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 astonishingflairfor 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 thisflairof 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.
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.