‘O, my uncle, this cloth knew not the weavers of Samarkand, and those colours were never made in the vasts of Bokhara.'
‘Twenty-five francs,' smiled the pedlar obsequiously.
‘Ultima Thule was the place of its manufacture, even Birmingham, the place of my birth.'
‘Fifteen francs,' cringed the bearded man.
‘Get thee gone, fellow,' said Cronshaw. ‘May wild asses defile the grave of thy maternal grandmother.'
Imperturbably, but smiling no more, the Levantine passed with his wares to another table. Cronshaw turned to Philip.
‘Have you ever been to the Cluny, the museum? There you will see Persian carpets of the most exquisite hue and of a pattern the beautiful intricacy of which delights and amazes the eye. In them you will see the mystery and the sensual beauty of the East, the roses of Hafiz and the wine-cup of Omar; but presently you will see more. You were asking just now what was the meaning of life. Go and look at those Persian carpets, and one of these days the answer will come to you.'
‘You are cryptic,' said Philip.
‘I am drunk,' answered Cronshaw.
XLVI
PHILIP DID not find living in Paris as cheap as he had been led to believe and by February had spent most of the money with which he started. He was too proud to appeal to his guardian, nor did he wish Aunt Louisa to know that his circumstances were straitened, since he was certain she would make an effort to send him something from her own pocket, and he knew how little she could afford to. In three months he would attain his majority and come into possession of his small fortune. He tided over the interval by selling the few trinkets which he had inherited from his father.
At about this time Lawson suggested that they should take a small studio which was vacant in one of the streets that led out of the Boulevard Raspail. It was very cheap. It had a room attached, which they could use as a bedroom; and since Philip was at the school every morning Lawson could have the undisturbed use of the studio then; Lawson, after wandering from school to school, had come to the conclusion that he could work best alone, and proposed to get a model in three or four days a week. At first Philip hesitated on account of the expense, but they reckoned it out; and it seemed (they were so anxious to have a studio of their own that they calculated pragmatically) that the cost would not be much greater than that of living in a hotel. Though the rent and the cleaning by the concierge would come to a little more, they would save on the petit déjeuner, which they could make themselves. A year or two earlier Philip would have refused to share a room with anyone, since he was so sensitive about his deformed foot, but his morbid way of looking at it was growing less marked: in Paris it did not seem to matter so much, and though he never by any chance forgot it himself, he ceased to feel that other people were constantly noticing it.
They moved in, bought a couple of beds, a washing-stand, a few chairs, and felt for the first time the thrill of possession. They were so excited that the first night they went to bed in what they could call a home they lay awake talking till three in the morning; and next day found lighting the fire and making their own coffee, which they had in pyjamas, such a jolly business that Philip did not get to Amitrano's till nearly eleven. He was in excellent spirits. He nodded to Fanny Price.
‘How are you getting on?' he asked cheerily.
‘What does that matter to you?' she asked in reply.
Philip could not help laughing.
‘Don't jump down my throat. I was only trying to make myself polite.'
‘I don't want your politeness.'
‘D'you think it's worth while quarrelling with me too?' asked Philip mildly. ‘There are so few people you're on speaking terms with, as it is.'
‘That's my business, isn't it?'
‘Quite.'
He began to work, vaguely wondering why Fanny Price made herself so disagreeable. He had come to the conclusion that he thoroughly disliked her. Everyone did. People were only civil to her at all from fear of the malice of her tongue; for to their faces and behind their backs she said abominable things. But Philip was feeling so happy that he did not want even Miss Price to bear ill-feeling towards him. He used the artifice which had often before succeeded in banishing her ill-humour.
‘I say, I wish you'd come and look at my drawing. I've got in an awful mess.'
‘Thank you very much, but I've got something better to do with my time.'
Philip stared at her in surprise, for the one thing she could be counted upon to do with alacrity was to give advice. She went on quickly in a low voice, savage with fury:
‘Now that Lawson's gone you think you'll put up with me. Thank you very much. Go and find somebody else to help you. I don't want anybody else's leavings.'
Lawson had the pedagogic instinct; whenever he found anything out he was eager to impart it; and because he taught with delight he taught with profit. Philip, without thinking anything about it, had got into the habit of sitting by his side; it never occurred to him that Fanny Price was consumed with jealousy, and watched his acceptance of someone else's tuition with ever-increasing anger.
‘You were very glad to put up with me when you knew nobody here,' she said bitterly, ‘and as soon as you made friends with other people you threw me aside, like an old glove'—she repeated the stale metaphor with satisfaction—‘like an old glove. All right, I don't care, but I'm not going to be made a fool of another time.'
There was a suspicion of truth in what she said, and it made Philip angry enough to answer what first came into his head.
‘Hang it all, I only asked your advice because I saw it pleased you.'
She gave a gasp and threw him a sudden look of anguish. Then two tears rolled down her cheeks. She looked frowsy and grotesque. Philip, not knowing what on earth this new attitude implied, went back to his work. He was uneasy and conscience-stricken; but he would not go to her and say he was sorry if he had caused her pain, because he was afraid she would take the opportunity to snub him. For two or three weeks she did not speak to him, and after Philip had got over the discomfort of being cut by her, he was somewhat relieved to be free from so difficult a friendship. He had been a little disconcerted by the air of proprietorship she assumed over him. She was an extraordinary woman. She came every day to the studio at eight o'clock, and was ready to start working when the model was in position; she worked steadily, talking to no one, struggling hour after hour with difficulties she could not overcome, and remained till the clock struck twelve. Her work was hopeless. There was not in it the smallest approach even to the mediocre achievement at which most of the young persons were able after some months to arrive. She wore every day the same ugly brown dress, with the mud of the last wet day still caked on the hem and with the raggedness, which Philip had noticed the first time he saw her, still unmended.
But one day she came up to him, and with a scarlet face asked whether she might speak to him afterwards.
‘Of course, as much as you like,' smiled Philip. ‘I'll wait behind at twelve.'
He went to her when the day's work was over.
‘Will you walk a little bit with me?' she said, looking away from him with embarrassment.
‘Certainly.'
They walked for two or three minutes in silence.
‘D'you remember what you said to me the other day?' she asked then on a sudden.
‘Oh, I say, don't let's quarrel,' said Philip. ‘It really isn't worth while.'
She gave a quick, painful inspiration.
‘I don't want to quarrel with you. You're the only friend I had in Paris. I thought you rather liked me. I felt there was something between us. I was drawn towards you—you know what I mean, your club-foot.'
Philip reddened and instinctively tried to walk without a limp. He did not like anyone to mention the deformity. He knew what Fanny Price meant. She was ugly and uncouth, and because he was deformed there was between them a certain sympathy. He was very angry with her, but he forced himself not to speak.
&nbs
p; ‘You said you only asked my advice to please me. Don't you think my work's any good?'
‘I've only seen your drawing at Amitrano's. It's awfully hard to judge from that.'
‘I was wondering if you'd come and look at my other work. I've never asked anyone else to look at it. I should like to show it to you.'
‘It's awfully kind of you. I'd like to see it very much.'
‘I live quite near here,' she said apologetically. ‘It'll only take you ten minutes.'
‘Oh, that's all right,' he said.
They were walking along the boulevard, and she turned down a side street, then led him into another, poorer still, with cheap shops on the ground floor, and at last stopped. They climbed flight after flight of stairs. She unlocked a door, and they went into a tiny attic with a sloping roof and a small window. This was closed and the room had a musty smell. Though it was very cold there was no fire and no sign that there had been one. The bed was unmade. A chair, a chest of drawers which served also as a wash-stand, and a cheap easel, were all the furniture. The place would have been squalid enough in any case, but the litter, the untidiness, made the impression revolting. On the chimney-piece, scattered over with paints and brushes, were a cup, a dirty plate, and a teapot.
‘If you'll stand over there I'll put them on the chair so that you can see them better.'
She showed him twenty small canvases, about eighteen by twelve. She placed them on the chair, one after the other, watching his face; he nodded as he looked at each one.
‘You do like them, don't you?' she said anxiously, after a bit.
‘I just want to look at them all first,' he answered. ‘I'll talk afterwards.'
He was collecting himself. He was panic-stricken. He did not know what to say. It was not only that they were ill-drawn, or that the colour was put on amateurishly by someone who had no eye for it; but there was no attempt at getting the values, and the perspective was grotesque. It looked like the work of a child of five, but a child would have had some naïveté and might at least have made an attempt to put down what he saw; but here was the work of a vulgar mind chock-full of recollections of vulgar pictures. Philip remembered that she had talked enthusiastically about Monet and the impressionists, but here were only the worst traditions of the Royal Academy.
‘There,' she said at last, ‘that's the lot.'
Philip was no more truthful than anybody else, but he had a great difficulty in telling a thundering, deliberate lie, and he blushed furiously when he answered:
‘I think they're most awfully good.'
A faint colour came into her unhealthy cheeks, and she smiled a little.
‘You needn't say so if you don't think so, you know. I want the truth.'
‘But I do think so.'
‘Haven't you got any criticism to offer? There must be some you don't like as well as others.'
Philip looked round helplessly. He saw a landscape, the typical picturesque ‘bit' of the amateur, an old bridge, a creeper-clad cottage, and a leafy bank.
‘Of course I don't pretend to know anything about it,' he said. ‘But I wasn't quite sure about the values of that.'
She flushed darkly and taking up the picture quickly turned its back to him.
‘I don't know why you should have chosen that one to sneer at. It's the best thing I've ever done. I'm sure my values are all right. That's a thing you can't teach anyone, you either understand values or you don't.'
‘I think they're all most awfully good,' repeated Philip.
She looked at them with an air of self-satisfaction.
‘I don't think they're anything to be ashamed of.'
Philip looked at his watch.
‘I say, it's getting late. Won't you let me give you a little lunch?'
‘I've got my lunch waiting for me here.'
Philip saw no sign of it, but supposed perhaps the concierge would bring it up when he was gone. He was in a hurry to get away. The mustiness of the room made his head ache.
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, straightforward 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 Mère, 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 civilized. 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 La 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 speciality); and this was to be followed by poires flambées, 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 whisky; 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.
‘Rampunzel, Rampunzel, 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.
Of Human Bondage Page 28
