Of Human Bondage
“There,” she said at last, “that’s the lot.”
Philip was no more truthful than anybody else, but he had a great
difficulty in telling a thundering, deliberate lie, and he blushed
furiously when he answered:
“I think they’re most awfully good.”
A faint colour came into her unhealthy cheeks, and she smiled a little.
“You needn’t say so if you don’t think so, you know. I want the truth.”
“But I do think so.”
“Haven’t you got any criticism to offer? There must be some you don’t
like as well as others.”
Philip looked round helplessly. He saw a landscape, the typical
picturesque ‘bit’ of the amateur, an old bridge, a creeper-clad
cottage, and a leafy bank.
“Of course I don’t pretend to know anything about it,” he said. “But I
wasn’t quite sure about the values of that.”
She flushed darkly and taking up the picture quickly turned its back to
him.
“I don’t know why you should have chosen that one to sneer at. It’s the
best thing I’ve ever done. I’m sure my values are all right. That’s a
thing you can’t teach anyone, you either understand values or you
don’t.”
“I think they’re all most awfully good,” repeated Philip.
She looked at them with an air of self-satisfaction.
“I don’t think they’re anything to be ashamed of.”
Philip looked at his watch.
“I say, it’s getting late. Won’t you let me give you a little lunch?”
“I’ve got my lunch waiting for me here.”
Philip saw no sign of it, but supposed perhaps the concierge would
bring it up when he was gone. He was in a hurry to get away. The
mustiness of the room made his head ache.
XLVII
In March there was all the excitement of sending in to the Salon.
Clutton, characteristically, had nothing ready, and he was very
scornful of the two heads that Lawson sent; they were obviously the
work of a student, straight-forward portraits of models, but they had a
certain force; Clutton, aiming at perfection, had no patience with
efforts which betrayed hesitancy, and with a shrug of the shoulders
told Lawson it was an impertinence to exhibit stuff which should never
have been allowed out of his studio; he was not less contemptuous when
the two heads were accepted. Flanagan tried his luck too, but his
picture was refused. Mrs. Otter sent a blameless Portrait de ma Mere,
accomplished and second-rate; and was hung in a very good place.
Hayward, whom Philip had not seen since he left Heidelberg, arrived in
Paris to spend a few days in time to come to the party which Lawson and
Philip were giving in their studio to celebrate the hanging of Lawson’s
pictures. Philip had been eager to see Hayward again, but when at last
they met, he experienced some disappointment. Hayward had altered a
little in appearance: his fine hair was thinner, and with the rapid
wilting of the very fair, he was becoming wizened and colourless; his
blue eyes were paler than they had been, and there was a muzziness
about his features. On the other hand, in mind he did not seem to have
changed at all, and the culture which had impressed Philip at eighteen
aroused somewhat the contempt of Philip at twenty-one. He had altered a
good deal himself, and regarding with scorn all his old opinions of
art, life, and letters, had no patience with anyone who still held
them. He was scarcely conscious of the fact that he wanted to show off
before Hayward, but when he took him round the galleries he poured out
to him all the revolutionary opinions which himself had so recently
adopted. He took him to Manet’s Olympia and said dramatically:
“I would give all the old masters except Velasquez, Rembrandt, and
Vermeer for that one picture.”
“Who was Vermeer?” asked Hayward.
“Oh, my dear fellow, don’t you know Vermeer? You’re not civilised. You
mustn’t live a moment longer without making his acquaintance. He’s the
one old master who painted like a modern.”
He dragged Hayward out of the Luxembourg and hurried him off to the
Louvre.
“But aren’t there any more pictures here?” asked Hayward, with the
tourist’s passion for thoroughness.
“Nothing of the least consequence. You can come and look at them by
yourself with your Baedeker.”
When they arrived at the Louvre Philip led his friend down the Long
Gallery.
“I should like to see The Gioconda,” said Hayward.
“Oh, my dear fellow, it’s only literature,” answered Philip.
At last, in a small room, Philip stopped before The Lacemaker of
Vermeer van Delft.
“There, that’s the best picture in the Louvre. It’s exactly like a
Manet.”
With an expressive, eloquent thumb Philip expatiated on the charming
work. He used the jargon of the studios with overpowering effect.
“I don’t know that I see anything so wonderful as all that in it,” said
Hayward.
“Of course it’s a painter’s picture,” said Philip. “I can quite believe
the layman would see nothing much in it.”
“The what?” said Hayward.
“The layman.”
Like most people who cultivate an interest in the arts, Hayward was
extremely anxious to be right. He was dogmatic with those who did not
venture to assert themselves, but with the self-assertive he was very
modest. He was impressed by Philip’s assurance, and accepted meekly
Philip’s implied suggestion that the painter’s arrogant claim to be the
sole possible judge of painting has anything but its impertinence to
recommend it.
A day or two later Philip and Lawson gave their party. Cronshaw, making
an exception in their favour, agreed to eat their food; and Miss
Chalice offered to come and cook for them. She took no interest in her
own sex and declined the suggestion that other girls should be asked
for her sake. Clutton, Flanagan, Potter, and two others made up the
party. Furniture was scarce, so the model stand was used as a table,
and the guests were to sit on portmanteaux if they liked, and if they
didn’t on the floor. The feast consisted of a pot-au-feu, which Miss
Chalice had made, of a leg of mutton roasted round the corner and
brought round hot and savoury (Miss Chalice had cooked the potatoes,
and the studio was redolent of the carrots she had fried; fried carrots
were her specialty); and this was to be followed by poires flambees,
pears with burning brandy, which Cronshaw had volunteered to make. The
meal was to finish with an enormous fromage de Brie, which stood near
the window and added fragrant odours to all the others which filled the
studio. Cronshaw sat in the place of honour on a Gladstone bag, with
his legs curled under him like a Turkish bashaw, beaming good-naturedly
on the young people who surrounded him. From force of habit, though the
small studio with the stove lit was very hot, he kept on his
great-coat, with the collar turned up, and his bowler hat: he looked
with satisfaction on the four large fiaschi of Chianti which stood in
front of him in a row, two on each side of a bottle of whiskey; he said
it reminded him of a slim fair Circassian guarded by four corpulent
eunuchs. Hayward in order to put the rest of them at their ease had
clothed himself in a tweed suit and a Trinity Hall tie. He looked
grotesquely British. The others were elaborately polite to him, and
during the soup they talked of the weather and the political situation.
There was a pause while they waited for the leg of mutton, and Miss
Chalice lit a cigarette.
“Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair,” she said suddenly.
With an elegant gesture she untied a ribbon so that her tresses fell
over her shoulders. She shook her head.
“I always feel more comfortable with my hair down.”
With her large brown eyes, thin, ascetic face, her pale skin, and broad
forehead, she might have stepped out of a picture by Burne-Jones. She
had long, beautiful hands, with fingers deeply stained by nicotine. She
wore sweeping draperies, mauve and green. There was about her the
romantic air of High Street, Kensington. She was wantonly aesthetic;
but she was an excellent creature, kind and good natured; and her
affectations were but skin-deep. There was a knock at the door, and
they all gave a shout of exultation. Miss Chalice rose and opened. She
took the leg of mutton and held it high above her, as though it were
the head of John the Baptist on a platter; and, the cigarette still in
her mouth, advanced with solemn, hieratic steps.
“Hail, daughter of Herodias,” cried Cronshaw.
The mutton was eaten with gusto, and it did one good to see what a
hearty appetite the pale-faced lady had. Clutton and Potter sat on each
side of her, and everyone knew that neither had found her unduly coy.
She grew tired of most people in six weeks, but she knew exactly how to
treat afterwards the gentlemen who had laid their young hearts at her
feet. She bore them no ill-will, though having loved them she had
ceased to do so, and treated them with friendliness but without
familiarity. Now and then she looked at Lawson with melancholy eyes.
The poires flambees were a great success, partly because of the brandy,
and partly because Miss Chalice insisted that they should be eaten with
the cheese.
“I don’t know whether it’s perfectly delicious, or whether I’m just
going to vomit,” she said, after she had thoroughly tried the mixture.
Coffee and cognac followed with sufficient speed to prevent any
untoward consequence, and they settled down to smoke in comfort. Ruth
Chalice, who could do nothing that was not deliberately artistic,
arranged herself in a graceful attitude by Cronshaw and just rested her
exquisite head on his shoulder. She looked into the dark abyss of time
with brooding eyes, and now and then with a long meditative glance at
Lawson she sighed deeply.
Then came the summer, and restlessness seized these young people. The
blue skies lured them to the sea, and the pleasant breeze sighing
through the leaves of the plane-trees on the boulevard drew them
towards the country. Everyone made plans for leaving Paris; they
discussed what was the most suitable size for the canvases they meant
to take; they laid in stores of panels for sketching; they argued about
the merits of various places in Brittany. Flanagan and Potter went to
Concarneau; Mrs. Otter and her mother, with a natural instinct for the
obvious, went to Pont-Aven; Philip and Lawson made up their minds to go
to the forest of Fontainebleau, and Miss Chalice knew of a very good
hotel at Moret where there was lots of stuff to paint; it was near
Paris, and neither Philip nor Lawson was indifferent to the railway
fare. Ruth Chalice would be there, and Lawson had an idea for a
portrait of her in the open air. Just then the Salon was full of
portraits of people in gardens, in sunlight, with blinking eyes and
green reflections of sunlit leaves on their faces. They asked Clutton
to go with them, but he preferred spending the summer by himself. He
had just discovered Cezanne, and was eager to go to Provence; he wanted
heavy skies from which the hot blue seemed to drip like beads of sweat,
and broad white dusty roads, and pale roofs out of which the sun had
burnt the colour, and olive trees gray with heat.
The day before they were to start, after the morning class, Philip,
putting his things together, spoke to Fanny Price.
“I’m off tomorrow,” he said cheerfully.
“Off where?” she said quickly. “You’re not going away?” Her face fell.
“I’m going away for the summer. Aren’t you?”
“No, I’m staying in Paris. I thought you were going to stay too. I was
looking forward….”
She stopped and shrugged her shoulders.
“But won’t it be frightfully hot here? It’s awfully bad for you.”
“Much you care if it’s bad for me. Where are you going?”
“Moret.”
“Chalice is going there. You’re not going with her?”
“Lawson and I are going. And she’s going there too. I don’t know that
we’re actually going together.”
She gave a low guttural sound, and her large face grew dark and red.