by George Moore
CHAP. XXXV.
THE MONTH WAS July; the season was dragging itself into August, and Helen and a seamstress, or a lady’s maid — Helen judged her to be one or the other — were almost alone in the Academy. “She is too old to be a model, and not well dressed enough to be a lady’s maid. A seamstress, no doubt”; and she watched the woman seeking a particular picture. “But why should a seamstress, a working woman of some kind for certain, be interested in pictures?” and her curiosity now fully awakened, Helen watched the woman look into the corners of the pictures for the artist’s signature. “Too poor,” she said, “to buy a catalogue.” And she was moved to go and buy one at the turnstile and offer it to her. A way, she thought, of getting into conversation with her and finding out which picture the woman was seeking, and why she was seeking it. “She will be glad to have the catalogue,” Helen continued, and on her return from the turnstile she followed the seamstress or the lady’s maid into the long gallery, certain that it could not be a picture, but the painter of a picture, that interested her. And as the conviction took possession of her mind, she saw the woman stand before Lewis’s “Clytæmnestra” enrapt.
Half a minute, a minute at most, is the time that a visitor to the Academy devotes to a picture, whereas Lewis Seymour’s admirer seemed as if she could not tear herself away from the “Clytæmnestra,” and when she moved away from it she stopped before one of Lewis’s portraits. “It is, then, the quality of the painting that attracts her,” Helen said to herself, and began to wonder if Lewis’s admirer was an artist. “But she doesn’t look like an artist — a model, perhaps, whom Lewis painted many years ago.” And feeling that the artist-seamstress or model held the secret that had eluded her so long, she felt she must speak to the woman, though she knew full well that to do so was not honourable nor just nor right. She tried to resist the temptation, but it overpowered her, and she offered her catalogue to the seamstress, whom she now recognised by her speech as of the working class, the wife of a carpenter, glazier, or bricklayer.
“You need not return it,” Helen answered; and the women stood staring at each other. It was not till the working woman was about to pass on that Helen mustered sufficient courage to ask her if she liked pictures.
“I like Mr. Seymour’s pictures. The picture over yonder with a long name to it is as beautiful as any that he has painted; and if you’d be so kind, ma’am, would you tell me what it is all about?”
Helen related the story of Clytænmestra to her companion, who listened with an attention that surprised her.
“Now that you have told the story to me, ma’am, I can see it all in the picture.”
“So you like Mr. Seymour’s pictures?” Helen said, as they walked towards the sculpture room.
“So much, ma’am, that I come to see them every year. I used to know him a long time ago. We lived together in the same house, and I sat to him.”
“Ah! A model?”
“Only to him, ma’am. Do you know Mr. Seymour? Have you sat to him?”
“You say you come to see his pictures every year,” Helen interjected hurriedly. “Do you remember the Bacchante’ that he exhibited some years ago?”
“Yes, indeed I do! But what a beautiful figure you must have if you sat for that! Do you do much sitting?”
“No; like you, I never sat for anybody but Mr. Seymour. I am his wife. And now that I have told you who I am, perhaps you will please tell me your name?”
“My name, ma’am, is Fuller. But he wouldn’t know me by that name. I was Gwynnie Lloyd when he knew me”; and Helen heard the story of how Mr. Jacobs had come to the lodging-house in the Waterloo Road with a panel, and a request that Mr. Seymour should paint a Venus with some Cupids upon it, and take it up to Bond Street. “I was so silly in those days, ma’am, that I ran away, fearing that worse might happen to me than sitting to him; but he had gone away to the country when I pulled myself together and went down to Mr. Carver’s shop to ask after him. I hoped he’d write, but he didn’t, which was just as well, for shortly after I met Fuller, a house-breaker — not a burglar — Mark Fuller, who died last year. He left me with three children.” Finding an indulgent listener in Helen, she related her prospects of a second marriage. “It is strange how things come about. And fancy my meeting you this day in the Academy!”
“Since you come here every year to see his pictures, it is strange that we didn’t meet before. I wonder you never tried to see him.”
“I’d like to see him well enough in a way, ma’am; but everything is so different. It might be painful to us both.”
And Helen wondered at this very true comprehension of life. Lewis would certainly be embarrassed, and would transfer his embarrassment to Mrs. Fuller. The interview would be a pleasure to neither. But how wonderful that she should know that to seek him out would spoil everything. “His pictures are enough,” she said to herself; and asked Mrs. Fuller if there was any message.
“No, ma’am — no message of any account; but I’d like to have a photo, if you can spare one, just to see how he looks now.”
“I don’t think you’ll find him much changed.” And after taking Mrs. Fuller’s address Helen returned home, thinking how all things come together again in life. “Once an attraction has been set up,” she said, “the atoms are drawn into the circle of gravitation, however widely they may have been scattered.” And then, her thoughts descending suddenly from the general to the particular, she began to understand how the chance meeting in the house in the Waterloo Road had created an idea that time could not quench in Mrs. Fuller. Her life was often a struggle for mere bread, but the struggle had not been able to kill her love, nor marriage, nor child-bearing; Lewis remained the romance of this woman’s life. “And how wise she is not to pitch her romance into the arena of reality. If she accepted my invitation to come to William Street to see Lewis, she’d leave it with an empty heart. Only by remaining away can she retain him. Her wisdom is truly the wisdom of the wise.” And Helen asked herself if the photograph she had promised to send Mrs. Fuller would not conflict with the image in her heart. Even so, she must send the photo.... Perhaps it would be better if they hadn’t met in the Academy. Should romance and reality ever overlap?
As her carriage drove up the King’s Road she asked herself which photograph she would send, and it seemed to her that Mrs. Fuller would like the one standing on the table in the studio.
“Have you got any news, Helen?” her husband asked her.
“Yes,” she said, “I have news.” He had just laid down his palette, and was walking up and down the studio.
“I’m elected, then?”
“I haven’t heard.”
“Then, what news? You must forgive me,” he said, “if I seem egotistical, but one’s nerves are on edge on a day like this, when any hour may bring the news. Do sit down and tell me where you’ve been.”
She threw herself into a chair, and her eyes went round the walls.
“What are you looking for?”
Helen did not answer, and he asked her whence she had come.
“From the Academy,” she answered.
“Just turned in,” he said, “to see how the ‘Clytaemnestra’ was looking? And how was it looking? Did it strike you that I might be passed over again? Were there many people?”
“No,” she answered, “the galleries were nearly empty; but it contained one of your admirers.”
“Who was she?”
“You jump at once to the conclusion that it was a woman. Well, it was a woman; one whom you knew many, many years ago — a Mrs. Fuller.”
“Mrs. Fuller!” he repeated. And Helen studied his blank face as he searched for somebody that had borne that name.
“A model, perhaps?”
“Yes, a model,” Helen answered. “Somebody you once knew in the Waterloo Road when you lodged there.” She could tell by his face that he remembered Gwynnie Lloyd, and it pleased her to indulge in pin-pricks. “Fuller was not her name then; when you knew her it was Gwy
nnie Lloyd, a little Welsh girl who sat to you for a panel that a man called Jacobs took to your lodgings.”
“Yes, I remember Gwynnie Lloyd. But what of that? You met her in the Academy. How did you know her? “ and Helen told him of Mrs. Fuller’s interest in his pictures: how she had stood before the “Clytæmnestra” for many minutes, and then looked round for another picture and found it in Lewis’s portrait of Lord Worthing.
“It seems strange that a working woman should like my pictures,” Lewis interrupted. “I always try for a permanent human interest — something beyond the mere craft.”
“I told her the story of Clytæmnestra, and she said she could read the watch-fires in the painted eyes. I expected that she would find another subject-picture to admire, but when I saw her standing enrapt before Lord Worthing’s portrait I said, ‘It is quality she is after.’”
“I don’t think she could appreciate quality — that’s the painter’s business; but Worthing’s portrait is typical.”
“I offered her my catalogue, and she told me her story.”
“Did you ask her to come here?”
Helen said she had suggested a visit; but Mrs. Fuller felt that there was no bridge across the long interval of years that separated them, and their circumstances, too, divided them. “But she asked for a photograph, and I was thinking of sending her the one that stands on the table.”
“No, don’t send that one,” Lewis answered; “it isn’t a good one.”
The door opened, and Mrs. Bentham came into the room; and passing by Helen, who in her excitement escaped her notice, she walked towards Lewis, and took his hands, saying: “Oh, Lewis, I’m so glad that it is I that bring you the news!”
“That I’m elected? Is that so?” he cried.
“Yes,” she said. And looking round the studio she caught sight of Helen dimly, and went to her, saying: “I beg your pardon, Helen; I didn’t see you. I can think of nothing but the good news.”
“My dear Lucy, it is very good of you to come with it,” Helen answered. “I’ve been to the Academy, but came back with no news. Go and tell Lewis how you heard the news; he’ll be interested to hear the details.”
“Won’t you, too, be interested in the story? I assure you it is rather interesting.”
“I shall listen, of course.” And Lady Helen sat, her legs crossed, her foot dangling outside her skirt, thinking still of Gwynnie Lloyd, and the elder-bush growing in the corner of the Vale garden appeared to her as an image of Gwynnie Lloyd. Both were humble and almost unnoticed. The elder-bush produced a pleasant blossom. And then, awakening a little from her reverie, she listened to Lucy, who for years had striven after Lewis’s welfare, protecting him, loving him always. And she thought of the lime-tree in front of the house on the Vale — a shapely tree, rising to a great height, casting a pleasant shade, emitting a delightful perfume. And Lucy appeared to her like a lime-tree. Gwynnie was the shrub, Lucy was the tree. Helen asked herself what tree she resembled, without being able to find one that exactly fitted her case. She felt ugly towards him. She was not like the oak, nor the pine, nor the elm. She was at that moment more like a holly than any other tree. She was all thorns, and anybody that might try to creep under her branches would encounter thorns. As aggressive as a holly to Lewis; but to some other man she might become as dulcet as the aspen. But the aspen wavers in every breath of wind. She wasn’t an aspen, but a holly, and a holly she would remain till she and Lewis were separated — not formally separated by law, but as soon as they began to go their different ways.
His painting concerned her no more, and he concerned her even less than his painting.
The door opened, and Mr. Harding was announced.
“Ah!” he said, “I see Mrs. Bentham is before me. She has brought you the news.”
“How good of you, Harding, to think of me! Come and sit here and tell us what you’ve heard about my election.
“Now that I am an Associate, I suppose there can be no doubt that at the first vacancy I shall be elected a full R.A. Come, let us talk about it.”
“Well, my dear Seymour, I shall be very glad to do so; but your wife has sent me some manuscript to look over, and I should like to have a word with her about her poems.”
“If you don’t mind walking round to Park Lane with me I’ll give you a cup of tea, and we can go through the poems together. Lewis, you will bring Lucy on with you; or perhaps she’ll take you to tea at Carlton House Terrace. Just as you like.”
Harding did not altogether approve of this plainness of speech, and he sought to overcome his disquiet with quotations from her poems.
At last they reached 34, and Helen said: “At the end of the passage I have a little nook.”
“I think the sonnet beginning, ‘When faded are the chaplets woven of May,’ quite perfect.”
“I hope it isn’t the only poem that you can admire without reservation.”
“As soon as one praises a poem to a poet,” Harding answered, “he fancies that his critic dislikes the rest.”
“Let me read this to you, Lady Helen:
“When faded are the chaplets woven of May,
Unto the deepening darkness of the skies
Goes forth a train of human memories
Crying: ‘The past must never pass away.’
“Yet, in this time of ruin and decay,
The fragrance of an unborn summer sighs
Within the sense, before my dreaming eyes
Passes the spirit of an ideal day.
“Then, fervid hours of sunlight and repose,
The warm delights, the tears that true love knows,
Are mine, are thine; until in sweet belief
“We dream, beside our broken prison bars,
Of love exceeding joy, defying grief,
And higher than the throbbing of the stars.”
“I’m so glad you like the sonnet. But there are others”; and during the course of the afternoon they read poem after poem together; and at the end of the afternoon, when he stood up to go, and extended his hand, he said:
“Then I may expect you at tea-time to-morrow.”
“Oui, monsieur; madame se présentera demain chez monsieur à l’heure du the.”
THE END
A Story-Teller’s Holiday
CONTENTS
A LEAVE-TAKING
CHAPTER 1.
CHAPTER 2.
CHAPTER 3.
CHAPTER 4.
CHAPTER 5.
CHAPTER 6.
CHAPTER 7.
CHAPTER 8.
CHAPTER 9.
CHAPTER 10.
CHAPTER 11.
CHAPTER 12.
CHAPTER 13.
CHAPTER 14.
CHAPTER 15.
CHAPTER 16.
CHAPTER 17.
CHAPTER 18.
CHAPTER 19.
CHAPTER 20.
CHAPTER 21.
CHAPTER 22.
CHAPTER 23.
CHAPTER 24.
CHAPTER 25.
CHAPTER 26.
CHAPTER 27.
CHAPTER 28.
CHAPTER 29.
CHAPTER 30.
CHAPTER 31.
CHAPTER 32.
CHAPTER 33.
CHAPTER 34.
CHAPTER 35.
CHAPTER 36.
CHAPTER 37.
CHAPTER 38.
CHAPTER 39.
CHAPTER 40.
CHAPTER 41.
CHAPTER 42.
CHAPTER 43.
CHAPTER 44.
CHAPTER 45.
CHAPTER 46.
CHAPTER 47.
CHAPTER 48.
CHAPTER 49.
CHAPTER 50.
CHAPTER 51.
CHAPTER 52.
CHAPTER 53.
CHAPTER 54.
CHAPTER 55.
CHAPTER 56.
CHAPTER 57.
CHAPTER 58.
CHAPTER 59.
CHAPTER 60.
CH
APTER 61.
Moore, 1920
A LEAVE-TAKING
A LEAVE-TAKING THIS certainly is of a great many readers, but I have faith in the good sense of all my readers, for they are not a heterogeneous crowd, but a family, and every one of the family knows how steadfast the persecution of my writings has been since the publication, forty years ago, of a little volume of poems entitled Flowers of Passion.
As I write I can hear a reader saying to himself as he paces his room: it is not two years since somebody pleaded at Bow Street that The Brook Kerith should be interdicted but the magistrate refused to issue the warrant; and last November in the Law Courts the jury, after having listened a whole day to a libel action, returned a verdict of no libel and no damages. But the fact that the magistrate refused to grant a warrant and the jury to convict is not sufficient compensation for the proffered insults, and our author has done well to retire into a literary arcanum where he will be able to practise his art in dignified privacy.
Another reader crosses his legs and meditates: George Moore was never welcome in Grub Street for he wished to write for men and women of letters, and this class is not recognised by the libraries as readers of books; strange that it should be so, but it is so; for whilst there are books for astronomers, for scientists, for doctors, for lawyers, for golfers, for cricketers, for chess players, for yachtsmen, and as for young girls in their teens, voluminous literature awaits them every year, there are no books written for men and women of letters exclusively. By private printing our author has cut himself off from many readers, but the alternative was for him to cease writing.
