfection was the more amazing as the outside of the house was more than a little grim, and the hill behind it was dark and ominous, while several of the trees were blasted and chapped with the wind.
Mendel had never seen such a house, and when Edward took him up to his room he almost wept with delight at the comfort and sweetness of it all. There was a fire burning in the grate, by the side of which was a huge easy chair. Flowered chintz curtains were drawn across the windows, and the same gay chintz covered the bed. On the wash-hand-stand was a shining brass can of hot water. There were books by the bedside, the carpet was of a thick pile, and the furniture was old and exquisite. . . . He was filled with delight and gratitude.
“Yes,” he thought, “England is best! Comfortable England.”
And when Edward showed him the big tiledbathroom he had a shiver of dismay, and thought what a dirty, uncouth fellow he was to come among these exquisite people.
Mary Tufnell put him at his ease at once and encouraged him to talk about himself. He was frank and gay and amusing, and told her about his adventures and many of his troubles, and even ventured once or twice upon scabrous details.
“He is a darling,” she said to Edward. “But how he must have suffered. He is such a boy, but sometimes he seems to me the oldest person I have ever met.”
“You must remember that he is a Jew,” said Edward.
“He doesn’t let you forget it,” replied she.
The portrait was begun the next day. Mendel took a business-like view of his visit. He was there to paint and to make thirty pounds. Every moment that his hostess could spare he seized upon. He painted her in her mauve cotton and Leghorn hat and would not talk while he worked.
When the light was gone he was ready for any entertainment they might propose. He did not find either of them particularly interesting, and their unfailing kindness wearied him not a little. They were so invariably good in every thought, word, and deed. It seemed impossible for them to fail. There was no combination of circumstances which they could not surmount with their smiling patience. . . . He thought of them as two people walking along on either side of a road, smiling across it at each other. Nothing joined them. They had never met. There had been no collision. He had overtaken her on the road and had taken her step, her pace. . . . They had just that air. Dear Edward had fallen in with her by the wayside, and she had smiled at him and he was content and held for life. To their mutualgrave astonishment she would have children, and her smile would become a little sad, and with the children she would be an ideal to Edward, like the little Italian Madonnas of whom he had so many photographs all over the house. And between them on the road would march the brave procession of life—kings and beggars, priests and prostitutes, artists and peasants, chariots, and strange engines of peace and war; but they would see nothing of it: they would see only each other, and they would smile and go smiling to the grave.
Mendel was at his ease with them and very happy, but suddenly out of nowhere there would arise, as it were, a great stench that pricked his nostrils and set him longing for London. And he would think of Logan and Oliver and ache to be with them, so that he knew that he was bound to them in the flesh. They were embarked upon a great adventure in which he must be with them to the end, for Logan was his friend, with whom he must share even the deepest bitterness. With Edward he could share nothing at all, for Edward was absurdly, incredibly innocent, content to smile by the wayside.
He wrote to Logan and Oliver and told them how he was longing to be with them, and how the country filled him with childish fears, and how Paris seemed a thousand miles away and its adventures a thousand years ago. And he was hurt because they did not at once reply.
He received two letters one morning. Logan wrote telling him he ought not to waste his time over portraits, and that he must come back to London soon, because the autumn was to see their triumph: nothing about himself, nothing about Oliver. Mendel was disappointed: nobody ever really answered his letters, into which he flung all his feeling.
His other letter was from Morrison. His first letter from her. He knew her hand, though hehad never seen it before—round, big, simple. He kept her letter until his day’s work was done, and then he went into the garden to read it. There was an arbour at the end of a mossy walk which led to a crag above a little waterfall. Out of the crag grew a mountain ash, brilliant in berry. This was the most beautiful spot in the garden, and so he chose it for reading the letter.
“I want you to forgive me for being so foolish. I want to try again. I hate being beaten, and I think it was only my stupidity that beat me. I have been thinking of you all the time, and I have been troubled about you. What people said had nothing at all to do with it. I admire you more than I can say, and I have been very foolish.
“It has been a lovely summer. I have been working hard and feel hopeless about it. Please don’t ask to see my work. While I am at it I am wondering all the time what you are doing.
“I am to be allowed to come back to London in October. There is no reason why you should not write to me.”
She was there with him, by his side, under the glowing rowan-tree, gazing down at the little white waterfall dashing so merrily down into the pebbled beck. She was there with him, and his blood sang in his veins and his mind began to work, pounding along as it had not done these many weeks. . . . Weeks? Years—more than a lifetime.
He went back to his picture and thought it very, very bad. Edward and his wife came in and looked at it dubiously.
“Of course,” said Edward, “it is a very jolly picture, but I don’t think you have caught all her charm.”
“But the painting of the hat is wonderful,” said Mary.
“What do I care?” thought Mendel. “It is you—you as you are, smiling, eternally smilingover your little clean, comfortable happiness, three parts of which you have bought, with your servants and your flowers and your bathroom.”
In a day or two he was being whirled back to London, shouting every now and then from sheer exuberance—thirty pounds in his pocket, October to look forward to: October, when London shook off its summer listlessness; October, when She would return; and until October he would run with his eyes on the trail of the burning, creeping passion that bound him to Logan and Oliver.