Though these financial clamours were loud round him, Craddock was not so distracted by them as to neglect his interests in the work of his new artist, and it says much for his equanimity in troublesome times that, between these discouraging rehearsals, and the contemplation of the execrable Pict and the unmarketable post-Impressionists, he devoted his full attention to the furnishing of such a studio for Charles as would give him the best possible conditions for work. He himself chose its furniture and embellishment: he sat with his white face on one side and his little eyes half-closed to select the colour for the walls: he himself pulled the blinds up and down over the big north light to make sure that this novel system of springs worked smoothly. He did not, of course, go so far as to believe that a suitably-appointed studio can do anything whatever towards the ripening of a possible genius, but his own thoroughness and common-sense told him that when you are dealing with a brain and hand so sensitive as that of a true portrait-painter, it is the falsest economy to spare either money or trouble in securing for him the best possible conditions for his work. And when, this afternoon, he paid a visit to the studio, an hour before Charles triumphantly and joyously expunged that sweet and tender face from his canvas, Craddock thought himself justified.
It will be readily understood that among this multiplicity of ventures and perplexities, Craddock had little time or psychical stuff to devote to the girl who, it is not too much to say, had brought a new type of emotion into his life. But though he had no time to address himself actively to thoughts of her, her image lived somewhere in the background of his mind, without loss of vividness. Indeed, without volition on his part, it seemed to be gently soaking into the businesses with which he was more acutely concerned, so that, for instance, even when his brain was most attentive to some lugubrious rehearsal, he would see himself and her with perhaps Lady Crowborough as chaperone, and Frank Armstrong as perspiring author, seated in the stage box on the night of the first representation. Perhaps he would not ask Armstrong: as there was a fierce rugged kind of strength about him that a girl might possibly find attractive.... But, such is the blindness with which ironical fate smites her puppets, no such qualms with regard to Charles, who had, so he had learned, stayed at the Mill House, on Lady Crowborough's invitation, for a week after the summer had broken in torrential rain, towards the end of July, ever entered his head.
Then only a week ago, for the date of production had to be postponed and yet again postponed until the rehearsals went with a smoothness that no friction disturbed, came the first night of "Easter Eggs," and before the evening was half over the conduct of the execrable Pict, and the apparent permanence of the post-Impressionist pictures on the walls of his gallery, had been smoothed out of Craddock's mind, as a wrinkle in the sand is erased by the incoming tide. From the first moment the simple and brilliant little play, with its neat construction and well-etched delineation of character, charmed and captivated the house. It was not necessary for the audience to put too strenuous a call on their intelligences, and, as Craddock had foreseen, they found an entertainment much to their minds in watching and enjoying the unfolding of the unpretentious but absorbing little chronicle. It had something of the fragrance of Cranford about it, and its gaiety was of some little bonneted Quakeress, suddenly moved to dance in a shy decorous manner. Nor did the faint patronizing blame and praise of the critics next morning disturb him in the slightest: he knew well from the manner of its reception, and the pleased chattering crowd that waited for their vehicles in the lobby when the last act was over that he need have no fear for the solidity of its first night's success. Being a critic himself, he knew how seldom his colleagues spotted the right horse. Indeed, the only jarring note was the attitude of the sardonic author, when, subsequently, he supped with the owner, and in reply to Craddock's congratulations returned those congratulations into his bosom. Armstrong, in fact, seemed rather vexed at the success of the evening, and Craddock remembering, for a brief moment, his own feelings on the success earned by the book of the execrable Pict, understood something of the young man's ingratitude.
Certainly the ill-luck which followed Craddock these last months—even at Marienbad the number of pounds of the too too solid which he had lost, were not what he had hoped for—seemed to have turned, for "Easter Eggs," when it had run a week, gave evidence by its advance bookings, of the security of its favour with the public, and the critics also were airily beginning to say that "they had said so all along." So, with the removal of these financial anxieties, Craddock was at leisure to turn his mind to the riverside again, and on the evening of the day on which he had visited Charles, just previous to the ruthless destruction of the head in his portrait, he went down again to Thorley to dine and sleep at Philip Wroughton's house. He had two ostensible reasons for so doing: in the first place he wanted to see Charles' copy of the Reynolds, in the second he wanted to talk over his friend's plans for the Egyptian winter. He was minded to spend a month or two in Egypt himself, and wondered whether a little judicious hinting would cause Philip to make a suggestion that he would be eager to fall in with.
He found, and was not ill-pleased to find, that Lady Crowborough was not in residence, but had gone back to town, where she was accustomed during the winter months to hermetically seal herself up, in the manner of a hybernating dormouse, in a small dark house in Half-Moon Street. But he found when the subject of Egypt was mentioned at dinner, that she had gone to town principally in order to supply herself with linen frocks and veils that should thwart the freckling powers of the Egyptian sun.
"My dear mother," said Philip, as he passed the port to Craddock, "has got it into her head that she would like to accompany Joyce and me, and when she has got any plan of any kind in her head, Joyce and I find it useless to protest. She does not listen to any arguments, nor does she reply to them. She carries out her plan. I do not entirely applaud this one. As likely as not it will be I who will have to look after her, for I am sure she will find the journey and the heat very trying. And as I planned this expedition with a view to regaining such measure of health as may be possible for a confirmed invalid, I do not quite applaud her resolution. But as I say, she is quite indifferent to applause or its absence. Sometimes I think that old people tend to become a little selfish."
He frowned slightly, as he poured himself out the water with which he was to facilitate the entry of his after-dinner cachet.
"And she will expect Joyce to be with her, and read to her and look after her," he continued, "and I shall be companionless. Shut up and condemned to an invalid life, as I have been, I find it difficult to think of anybody who might accompany us, and relieve me of the solitude which will so largely be mine. But the world in general and even one's friends, soon forget an invalid like myself. But certainly I should like, now that my mother has settled to come with us, a further addition to our party."
Philip was sufficiently astute to observe others, when he was not entirely absorbed in himself, and as he looked at Craddock now, it seemed to him that there was a certain suggestion of expectancy of tension even about him: in fact he had raised his wine-glass from the table, as if to drink, but sat with it poised, neither drinking nor replacing it.
"If only I could induce you to come with us," he said.
Craddock put his glass down.
"I think if you had not suggested that," he said, "that I should have risked a rebuff and done it myself."
He paused a moment.
"Only one thing might have deterred me," he added, "namely the fear that my presence, after what happened when I was here last, might be distasteful to Miss Joyce."
Philip waved this away with his thin white hand.
"I know that the young are often very selfish," he said, "but I do not believe that Joyce would for her own sake wish to deprive me of so congenial a companion, even if your suggestion was well-founded. But I am sure it is not. Indeed, I think your being able to come with us is a very fortunate circumstance for her, and, if I may say so, for you, as well as for myself. She will have ample opportunities for knowing you better, and appreciating you more truly. Shall we go into the next room? Ah, by the way, since you will now be seeing about your journey and your hotel accommodation in Egypt, perhaps it would not be troubling you to make arrangements for us also. My mother I know will take a maid, who will look after her and Joyce. I cannot afford a similar luxury."
The rain and gale that had clamorously wept all day, had vastly increased at nightfall, and when the two men left the dining-room they found Joyce sitting in the drawing-room with open windows in the attempt to clear the room of the smoke that had been blowing down the chimney. This rendered the room impossible for her father to sit in, and since his own sitting-room was in no better plight, Joyce was despatched to see whether her room, which was on the other side of the house and sheltered from the fury of the wind, was more tenable. Her report was favourable, and her father, coughing and feeling sure that this quarter of a minute's exposure to the open window of the drawing-room had chilled him, went upstairs with her, leaving Craddock to look at the copy of the Reynolds which hung in the dining-room. He had had dusky glimpses of it during dinner, but now when he examined it by a fuller illumination, the execution of it amazed him. Not only was it faithful in line and colour but in that indefinable quality of each which marks off the inspired from the merely intelligent copy. There was the same gleeful mystery in that turned and radiant face ... it was as if Charles no less than the painter of the original picture had known this entrancing girl, had penetrated by his artistic insight into the joy and vitality that enveloped her. And how like she was to Joyce!
He was swift to see, and the picture did not long detain him, but on his way upstairs he very sincerely congratulated himself on the tide in his affairs that was proving so fortunate. "Easter Eggs" he already counted as a gold-mine, three pictures of Charles', one of them that admirable portrait of his mother, were enviable possessions, and there was the winter in Egypt, and the golden possibilities which it contained already his own. He determined, or almost determined, to give Charles the hundred pounds which he had received from his customer, in payment for the copy made of the Reynolds, instead of the fifty he had promised him. He could easily say that Mr. Ward had been so delighted with it that in a fit of altruistic generosity (seeing that the copy was not his) he wished to make a larger remuneration. Charles would be so ingenuously grateful, and Craddock liked gratitude and ingenuousness. They contained the elements of security.
Joyce gave him a charming welcome to her room; she had just heard from her father that Craddock would join their party.
"It is delightful that you will come to Egypt with us," she said. "A party of four is the ideal number."
There was an absence of the personal note in this, which Craddock, as he caressed the side of his face, did not fail to observe.
"Quantitatively, then, we are all right, Miss Joyce," he said. "But is the latest addition qualitatively satisfactory?"
Joyce wore raised eyebrows and a slightly puzzled smile at these polysyllabic observations. But it is probable that she understood very well.
"It is delightful that you are coming," she repeated.
Craddock might have attempted to get a more personal welcome than this, but at the moment his very observant eye caught sight of a small framed sketch that stood in the circle of lamplight on the table. Instantly his attention was diverted there, nor was it only his artistic attention that was thus captured, for in a glance he saw that this sketch concerned him in ways other than artistic. He put out his hand and drew the picture more immediately under the light, unconscious that he had not even acknowledged Joyce's repeated speech of welcome.
There she knelt in Charles's sketch, on the carpet of forget-me-nots at the water's edge. Her head was turned as in the Reynolds picture, to face the spectator, while her body was in profile. It was possible enough that Charles had begun this water-colour replica of her head from the Reynolds itself, but there were differences in it, subtle and insistent, that showed beyond all doubt that the girl had sat to him for it also. She was engaged, as to her hands, with a white blot of a tea-cup; the dish-cloth which she held in her other hand was green with reflection from the bank beside her which basked in brilliant sunshine. Behind was the weir with its screen of trees, above, a dab of blue was sufficient—neither more nor less—to indicate the serenity of the summer day. Critic to his finger-tips Craddock could appreciate, none better than he, the slenderness of the means employed to portray these things, and the adequacy. No one but a great artist would have dared to omit so much: the foreground of forget-me-nots was two mere swirls of paint, the weir a splash of brown with a smudge of grey to indicate the shadowed water, while a mere twirl of the brush showed the swift current of the river. But in the midst of these mere symbols and notes of colour was her face, and that was a marvel of portraiture, into which an infinity of care was absorbed. Of the same quality were the vague lines that showed the girl's slim body: it was she and no other who knelt among the forget-me-nots. And it seemed to Craddock that just as none but a son could have painted that portrait of Charles' mother, so none but a lover could have painted this. He saw the difference between Joyce and the Reynolds picture now; previously he had only seen the marvellous similarity. But here the blood and heart-beat of the artist throbbed in the exquisite handiwork.
But his artistic sense took the first call on his faculties.
"But a little masterpiece!" he said. "I have never seen a happier moment. That's an inspired boy!"
Philip just shrugged his shoulders at this admiring explosion.
"Ah, that little picture of Joyce," he said. "It has always seemed to me rather sketchy and unfinished. But if you admire it so much, I am sure Joyce would be delighted to let you have it."
Joyce turned quickly to her father, and for the first time Craddock saw her troubled and disturbed.
"Oh, father, I can't possibly," she said quickly. "Mr. Lathom gave it me——"
She broke off short, and her face and neck were flushed with the blood that sprang there. Then bright-eyed and rosy as the dawn she turned to Craddock.
"It is a clever sketch, isn't it?" she said. "And all the background is only three dabs and a smudge. I suppose they happen to be put in the right place. He did it one afternoon when Granny and I were having tea with him."
She gave him a few seconds more for looking, and then quickly held her hand out for it, and replaced it on the table. Then she baldly and ruthlessly changed the subject.
"I don't think you have even been up here before, Mr. Craddock," she said. "It was my nursery once, as the rocking-horse and the doll's house witness, then my school-room, as the time-table of lessons above the chimney-piece witnesses, and please let it now become your smoking-room and light another cigarette. Now do tell us about Egypt. I know darling Granny will want to stop in Cairo, and go to every dance and dinner-party."
The new topic effectively diverted her father from the channel concerning Charles and his sketch, for he was always more ready to talk about things that concerned his own comfort than any topic which was unrelated thereto. But a week in Cairo, before going up the Nile to settle down for a month's sunshine at Luxor, was not unreasonable: if Lady Crowborough desired more Cairo, there was, of course, no cause why she should not indulge herself to any extent in its pleasures and festivities. But she would be obliged to indulge herself alone: the party whose sole object was the pursuit of health for Philip, could not be expected to hamper their guest. Joyce had no inclination, so he assumed then, for gaieties like these; the temples of Karnak were much more to her mind....
Joyce left the two men before there was any sign of the discussion growing lukewarm, and went to her bedroom. This was on the other side of the house fronting the full bugling of the gale, and the maddened tattoo of the rain on her panes. It was impossible in this onslaught of elemental fury to open her windows, but she felt in the very bones and blood of her a longing for the out-of-doors, whatever its conditions. Up and down her room she walked, strangely and unwontedly excited, and had she obeyed her impulse, she would have put on a cloak, and let herself out of the house, to walk or to run, or even to stand in the blackness of the night, and the bellowing of the wind, and feel herself one with the wild simplicity and force of the storm. Better even than that she would have liked to go forth and plunge herself, naked under the hueless night, with the torrent and froth of the weir, to struggle and be buffeted by the furious water, to be herself and nobody else, not anybody's daughter, not anybody's companion, not even his with whom her soul seemed suddenly mated. She had gone out for a drenching walk to this weir only this afternoon, and had leaned over its grey wooden railing, and watched the water in flood over the promontory where a tent had stood. Below her a carpet of forget-me-nots, where she had knelt, and she could have found it in her heart to wade through the foam of the flood to kneel there again, and recapture the first thrill of the knowledge that had come to her then. That unbidden flash of desire had lightened on her but for a second, and she had instantly shoved it away again, slamming the door on it, and turning the key, and shooting the bolts. But it had been there, and to-night as she paced her room, she knew quite well what lay behind the barred doors of her consciousness, and though she had imprisoned it, giving it no bail to go abroad, she was not ashamed of it. It burned there within her, warmly radiant, and though she would not allow herself to see the light of it, she knew it to be there, and secretly exulted in the knowledge.
But she did not directly want to throw it open to herself: just now she only wanted to be herself, as she felt she would be if she could be out in the storm. She did not formulate in her mind the indubitable necessity of unlocking her inmost self in order to be herself. Illogically enough, but with a very human inconsistency, she longed for the conditions that would give her the sense of freedom, of expansion that she demanded, without contemplating that on which her whole freedom was based. Yet she knew well that against which she revolted, from which she longed to escape. In a word, it was the fact, and the implication founded on that fact, that Arthur Craddock was coming to Egypt with them. Coupled with it was the idea, so cursorily introduced by her father, that she should give Craddock the sketch that Charles had made of her. Literally, no expedition of ingenuity could have framed a more unfeasible request. There was nothing in the world she could less easily have parted with. And the suggestion was just thrown over the shoulder, so to speak, like an idle question, a meaningless complimentary speech! But now she wondered whether it was only that. Taken in conjunction with Craddock, and his bloodless wooing of her, she felt it was possible that this was in the nature of a test-question. Was it? Was it?
Once more for a moment she desired the night and the storm and the waters of the swollen river; then, instantly, she knew that all this was but a symbol of the knowledge that burned behind the closed and barred door of her mind. She seemed to have no volition in the matter: she but looked at the doors, and they swung open, and the light that burned within was made manifest. She ceased from her restless pacing of her room, and with a little sigh of recovered rest sat down at her dressing-table, and unlocked one of the drawers. It was empty but for a couple of letters addressed to her. They were quite short, and nearly quite formal. But they filled the drawer, and they filled everything else beside.
She read them.
"Dear Miss Wroughton."I hope the copy of the picture satisfies your father. I didn't see him before I left, and I should so much like to know that he is pleased with it (if he is). I can't tell how sorry I was to finish it, for it was such a pleasure to do it. I should so like to see it in its place, if that is possible—I often think of you and poor Buz...."
"Dear Miss Wroughton.
"I hope the copy of the picture satisfies your father. I didn't see him before I left, and I should so much like to know that he is pleased with it (if he is). I can't tell how sorry I was to finish it, for it was such a pleasure to do it. I should so like to see it in its place, if that is possible—I often think of you and poor Buz...."
There was nothing here that the merest formalist might not have written ... only a man formalist would not have written it.
She took out the second letter.
"Dear Miss Wroughton."I am so glad your father likes the copy. About that silly little sketch—if you are going to frame it, I think you had better just have a plain gilt frame, and no mount. A mount will only make it look more dabby. I am busy with a portrait of my mother, and it's tremendous fun, chiefly, I suppose, because she has a perfectly darling face, and is utterly like her face. But of course any day will suit me to come down and look at the copy, and I do want to see if it is fairly satisfactory. I will come on any day and at any hour that you suggest."Sincerely yours,Charles Lathom.""P. S.—I have got into a new studio, which is lovely. Won't you be up in town sometime before you go to Egypt, and won't you come to lunch or tea? Lady Crowborough said she would, and I will ask her the same day, or if my mother came, wouldn't it do? But I should like you to see my things. It has been quite dark for days, and I suppose will be all the winter. I wish I could put my studio down in Egypt."
"Dear Miss Wroughton.
"I am so glad your father likes the copy. About that silly little sketch—if you are going to frame it, I think you had better just have a plain gilt frame, and no mount. A mount will only make it look more dabby. I am busy with a portrait of my mother, and it's tremendous fun, chiefly, I suppose, because she has a perfectly darling face, and is utterly like her face. But of course any day will suit me to come down and look at the copy, and I do want to see if it is fairly satisfactory. I will come on any day and at any hour that you suggest.
"Sincerely yours,Charles Lathom."
"P. S.—I have got into a new studio, which is lovely. Won't you be up in town sometime before you go to Egypt, and won't you come to lunch or tea? Lady Crowborough said she would, and I will ask her the same day, or if my mother came, wouldn't it do? But I should like you to see my things. It has been quite dark for days, and I suppose will be all the winter. I wish I could put my studio down in Egypt."
There was nothing here that anybody might not see. But Joyce would not have shown those letters to anybody. She felt she would have shown his heart no less than her own in showing them. And for comment on the text, if any were needed, there was his sketch of her. That was how he saw her.
All restlessness had utterly subsided: she had only been restless as long as she had wanted to be herself, without admitting to herself all that was most real in her, as long as she shut up the bright-burning knowledge that shone in her innermost heart. Now she had thrown the closed doors wide, and sat very still, very bright-eyed, with the two simple little notes on the table in front of her, desiring no more the air and the tumult of the night, but unconscious of it, hearing it no longer.
Below the drawer where she kept those letters was another also locked. After a while she opened that also, and took out what it contained. Often she had laughed at herself for keeping it, often she had scolded herself for so doing, but neither her ridicule nor her blows had stung her sufficiently to make her throw it away or destroy it. In its present condition it would have been hard to catalogue or describe. But there was no doubt that this shapeless and mud-stained affair had once been a straw-hat. She had found it drowned and pulpy just below the landing-stage of the Mill House the day after Charles had made his sketch of her.
Meantime Arthur Craddock, though glib and instructive in matters of hotels and travel, had been very deeply busy over a new condition that he felt to concern him considerably. Rightly or wrongly he believed that this boy who had painted that wonderful little water-colour of Joyce was in love with her. He could not wholly account for his conviction, but judging intuitively it seemed plain to him. And what seemed no less plain, and far more important, was the fact that Joyce peculiarly valued that sketch. No intuition was necessary here: the trouble and sudden colour in her face when she told her father that she could not possibly part with it, spoke more intelligibly than her words even. Had he known or guessed a little more, had he conjectured that even at this moment Joyce was sitting in her room with those two little notes spread in front of her, while in a drawer, yet unopened, there lurked the dismal remains of Charles' straw-hat, he might have suspected the futility of the abominable interference that he was even now concocting. For little meddling lies have seldom the vitality to enable them to prevail against needs that are big and emotions that are real. Soon or late by logical or chance discovery comes the vindication of the latter, and they assert themselves by virtue of their inherent strength: soon or late, for the air is full of thousands of stray sparks, comes the explosion that shatters such petty fabrications, the chance circumstance that blows it sky-high. But he only thought that he was dealing with the calf-love of a boy whom he had rescued, if not from a gutter, at any rate from a garret, and who was altogether insignificant save for his divine artistic gift, the fruits of which he was bound to sell at so reasonable a price to himself, and with, he supposed, the fancy of a girl who knows nothing of the world, for a handsome young face.
So in this dangerous state of little knowledge, he planned and invented as he talked about steamers and hotels, till even his companion was convinced that the utmost possible would be done for his convenience and comfort. Then, for he was now ready, Craddock took up Charles' sketch again.
"Certainly that young Lathom has a wonderful gift," he said, "and I congratulate myself on having obtained you so fine a copy of your Reynolds. He stayed with you, did he not, when the weather broke?"
Philip glanced at the clock: it was already half-past ten, but he did not mind having a word or two about Charles. Indeed, it is possible he would have initiated the subject.
"Yes, he was with us a week," he said, "though the invitation was not of my asking. He seemed a well-behaved young fellow."
Craddock caressed the side of his face before replying.
"I wish I could share your good opinion of him," he said. "Of course, when I recommended him to you for the work which he has certainly done very well, it never occurred to me that you would have him in the house like that. But I have no wish to enter into details, and since his connection with you is over, there is no reason why I should."
Philip got up.
"Indeed, I am glad to know that," he said, "because there certainly was considerable friendliness between him and Joyce, which I did not altogether like, though it was hard to prevent. Now I have a reason which my duty forbids me to disobey, for refusing to allow any resumption of their acquaintance—I am not sorry for that."
Craddock got up also.
"Then let us leave the subject," he said. "Now I know your bedtime is half-past ten, so pray do not be ceremonious with me, but allow me to sit here for a quarter of an hour more, while you go to bed. Listen at the storm! But by this day month, I hope we shall both be in that valley of Avalon basking in the warm sunshine of Nile-side. For the present it is goodnight and goodbye, for I have to go early to-morrow. I will write to Miss Joyce fully about our travelling arrangements."
Craddock lit another cigarette after his host was gone, and knowing he would not see him again in the morning, thought over what he had just said, to assure himself that he had managed to convey that indefinite sufficiency which he had in view. He thought that he had probably succeeded very well, for he had given his host an excuse, which he was clearly glad to make use of, for stopping any future intercourse between this young fellow and his own circle. And he had effected this without being positively libellous, for he had said no more than that he wished he could share Philip's good opinion of him. He felt that it was certainly time to prevent the ripening of this acquaintanceship, that Joyce had better have it conveyed to her, as assuredly she would, that she would not see the author of that sketch any more.
The sketch stood by him on the table, and once again he took it up, and found it even more admirable than he had thought. And even as he looked, the injury and wrong that he had done to its artist made him feel for the first time a curious dislike of him: he disliked him just because he had injured him. But this dislike did not extend to his pictures, and the thought that the portrait of his mother and two more canvases besides, would pass into his possession, gave him the keenest sort of satisfaction, since he augured for their author a fame and a future of no ordinary kind. What would that hand be capable of when its power was fully matured? Certainly it should not be for want of recognition that he should any longer remain unknown. He himself, though anonymously, had written the notice to the "Whitehall" regarding Charles' picture of his brother at Thorley Weir, and next week under his own signature would appear a column's notice of the same Exhibition, practically devoted to that one canvas. At any rate, that would have the effect of making the world in general turn their eyes to that which had evoked from him so apparently extravagant a eulogy, and he completely trusted the picture itself to convince them that no extravagance had been committed. People would be set talking, and in next year's Academy would be hung the portrait of Charles' mother. That would be sufficient.
He got up and lit his bedroom candle. It seemed to him that he had arranged Charles' future very satisfactorily. He would do the most that could be done for a young man with regard to his artistic career, and as regards his private affairs, he had made arrangements for them already in half a dozen sentences that had not been spoken amiss. But his new born dislike of him made him reconsider his resolve to pay him the hundred pounds which Mr. Ward had been so pleased to give for the copy of the Reynolds. After all, Charles had been promised only half that sum, and had been more than content to close with that bargain. The fact that Mr. Ward had paid more for it was a thing that lay outside questions that concerned him. Craddock had promised him fifty pounds for the copy, and Craddock would pay it.... But he did not definitely settle either on one sum or the other.
It was three days after this that Craddock's word of warning to Joyce's father bore fruit. She had come into his study that morning before lunch, and found him singularly well pleased at the proposed itinerary which Craddock had sent him that morning. Sleeping-berths had already been secured, they would not have to change trains at Paris, and the sleeping-car went, on arrival at Marseilles, straight through to the quay where their ship was berthed....
"And you came in to ask me something, Joyce," he said, when he had explained this.
"Yes, father. I have heard from Mr. Lathom, asking when he can come down to see his picture framed and in its place—I suppose any day will do, will it not? Shall I ask him to stay the night?"
Philip had been expecting this. He remembered a cordial invitation conveyed by his mother to the artist, to come back and see his handiwork when it was framed and in the room of the original picture. But it was a little uncomfortable to be obliged to give a reply so different to that which Joyce expected, and there was nothing in the world which he disliked so much as being uncomfortable. Bodily discomfort, of course, was the worst form of that imperfection, but mental discomfort was odious also.
"I think Mr. Lathom may take it for granted that his picture looks well, and pleases me," he said. "We have less than three weeks here, before we actually start for Egypt. There is an infinity of things to do. You will be very busy without the extra burden of entertaining people."
Joyce did not at once assent to this, or even reply to it. All her secret knowledge seethed within her.
"He was asked to come to see it," she said.
A more definite statement was necessary. Philip had been glad enough of Craddock's information, but he did not find it quite easy to use it with Joyce's young eager face looking at him. Yet its eagerness gave him an added courage. It was too eager: in spite of the excellent reasonableness of her words, he felt the unreasonable wish behind them.
"By my mother," he said, "who does not regulate all my affairs. Frankly, my dear Joyce, I do not want Mr. Lathom in my house again. I do not hear a very good account of him. To copy a picture for me is one thing; to have him proposing himself even though asked, is quite another. You may take it that we have finished with Mr. Lathom."
Joyce's instinct and desire urged her.
"I don't see how I can write a letter to him on those lines," she said. "Am I to say that you don't wish to see him again? If that is so, father, you must write it yourself. I—I was very friendly with him when he was here. Why should I appear to cease to be so?"
Philip went into the rage of a weak man. He had not meant to argue the point with Joyce. He had, in his imagination, framed this interview on quite different lines. In his imagination it was enough for him to have said that Charles' proposed visit was inconvenient, and that Joyce would have written a note that should embody his wish. But while he delayed and fussed with the little appurtenances of his writing table, adjusting sealing-wax, and putting pens level, Joyce spoke again.
"He isn't quite like a bootmaker or a tailor," she said, "whom you can order down, and who will send in what you have commanded. He has been staying with us. I can't say to him that we have finished with him."
The weak rage burst out.
"That is what you are to say," he cried. "You will make it clear that he is not to come here again. You will show me your note when you have written it. Quite polite, of course, but it must be made clear that we have finished with him. He came to paint a portrait, and he has done so, and he has been paid, no doubt, for his trouble. That is all. We are going to Egypt within a week or two. His visit will be inconvenient. He may come after we have gone away, if he chooses, and look at his picture. He wants to see it: very well, he shall see it after the third week in November."
He beat with his feeble closed hand on his table.
"Do you understand?" he said. "You will tell him that he may come here when we are gone. Not before, and not after we get back. He can look at his picture every day for three months. You may tell him that if you choose. And you have no consideration for me, Joyce: you make me excited, and make me raise my voice, which, as you know quite well, always gives me a fit of coughing."
Joyce came back from the window, and sat down by her father at his table.
"If I am to write such a letter, father," she said, "I must know why I write it. You must tell me something which accounts for it."
She had her voice perfectly in control, but she could not control her colour. She felt that her face had become white, and though she detested herself for this palpable sign of emotion, she was powerless to prevent it.
"It is easy for me to account for it," said Philip, "though I should have hoped that my wish was enough."
"It isn't enough," said Joyce quietly. "I have treated him like a friend."
"You must treat him as a friend no longer, and as an acquaintance no longer. He is not a desirable friend for you nor an acquaintance. He is nothing to you: he painted a portrait. He begins and ends with that. He is not the sort of man I want to know, or want my daughter to know."
The weak rage subsided: but the calmer tone which followed was not less ineffectual.
"You must take my word for it, dear Joyce," he said. "You are young and inexperienced, and you must obey me, and not see any more of this young man. I have excellent authority for telling you that he is undesirable as friend or acquaintance. I am sorry for it: he seemed harmless enough and even well-bred!"
Joyce got up. The accumulated weight of the habit of filial obedience was heavy, but her heart was in declared rebellion. Nor did she believe what had been told her.
"Will you tell me who this excellent authority is?" she asked.
"No: you must take its excellence on trust from me."
Joyce turned to him. She spoke quite respectfully, but quite firmly.
"Then I can't write that letter," she said. "I am very sorry, but it is quite impossible."
"And do you intend also to disobey me with regard to neither seeing nor communicating with Mr. Lathom again?"
Joyce hesitated.
"No, I intend to obey you," she said. "At least—at least I promise to tell you if I ever intend to do otherwise."
For the first time it struck him that he was dealing with a force greater than any that was at his command. Hitherto, Joyce had never put herself into open opposition to him, and he had had no experience of the power which her habitual serenity held within it.
"You are vastly obliging," he said. "I had no idea I had so obedient a daughter."
"I am sorry, father," she said. "But you have been asking me to do things I can't do."
"Things you won't do," said he. "You have made me feel very unwell with your obstinacy."
"I am sorry for that, too," she said.
The autumn session, combined with a singularly evil season as regards pheasants, had caused London to become very full again during November with the class that most needs and happily can best afford to pay for amusement, and theatres were enjoying a period of unprecedented prosperity. Night after night the queue outside the theatre where "Easter Eggs" was being performed had the length attained usually only by gala performances and after a month's run Craddock had successfully accomplished the hazardous experiment of transplanting it to a much larger theatre, which, by chance, happened to be tenantless. His luck still burned as a star of the first magnitude, and he had without difficulty sublet the scene of its initial triumph, and started a couple of provincial companies on a prosperous progress. Money poured in, and with a generosity that surprised himself he presented the author (though there was no kind of claim on him) with a further munificent sum of two hundred pounds. But Armstrong's continued ingratitude though it pained him, did not surprise him nearly so much as his own generosity. He knew exactly how the young man felt.
It was but a few days before he was to start on the Egyptian expedition, when Armstrong was dining with him in his flat in Berkeley Square, intending to read to him after they had dined, the first act of "The Lane without a Turning," which, with somewhat cynical enjoyment, he was remodelling in order to suit the taste of the great Ass, as he called the patrons of the drama, though Craddock had urged and entreated him not to attempt this transformation. However thoroughly it was transformed he argued that the great Ass would detect that below lay the original play of which it had so strongly disapproved, would feel that it was being laughed at, and would, as it always was quick to do, resent ridicule. He put forward this view with much clearness as they dined.
"You have had the good fortune that comes perhaps to one per cent. of those who try to write plays," he said. "You have scored a great and signal success, and I beseech you not to imperil your reputation and prestige by so risky an experiment. I don't doubt your adroitness in remodelling and even reprincipling—if I may coin a word——"
Frank had only just filled his wine-glass. He emptied it at a gulp.
"Not exactly reprincipling," he said, "it's more turning it upside down. But I think your advice is rather premature, do you know, considering you have not at present the slightest idea what this remodelled play will be like. Had you not better wait till I read you some of it?"
"I don't think it matters what it is like," said Craddock, "because there will still be 'The Lane without a Turning' at the bottom of it. It might be Macbeth and Hamlet rolled into one——"
"That remarkable combination would certainly have a very short run," remarked Frank. "You were saying?"
"I was saying that the public, and the critics, will know that at the base of your play lies the play they so unmistakably rejected."
"There was one critic who thought it promising," said Frank. "And he is reaping a very tidy little harvest for his perspicacity."
"You are girding at everything I say this evening, my dear fellow," said Craddock placidly.
Frank looked at him with scarcely repressed malevolence.
"I think the sight of this opulent room and this good dinner and delicious wine makes me feel vicious," he said. "I can't help remembering that it is I who have really paid for all I am eating and drinking a hundred times over. And yet it is you who ask me to dinner."
"I am sorry if I burden you with my hospitality," said Craddock. "And as a matter of fact, it was you who asked yourself."
Frank Armstrong laughed.
"Quite true," he said, "and I will ask myself to have another glass of port. But really I think the situation justifies a little wailing and gnashing of teeth."
Craddock was slightly afraid of this very uncompromising young man. He liked to feel himself the master and the beneficent patron of his protégés, and it was a very imperfect sense of mastery that he enjoyed when he was with this particular beneficiary. He had tried cajolery and flattering him with the most insignificant results, and he determined to adopt more heroic methods.
"As to the gnashing of teeth," he observed, "there certainly was less gnashing of teeth on your part before I put on this play for you, for the simple reason that you often had to go without meals. But I am bound to say you didn't wail."
Frank laughed again.
"That's not bad," he said. "But I repeat that it is maddening to think of you earning in a week over my labour, as much as I earned altogether. Of course you had the capital; one can't expect labour and capital to fall into each other's arms."
"I had much more than the capital," said Craddock. "I had the sense to see that star-actors would not take, or if they did take, would ruin your works. You had not the sense to see that, if you will pardon my saying so."
"True. I like you better when you answer me back, and I'm not denying your shrewdness—God forbid when I have been the victim of it. I've been thinking, let me tell you, how I can get out of your clutches, but really I don't see my way. You may take it I suppose that you're safe. Now about this play. I don't see to begin with why it matters to you what I write. You needn't exercise your option over it, unless you please. In that case I shall get it done on my own account."
"Ah, but it does matter to me," said Craddock. "If you produce a couple of plays that fail, you may consider your present success as wiped out. You can't tamper with a reputation, and the bigger it is—yours at this moment is very big indeed—the more it is vulnerable. It is for your sake no less than mine that I am so strong about this."
"Surely for my sake a little less than yours?" suggested Frank.
"If you will have it so. And for your sake a little less than mine I advise you not to produce plays too quickly. The public are very fickle: if you flood the theatres with the dramas of Frank Armstrong they will soon laugh at you."
"I disagree with that policy altogether," said Frank. "Whatever happens they will get tired of you in five or six years. So for five or six years I propose to produce as many plays as I possibly can. I find I've got lots more twaddle-sketches and things half-finished, and scenarios that were invariably returned to me. But they shall be returned to me no longer. Actors and managers are tumbling over each other to get hold of my work. I like seeing them tumble. By the way, there is a point in our agreement I should like to discuss. Akroyd came to me to-day—good Lord, think of Akroyd coming to me, when a few months ago he wouldn't even let me come to him—he came to me with his terrible smile and his amazing clothes and offered me a thousand pounds in advance on account of royalties for a play. He wants to see and approve the bare scenario. Now supposing I accept, and you choose to exercise your option on it, do you get that?"
"Naturally. I have acquired all rights in such a play. I shall also try to make Akroyd give me a little more than that."
"Hell!" said Frank succinctly.
He poured himself out another glass of port as he spoke, and shaking the drop off the lip of the decanter broke his glass and flooded the tablecloth. His action was on the border-land between purpose and accident, and he certainly was not sorry as he looked at the swiftly-spreading stain.
"My port, my tablecloth," he observed.
"And your manners," said Craddock drily.
"Yes, I deserved that. But I didn't really do it on purpose, so, as it was an accident, I'll say I am sorry. No, no more, thanks. But I feel in a better temper you may be pleased to hear. There's nothing so soothing as smashing something, if one doesn't value it oneself. I spent an hour this afternoon at one of the side-shows in the Exhibition, banging wooden balls, seven for sixpence, at a lot of crockery on a shelf. What an ironical affair the world is! When I had hardly enough money to get dinner for myself, nobody ever asked me to dinner, and now that there is no longer any difficulty in paying for my own dinner, everybody wants me to dine at his or her—chiefly her—house. People I have never seen who live in squares, write to me, giving me the choice of a couple of nights! They ask other people I have never seen to meet me. They roar with laughter, whatever I say, or if it obviously isn't funny, they look pensive and say 'How true!' What a great Ass it is!"
"Ah, make the most of that," said Craddock. "A dozen people talking about you will do more for you than a dozen newspapers shouting about you."
"Probably, but I rather like the newspaper shouting. It's so damned funny to think of a lot of grinning compositors ruining their eyesight to set up columns about me. I read your article in the 'Whitehall,' by the way; you didn't spare the adjectives did you? They send interviewers to me, too, with cameras and flash-lights, who fill my room with stinking-smoke, and ask me to tell them about my early days. Hot stuff, some of it. They are nuts on the story of my father throwing the knife at me."
"Did you tell them that?" asked Craddock, feeling rather bruised.
"Certainly. Why should I not? He came to see me this morning himself, rather tipsy, and I told him to go away and come back when he was sober, and I would give him half-a-crown to get drunk on again. There's a commandment, isn't there, about honouring your father. I should like to see a fellow trying to honour mine. It's out of my power."
Frank lit a cigar, and leaned forward with his elbows on the table.
"Success hasn't made me a snivelling sentimentalist," he observed. "Now that I'm on the road to make money—or I shall be when I've got out of your hands—I don't instantly think the world is a garden full of ripe apricots and angels. It's a hard cruel world, same as it always was, and the strong tread on the weak and the clever suck the foolish, as a spider pulls off the leg of a fly and sucks it. I've often watched that. I've been foolish, too, at least I've been hungry, and in consequence you are sucking me. But why should I go slobbering over and blessing my father, who made life hell to me? Or why should I say it's a kind, nice world just because I myself am not cold or hungry any longer? And I'm not a bit sorry for the cold and hungry any more than I was sorry for myself when I was among them. I hated being cold and hungry, it is true, but nobody cared, and I learned to expect that nobody should care unless he could get something out of me, as you have done. All your fine rich people were there while I was starving, and nobody asked me to dinner or treated me to dozens of wooden balls at the exhibition. Now I've shown that I can amuse them for an hour or two after dinner, they think I'm no end of a fine fellow. But I've not changed. I always believed in myself, even when I was hungriest, and not being hungry doesn't make me believe in anything else. No, no more wine, thanks. I'm not going to take after my father. By the way, I met a dear little female Methuselah last night, name of Lady Crowborough, who told me she knew you. I congratulated her, of course."
"Did you—did you mention your connection with me?" asked Craddock, with some little anxiety not wholly concealed.
"You wouldn't have liked that, would you? But you can make your mind easy. I didn't and I don't suppose I shall, I wouldn't vex you for the world."
"That is not so good a reason as I should expect from you."
"No? Try this one then. You made a fool of me, you see, you outwitted me. I don't want people to know that for my sake far more than yours. The rôle of the brilliant successful dramatist is more to my mind than the rôle of your dupe."
"These are offensive expressions," said Craddock.
"Certainly. But why should you care? No doubt other people have used them before to you. By the way again, there was another fellow there last night who knew you, under Lady Crowborough's slightly moulting wing. Lathom: that was his name. I congratulated him also. There was something rather taking about him: a weird sort of guilelessness and gratitude. He's coming to the play with me sometime next week. And now if you want to hear the first act of the 'Lane without a Turning,' we had better begin? I'm going to Mrs. Fortescue's party later on. Who is Mrs. Fortescue?"
"The prettiest bore in London, which is saying a good deal, both as regards looks and as regardsennui. But she is so convinced she is only twenty-eight, she is worth your study as showing the lengths to which credulity can go. By all means let me hear your first act."
Armstrong got up.
"I want you to tell me when you have heard it," he said, "and when I have told you how the second and third acts will go, whether you exercise your option or not. You are going to Egypt in a few days, you tell me, and I don't want this hung up till you get back."
"I have no doubt I shall be able to tell you," said Craddock.
In spite of this assurance, Craddock found himself an hour afterwards, in a state of bewildered indecision. The finished first act, together with a very full scenario of the other two, gave him, as he was well aware, sufficient data for his conclusions, but he was strangely embarrassed at the recital of the brilliant and farcical medley, which, as the author had said, turned the original play upside down, parodied it, and winged it with iridescent absurdity. He knew well the unaccountableness of the public, well, too, he knew the value of a reputation such as "Easter Eggs" had brought its author, and it seemed to him a frantic imperilment of that reputation to flaunt this rainbowed farce in the face of the public. Armstrong had acquired the name of an observant and kindly humorist, here he laughed at (not with) the gentle lives of ungifted people. Again, in the original play, he involved his puppets in a net of inextricable tragedy: here, as by a conjuring-trick he let them escape, with shouts of ridicule at the suppose Destiny that had entangled them. The play might easily be a failure the more stupendous because of the stupendous success of "Easter Eggs": on the other hand there was the chance, the bare chance, that its inimitable and mocking wit might be caught by the rather stolid Ass.... But he had to decide: he knew quite well that he had sufficient data for his decision, and he did not in the least desire merely to annoy Armstrong by a plea for further opportunity of consideration. But he most sincerely wished that the play had never been written. And that wish gave him an idea that for the moment seemed brilliant. He was harvesting money in sheaves, he could well afford it....
"I will exercise my option," he said at length, "and then I will destroy the play. For your convenience, my dear fellow, you needn't even put on paper the last two acts. You can take your cheque away with you to-night."
Frank Armstrong considered this munificent proposal for a moment in silence, looking very ugly.
"You didn't purchase the right to destroy my work," he said.
"I purchased the right to possess it."
For a minute more Armstrong frowned and glowered. Then suddenly his face cleared, and he gave an astonishing shout of laughter.
"All right," he said, "Draw the cheque, and here are my manuscript and notes, which you are going to destroy. To-morrow I shall begin a new play exactly like it. How's that? Gosh, what an ass I am! I ought to have got your cheque first and cashed it before I told you. But you gave yourself away so terribly by telling me you would purchase and destroy it that I was off my guard. But now——"
Once again the sense of imperfect mastery struck Craddock. There was this difference about it now that it forced itself rather as being a sense of mastery on the other side. He was thrown back on the original debate in his mind. Doubt of success prevailed.
"I take no option," he said curtly.
Frank got up.
"Thank God," he said. "Good night."
Craddock sat quiescent for a few minutes after Armstrong had left him, feeling rather battered and bruised, and yet conscious of having passed a stimulating evening. And he did not wonder that that section of London who spend most of their time and money in procuring tonic entertainments that shall keep their pulses racing, should pursue this flaring young man with eager hospitalities. He was liable, it is true, to behave like a young bull-calf: he might, and often did, lower his head, and, fixing a steady and vicious eye on you, charge you with the most masculine vigour, but it was quite impossible to be dull when he was there. There was a strength, a driving force about him that raised the level of vitality at social gatherings, and though it was a little disconcerting to have him suddenly attack you, he might equally well attack somebody else, which was excessively amusing. Moreover many women found a personal attack exciting and inspiriting. To be tossed and tumbled conversationally did not do one any harm, and so virile and brutal an onslaught as his had something really fascinating about it. To be sure, he had no manners, but yet he had not bad manners. He would not plan an impertinence, he only ran at a red rag, of which, apparently, the world held many for him. If he was bored, it is true that he yawned, but he didn't yawn in order to impress upon you your boring qualities, he only expressed naturally and unaffectedly, his own lack of interest in what you were saying. To be sure, also, he was ugly and clumsy, but when there were so many pretty little men about, who talked in the softest of voices and manicured their nails, a great rough young male like this, who said he hated dancing, and asked leave to smoke his pipe instead of a cigarette, brought a sense of reality into the room with him. He was not rough and uncouth on purpose: merely that big clever brain of his was too busy to bother about the frills and finishings of life. Scandal and tittle-tattle had no interest for him, but when he told you about his own early years, or even when with inimitable mimicry he showed you how Craddock felt for a whisker, and looked at his plump little hands, he was immensely entertaining. Very likely he would soon become tiresome and familiar, but it would be time to drop him then.
Craddock was not in the least surprised at this lionizing of young Armstrong. Not only had he written the play which was undeniably the bull's-eye of the year, which in itself was sufficient, but, unlike most writers and artists, the strength of whose personality is absorbed into their achievements, he had this dominating personal force. Craddock knew well the mercantile value of the social excitement over the author of "Easter Eggs" (as he had said to Armstrong a dozen people talking was worth the shouting of two dozen journals), and while it lasted there was no question that stalls and dress-circles would overflow for his plays. Apparently, too, they had the no less valuable attraction for pit and gallery: there was a sincerity about his work that appealed to those who were not warmed by the mere crackle of epigrams and neat conversation. But while he welcomed Armstrong's appearance as a lion as a remunerative asset at the box-office, he was not so sure that he entirely approved of a possible intimacy between his new artist and his new playwright. He could not have definitely accounted for his distaste, but it was there, and though he was in the rapids that preceded his departure for Egypt, he found time next morning to go round to Charles' studio, ostensibly to see the finished portrait of his mother, but with a mind alert to sound a warning note as to undesirable companionship.
Charles the Joyful, as Craddock had christened him, received his visitor with arms open but with palette and brush and mahl-stick. The confidence which he had so easily won from the boy, at that first meeting by their weir, burned with a more serene brightness than ever, and his gratitude towards his patron was renewed morning by morning when he came into the comfortable well-appointed studio which had been given him.
"Oh, I say, Mr. Craddock," he exclaimed, "but it is jolly of you to come round to see me. Do say that you'll stop for lunch. It will be quite beastly by the way, but I promised to cook lunch for Lady Crowborough who is coming. But there are things in tins to eke out with."
Indeed this was a very different sort of protégé from him who had spilt the port last night, so much easier to deal with, so much more conscious of benefits. Gratitude and affection were so infinitely more becoming than the envious mistrust that Frank habitually exhibited. And how handsome the boy was, with his fresh colour, his kindled eyes, and unconscious grace of pose as he stood there palette on thumb! How fit to draw after him, like a magnet, the glances of some tall English girl. And at the thought, and at the remembrance of the injury he had done Charles, Craddock felt his dislike of him stir and hiss once more.
"I can't do that my dear Charles," he said, "as I have only a quarter of an hour to spare. Besides I am far too prudent to think of incurring Lady Crowborough's enmity by spoiling her tête-à-tête with you. But on this grey morning I felt it would do me good to see your Serene Joyfulness, and also the presentment of your Joyfulness' Mother which you tell me is finished."
Charles looked deprecating.
"I'm rather frightened," he said. "You see, I've changed it a lot since you saw it. I took out the whole of the head and painted it quite fresh and quite differently."
Craddock frowned ... it was as if Armstrong had interpolated an act in "Easter Eggs" without permission.
"My dear fellow, I don't think you had any business to do that without consulting me," he said. "I had said I would buy the picture: you knew too that I immensely admired it as it was. Where is it? Let me see it."
Charles seemed to resent this somewhat hectoring and school-master-like tone. Below the Serene Joyfulness there was something rather more firm and masculine than Craddock had expected.
"Oh, I can't concede to you the right to tell me how I shall paint," he said. "Just after you saw the picture the other day I suddenly saw I could do better than that. I must do my best. And as a matter of fact I don't think you will mind when you see it. Here it is, anyhow."
He wheeled the picture which was on an easel, face to the wall into position, and stood rather stiff and high-headed.
"I shall be sorry if you don't like it," he said, "but I can't help it."
Somehow it struck Craddock that Charles had grown tremendously in self-reliance and manliness since he had first seen that shy incredulous boy at the weir. He was disposed to take credit to himself for this: these weeks of happy expansion, of freedom from the dragging sense of dependence had made a man of him. And then still blameful he looked at the picture. Long he looked at it and silently, and quickly in his mind the conviction grew that he must climb quite completely down from his hectoring attitude. But, after all, it was not so difficult: there were compensations, for the lower he had to go, the higher the picture soared, soared like some sunlit ship-in-air.
"You were perfectly right," he said at length. "It was the rashest presumption in me to suppose that I knew better than you. That will make you famous. I was an utter fool, my dear Charles, to have imagined that you could have spoiled it."
"Oh, that's all right," said Charles, tall amid his certainties.
Again Craddock looked long at it.
"Is it finished now?" he asked humbly.
"I think so. It seems to be what I see, and a picture is finished when that's the case. I daresay I shall see more sometime: then I shall do another."
Craddock felt no call on his superlatives.
"I must say I shall be seriously anxious if I thought you were going to scrape it out again," he said, "though this time I shouldn't dream of interfering. Now what other work have you got on hand? I am off to Egypt in two days, and I should like to know I leave you busy. Did Mrs. Fortescue come to your studio? I recommended her to."
"I know: it was awfully good of you, and I am going to paint her. You told me to charge two hundred guineas, which seemed a tremendous lot."
"Not in the least. You won't remain at that figure long."
Charles made a face of comic distaste.
"I—I don't quite know how to paint her," he said. "I can't make her as young as it is clear she thinks herself, and I can't make her such a bore as I think her."
"How could your portrait show you think her a bore?" asked Craddock.
"How it shall not is my difficulty. I must try not to get a weary brush. Then Lady Crowborough says she will sit to me when she comes back in the spring. I shall love doing that. By the way——"
Charles hesitated a moment.
"You've been so extraordinarily kind to me," he said, "that perhaps you don't mind my consulting you. She told me to propose myself to go down and see my copy of the Reynolds picture when it was framed and in its place, and for the last month I've been ready to do so any day. But Mr. Wroughton wrote me rather a queer letter. He suggested that I should go down after they left for Egypt. It read to me rather as if he didn't want to see me. And I was so friendly with them all. What can have happened?"
Craddock assumed his most reassuring manner.
"Happened?" he said. "What on earth could have happened? You know our respected host down at the Mill House. I assure you when I was there three weeks ago for one night he could think about nothing but his underclothing for Egypt, and the price of pith-helmets. He had already, I believe, begun to pack his steamer-trunks and his medicine-chests. Do not give it another thought."
Charles gave a sigh of relief.
"I'm so glad you think that is the reason," he said. "All the same I should have liked to go down and say goodbye to—to them."
"To her, don't you mean?" said Craddock.
Charles flushed and laughed.
"Well, yes, to her," he said. "Why not?"
"Why not indeed? Every sensible young man likes to say some goodbye to a charming girl, if he can do no more than that. My dear fellow, if only I was your age, I should take a leaping heart to Egypt. And now that we've pricked that little troublesome bubble, tell me a little more about yourself and your life. I meant to have seen much more of you this last week or two, but I have been distractedly busy, and have seen no one but people on business. Apart from your work, have you been going about much?"
"Hardly at all. I don't know so many people you see. I dined with Lady Crowborough, though, a couple of nights ago, and she took me to a big party. Oh, and I met there such a strange queer fellow, name of Armstrong, who said he knew you. He wrote "Easter Eggs": such a ripping play. Have you seen it? He is going to take me to it next week."
Craddock puffed the smoked-out end of his cigarette from its amber tube into the grate.
"Yes, I know him," he said. "I should not have thought there was much in common between you."
"I'm not sure. I should like to find out. And, heavens, how I should like to paint his portrait. Where's the charcoal?"
Charles seized a stick and spread a loose sheet of paper on the table.
"Eye like that," he said, "with the eyebrow like a pent-house over it. Face, did you ever see such a jaw, square like that and hungry. That's the sort of face it pays to paint. There's something to catch hold of. And his ears are pointed, like a Satyr's. I think I must ask him to sit to me. I'll give him the portrait if he will."
Craddock took up this six-line sketch.
"Yes, very like, indeed," he said, "and a terrible face. And now I must go. But I wonder if you will resent a word of advice."
"Try," said Charles encouragingly.
"Well, I will. Now, my dear Charles, you are a young man just beginning your career, and it is immensely important you should get among the right people. The Latin quarter in Paris is one thing: Bohemianism in London is quite another. For the next forty years your work will be to paint these charming mothers and daughters of England. They have got to come and sit to you in your studio. They won't if they find that it savours of the Bohemian. You can't be too careful as to your friends, for the strongest and most self-sufficient people take their colour from their friends: they can't help it."
He laid his plump white hand, which he had been observing, on Charles' shoulder.
"You must pardon me," he said, "but I have got to the time of life when an unmarried man wishes he had a son growing up. But I have none,—I have to expend my unfruitful potentiality of parentage elsewhere. If you were my son, I should choose your friends for you so carefully."
There was something pathetic and unexpected about this, which could not but touch Charles. But somehow he felt as if he ought to have been more touched....
"À proposof Armstrong?" he suggested.
"À proposof intimacy with Mr. Armstrong in general," said Craddock, feeling somehow that he had missed fire, and that it was as well to get behind a hedge again.
Charles nodded. Then suddenly he felt his own lack of responsiveness: he felt also, though without touch of priggishness, that here was a man who had been wonderfully good to him, and who felt the burden of the years that were not lightened by the tie of fatherhood with youth. It struck him suddenly, vaguely but convincingly.
"You have been as kind as a father to me," he said quickly. "I hope I don't pay you with a son's proverbial ingratitude. You have been like a father to me—I—I've often wanted to tell you that."
He looked up a moment at Craddock, and then seized with a fit of misgiving at his blurted outspokenness, shied away from the subject, like some young colt.
"But I should like to paint Armstrong's portrait," he said. "I promise you that you would not think I had wasted my time."
Craddock appeared to accept this sudden switching off of sentiment.
"I will leave you free from any option of mine regarding it," he said. "To have it on the wall opposite me would certainly cause me indigestion, if it was as like as your charcoal sketch. The truth is he has not behaved very nicely to me. I tried to befriend him, as I have tried to befriend you, but with less success in amicable relationship. It is a mere nothing, but I felt I might do worse than give you a word of warning. It is of course for your private ear alone. Goodbye, my dear Charles. I shall let you know when I get back from the land of bondage. And accept my long experience to make your mind easy over the matter of going down to see your admirable copy of that Reynolds picture. I should not for instance, confide in Lady Crowborough. God bless you!"
Craddock took the unusual step of walking back to Berkeley Square after he had left Charles, and as he pursued his portly way up the Brompton Road, he thought rather intently over what he had said, and again, as on the evening when he had let drop a few lying words to Philip Wroughton, he felt he had not spoken amiss. He could not possibly prevent an acquaintance between his two protégés, nor could he certainly prevent it ripening into an intimacy, but he felt he had spoken well when he hinted that Armstrong had not behaved very nicely to him. As a rule, he did not much believe in the stability of such an emotion as gratitude, but he believed very strongly in the child-like simplicity of Charles. In this his conclusions were firmly founded, for in the course of his life he had never come across, as a matter of fact, so guileless and unsuspicious a nature. He almost regretted the necessity of deceiving him, for the feat was so inconspicuous a one. Charles was a child, a child with a divine gift, of which he himself was in the position to take secure advantage. After all nurses and kind mothers habitually deceived children: they told them that if they squinted and the wind changed, their squint would be permanent: they told them that many poor beggars would be glad of the food they rejected, in order to induce them to swallow it, and thus, incidentally, to extinguish altogether the outside chance of a poor beggar getting it: they told them that God would be angry with them if they disobeyed orders and got their feet wet.... Charles was just a child. Though certainly he had grown a good deal lately. But his soul was a child's.
It was not until he had walked as far as Hyde Park corner that he knew he was waging a war instead of merely conducting a child's education. He was at war, he with his obese person and half-century of years, with the generation that had sprung up after him, and was now realising the zenith of its youthful vigour. Already it trod on his heels, already he seemed to hear in his ears its intolerant laughter at his portly progress, and his first acute attack of middle-age stabbed him like the lumbago from which he occasionally suffered. It seemed to him a devilish complaint, not to be acquiesced in, but to be ostentatiously disregarded and denied. Even since last June, when he had first felt the charm and the need of girlhood, he had suspected this foe, and the fact that Charles admitted the attraction which was his magnet also, stiffened his resistance. He hated the young generation, chiefly because his own youth had been a bloodless affair, but he did not feel himself old, except when he met the guileless eyes of Charles, or the vindictive glance of young Armstrong. Both of these, in their widely different fashions, illumined the truth, and thus for them, these young and vigorous males, he cherished an enmity that rivalled Armstrong's. But he was not shelved and done with yet. As far as the attainment of love went, he entered the lists against Charles, as far as hard business capacity went, he was willing to meet Armstrong. But he had suffered an initial defeat on either hand. On the one side Armstrong had taken this remodelled play into his own control, on the other—this was more subtle—Charles had been able to paint that rough sketch of Joyce among the forget-me-nots. Yet he had weapons against these attacks. He could and would write feebly appreciative notices of the play, more damning than any slash of onslaught, he could and would go southwards with Joyce, and her approving father, the day after to-morrow.