by George Moore
‘Yes, that’s the worst of it. I like men, men are my life, I don’t mind admitting it. But I know they’ve interfered with my painting. That’s the worst of it.’
Then the conversation turned on Cissy Clive. ‘Cissy is a funny girl,’ Elsie said. ‘For nine months out of every twelve she leads a highly- respectable life in West Kensington. But every now and then the fit takes her, and she tells her mother, who believes every word she says, that she’s staying with me. In reality, she takes rooms in Clarges Street, and has a high old time.’
‘I once heard her whispering to you something about not giving her away if you should happen to meet her mother.’
‘I remember, about Hopwood Blunt. He had just returned from Monte Carlo.’
‘But I suppose it is all right. She likes talking to him.’
‘I don’t think she can find much to talk about to Hopwood Blunt,’ said Elsie, laughing. ‘Haven’t you seen him? He is often in the galleries.’
‘What does she say?’
‘She says he’s a great baby — that he amuses her.’
Next day, Mildred went to visit Cissy in the unfrequented gallery where her ‘Bather’ would not give scandal to the visitors. She had nearly completed her copy; it was excellent, and Mildred could not praise it sufficiently. Then the girls spoke of Elsie and Walter. Mildred said:
‘She seems very fond of him.’
‘And of how many others? Elsie never could be true to a man. It was just the same in the Academy schools. And that studio of hers? Have you been to any of her tea-parties? They turn down the lights, don’t they?’
As Mildred was about to answer, Cissy said, ‘Oh, here’s Freddy.’
Mr. Hopwood Blunt was tall and fair, a brawny young Englishman still, though the champagne of fashionable restaurants and racecourses was beginning to show itself in a slight puffiness in his handsome florid cheeks. He shook hands carelessly with Miss Clive, whom he called Cis, and declared himself dead beat. She hastened to hand him her chair.
‘I know what’s the matter with you,’ she said, ‘too much champagne last night at the Cafe Royal.’
‘Wrong again. We weren’t at the Cafe Royal, we dined at the Bristol. Don’t like the place; give me the good old Cafe Savoy.’
‘How many bottles?’
‘Don’t know; know that I didn’t drink my share. It was something I had after.’
Then followed an account of the company and the dinner. The conversation was carried on in allusions, and Mildred heard something about Tommy’s girl and a horse that was worth backing at Kempton. At last it occurred to Cissy to introduce Mildred. Mr. Hopwood Blunt made a faint pretence of rising from his chair, and the conversation turned on the ‘Bather.’
‘I think you ought to make her a little better looking. What do you say, Miss Lawson? Cis is painting that picture for a smoking-room, and in the smoking-room we like pretty girls.’
He thought that they ought to see a little more of the lady’s face; and he did not approve of the drapery. Cissy argued that she could not alter Etty’s composition; she reproved him for his facetiousness, and was visibly annoyed at the glances he bestowed on Mildred. A moment after Ralph appeared.
‘Don’t let me disturb you,’ he said, ‘I did not know where you were, Miss Lawson, that was all. I thought you might like me to see how you’re getting on.’
Ralph and Mildred walked through two galleries in silence. Elsie had gone out to lunch with Walter; the old lady with the grey ringlets, who copied Gainsborough’s ‘Watering Place,’ was downstairs having a cup of coffee and a roll; the cripple leaned on his crutch, and compared his drawing of Mrs. Siddons’s nose with Gainsborough’s. Ralph waited till he hopped away, and Mildred was grateful to him for the delay; she did not care for her neighbours to see what work her master did on her picture.
‘You’ve got the background wrong,’ he said, taking off a yellowish grey with the knife. ‘The cloud in the left-hand corner is the deepest dark you have in the picture,’ and he prepared a tone. ‘What a lovely quality Reynolds has got into the sky! … This face is not sufficiently foreshortened. Too long from the nose to the chin,’ he said, taking off an eighth of an inch. Then the mouth had to be raised. Mildred watched, nervous with apprehension lest Elsie or the old lady or the cripple should return and interrupt him.
‘There, it is better now,’ he said, surveying the picture, his head on one side.
‘I should think it was,’ she answered enthusiastically. ‘I shall be able to get on now. I could not get the drawing of that face right. And the sky — what a difference! I like it as well as the original. It’s quite as good.’
Ralph laughed, and they walked through the galleries. The question, of course, arose, which was the greater, the Turner or the Claude?
Mildred thought that she liked the Claude.
‘One is romance, the other is common sense.’
‘If the Turner is romance, I wonder I don’t prefer it to the Claude. I love romance.’
‘School-girl romance, very likely.’ Mildred didn’t answer and, without noticing her, Ralph continued, ‘I like Turner best in the grey and English manner: that picture, for instance, on the other side of the doorway. How much simpler, how much more original, how much more beautiful. That grey and yellow sky, the delicacy of the purple in the clouds. But even in classical landscape Turner did better than Claude — Turner created — all that architecture is dreamed; Claude copied his.’
At the end of each little sentence he stared at Mildred, half ashamed at having expressed himself so badly, half surprised at having expressed himself so well. Anxious to draw him out, she said:
‘But the picture you admire is merely a strip of sea with some fishing-boats. I’ve seen it a hundred times before — at Brighton, at Westgate, at whatever seaside place we go to, just like that, only not quite so dark.’
‘Yes, just like that, only not quite so dark. That “not quite so dark” makes the difference. Turner didn’t copy, he transposed what he saw. Transposed what he saw,’ he repeated. ‘I don’t explain myself very well, I don’t know if you understand. But what I mean is that the more realistic you are the better; so long as you transpose, there must always be a transposition of tones.’
Mildred admitted that she did not quite understand. Ralph stammered, and relinquished the attempt to explain. They walked in silence until they came to the Rembrandts — the portrait of the painter as a young man and the portrait of the ‘Jew Merchant.’ Mildred preferred the portrait of the young man. ‘But not because it’s a young man,’ she pleaded, ‘but because it is, it is—’
‘Compared with the “Jew Merchant” it is like a coloured photograph… Look at him, he rises up grand and mysterious as a pyramid, the other is as insignificant as life. Look at the Jew’s face, it is done with one tint; a synthesis, a dark red, and the face is as it were made out of nothing — hardly anything, and yet everything is said… You can’t say where the picture begins or ends, the Jew surges out of the darkness like a vision. Look at his robe, a few folds, that is all, and yet he’s completely dressed, and his hand, how large, how great… Don’t you see, don’t you understand?’
‘I think I do,’ Mildred replied a little wistfully, and she cast a last look on the young man whom she must admire no more. Ralph opened the door marked students only, and they went down the stone steps. When they came to where the men and women separated for their different rooms, Mildred asked Ralph if he were going out to lunch? He hesitated, and then answered that it took too long to go to a restaurant. Mildred guessed by his manner that he had no money.
‘There’s no place in the gallery where we can get lunch — you women are luckier than us men. What do they give you in your room?’
‘You mean in the way of meat? Cold meat, beef and ham, pork pies. But I don’t care for meat, I never touch it.’
‘What do you eat?’
‘There are some nice cakes. I’ll go and get some; we’ll share them.’
‘No, no, I re
ally am not hungry, much obliged.’
‘Oh, do let me go and get some cakes, it’ll be such fun, and so much nicer than sitting with a lot of women in that little room.’
They shared their cakes, walking up and down the great stone passages, and this was the beginning of their intimacy. On the following week she wrote to say what train she was coming up by; he met her at the station, and they went together to the National Gallery. But their way led through St. James’ Park; they lingered there, and, as the season advanced, their lingerings in the park grew longer and longer.
‘What a pretty park this is. It always seems to me like a lady’s boudoir, or what I imagine a lady’s boudoir must be like.’
‘Have you never seen a lady’s boudoir?’
‘No; I don’t think I have. I’ve never been in what you call society. I had to make my living ever since I was sixteen. My father was a small tradesman in Brixton. When I was sixteen I had to make my own living. I used to draw in the illustrated papers. I began by making two pounds a week. Then, as I got on, I used to live as much as possible in the country. You can’t paint landscapes in London.’
‘You must have had a hard time.’
‘I suppose I had. It was all right as long as I kept to my newspaper work. But I was ambitious, and wanted to paint in oils; but I never had a hundred pounds in front of me. I could only get away for a fortnight or a month at a time. Then, as things got better, I had to help my family. My father died, and I had to look after my mother.’
Mildred raised her eyes and looked at him affectionately.
‘I think I could have done something if I had had a fair chance.’
‘Done something? But you have done something. Have you forgotten what the Spectator said of your farmyard?’
‘That’s nothing. If I hadn’t to think of getting my living I could do better than that. Oil painting is the easiest material of all until you come to a certain point; after that point, when you begin to think of quality and transparency, it is most difficult.’
They were standing on the bridge. The water below them was full of ducks. The birds balanced themselves like little boats on the waves, and Mildred thought of her five hundred a year and the pleasure it would be to help Ralph to paint the pictures he wanted to paint. She imagined him a great artist; his success would be her doing. At that same moment he was thinking that there never had been any pleasure in his life; and Mildred — her hat, her expensive dress, her sunshade — seemed in such bitter contrast to himself, to his own life, that he could not hide a natural irritation.
‘Your life has been all pleasure,’ he said, glancing at her disdainfully.
‘No, indeed, it has not. My life has been miserable enough. We are rich, it is true, but our riches have never brought me happiness. The best time I’ve had has been since I met you.’
‘Is that true? I wonder if that’s true.’
Their eyes met and she said hastily, with seeming desire to change the subject:
‘So you’re a Londoner born and bred, and yet you’d like to live in the country.’
‘Only for my painting. I love London, but you can’t paint landscapes in London.’
‘I wonder why not. You said you loved this park. There’s nothing more beautiful in the country — those trees, this quiet, misty lake; it is exquisite, and yet I suppose it wouldn’t make a picture.’
‘I don’t know. I’ve often thought of trying to do something with it. But what’s beautiful to look at doesn’t do well in a picture. The hills and dales in the Green Park are perfect — their artificiality is their beauty. There’s one bit that I like especially.’
‘Which is that?’
‘The bit by Buckingham Palace where the sheep feed; the trees there are beautiful, large spreading trees, and they give the place a false air of Arcady. But in a picture it wouldn’t do.’
‘Why?’
‘I can’t say. I don’t think it would mean much if it were painted.’
‘You couldn’t have a shepherd, or if you had he’d have to be cross- gartered, and his lady-love in flowery silk would have to be sitting on a bank, and there is not a bank there, you’d have to invent one.’
‘That’s it; the park is eighteenth century, a comedy of the restoration.’
‘But why couldn’t you paint that?’ said Mildred, pointing to where a beautiful building passed across the vista.
‘I suppose one ought to be able to. The turrets in the distance are fine. But no, it wouldn’t make a picture. The landscape painter never will be able to do much with London. He’ll have to live in the country, and if he can’t afford to do that he’d better turn it up.’
‘Elsie Laurence and Cissy Clive are going to France soon. They say that’s the only place to study. In the summer they’re going to a place called Barbizon, near Fontainebleau. I was thinking of going with them.’
‘Were you? I wish I were going. Especially to Barbizon. The country would suit me.’
Mildred longed to say, ‘I shall be glad if you’ll let me lend you the money,’ but she didn’t dare. At the end of a long silence, Ralph said:
‘I think we’d better be going on. It must be nearly ten.’
V.
As the spring advanced they spent more and more time in the park. They learnt to know it in its slightest aspects; they anticipated each bend of the lake’s bank; they looked out for the tall trees at the end of the island, and often thought of the tree that leaned until its lower leaves swept the water’s edge. Close to this tree was their favourite seat. And, as they sat by the water’s edge in the vaporous afternoons, the park seemed part and parcel of their love of each other; it was their refuge; it was only there that they were alone; the park was a relief from the promiscuity of the galleries. In the park they could talk without fear of being overheard, and they took interest in the changes that spring was effecting in this beautiful friendly nature — their friend and their accomplice.
‘The park is greener than it was yesterday,’ he said. ‘Look at that tree! How bright the green, and how strange it seems amid all the blackness.’
‘And that rose cloud and the reflection of the evening in the lake, how tranquil.’
‘And that great block of buildings, Queen Anne’s Mansions, is it not beautiful in the blue atmosphere? In London the ugliest things are beautiful in the evening. No city has so pictorial an atmosphere.’
‘Not Paris?’
‘I’ve not seen Paris; I’ve never been out of England.’
‘Then you’re speaking of things you haven’t seen.’
‘Of things that I’ve only imagined.’
The conversation paused a moment, and then Ralph said:
‘Are you still thinking of going to Paris with Elsie Laurence and Cissy Clive?’
‘I think so. Paris is the only place one can study art, so they say.’
‘You’ll be away a long while — several months?’
‘It wouldn’t be much good going if I didn’t stop some time, six or seven months, would it?’
‘I suppose not.’
Mildred raised her eyes cautiously and looked at him. His eyes were averted. He was looking where some ducks were swimming. They came towards the bank slowly — a drake and two ducks. A third duck paddled aimlessly about at some little distance. There was a slight mist on the water.
‘If you go to Paris I hope I may write to you. Send me your drawings to correct. Any advice I can give you is at your service; I shall only be too pleased.’
‘Oh, yes, I hope you will write to me. I shall be so glad to hear from you. I shall be lonely all that time away from home.’
‘And you’ll write to me?’
‘Of course. And if I write to you, you won’t misunderstand?’
Ralph looked up surprised.
‘I mean, if I write affectionately you won’t misunderstand. It will be because—’
‘Because you feel lonely?’
‘Partly. But you don’t misunderstand, do you?’
<
br /> They watched the ducks in silence. At last Mildred said, ‘That duck wanders about by herself; why doesn’t she join the others?’
‘Perhaps she can’t find a drake.’
‘Perhaps she prefers to be alone.’
‘We shall see — the drake is going to her.’
‘She is going away from him. She doesn’t want him.’
‘She’s jealous of the others. If there were no other she would.’
‘There are always others.’
‘Do you think so?’
Mildred did not answer. Ralph waited a few moments, then he said:
‘So you’re going away for six or seven months; the time will seem very long while you’re away.’
Again Mildred was tempted to ask him if she might lend him the money to go to Paris. She raised her eyes to his (he wondered what was passing in her mind), but he did not find courage to speak until some days later. He had asked her to come to his studio to see a picture he had begun. It was nearly six o’clock; Mildred had been there nearly an hour; the composition had been exhaustively admired; but something still unsaid seemed to float in the air, and every moment that something seemed to grow more imminent.
‘You are decided to go to France. When do you leave?’
‘Some time next week. The day is not yet fixed.’
‘Elsie Laurence and Cissy Clive are going?’
‘Yes…. Why don’t you come too?’
‘I wish I could. I can’t. I have no money.’
‘But I can lend you what you want. I have more than I require. Let me lend you a hundred pounds. Do.’
Ralph smiled through his red moustache, and his grey gentle eyes smiled too, a melancholy little smile that passed quickly.
‘It is very kind of you. But it would be impossible for me to borrow money from you. Even if I had the money, I could hardly go with you.’
‘Why not, there’s a party. Walter is going, and Hopwood Blunt is going. I’m the fifth wheel.’
Ralph was about to say something, but he checked himself; he never spoke ill of any one. So, putting his criticism of her companions aside, he said:
‘Only under one condition could I go abroad with you. You know, Mildred, I love you.’
