Merrick Leonard
The Quaint Companions
CHAPTER XII
She was standing in her studio, in front of her Academy picture, wondering lazily when it would be finished, and if it would get in. She had exhibited several times at Birmingham and Manchester, and last spring her "The Grove is all a Pale Frail Mist" in the Leeds Exhibition had sold for thirty guineas, but she had had nothing hung yet in the Royal Academy, though she had sent there more than once.
Her studio was an attic. On the discoloured walls, and stacked in corners on the floor, were early works – a record to the investigator of the various stages she had passed. They were all there – the pictures that one would have expected to find. There were the usual attempts at family portraits, the usual still-life groups of ginger-jars, Japanese fans, and bowls of flowers; there were the more ambitious canvases depicting lackadaisical females posturing in medieval landscapes – painstaking exaggerations of a famous man's most obvious faults. There were the subjects with silver beeches and willowy streams, painted after she had given her heart to landscape for good and all, and had returned to Beckenhampton entranced by the work of Corot. Compared with those early insincerities the picture on the easel was a masterpiece; but she was not looking at them for encouragement – indeed not many of them were in a position to be observed – nor was she at work, though the colours on the palette were freshly set. Although her gaze wandered constantly from the picture to the study beside it – showing in miniature the same stretch of gorse-grown common, the same sunk wayfarer upon a bench – her brush was motionless, and presently she tossed it to the table with a gesture of impatience.
She was thinking of A Celibate's Love Songs. A fortnight had passed since she bought it, and the volume haunted her. She had been filled by an intense desire to write to the author, to tell him of the effect his poetry had had on her, also to ask him one or two questions about it. Such impulses are obeyed by a thousand women every day in the year, but to this woman, remote, unfashionable, the desire seemed so romantic, and even immodest, that she blushed at the temptation. She wondered again if such things were done, wondered if the appreciation of an obscure, bent, plain little artist would excite his ridicule.
It was the latter doubt that deterred her most strongly, the fear that he might scoff. The sensitiveness to her deformity which made it an ordeal to her to confront a stranger, which made her ashamed of her Christian name, rendered her shy even in correspondence, and she shrank as much from revealing herself on paper as in speech. Still this correspondent would not know that she was bent, or plain, or an obscure artist, so there would be nothing for him to scoff at, excepting, perhaps, the way she expressed her ideas. She reflected for a moment that the "H. Sorrenford," which was her usual signature, might even conceal her sex.
That fancy faded almost as it rose. Since her object in writing would be to obtain an answer, she ought to enclose an envelope stamped and addressed. Yes, he was bound to know that the appreciation was a woman's. She faltered again, and wished that the poet were not a man.
In one respect she resembled all the readers who want autographs or information; she was supported by the remembrance that she meant to spare him the expense of the penny stamp. It emboldened her to begin the letter. She had not a sentence in her mind when she sat down, and her opening lines were the lines that popular authors have come to know by heart – the lines with which even less favoured authors are familiar. Before long, though, the knowledge that she was free to destroy the letter when it was finished made her spontaneous, and she ceased to consider the propriety of her action, forgot to question whether he would sneer or not.
She was not a literary woman and she did not write literary English, but she was an unhappy woman, who for the first time in her life had experienced the joy of finding herself understood; and she came nearer to uttering what she meant with her untutored pen than she had ever done with her misguided brush. Because she was not literary, she believed that when she suppressed the pronoun "I" she stilled the personal note, and the true value of the letter lay in its suggestiveness. The pleasure of expressing her love, her gratitude for the verse was very great, and though she chose to ignore the fact that the pages were destined to meet his eyes, the inward consciousness of it remained forceful.
When the letter was written, she read it slowly through, and twice she made as if to tear it up. But she did not tear it up; she put it away irresolutely. It occurred to her now that she could direct it only to the office of the publisher, and several times during the day she wondered if the publisher would forward it. Once in recalling something that she had said, she regretted a word that had been used, and she wished she could substitute a weaker one. She went to the studio and took the letter out and examined it. She wrote with a "J," and the word was thick and black; the alteration would be noticeable. She did not like the thought of that, was averse from giving to an unaffected letter an air of artifice, and she was reluctant to copy it. She stood hesitating a long while. But how foolish she was! She had not decided yet that she meant to post it at all.
The same on the morrow; she vacillated hourly. She wanted so much to post it, but it seemed such a preposterous thing to do; the more she reflected, the more certain she was that she would feel ashamed if she yielded to the desire. Still she would put the letter in the pocket of her jacket! She could determine whether it should go into the pillar-box or the fire while she was out.
Beckenhampton itself is not picturesque, though the outskirts are pretty enough. The visitor finds nothing to admire in the town save the factory-girls, some of whom are beautiful – excepting on Sunday when they wear their best clothes and mock pearl necklaces. She was tired to death of the long, dull, stuccoed roads that offered nothing to the imagination. She crossed the market-place and passed a post-office and made her way towards London Street. In London Street the Misses Simpson nodded to her without stopping. They agreed that she was "beginning to look old, poor girl," as they went on. In her hand were the letter, and the cheesemonger's bill, which she was about to pay. The fancy did not strike her, but the two things that she held were typical of her existence.
She paid the bill and turned homeward. Now she walked more slowly, and when she reached the post-office again, she paused. She moved a step closer to it – and wavered. The thought came, to embarrass her, that she was making herself more ridiculous still by so much hesitation. At the worst the man would throw the thing aside and forget it. She wished that it had been sent at once, or that she had never written it at all. The whole incident seemed to her intolerably stupid. She pushed the letter hastily into the box.
CHAPTER XIII
Yes, David's success had come. It had not been won so easily as was imagined by the readers who had never heard of him till now, for he had written for many papers – verse and articles too – before A Celibate's Love Songs appeared. It had not come so soon that success intoxicated him; but it had come a decade earlier than it comes as a rule even to the fortunate.
It was the pity of it, that the recognition he had wooed so ardently found his embrace at last a little passionless. "A humbug" his friends, if he had had any, would have called him when he hinted as much, but some of Fame's fairness had faded in the courtship, or the wooer had lost some of his capacity for rapture.
The "interviews" and the introductions that might have been his were not forthcoming because nobody had met him yet, but he was conscious of no sacrifice in waiving them; on the contrary, he shrank distressed from the thought of thrusting his negro face? between the public and their appreciation of his verse. Mr. Norton, his publisher, might have intimated suavely that his personality had a distinct commercial value, but David had even excused himself from calling on his publisher.
Few things are more circumscribed than "widespread literary fame"; and David's was only spreading. Though A Celibate's Love Songs was in brisk demand, and a second edition, the author's mother in her boarding-house at Regent's Park had not heard of it yet; Vivian was travelling, as business-manager of a dramatic company; and at present the poet's parentage had not transpired. At Panzetta's somebody might have given the kick-off to a ball of personal gossip, remembering the whisper of the ex-clerk's tendencies, but before a volume of poems penetrated to Panzetta's it would have to see, not two, but twenty editions.
In solitude as complete as when he saw his first sonnet printed, or when – as an unattached journalist – he bade the clerkship good-bye, David lived to-day. The residence of the "new poet whom Mr. Norton had discovered" – there are always paragraphists who talk naively of the publisher or manager "discovering" a writer who has been pealing at the bell for years – was a philistine and even shabby first-floor in an undesirable street shadowed by Gray's Inn Road. On his notepaper he ignored Gray's Inn Road, and flaunted Mecklenburgh Square. When he worked, his eyes rested now on an oleograph of Romeo and Juliet in a gilt frame, instead of on a washhand-stand, and his meals were laid by a domestic who removed her curling-pins by noon, and was clean by tea-time. One does not attain distinction as a poet without acquiring certain luxuries.
He was not writing this morning; he seldom did much good until the gas was lighted – until the bawl of hawkers, and the riot of children, and the clatter and crash of milk-cans had ceased. In the evening there were only piano-organs to prevent his earning a living, and by ten or eleven o'clock even these finished. He was not writing; when the second post was delivered, he had his overcoat spread on the table, and was trying to expunge a grease-spot with a rag soaked in turpentine. There was a letter for him. Though the servant was slow in coming upstairs, the grease spot was still slower in yielding to his treatment, and when she thudded across the room, he was still rubbing vigorously.
His publisher's name was on the envelope, so he put the rag down, wondering if there was any important news. At the sight of an enclosure, and a printed slip conveying Mr. Norton's compliments, he said "damn," for enclosures usually proved to be circulars from Press-cutting agencies. He opened Bee's letter with little interest, and fingers that smelt of turpentine.
The feeling roused in him by the first lines was a very commonplace one – the gratified flutter of a young artist who is praised – but after a few seconds the letter affected him more subtly. It was not merely that "Miss H. Sorrenford," who desired a reply, admired his work; so did more authoritative critics. Nor was it simply that he was thankful to her for owning it; he had been thankful to them too. It wasn't only that her appreciation was intelligent; a few of the criticisms had been more than that. The arresting fact was that he was stirred by curiosity about her. For once a woman permitted him a glimpse of her soul, and the loneliness of his life made the strange event more fascinating. He wondered who she was, and how she looked, and was humiliated to reflect how disenchanted she would be if she could see him. He read the letter twice before he put it in his pocket, and smiled again at the diffidence of her beginning. What was the picture in her mind – the seclusion of a study, a secretary sorting the poet's morning mail? He regarded his surroundings ruefully.
He thought he would reply to her on the morrow, but the curiosity she had wakened in him did not subside; on the contrary, her letter kept recurring to him during the day, and he pondered what he should say. He was young enough to quake lest his response should dethrone him. Because the matter was engrossing he sat down to answer her the same afternoon, and he found himself writing at much greater length than he had intended.
As he took the second sheet of paper, the doubt arose whether such prolixity would not cheapen him in her view. Unaccustomed to a crown, he was of course afraid of its slipping off. He left the table, and revolved a polite and colourless note that seemed more consistent with the position to which she elevated him; but he wasn't satisfied with it. To assist his meditations he re-read her letter, and now he realised that at the back of his mind lay the desire to hear from her again. The note would frustrate it. He returned to the table, and went on with the fifth page. By dint of squeezing his wisdom a good deal he contrived to avoid encroaching on page six.
Late on the next day but one, he received a few lines of acknowledgment from her. They were grateful, but they provided no reason for his addressing her any more. He was chagrined, and it would have astonished Bee much to know how often David Lee's thoughts turned to her.
At the end of a week she was sufficiently astonished; she recognised the writing on the envelope and the package a shade incredulously. He begged her acceptance of his first book, which he hoped she would like as well as his second. He even hinted that he awaited her opinion of it with considerable eagerness. She thanked him by return of post, and when another week had gone by, her opinion was expressed. She had written with a faltering pen this time, because she did not like his first book so well as his second, and was perturbed by the necessity for saying so.
David put down the letter discomfited. He had been looking for it every day, and the knowledge that he had been impatient made him angrier still. He was incensed with himself for having provoked the disappointment. Why had he sent her the book? The tepidity of her praise! Never a superlative. Besides, in parts she failed to see his meaning. After all, she was less spiritual than he had thought her!
If her earliest letter had stirred his imagination less deeply, the correspondence which he had rescued once would now have been allowed to die; as it was, he wrote to her not long afterwards, defending himself from her criticism, and explaining a passage which he said she misunderstood. It was manifest that he was wounded. She replied – evidently abased by his displeasure – that she had not presumed to "criticise." So does humility juggle with words. The poet was appeased; and then mortified to feel that he had been a churl. He scribbled a line of deprecation. Also, angling for further favours, he tied an inquiry to the end of it.
Thus the correspondence entered upon its second stage. In its second stage they exchanged letters at longer intervals, but he ceased to invent pretexts for asking her to reply, and she signed herself, "Sincerely yours, H. Sorrenford," instead of "Yours very truly." When the spring came, he complained: "It is nearly a month since I heard from you – the bareness of the breakfast-table affronts me every morning," and Bee, who had been the prey of scruples, put them from her, and wrote again.
They were wholly natural, the letters that had begun to mean so much; they would have seemed unnatural only if they had been published, with an editor's "Foreword" proclaiming that the writers were strangers to each other. David wrote on impulse in the hours when he was loneliest; Bee responded gladly when the temptation to confess herself was too strong to be denied. There was no news in the letters; hers especially were poor in facts – her thoughts about a book he had recommended to her, the impression of a ramble through the fields, seldom more. He was surprised sometimes to reflect how little he knew about the woman whom at other times he seemed to know so well. It surprised the woman that she could unveil her soul with such audacity to a man she had not met.
Only in moments she realised that she was able to write without constraint because they had not met. He didn't know her, and unknown, she was unembarrassed; the disparity between her body and her mind ceased to oppress her until the envelope was sealed. She would not even tell him she was an artist, lest he should make inquiries, and discover that she was deformed. In their sensitiveness to their exteriors, as well as in their hunger for love, these two were akin. Often when the man wrote to her, he shivered in imagining her aversion if she could see her correspondent's face. Often when the woman posted her answers, she was ashamed, conjecturing his fancy-portrait of her and cowering before her crooked shadow on the road.
And his fancy sketched a score of portraits of her. She had youth – he was sure of that – yet she was not so young that her outlook was a girl's. She had beauty – manlike, he clung to that, although he had so good a cause to know that lovely thoughts may inhabit unlovely homes. But after it was said, how little had been told! He craved the definite. Was she fair, or was she dark? Were her eyes brown or blue? What colour was her hair? Was she small, or queenly? At once he longed to see her, and trembled at the thought of revealing himself to her astounded gaze. Frequently he was harassed by the thought that an opportunity for their meeting would occur, and he wondered what excuse he could offer for avoiding it. Her letters were friendly, frank; one day he might open one to learn that she was coming to town. How could he dare to greet her? "I am David Lee." He foresaw her start, the colour falling from her face, the effort with which she put out her hand after the shock. And then? Yes, they would talk together for a little while unhappily; she would be painstakingly polite and struggle to conceal the dismay that he read in her every tone and gesture. And afterwards there would be a difference in her letters; and by degrees they would grow shorter, and presently they would cease – and the woman who had given him a new interest in life would be lost. While he could retain this sweet and strange companionship he swore he would retain it. The shock must come to her some time, he supposed, from a newspaper paragraph; for the present – But cowardice could not quiet his curiosity, and again and again he wished that he could see her once; always he wondered how she looked.
Bee's dread of his suggesting a visit to her was deepened by the fact that if she seemed reluctant to receive him, her correspondence would assume a clandestine air. Into the woman's life as well had come a new and eager fascination; she, too, desired and feared together. She wanted to hear him talk; she did not ask herself if he was handsome, but she wanted to hear him talk. What joy to have a presence that he would approve! To be able to tear open his welcome letters with no misgiving; one day to read that he was coming, and go down to the drawing-room, a graceful figure in a becoming frock, without the terror of reading consternation in his gaze. She pictured her entrance as it must be: his blank astonishment as she appeared on the threshold; their perfunctory conversation, with a lump in her throat; his pitiful pretence that he was pleased that he had come. How her letters would shrivel in his remembrance! She bowed her head.
Each was fast falling in love with an individuality; each was frightened at the thought of meeting the other's eyes. The man said bitterly, "She would shrink from a mulatto!" The woman sighed, "No doubt he thinks me beautiful!"
CHAPTER XIV
April was drawing to a close, and every evening the Professor said, "Have you heard from the Academy, my dear?" and sighed when she answered "No." She had begun to conclude that "The Sun's Last Rays" was rejected, and it distressed her to think of the money that she had laid out on the frame. Before the order for that frame was given, the price had been exhaustively debated at the supper-table; she knew that a good frame was a recommendation to a hanging committee – her father had argued that "an artist's work ought to stand on its own merits." In his demeanour now she read a reproach of her extravagance, and each time that he asked her if she had heard yet, it was a greater effort to her to reply.
At last, however – one evening when hope had almost died in her – the servant entered the room with a letter. The Professor lolled in the armchair smoking his pipe; Hilda was engrossed in a "new novel" from Turlington's – published in the previous spring – and Bee herself was sitting idle. Her thoughts flew to David Lee as she watched the girl advance towards her. She had withheld from her family the fact of her correspondence with the poet – withheld it, not because they would regard her friendship with him as an impropriety, but because they would consider she was making herself ridiculous – and she prayed that her father would not ask from whom the letter came. The handwriting relieved her anxiety, and the crest on the flap excited her. The next moment she pulled her varnishing ticket from the envelope.
"From the Academy, my dear?"
"Yes," she exclaimed, "I've got in!"
"What's that?" said Hilda, glancing up from the book. "Got in? Oh, have you – how nice!"
"What do they say?" inquired the old man. "Let me see!"
"It's a ticket for varnishing day," she said. "I wonder how I'm hung."
"Very odd," he remarked, "that they didn't send it you before." He read the ticket attentively, pursing his lips, and turned it over, as if a clue to the delay might be discovered at the back. "What did I tell you? I knew it would be all right. A pity you wasted such a lot on the frame now, eh, my dear?"
She could not perceive that the mistake was demonstrated, but his legitimate triumphs were so few that it would have been petty of her to grudge him an illusory one. "It must have been among the doubtfuls," she explained – "the pictures they didn't make up their minds about at once – that's why I didn't hear before."
"Of course," he said, "there are pictures that are put away to be examined again; the committee can't decide about them right off. Whether they are, taken eventually depends – er – depends on circumstances. They are called the 'doubtfuls.'" He returned her information to her with the air of letting her into a secret. "I expect they thought it a bit dull, you know – a bit dull. It's pretty – it's a pretty thing – but it wants more sunshine. It isn't bright enough. You haven't got the blaze of the gorse into it; that's what you've failed in – you haven't got the blaze of the gorse."
"It's eight o'clock in the evening," she said. "The title is 'The Sun's Last Rays.'"
The sunshine was paling from her spirits too. Extraordinary, she reflected, that it was possible for those who always meant well always to miss saying the things one wanted to hear. Both he and Hilda were genuinely pleased – she knew it – yet how flat the news had fallen! And neither of them had cried, "I wonder how you're hung!"
"Y-e-s, you don't convey the glory of summer, unfortunately; the thing isn't gay enough; there's no heat in it, no glare. That's what's the matter with it, my dear – there isn't the glare there should be. Now, to do justice to that scene, to paint it to advantage, you should have shown it on a scorching afternoon, under a vivid sky. The tramp on the seat should have been hot – mopping his forehead. There might even have been a touch of humour in the figure of the tramp. As it is, he only looks tired. You understand what I mean?"
"Oh yes," she murmured, "I understand. But that isn't the picture I wanted to do. I meant the wayfarer to look tired. I wanted to get what George Eliot called 'the sadness of a summer's evening' into it."
"Mopping his forehead with a red handkerchief, now, would be natural; and the red would liven the picture up. You might paint a red handkerchief in before the Academy opens, mightn't you? Think it over, my dear. A red handkerchief and a brighter light on the gorse would improve the thing wonderfully. It's a pity the man isn't more to the front, more important. He isn't prominent enough. That's where the fault lies really – the tramp isn't prominent enough."
Though it exasperated him to hear the ignorant try to criticise music, he never hesitated to dogmatise about the arts of which he knew nothing himself; and as she listened to him, the elation that had been born within her faded into lassitude. The fact that good news had come appeared to be already forgotten; her sister, having said, "How nice," was again immersed in the novel, and while her father discoursed didactically without once speculating how her picture had been hung, it seemed to Bee that her successes were always made an opportunity for homilies in her home rather than for rejoicing.
How her work had been hung, and how it would look, were doubts that filled her mind when she travelled to town on varnishing day. It was only in moments she even remembered that she was nearing the city that held David Lee. She knew the change that removal from the studio wrought in the aspect of a picture, and she crossed the great courtyard – as an exhibitor for the first time – with increasing nervousness. She went upstairs, and for a quarter of an hour wandered through the rooms in an unavailing search. Then she discovered her work, high in a corner, beside a picture of a child in a bright blue frock, playing with a puppy on a Brussels carpet. She stopped with a heart-quake. Though she had prepared herself to be disappointed, the shock sickened her. Surrounded by other pictures, also clashing with it in subject and treatment, and viewed in the harsh light of the Academy, her quiet landscape appeared to her insignificant and unfamiliar. She marvelled that there could have been hours when she was pleased with it; she stood rooted there, seeking the qualities that had endeared it to her. They had gone – everything had gone! It was the ghost of the landscape that she had painted that appalled her from the Academy walls. The ghost of it. She drooped drearily to a step-ladder and sat down. When she had recovered sufficiently to return to the picture, she put on a light varnish, which brought up the colour of the parts that had sunk in; but varnish could not brighten her mood, and she had little hope that "No. 790" would ever find a purchaser.
She had often reflected with a tremor that when David Lee went to the Academy, he might observe her work and recognise her name in the catalogue. In the novels that Hilda borrowed from Tuffington's the Academy was always revealing somebody's identity to someone else. "He moved to where the crowd was densest, and a minute later a half-cry escaped his lips. The scene that had never faded from his memory – the scene of their farewell – glowed upon the canvas. He knew that only one hand could have portrayed it – knew that the artist who had leapt to fame must be the trustful girl whom he had loved and lost!" Now that there was no danger of the work attracting Mr. Lee's notice, she wondered why she had feared its doing so; her misgiving that it might lead to his finding out the truth about her seemed ridiculous. She even parted regretfully with the prospect of arousing his admiration.
In the train, her despondence was deepened by the thought of having to give an account of the day's experiences when she arrived. While she could imagine nothing sweeter than to be approaching a home where affection was interpreted by tact, her soul fainted before the ordeal of detailing the disappointment to her father and Hilda. She knew that she would feel worse in the parlour than she did in the train, that, besides being dejected, she would be incensed. Whether things went well, or whether they went badly, she mused, it was an equal effort to have to talk about them if the listeners seized upon the trivial, and ignored the point – if they put faith in what they were meant to smile at, and were sceptical where they were asked to believe. How often she had gone home brimming with news, and no sooner imparted the first item than she wished fervently that she hadn't any at all!
The porters bawled "Becken'ampton," and she got out with a sigh, and made her way – dusty, unwilling, tired – towards the house. When she entered it, there were some letters lying on the hall table, and she saw one among them for herself from David. She picked it up, rejoicing; a flush warmed the whiteness of her cheeks, and she forgot she was fatigued. Her home-coming had been happier than she expected after all.