Complete Works of George Moore

by George Moore

  Her face lit up and pleasant laughter flowed from her lips, for she was aware of her own vanity; it amused her, and she knew how to make good her retreat from it with laughter. Harold, who had been brought up to admire his sister, was caught by her delicious comedy and begged that she would send upstairs for her portfolios; and she, nothing loth, asked him to ring for her maid. And her drawings and sketches were overlooked till Harold had exhausted his vocabulary and admitted pathetically: To think you should have done all these drawings, Etta, and that I should not be able to understand them, or very little. I am afraid that I understand only whisky. And now about the whisky. A nightcap would guarantee you a long night’s rest, I am sure, for you ‘re looking very tired, and I have no hesitation in saying that it would be well if you remained in bed for a few days. A rest cure is what you need.

  Ill As soon as she was able to leave her room, she was ordered to the sea-side, and after a fortnight at Brighton she went to stay with some friends in London, returning to the Manor House for Christmas to entertain a large party of Harold’s friends, business men, several of whom looked upon themselves as patrons of the art of painting because they collected bad pictures, which they bought right off the easel, a favourite phrase when telling each other of their purchases. Sometimes it dropped into their conversations with Etta, provoking an ironical answer, a quick stab, reaching to the very heart of their vanity; and then she would sit listening to them without even a look of weariness upon her face.

  As soon as the holidays were over and she had bidden the last of Harold’s friends good-bye, her thoughts turned to the room in which she used to paint before she went to Paris, and to a subject, which she had had to abandon for lack of skill to carry it out. Having no song of their own, bullfinches can learn tunes more easily than other birds — two tunes, but not more; if they are taught a third they forget the first, and if they are taught a fourth, they forget the second, their musical memory being limited to two, and these are imparted to them by means of a bird organ. She had never seen one of these bird organs, but imagined it to be set in motion by the turning of a handle, a sort of miniature hurdy-gurdy, the purpose of which would be difficult to make plain in a painting. Not difficult, but impossible, she said to herself, and her thoughts turned to a flute, and afterwards to a flageolet. And having come to a definite conception of her picture, she engaged a model, and had nearly finished before it struck her that girls do not play a pastoral instrument of a sort once associated with shepherds and of late with gate-keepers. A boy is more patient, she said; a girl would not sit hour after hour playing the same tune. And from that moment she lost interest in the chubby, blue-eyed, flaxen-haired girl, who held the flageolet in her lips, sucking the mouthpiece as she might a sugar stick, but with less interest. I ought to have had a boy, but it is too late to change now; and she continued in the hope that nobody would notice the discrepancy. After all, she said, if the painting be good — But the bitter thought that her model should have been a boy filtered into the painting, poisoning it, and at the end of a week there was no more room for hope. She had spoilt her picture, and having spoilt it she might as well scrape it out and begin again, this time from a boy. The flaxen-haired girl might have a brother! She had, but the brother reminded Etta of his sister, and she preferred to make a fresh start, meeting with a child in Sutton who was the very model she had had in her mind from the first. The child’s mother brought him next day to the Manor House, and whilst making a drawing preparatory to painting, her thoughts often turned to Ralph Hoskin, whom she had met in the National Gallery in the very beginning of her career, before she knew anything of her craft. Ralph could help her. But will he come to Sutton if I write to him?

  She fell to thinking whether they were enemies or friends, and to discover which she began to recall the story of their friendship, how he had stopped before her easel and complimented her on her work, one of Gainsborough’s landscapes. He was much admired among the copyists in the National Gallery, for he was not an ordinary copyist. He had a studio of his own, exhibited at the Royal Academy, and only came to the National occasionally, in exceptional circumstances, to make a copy for himself or for a patron whom he wished to oblige. Nobody’s copies were so free as his, for his object always was to catch the spirit of the original rather than the special handicraft of the artist. She remembered how flattered she was by his notice of her picture, and how she had asked him to criticise, saying: I am only a beginner, and you can be of such help. You have got the background wrong, he said; if you will let me have your palette I will mix you a tone. She handed him the palette and stood by, full of anxiety, while he took off a muddy grey with the knife. There, it’s better now, he said, surveying the picture, his head on one side. And they had walked through the galleries talking of Turner and Claude, Ralph saying that he liked Claude, for he was nearer to Nature; there was less fake. Turner’s fake was good fake, but — he had to exclude the burnt-sienna foregrounds.

  She didn’t think he liked her, not at first; he didn’t seem even to see her. He stood staring, thinking, and anxious to help him out she began to argue with him, saying that the Turner he admired was merely a strip of sea with some fishing boats. I have seen it myself a hundred times, she said, at Brighton, at Westgate, just like that, only not quite so dark. Turner didn’t copy, he transposed, Ralph answered. I am afraid I don’t express myself very well, but what I mean is that the more realistic you are the better, as long as you transpose; but there must always be a transposition of tone. Look at the Jew merchant; he rises up grand and mysterious as a pyramid. You can’t say where the picture begins or ends; the Jew rises out of the darkness like a vision. Look at his robe; a few folds,- that is all, and yet he is completely dressed. And his hand, how large, how beautiful! Don’t you see, don’t you understand? Ralph spoke with a low, gentle voice; it was pleasant to think of his voice. She had never heard anybody talk so winningly before; and feeling that she must not allow him to pass out of her reach, ‘she said that she hoped he would come to her easel on the next students’ day. For now that I have had your help, I don’t think I shall ever be able to do without it.

  She had always liked Ralph, and now in the great difficulty of the modelling of the boy’s blowing cheeks, she began to consider how she might get him back again. But would he be satisfied with her friendship? Ah, that was it! And after telling the boy, her model, to continue blowing the flageolet till she told him to stop, she took note of the light and shade; and having assimilated him as she thought he should be portrayed on the canvas, she began to paint, thinking at intervals of a delightful morning that she and Ralph had spent in the Green Park. It was whilst watching the ducks balancing themselves like little boats on the waves, that he had told her his mother once kept a paper shop in Brixton, and that he used to draw behind the counter on every scrap of paper, till one day a man connected with one of the great newspapers took some two or three of his drawings to show to the Editor, who was much struck by them. If a boy can draw like that, he said, without being taught, what will he be able to do when he gets some instruction? Everybody, Ralph said, as they stood on the bridge looking into the water, believes in instruction, not that he can be instructed himself, but that he can instruct somebody else. It’s either in you or it isn’t. If a duck had any more than: Quack, quack, in his bill, he would speak it.

  Her model asked Etta if he might leave off blowing the flageolet, and she answered: Of course, my dear boy, you can; I had forgotten all about it; and you can rest yourself. The boy rose with some difficulty from his chair, crying: Oh, Lord! pins and needles! And whilst he walked about the studio, Etta remembered the reasons that had decided her to go to Paris with Elsie Lawrence and Cissy Clive. It had seemed unkind to her to leave Ralph, but if she wasn’t going to marry him it would be better for her to go away for a time, for in no other way could she free herself from him. He had asked her to marry him, and as she did not feel that she could marry him, she had gone to Paris to learn painting. Had he not
said it was the only place where painting could be learnt? So it was his fault, to some extent, that she had left London. She had written to him from Paris, and, she was prepared to admit, more affectionately than she would have done in pleasanter circumstances; for she was not happy in France, nor very well, and in one letter she wrote about her great loneliness and of the joy it would be were he suddenly to draw aside the curtain and seek her out among the students. He had taken her at her word and come over, and she remembered how startled she was when one of the monitors handed her Ralph’s card, saying she would find him in the anteroom. She had written to him out of the impulse of the moment; his arrival was provoking, but there was no escape from him now. And they had gone downstairs together, and after walking about the streets in the neighbourhood of the Place de la Bourse, she proposed a café to him; and once out of the heat and noise of the street, some of her old liking for him had returned, though indeed she was annoyed with herself for having written the letter, and with him for having taken her at her word so easily.

  As she painted, she could see herself in her thought laying out her drawings on the café table, and Ralph taking them up one after the other, criticising them perfunctorily, for, as she soon perceived, he had not come to Paris to teach her drawing, but to ask her to marry him. She took pleasure in recalling his words: I have read your letters a thousand times, till at last I felt that I couldn’t go on reading them without seeing you, till I began to be afraid that you would find somebody here to fall in love with, somebody whom you would prefer to me. Have you? She remembered her very words: I don’t know that I have. But unabashed by them, he had asked her to marry him. You mean now, in Paris? Why not, Etta? If you haven’t met anybody you like better, you know. And give up my painting just at the time I’m beginning to get on! I’d give anything to draw like Doucet. You don’t know him — a student of the Beaux Arts. Ralph did not think that even if she could draw like Doucet, she would be any nearer painting a picture. A man in love hardly knows what he is saying, and they had left the café, Ralph pleading, saying that he would wait if she would only promise. And it was in the rue Vivienne, by the Café Vivienne (Davau was there, drinking coffee), that Ralph began to plead so earnestly that she had to make an end of it. She remembered her words: I really must send you away now. That was all. So you won’t promise to marry me? No, I cannot marry you. His face darkened. I cannot live without you, he said, and frightened at the thought of his suicide, she had tried to dissuade him, saying: You have your art to live for. You ‘re no longer a sentimental boy. You’ve got your man’s life to lead. You must think of it. But the words had barely passed her lips when it occurred to her that his was perhaps one of those narrow, gentle natures that cannot outlive a disappointment. He had never loved a woman before — all he knew of women was one of his models.

  The sound of a flageolet recalled Etta from the memories of her unkindness to Ralph in Paris, for she admitted to herself that she had been unkind. Would you mind, Miss, if I was to say something to you about the bird? You tell me that you’re going to paint a bullfinch into this cage, and that he is learning a tune off me. Now, I could play the flageolet much better if there was a real bullfinch, and I knows where you can get one for one-and-six; and then it would be a real picture, painted from me learning the bullfinch a tune on the flageolet. What do you say to paying one-and-six for the bird, Miss? You see, he’ll be listening, and will stay quiet on his perch for you. You are a clever little boy, Etta answered; you can bring the bullfinch with you to-morrow.

  IV

  But in spite of the work that she did upon it, the picture did not progress; instead of going forwards, it seemed to go backwards. She was in trouble in turn with the background, the bird cage, and then the bird. She could not get the action of the cheeks blowing, nor the movement of the fingers on the flageolet, and after repeated efforts the picture began to show signs of weariness, becoming like woolly cotton in the whites, and in the blacks dim and lustreless. She lay awake thinking about her picture, and every morning before she finished dressing, the canvas was wheeled into the light in the hope that yesterday’s judgment of it was at fault. Sometimes she thought one thing and sometimes another, and all the time her heart misgave her. I shall never get it right, she said to herself, not without help. I want criticism. And her thoughts going back to the studio, she began to wonder what the Professor would say if she could summon him to her aid. Any one of the leading students could criticise her picture from a painter’s point of view, and what would she not give to get it! But in England she knew nobody who could tell her whether she should scrape it down or start afresh on a new canvas, nobody but Ralph, and she was not certain that he would come down if she wrote to ask him, for Cissy and Elsie held that she had treated Ralph cruelly; he no doubt thought so himself, but that was several months ago, and she had never known a man who did not respond if she held up her little finger. And it was in this conviction that she went up to London one morning, telling her brother she must copy a certain picture in the National Gallery. He asked her why she felt obliged to copy it, and she answered petulantly that she could not explain. Only a painter would understand, she said, and fell to thinking that she would not walk round the students asking for news of Ralph Hoskin; being well known in the Gallery, if she began to copy somebody would come to speak to her, Ralph’s name would crop up in the course of conversation, and she would get news of him without asking for it.

  Nobody, however, came to talk to her. All her old acquaintances were away. But Etta was as patient as she was resolute in her flirtations, and she continued copying the Greuze till one day an acquaintance, an occasional copyist in the Gallery, caught sight of her; and she learnt from Miss Brand that Ralph had not been seen in the Gallery for more than a year. You know that he has been ill? asked Miss Brand. No; I was in France and have been ill myself and am only just recovering. But Ralph, I hope, is not seriously ill? Lung trouble, Miss Brand answered. That is always serious, Etta replied, and when her friend had left her she sat staring at her Greuze, till unable to endure its silly sentimentality any longer, she locked up her paint-box and left the Gallery, walking without seeing or hearing, even to the danger of getting herself run over, asking herself if her refusal to marry him had anything to do with his illness. She hoped it had not, admitting at the end of a little sensuous meditation on the bridge in St. James’s Park, that she might have led him to expect she would marry him sooner or later. But she couldn’t have made him happy; she was not sure that she could make any man happy.

  As she crossed the open space in front of Buckingham Palace, the desire to see him laid hold of her, and hailing a hansom she drove to his studio. The door was opened by a young woman who looked like a servant, but Etta, not deceived by her appearance, guessed her to be one of his models. I’ve come, she said, from the National Gallery, where I heard that Mr. Hoskin is ill. Can I see him? He has just dozed off, the young woman answered. I dare not awake him, but I’ll give him a message. Give him my card and say I would like to see him. Stay, I’ll write a word upon it. And whilst Etta wrote on the card the girl watched her — her face full of suspicion, and when she read the name an indiscreet Oh escaped from her, and Etta knew that Ralph had spoken of her. His mistress, no doubt, she thought; she wouldn’t be here nursing him if she wasn’t. And lowering her eyes she murmured: Thank you, reaching the end of the street humiliated and angry, humiliated that the girl should have seen through her so easily, angry that Ralph should have spoken about her to his mistress; for she was sure that the woman was, or had been, his mistress. She regretted having asked to see Ralph, but she had asked for an appointment — she could hardly get out of it now.... She would have to meet that woman again; but she wanted to see Ralph. Ralph, I suppose, told her the truth, she thought. A moment’s reflection convinced her that he probably had, and reassured she went to bed, wondering when she would get a letter. She might get one in the morning.

  The first letter she opened, read:

&nb
sp; MADAM, — Mr. Hoskin begs me to thank you for your kind enquiry. He is feeling a little stronger and will be glad to see you. His best time is in the afternoon, about three o’clock. Could you make it convenient to call about that time? I think it right to warn you that it would be well not to speak of anything likely to excite him, for the doctor says that all hope of his recovery depends upon his being kept quiet. — I am, madam, Yours truly, — ELLEN GIBBS.

  Ellen Gibbs; so that is her name, thought Etta. There was a note of authority in the letter which did not escape her. She did not like meeting this woman, but she wanted to see Ralph; and an expression of vindictiveness came into her cunning eyes. If she dares to try to oppose me, she’ll soon find out her mistake. She has been his mistress; I have not, and shall get the best of her easily. To-morrow! This letter was written last night, so I have to go to see him to-day, this afternoon, at three o’clock. I shall have to go up after luncheon by the two o’clock train. That will get me there by three. Now I wonder if he is really dying? If I were to go to see him and he were to recover, it would mean beginning it over again. But would it? And why do base thoughts and calculations enter my head? I don’t know, for I do not call them, nor do their promptings affect me. I am going to see him because I was once very fond of him, because I caused him, through no fault of mine, a great deal of suffering. I know he’d like to see me before he dies, that’s why I’m going, and yet horrid thoughts will come into my head. To hear me thinking, anybody would imagine that it was only on account of my own vanity that I wanted to see him, whereas it’s quite the contrary. As a rule, I hate sick people, and I’m sure it is most disagreeable to me to meet that woman.