An Engagement of Convenience. Louis Zangwill
his own body to lavish his money on it. At last, gulping down the humiliation, he was forced to accept of Mary's little store of savings to pay his rent and his models. It was his first step of the kind, and he paid the full proverbial cost of it. But he had still the hope of returning the loan a thousandfold. Was not his success to redeem her life as well as his?
Certainly Mary believed in him and the picture, and looked forward to its scoring a great triumph. The whole heart and hope of the sister centred on that vast canvas. She sometimes ran across town to see it, though—poor child!—Hyde Park Corner always looked the same to her at every stage of its long creation. But the picture was Wyndham's backbone; it was his stock-in-trade before his world. He was more and more of a recluse now, refusing all invitations, discouraging his friends from coming to interrupt him—as he put it. Certainly Wyndham would rather have died than confess to failure after all the magnificent trumpeting. Even as it was, the time came soon enough when the big picture no longer served to protect his dignity. He imagined half-pitying glances and ironic smiles, and so eventually he found himself avoiding everybody without exception.
It was only on Lady Betty's wedding day, after more than three years of futile striving, that he had the resolution to remove the great canvas from the easel and stand it with its face to the wall.
He was tired now, but he must make an effort to emancipate himself from Mary's exchequer. Till then he could not hold his head up. So he painted some smaller and pleasanter pictures, but again he could do nothing with them. The Academy sent them back, the minor galleries sent them back, the Salon sent them back the following year. The dealers offered less than the cost of the frames. Meantime he had ceased to count up the five-pound notes Mary had starved herself to keep for him. He knew he was a coward and dared not. He had reached that stage of moral confusion which Nietzsche registers as in the natural history of the artist-type, and which may not be eyed too harshly from the point of vantage of ordered and organised existence in this outer universe. One idea stood clear beyond all others; grew into his mind; grew till it became his mind. He must cling to his studio, hold desperately to this atmosphere of paint and canvasses.
He was getting on in years now—past thirty-three. It was like the striking of a pitiless clock, this adding of swift year after year to his unsuccessful life. His hand began to fail him. The necessity of now doing his own house-work; of bothering with coals and cinders, preparing his makeshift monotonous meals, pouring oil into lamps, and boiling kettles, and washing plates and teacups, had begun by encroaching on his time and energies, and ended by absorbing them altogether. The care of ministering to his own primary needs had at last superseded art as his profession. Even so, the cobwebs multiplied and the dust lay thick.
Months now slipped by, he scarcely knew how; he was astonished to realise how time might elude one, how a colourless day might be trifled away without appearing to hold the possibility of even a morsel of achievement. Yet he still grasped the hope that something would "arrive"—an unexpected magazine commission, a request from a dealer. Ideas for a new start would teem in his head as he lay tossing on the narrow iron bed up in the gallery at the end of the studio. Why not do some pretty little things—to fetch ten guineas apiece, say—Cupids playing amid wreathed flowers with pale Doric structures in the background? If Mary could manage just another few pounds for him, he would have time to turn out a number of such decorative trifles. Such things were in constant demand and were a sure source of livelihood. He had stood out long enough, much longer indeed than he had had the right. He had consistently worked on a basis of high endeavour, but now he must withdraw his dignity and enter on the pot-boiler phase. Better that than this abominable leech-like existence. Continued misfortune had befogged his wits, and this last year certainly he had been half mad.
So be it! He must wake up now, and no longer lose his days in this stupid pottering about!
Every dog had his day, and his own turn would come in time. He was an artist. He felt it in his bones and blood. Art was his life and destiny. He had blundered in attempting too big a feat too early in his career, but he did not intend that that should wreck his existence. No, no! he would never throw up the sponge. He would rather die than admit defeat, with all those who knew him looking on at the game.
III
He dressed himself carefully to go to Mary's, trying hard not to think of the real purpose of his visit—he had merely informed her that he would be in the neighbourhood and would look in for a cup of tea. But, though it was distasteful to dwell on these unending demands on her earnings, he was anything but profligate in spending them. He had spun out her previous five-pound note so that it had kept him going for weeks and weeks, and he had grudged himself even a newspaper. In view of the newly-projected work to tickle the dealers, he regretted more than ever that he had not been able to pull himself together sooner: in these past precious weeks he might have knocked off half a dozen of such pretty-pretty things.
A series of omnibuses took him across London to Kensington Church, where he descended, presently turning out of the High Street. The "Buildings" where Mary resided were in a side alley at the back, and Wyndham made direct for them. He walked straight in through the large front door that stood perennially open, and followed the trail of muddy footmarks up the worn stone stairway. On the third landing he came to a stop, and pulled a bell half hidden in the obscurity of a corner. The door opened, and Mary stood before him. He could not help seeing how unnaturally slim she appeared to-day; how her simple stuff dress seemed to hang loosely on her.
"This is so good of you. I am so glad to see you, dear." Her earnest face brightened with a wistful yet pleasant smile.
He stooped and kissed her, then followed her into her tiny sitting-room. It was evidently the home of a gentlewoman. With the shelf or two of books, the escritoire, the few prints, and the little trinkets and photographs she valued, she had contrived to make a dainty little nest of it, and all these simple things gave the place a peculiar personal stamp. The table was laid for tea, and the kettle sang on the fire.
"You have had a dreary journey," she said, as she gave him a chair.
"No, the weather has been unexpectedly kind," he reassured her. "The sun peeped out just for one moment. I believe I was the only person in London that noticed it: the rest of the world were intent on other things. Have you been keeping well?"
"You forget I am just back from vacation."
"Of course—I had forgotten," he laughed. "How did you spend your time?"
"I passed the first three weeks with Aunt Eleanor, as I told you I should. We were a big, merry party, and everybody made a great fuss of your little sister." Again that wistful smile. "They all spoiled and petted me shamefully."
"Ah, that was good for you."
"I am not so sure about that," she returned thoughtfully. "I am certainly not used to the sort of thing, and I really found it restful and refreshing to go on to old Lady Glynn, who had me to herself."
"So that's your idea of a holiday—taking care of paralytic, deaf old people whom everybody else shuns like the plague." He shook his finger at her. "And you call it restful and refreshing."
"Service is the greatest of all happiness," she answered gently. "Even as it is, I'm sadly afraid I'm a sham and a fraud. I'm not really a worker—in the same sense as others I know. They have no fashionable friends with big houses in the country."
She brewed the tea and gave him his cup.
"Do people inquire much about me?" he asked, as the uncomfortable thought recurred to him.
"Certainly not of me," she returned. "You neglect them, you refuse their invitations, they never hear a word from you, and naturally they suppose you wish to be quit of them all. And so, no doubt, they feel it the proper thing not to appear to wish to discuss you with your sister." There was a pause. Both seemed lost in thought for the moment. "And so you, poor Walter, have had no holiday at all!"
"Ah, well," he sighed. "I try to