by George Moore
“I wish I knew where to find him,” repeated Lewis, looking about him anxiously, and nodding rapidly to his acquaintances so that they should see that he didn’t want to be interrupted.
“If he is writing about “The modems” we may probably find him near their pictures,” suggested Lady Helen.
“Not a bad idea; come, I’ll show you Frazer’s Railway Junction,” replied Lewis, plucking up courage.
The picture was not difficult to find; it was surrounded by a jeering crowd; ladies, critics, and artists pressed forward smiling and curious to see, and then retired shaking with laughter. Frazer watched from the other side of the room, and his long, sallow face showed no trace of either anger or disappointment.
“That’s Frazer,” Lewis whispered to Lady Helen; “did you ever see anything like it. If my picture were laughed at like that, I think I should die.”
“What a curious man he is,” replied Lady Helen, looking at the enthusiast with interest. “I should like to know him.”
“Oh, impossible,” returned Lewis; “he says the most extraordinary things, but I’d give anything to show you his studio. He used to keep a raven that he had taught to say, ‘Frazer is a great painter:’ he used to call the bird his art critic. He’s the most curious card you ever saw in your life. But, come and look at his picture.”
Frazer’s picture represented a railway junction seen from above, probably from a railway bridge. Through clouds of steam three or four engines loomed indistinctly, their yellow wheels glaring horribly.
“Well, do you know,” said Lady Helen, after a long pause, “it doesn’t seem to me to be as bad as you say it is. The wide, grey track covered with a network of lines is very real, and it is like no one; you can’t say it isn’t original.”
“What’s the use of being original and bad?” said Lewis, pettishly; “I’d sooner be like someone, and do good work.”
The argument perplexed her, and she was annoyed that she could not answer it.
“But,” said Lewis, stopping suddenly, “there’s Holt’s picture; did you ever see anything so shockingly coarse?”
The last phrase was whispered softly to Lady Helen; and then, in the hope of being overheard, Lewis talked loudly and extravagantly in its praise.
Holt’s picture showed a group of peasant women bathing in a shady pool. Overcome with heat, they had left the glaring cornfields, indicated here and there through the opening in the trees, and were plunging about in a way that clearly showed that bathing was to them a novelty. Both in conception and handling, it was undoubtedly a very powerful painting; and being a sort of compromise between “The classics” and “The moderns,” mightily pleased the dilettanti and critics, who prided themselves on their impartiality.
Lewis continued to point out the merits of the picture, and, as luck would have it, his words were not wasted; for Harding, who was passing at the time, stopped to listen. At first the novelist did not intend to speak, but he was so astonished at hearing Lewis praise Holt’s picture, instead of abusing it, that he could not help saying:
“I shouldn’t have thought that you would have cared for anything so modern as that.”
Lewis turned round at once, surprised at the success he had so quickly achieved. He shook Harding warmly by the hand, and declared he was delighted to see him. Then, after these expressions of good will, Lewis said that the peasant women were simply magnificent; and that he wasn’t in the least opposed to “The moderns” when they took the trouble to draw correctly. This opinion being very much Harding’s own, he felt already disposed to take a more lenient view of the man whom he intended to “slate;” and an introduction to Lady Helen helped him, in a few minutes, to believe that Lewis was not half such a bad fellow after all. She congratulated him on his last novel, mentioning certain details which obviously pleased him. Then she questioned him about the new phrase “Positivism of art,” and laughingly declared that she was sure he was the author of it. For the moment, Harding forgot to pry into the truth and falseness of things; and, blindfolded, Lady Helen led the analyst away to talk to him of her poetry.
The excitement of introducing his wife to Harding being over, Lewis began to grow dejected, and to think again of Mrs. Bentham. Looking about for her, he passed from room to room, until he found himself opposite his Clytemnæstra. Now and again a small group would form round it, but it suffered from the presence of a large landscape on the right, which was much admired, and Crossley’s pictures of race-horses, which attracted a good deal of attention.
Lewis examined his picture with painful curiosity. As he did so he remembered his hopes and expectations; they rose before him a pale vision of folly and weak imaginings.
He felt quite disgusted with himself. Clytemnæstra appeared to him the most wretched and ludicrous thing he had ever seen; and a cruel temptation rose up in his mind to take a penknife from his pocket and cut it down from the walls. A cynical smile curled round his lips as he thought of what a scene there would be were he, quite politely, to ask one of the people about to oblige him with the loan of a knife. Then, one — two — three, and the whole thing would be finished. Such foolish fancies afforded him for the moment a sort of bitter amusement; and, allowing his thoughts to wander, he examined unconsciously the different women that passed. A certain green dress interested him, and be followed it with his eyes until he was suddenly startled by a voice speaking behind him:
“Well, Mr. Seymour, which of us do you give the apple to It was Mrs. Campbell Ward. By her side, with dyed whiskers and hair, his portly stomach tightly buttoned in a superb new frock coat, was Lord Worthing.
“To whom am I to give the apple?” said Lewis, smiling gaily — a woman always brushed sorrow from his heart—” Am! Paris, then, that I have the apple to give?”
“Certainly,” said Mrs. Campbell Ward, flashing her large eyes. “Have you not won Helen?”
Lewis laughed lightly, and his face became grave as he thought of a reply. Lord Worthing had moved aside and was looking at the Clytemnæstra. Lewis watched him a moment, and then said, with obvious satisfaction, for he prided himself on his esprit:
“Yes, but if you were Eve, and I were Adam, would you give it to me?”
“It is quite possible that I would,” replied the professional beauty, with a quiet glance. Lewis was in the habit of deciphering such glances, and he said to himself: “By Jove! I wonder I didn’t guess it before; there’s no doubt but she has a fancy for me.” But at this moment Lord Worthing, who had finished his examination of the Clytemnæstra, addressed himself to Lewis. Mrs. Campbell Ward listened to his twaddling talk impatiently. At last she could stand it no longer, and, determined to get rid of him, she said:
“Have you seen my husband lately, Mr. Seymour? I promised to meet him about half-past one; it must be that now.” Lewis replied that he had not seen Mr. Ward for the last hour or so.
“Oh! how very tiresome; he will be looking for me everywhere. I wish, Lord Worthing, you would see if you could find him. I’ll wait here; Mr. Seymour will take care of me.”
The old gentleman hesitated a moment, but there was nothing for it but to go and seek for husband.
As he disappeared in the crowd, Lewis and Mrs. Ward looked at each other; it was a look that meant a great deal. “Thank Heaven,” it seemed to say, “now he’s gone we can talk at our ease.” After a moment’s pause, Lewis said:
“I am glad you like my picture, Mrs. Ward.”
“Oh, I think it perfectly lovely, the arms are so sweet.”
“They don’t quite satisfy me. Ah! if I had had your arms to draw from.”
“You have never seen my arms: they mightn’t suit you at all.”
“Never seen your arms? I think I have had the honour of feeling them on my shoulders — at balls.”
“Oh, yes; but a Greek dress shows more of the figure than a ball dress.”
“Yes, but I can judge of a rose by the bud... You must come... and sit to me... I am sure I could—”
; “And what would your wife say?”
“What could she say? — a mere question of art. You would be doing me a great service. A picture of you by me would be talked of everywhere.”
“And my husband, I don’t think he would consent. You know you have such a bad reputation. They say you make love to every woman.”
“There is very little love I would care to accept were it offered me — nothing less,” he murmured with a sigh, “than a supreme desire is worth gratifying.”
Mrs. Ward laughed nervously, and Lewis congratulated himself on the way he had spoken, and thought how nicely he had hinted at things without saying anything that could by any possibility be turned against him. Mrs. Ward puzzled her brain to think how she should arrange a rendezvous.
After a pause she said, “What a long time Lord Worthing is away; I wish he’d come back. I want my husband to take me to lunch, I’m dying of hunger.”
“And is that what you want your husband for?” replied Lewis, laughingly. “You do surprise me. Really if you had told me you wanted him to kiss you, you could not have astonished me more.”
This remark both of these professional beauties considered excruciatingly funny, and, with a great deal of laughter, Mrs. Ward said:
“Oh, you mustn’t make me laugh so” (she burst forth again), “you are really too shamefully wicked.”
Enchanted at the success of his joke, Lewis thought of sending it to Punch; and they walked down the galleries, conscious of no one but themselves, penetrated and tickled with many pleasurable feelings. The pictures they did not even see; and when they got entangled in a group of artists, their only thought was how they could quickest rid themselves of such hum-drum bores. After many twists and turns, Lewis contrived to ask Mrs. Campbell Ward if she would like to go out to lunch with him.
“But how shall I come back here! It would look quite awful.”
“But you won’t come back here,” said Lewis, gaily. “I will put you in a cab and send you home, and I can tell Lord Worthing and your husband that you were so tired looking at the pictures that you could wait no longer, and that will be the truth, for you have had enough of this place, haven’t you?”
Mrs. Campbell Ward raised her eyes; words were weak to express her weariness of the place, and they walked out of Burlington House together.
“There are even occasions when it is unpleasant to be well known,” said Lewis, as he followed Mrs. Ward into a cab, and told the driver to go to the Café Royal There was a side door, he assured her, in one of the back streets, a little back passage, the most convenient thing in the world, not a particle of risk.
After some difficulty this luxury of modern life was explained to the dull-headed coachman, and five minutes after Lewis Seymour and Mrs. Campbell Ward, these two representatives of fashion and art, were passing up a black back stair, smelling of beer and grease.
“It’s dirty but it’s safe,” said Lewis, referring to the back way as they were ushered into a private room — a snug little nook with a glaring look of public vice. There was a chair and a divan, both covered with red velvet, and the table was laid for two. The ceremonious Swiss waiter closed the window, and took the order for lamb cutlets and a bottle of champagne. When he left the room there was a slight hesitation, but, taking Mrs. Ward’s hand. Lewis said: “And when shall I see these beautiful arms in a Greek dress?”
The professional beauty answered, “If you are good, one of these days.”
“You promise me I shall see your arms in a Greek dress, or, the equivalent?”
This sally provoked much laughter, after which Mrs. Ward gave the required promise.
“And now give me a kiss to seal that promise with.”
They bent their heads and kissed each other.
It being the first occasion he had betrayed his wife’s trust, he was for a while in an ephemeral sort of a way conscious of his own baseness. Somewhat frightened, he asked himself bow he could have done such a thing. He had often acted equally vilely, but was nevertheless now ashamed to find that he had accepted a woman whom he did not love, whom he did not even remotely desire, because her viciousness had enabled him for an hour or so to forget his disappointments. With characteristic treachery and cowardice he turned on the woman, and in his thoughts denounced her as a vain fat creature, with the airs and caprices of a macaw.
It was the suddenness of the sin that had discovered in Lewis Seymour this thin streak of conscience, or, rather, of nervous irritability. Many events had happened, and it was the combination of these that had produced this unique result. For above other things he could not help recollecting how he had left his wife working in his interest, and he thought, with some tenderness, how good she was, how much she had given up for him. There was no subject of reflection that pleased him so much as to think of the women who had loved him, of how they had sacrificed themselves for him. Naturally, Gwynnie Lloyd and Mrs. Bentham came uppermost in his thoughts, and his sensibilities being on this day strung to a keen pitch, it dawned upon him, in a vague, glimmering way, that perhaps some part of the success he had achieved in his life was owing to the assistance he had received from women. He did not quite reach this most certain fact, he grazed it as a ship might a rock, for his vanity came to his assistance immediately, and floated him into dreams where he could luxuriate at ease. A hundred pleasant memories of the compliments he had received thronged on his mind at once, how that dealer and this amateur had come into his studio, and been perfectly dumbfoundered by the grace and beauty of his work, how they had given proof of the genuineness of their admiration by paying their money. And then it was not difficult to find reasons for Thompson’s success and his own failure. It was easy to think that Thompson was surrounded by a lot of friends, Holt and the rest, who hated Lewis Seymour, for he had succeeded by legitimate means, which they couldn’t do. He had never descended to painting bar girls and housemaids. He had stuck to the nude, and he was the only person who could sell it; and if his pictures did sell it was not because they were the fashion but for the good work that was in them.
In this way Lewis’s thoughts ran on until he arrived at Burlington House. Indeed, so occupied was he in considering the shameful neglect that had been shown him that he had almost forgotten his own treachery. His remorse was already a phantom of the past; and, assuring himself that he had far more important things to think of, he dismissed the subject for ever from his thoughts.
In this frame of mind he ran up the stairs, and passed through the turnstile into the galleries. The first person who caught his eye was Thompson. He was surrounded by a crowd of journalists and artists. A bitter feeling of envy rose up in Lewis’s mind, and now he hated his former friend with all the strength his weak soul was capable of. Nevertheless, he wished to be seen speaking to the hero of the hour. This was not easy to do, for he had been in the habit of cutting Thompson for a long time past. Thinking how he could deny these affronts he approached the great man, and reminded him obsequiously of their friendship of old days. Thompson looked at him contemptuously, and, without troubling himself to ask him why he had not spoken to him before, bowed and accepted coldly the congratulations that were offered.
This embarrassed Lewis not a little, and he inwardly wished himself miles away from the artists and journalists who stared so rudely at him; and had it not been for Frazer, who insisted on explaining some new dogma, Lewis would have fared badly. The interruption enabled him to put on his haughtiest air, and, with a sarcastic remark, he strolled off after Mr. Campbell Ward, whom he recognised in the distance.
The husband was walking pensively in company with his little boy, to whom he was much attached. Both father and son inquired anxiously after Mrs. Ward, and the latter declared that Lord Worthing wanted particularly to see her.
“Well, he’ll find her at home,” replied Lewis, indifferently. “But, by-the-way, have you seen my wife?”
The husband looked steadfastly at the lover, and after a pause answered, with a deep sigh, “Oh, yes, sh
e is walking with Mr. Harding.”
Lewis wondered for a moment why Mr. Ward should sigh so profoundly; but, catching sight of Lady Helen’s narrow back in the crowd, he rushed after her.
“I have been looking for you everywhere,” he said, with an air of affected annoyance.
“And we have been looking for you,” replied Lady Helen, smiling. “But Mr. Harding has been very good, has shewn me everything, and has promised to take a poem of mine to one of his papers.”
“That is very kind of him,” said Lewis, taking his arm in an affectionate manner, “and I must tell you, Harding, my wife is one of your greatest admirers. For myself, you know — of course I see the power — but the beauty — well, that’s the old argument.”
As her husband spoke, Lady Helen could not help wishing that he would not begin to discuss the beauty question again. She was beginning to realise that his criticism on this and all other subjects was shallow and common-place. For the last hour, while Lewis had been away at lunch, she had been unconsciously weighing him in the balance with Mr. Harding. His logical views and methodical judgments awoke a new fire in her heart, and she had already begun to long for the intellectual comfort and advice he could give her. She had already begun to tire of her husband’s caresses and superficial attainments.
The conversation then returned to the pictures, and dwelt on Thompson’s success, which Harding declared was undoubted. Lewis said he was delighted, that it was deserved; at the same time expressing fear for the traditions, so that he might not appear too conciliatory.
The novelist accompanied them to the turnstile, and then in the clearest tones of her flute-like voice, Lady Helen said; “Good-bye, Mr. Harding, I shall expect you to-morrow; we lunch at two.”
Harding bowed, and continued to watch the slender neck, fluffed with delicate lemon coloured down, till it was lost in the shadow of the lower hall. When he turned he saw, much to his irritation, Thompson and Frazer examining some has-reliefs. Accosting them familiarly, he took Thompson’s arm, and they walked again through the galleries, and agreed that no better title could be found than “Positivism of art” for the article he was about to write.
