Читать книгу The Masterfolk - Haldane MacFall - Страница 9

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Wherein it is hinted that to be Famous is not necessarily to be Great

In a large and richly furnished studio that was the splendid workshop of a fashionable portrait-painter there stood before an easel a handsome fair-bearded man—handsome, though the head was small—a fellow who held himself with self-reliance, straight and satisfied. And with the calculated stroke of one who has mastered the technique of his craft, he set down the loaded brush on the embrowned canvas, yielding a touch of colour that told like living flesh on the portrait of the pretty woman whose likeness he was building up into life.

The stroke of colour pleased him, and he stood back and peered at it. He turned his head and glanced keenly at the pretty woman where she sat in the handsome chair that stood on the painter’s throne before him, her beauty enhanced and brought out by the carefully arranged crimson draping that was set in the grand manner as a heavy curtain looped behind her with golden cords and tassel—indeed, she made a telling picture as she sat there framed in by the great screen that was placed at her left hand to keep away the draught from the large double doors near by.

The beauty of Lady Persimmon, as the world knows, had caught roving royal eyes; and she was at the height of her vogue, gathering from this strange source of public esteem such homage as is given to the toy of a court. She was, in very truth, exquisite as a butterfly.

“Ah,” said she with languid, lazy accent that caressed the words she uttered, “I should love to live in Bohemia.” And she added with a pout: “Society is such a weary round—and so spiteful!”

Paul Pangbutt shrugged his shoulders:

“A part of the price you must pay for being a beautiful woman, my dear lady,” he said—and he went back to his painting.

“What? Spite!” she asked, the handsome brows meeting in questioning furrows. Her lips were very red—half open with delicious whisperings of scarlet sin, a minor poet had it—so she would keep them half open, though she most pronouncedly estranged herself from the minor poet for close upon a fortnight in display of her deep resentment. Thus, too, she was now being limned.

Pangbutt painted the corner of her pathetic mouth:

“Spite is the unwitting tribute of a petty mind,” he pronounced.

“I don’t see that that is any excuse for it,” she said smartly.

Pangbutt stood back; and he uttered a light laugh:

“The world is one vast engine of criticism,” he said. “A man is not a critic because he writes for a newspaper. That act is generally the mark of his incapacity. We are all discriminators. Bless my soul—conversation is criticism more than half the time! And why not?”

“That’s rather alarming, isn’t it?” she cooed. “Fancy if we criticised our friends!”

“Exactly what you do!” he pshawed. “You give your friendship: it is criticism in action. On others you turn a cold shoulder. You have said no word—but you have passed criticism. You have—well!—you have turned a very pretty but cruel back—uttered a more brutal verdict than tongue ever spoke.”

She laughed lightly:

“You’re a charming colourist, Paul—but all your craft cannot whitewash spite,” she said.

“No, no,” said he. “I only say that criticism has its shabby side. Spite is criticism gone sour.... But, tsha! I don’t believe there is all this venom in the world.” He laid down his palette: “It’s a very comfortable old world.... I’m afraid the light has gone.”

He pushed the easel aside, and came to where she sat. He set a foot on the throne, and leaned his elbow upon his knee, gazing into her eyes:

“The light has gone, and your great beauty calls for all the light—it dares the sun’s severest cross-examination.”

He held out his hand and she placed her slender fingers in his; she felt his admiring regard upon her. He pressed her fingers:

“You are firing my art as it has never been fired—you have given my craft all that it has lacked—yet your beauty, that exquisite thing over which you have no control, which is of no willing of yours, not even your own gift to yourself, is so subtle, so elusive, so wonderful, that all the colours of my art, all my knowledge of their use, cannot give more than a hint of that which you have, and without the asking. You are the living thing—I can at best but paint some poor suggestion of it. And when I have done, what is there in all my effort of the warmth and the sweetness, of the mystic fragrance of you?... Yet”—he played with her fingers—“yet,” he added, “you are giving me that inspiration that will set me above my fellows—the artist has never been anything of moment until fired by the flame of a great passion—and it may be that your beauty will make my art to glow and live.”

“I am glad,” she said, “if I—have——”

She hesitated prettily, and he kissed her fingers.

She was really thinking that this was a doing of the thing handsomely, but young Nick Bellenden of the Guards talked less and made of loving a more exciting affair. After all, the embrace was chief part of the business—not this dandified talk.

Thus they played at half-revealed travesties of passion; she keeping back much she would not have had him guess; he himself, perhaps, only half-realizing how little he allowed her glamour to interfere with his art until the light was gone and his craft at rest. The man had not even the excuse of jumping blood, the plea of hot-headedness. He never allowed his intrigues to interfere with his self-ordained task of setting a crown of contemporary fame upon his achievement....

It was dusk when he said inquiringly:

“You’ll have some tea?”

He rang the bell.

She laughed gaily:

“You have not turned on the light,” she said.

He snapped the trigger of the electric switch, and the room burst into light.

An old man-servant flung open the door and entered, bearing a glittering tea-service on a silver salver. As he came into view round the edge of the high screen, Pangbutt beckoned him towards the throne:

“Set the tray by her ladyship, Dukes,” said he.

The old butler set down the things on the throne at her feet.

Lady Persimmon lolled back in her chair:

“Nevertheless,” she said, “I should love, just for a little while, to live in Bohemia.”

Pangbutt laughed. It had been borne in upon him that this gentle beauty had deft resource and a somewhat confirmed habit in steering awkward corners. He came back to argument:

“But Bohemia, too, has its shabby side,” he said—“there is spite even in Bohemia.... I’m afraid I’m watering down some of your illusions, Lady Persimmon.”

“Ah, it’s quite easy to see that you were not long in Bohemia—not long enough to be infected with its home-sickness.”

The butler passed stealthily out of the room on silent feet—and the catch on the door faintly clicked.

The pretty woman nestled back amongst her cushions, and gazed through half-closed lids with languorous eyes at the man who poured out the tea near her feet.

“It’s so pleasant,” she said with a comfortable sigh, “to see the tea—the silver—the china. The fragrance of it all——”

He stopped, the silver teapot in his hand, and smiled:

“But there are no footmen in Bohemia—very little silver—very indifferent china.” He handed her a cup of tea. “They live as often as not upon imagination—and mad cow is their chiefest dish.”

She raised inquiring eyebrows:

“Mad cow?” she asked.

He nodded:

“Hunger,” said he, and he laughed.... “It doesn’t sound an alluring dish, does it?”

“How dreadful!” she purred, and sipped tea. “Still”—she sighed—“it must be rather exciting. It must be so romantic—to starve.”

Pangbutt shrugged his shoulders:

“This is an age of romance, then,” said he.

She sighed, prattling on:

“And it must be delicious to be famous.”

The flattery sent a smirk to Pangbutt’s lips:

“Ah, Fame——!” he said.

The handle of the door moved, clicking in its turning, and Pangbutt, looking over his shoulder, where he stood by the edge of the great screen, saw the door open, and a haggard face look in. The intruder came into the room a step or so.

Pangbutt gasped with frank surprise:

“Anthony? Good God, where have you sprung from?”

“Sorry to come before the light has quite gone, Paul; but I’m starving.”

“Starving?”

Anthony nodded his head:

“H’m, h’m! There you have the real devil in the machinery—and I’m turning on the lime-light of confession.” He glanced round the great studio deliberately: “This is rather a handsome room to confess in—a palace to our rooms in the old Paris days, eh?”

Pangbutt was cudgelling his wits to say something that would discover the presence of the seated lady behind the screen to the careless intruder, when Anthony strode up to him; and as the corner of the throne came into his range of vision beyond the end of the screen, he caught sight of the tray with the bright tea-things upon it.

“Food, ye gods!” he cried, and strode towards the tray. “Paul,” he said hoarsely—“I must have food.”

He stretched out his hand to the tray—halted—hesitated—stood up and took off his hat, as, on passing the screen, the enthroned sitter came into his view.

He bowed:

“Madame,” said he—“I apologize for my want of manners. The truth is I pawned them weeks ago—with my waistcoat and the last family portrait—a miniature of my uncle the general—a most polished person, who would have died of an apoplectic fit to see himself coming to move in such mixed company——”

Pangbutt coughed; and mumbling their names, as the fashion is, he introduced them, adding:

“A friend of mine—from Bohemia.”

His eyes laughed to her. He turned to Anthony as the two bowed to each other formally:

“Anthony,” said he—“the sight of you takes me back to Paris—and makeshifts.”

“Makeshifts!” Anthony laughed sadly, and, rousing, added—“I say, Paul, have you finished with the crumbs on that tray?”

Pangbutt uttered an embarrassed laugh, and went and rang the bell.

“Anthony was always impatient for the dinner-hour,” he said—and turning to Dukes as he appeared at the door he added—“Take away the tray, Dukes——”

Anthony put out his hand:

“I say—couldn’t he—leave the tray? I see some crumbs.... Bring another tray, Dukes.”

Pangbutt signed to the old butler to wait:

“A glass of wine, Anthony?” he asked.

“Tsah! you don’t understand, Paul. I’m not playing with my vitals—I’m starving, man,” he said hoarsely.

“A chicken?”

“The man’s a god!”

“D’you mind it cold?”

“Heavens, Paul! I shall die in the midst of all these elaborate courtesies—this rigid etiquette!”

He sank down wearily upon a corner of the painting throne, and fidgeted with the tea-things on the tray.

Pangbutt gave an embarrassed laugh, and turned to the butler:

“Dukes, bring up a tray—cold chicken—wine—anything you can get. Quick as you can.”

“Yessir!” said Dukes, and formally disappeared.

The beauty had been markedly uneasy; she now rose to take her leave.

“I must be running away, Mr. Pangbutt,” she said; and bowing over her shoulder to Anthony, who rose and returned her bow with stiff precision as she stepped lightly down from the throne: “So sorry!” she said.

As Pangbutt moved with her through the door she asked him in confidential undertone:

“Who’s the savage? Where does he come from?”

“Bohemia,” he said, with a dry mocking smile; and he lingered about her on the landing, to assist her with her cloak. He escorted her downstairs to her carriage....

When they were gone from the studio, Anthony Baddlesmere rose from his seat, carrying the last piece of a tea-cake in his hand, and, walking over to the easel, as he ate the cake he regarded the picture with critical eye:

“H’m! ’Tain’t bad!” he growled.

Pangbutt entered the room and shut the door.

He laughed:

“Her ladyship doesn’t seem to be so enamoured of Bohemia after all,” he muttered.

“Eh?” asked Anthony.

“Oh—nothing—nothing,” said Pangbutt. “I am afraid we have spoilt a pretty woman’s illusion.”

Anthony gazed at the canvas before him:

“To destroy a pretty woman’s illusions is cruel as plucking out a child’s eyes,” he said, and added: “Who’s the doll?”

“Lady Persimmon; but——”

“What? Eleanor Persimmon, who married old Gilders Persimmon?... He dyed his beard for the wedding—naughty old man—and he’s had to renew it ever since——”

Pangbutt went to the fireplace, and he turned and said severely:

“Sir Gilders Persimmon is not in his youth, but——”

“No, no, Paul—I’m not blaming him for being a ruin—but he’s so damned badly restored.” He turned to the picture. “So you are Eleanor Persimmon, my lady!” He gazed at the portrait dreamily; and, suddenly rousing, added: “Not much of a likeness, old boy, is it?”

Pangbutt smiled wryly.

Anthony peered round the easel at him:

“I suppose she babbles all the time!” said he.

Pangbutt stiffened before the fire:

“Lady Persimmon is a most charming woman,” he said.

“Yes, yes; it’s in the family,” Anthony said airily—“she’s a sort of cousin of mine. My brother had rather a calf-love for her—when he was seventeen—and a calf.”

Pangbutt flushed:

“I do not care to discuss Lady Persimmon,” he said stiffly.

“No, no; I can quite understand that,” said Anthony breezily. “Nor do I—nor do I. She was always rather uninteresting.”

He walked over to the throne: “Ho, ho!” thought he. “H’m! ha! Paul still worships the titled classes. He was always weak in the first commandment.”

He sat down wearily and searched aimlessly under the little covers of the cake-dishes on the tray.

“Paul,” said he, “I exaggerated when I said there were crumbs....” And he added with a laugh—“I don’t suppose cousin Eleanor recognised cousin Anthony—I was only sixteen—besides, she would not be prepared for his rising at her pretty feet like a down-at-heels pantomime clown in this Palace of Art—this lofty pleasure-house.”

“You wrong Lady Persimmon by insinuation,” said Pangbutt sulkily—“she is a woman of most generous sentiments.”

Anthony uttered a funny little laughing grunt:

“Cousin Eleanor was always the soul of sentiment and—delicate self-indulgence. She used to adore the portrait of Shelley—weep over Chatterton—cry over Kit Marlowe—and—married a baronet in an advanced state of decay.”

He got up, strode to the easel again, and examined the picture. Pangbutt watched him under his brows with sulky attention, lolling against the mantelpiece.

“Come, Paul, old boy,” Anthony said at last—“I’ve been sketching the doll’s soul for you; but you’ve got none of that into her picture.... The colour and technique may be all there—and it is splendidly handled—but where’s the woman?”

Anthony’s frank criticism, his just and keen appreciation of the good and the weak side of a work of art, had always won Pangbutt’s admiration; and the scowl left his eyes now as the praise bit into his conceit. The detraction passed by him:

“D’you know, Anthony,” he said—“sometimes I suspect I am too successful—too easily successful—and I have a horror of becoming commonplace.”

His eyes followed the other as he slouched carelessly back to the throne and flung himself upon it.

“Pooh! Nonsense, Paul.” He searched aimlessly amongst the empty plates again: “That’s all cant. Look at me. I’m as empty as a bubble—but it’s just as difficult to write sparkling prose on an empty stomach as to be a poetic alderman.”

Pangbutt gazed down at his own shining boots complacently:

“I have not forgotten what personal discomfort was, in the old Paris days. I detested it. I determined from the first to be rid of it.... Where are you living?”

The man that sat on the throne shrugged his shoulders, gazing at vacancy sadly:

“In a very shabby corner of Bohemia, Paul, where, in the streets, every vagrant wind makes whirlpools of stray papers—that shuffle by—like the damned restless whispering ghosts of rejected poems—or other stammerings that are the inky outpourings of broken literary careers.... Not at all the sort of place that you would like, old boy.... But, Paul”—he looked round the room—“you muttered something—about—a chicken—just now——”

Paul laughed—a little embarrassedly; and rang the bell:

“You’d like to take off your overcoat?” he asked.

Anthony laughed drily:

“Tsh! Paul!—we’ll avoid delicate subjects, please. But since I am in the confessional, I ought to add that I haven’t a coat or waistcoat. Misfortune makes us acquainted with strange underclothes.”

Paul Pangbutt smiled; but a frown followed close upon the smile, and blackened it. He was possessed of that peculiar egoism which, at the sight of the pitiful, is but roused to a delicious self-pity.

“Ah,” said he; and a little suspicion of patronage slipped into his manner, as it does when we are content to comfort our friends with phrases—“I have not forgotten what makeshifts were in Paris—before I made my mark.... I always detested frayed cuffs.”

A funny little smile played about the lips of the seated man; he nodded grimly:

“H’m, yes. Having no shirt at all has that advantage—the cuffs do not fray.”

Pangbutt’s scowl came flitting back:

“Yes; I know.... You and the others always made a jest of the disgusting pinch and meanness of it all——”

The weary man nodded:

“Ah, yes, it’s true,” said he, and he sighed—“the road was very weary—very dusty—sometimes—in Paris.”

The other strode vigorously up and down the room, with that vigour that had set him on the road to success: his eyes were fixed within:

“But I determined at the first chance I got to shake off that dust of the students’ quarter of Paris. I detested the untidiness of them all—the leanness and the grim jest of it—and the everlasting loans that were never paid.”

Anthony’s face, as he watched the impatient striding from under his brows, listening to the triumphant note of success, flickered with a grim smile. Paul Pangbutt had not been exactly notorious for the lending of loans. It came to him that his quest for help was not going to be an easy one.

The other suddenly came to a halt, and looked keenly at Anthony where he sat; remembering that this brooding man was the real subject of talk, he added:

“But—are things really as low with you as you say, Anthony?... You always made a jest of hard work.”

Anthony laughed sadly:

“And sometimes we got a good deal of hard work out of a jest; eh, Paul?” The smile died out of his eyes as soon as he had spoken: “No,” he added, “there’s no jest in it—unless the gods laugh at misfortune.... I am about at the end of things.”

Pangbutt assumed the fatherly note:

“Anthony,” said he—“I hope you will not mind my saying so, but you were always most reckless in your expenditure—or rather in your loans to all that army of hangers-on about you.”

It came to Anthony, as he stood in the withering blight of this man’s lack of sympathy, that if he were going to ask for help he must set aside all delicacy and put the situation before him bluntly. He made an unwilling start:

“Some years ago, Paul,” he said, “after you had made your mark in Paris, and were doing the round of the foreign courts, you no doubt heard that Caroline made rather a sensation with a book.”

Pangbutt nodded:

“I have read it,” he said—but his attitude was enigma.

Anthony was relieved to find there was to be no oratorial protest in honour of Style. He went on as though repeating a distasteful task he had set himself:

“It has been attacked from all sides. It is as dead—as—a railway sandwich.”

“That is rather a misfortune,” said Pangbutt.

Anthony laughed. He felt strangely ashamed—of himself—of his friend. And it flashed through his thinking parts, with lightning stroke, that this was the man whom Caroline had nursed through the typhoid.

He was roused from his reflections by Pangbutt’s sharp question:

“And you?”

He searched about in his mind for what he had last said:

“Eh? Me? Oh, ah, yes; I tried to grow a garden of literature in Fleet Street—to bring to blossom the tender buds of the new school of thought. But my star was not in journalism. My paper was burnt up in the fire of the young immortals who flocked to my office, whose masterpieces few would buy—or read.” He smiled a wan smile, and sighed: “The paper has gone into ash.... That’s why, when the wind blows keen, there is so much dust in Fleet Street.”

Pangbutt’s eyes were fixed critically upon his own survey of this man’s past, and he had but half listened to the other’s words:

“On the whole,” said he drily, “you have not been very fortunate, then?”

Anthony laughed sadly, but said nothing.

It was definitely borne in upon him that he would never be able to ask this man for money.

The other was embarrassed by the silence:

“What are you going to do?” he asked uncomfortably.

Anthony roused himself. He took up the thread of his appeal, but he now went on vaguely—he felt that it was hopeless:

“Oh, ah, yes.... Well, my verse is sunk to the honour of neglect—which is not a matter wholly wanting in subtle flattery, since all the clever young men tell me it is the reward of true poetry. But—here’s food!” he cried, as the door opened and the butler entered, carrying a tray, well laden: “Here’s food—so poetry go hang!” He seized the carving-knife almost before Dukes had set down the tray; and the austere servant took up the other discarded empty tray and softly withdrew from the room. “A most radiant fowl!” cried Anthony, carving it with swift precision.... “I say, Paul—you won’t mind my taking the wings in my pocket for the youngster—he’s been a little sickly of late!”

He carved off the wings and breast, and his searching glance fell on a large handsome quarto that lay upon the throne by his side.

“Hullo!” said he—“a large-paper edition!” He turned it over and saw that it was verse. “What idiot has been writing verses now?”

Pangbutt smiled:

“That’s a volume of collected poems by Sir Gilders Persimmon,” he said.

“Indecent old thing!... May I have the fly-leaf for the chicken?”

Pangbutt almost put out his hand in panic, fearing sacrilege; but he said instead, rather stiffly:

“It is an autograph copy from my friend, Sir Gilders Persimmon; and——”

“Yes, yes—quite so. It’s luxury to write poetry when you’re rich,” he said—“poetry should be handsomely treated.”

“Ah, Anthony—we scoff at riches——”

“Who scoffs at riches?” Anthony looked up sharply.

“We all sneer at times.”

Anthony laughed:

“They don’t trouble my sleep much—not half so much as the lack of them.”

Pangbutt smiled drily:

“Well,” said he—“you confess by insinuation that it’s very pleasant to be even so discredited a thing as a millionaire?”

“I don’t know, Paul. I don’t call on ’em. When all’s said, they are no worse than the folk who do call on ’em. The rich man, too, stands before his abysses—he has his blood-curdlings like the poorest.... There are honest men and dishonest, even amongst the rich. Look at your speculative millionaire—your mighty company-promoter! He don’t sleep too well, thank God; but look at him.... To-day, society is licking his boots—licking them, Paul—for who so sublime a boot-licker as your hereditary flunkey of the Court? To-morrow—— Hang it, I’m talking like a curate.” He laughed. “I always gabble of millionaires in my sleep when the landlady is pressing for the rent.”

Pangbutt shrugged his shoulders:

“Nevertheless,” said he—“there’s something rather wonderful about a millionaire.”

“A very proper and right sentiment, Paul! Of course, a millionaire is a colossal article of commerce. Bigness appeals to the imagination. So a school-boy looks at a bishop and thinks the works of God are very wonderful.... But riches are comparative—there’s a millionaire who cannot buy a digestion. Give me a competency——”

Pangbutt’s lip curled:

“How much is a competency?” he asked.

“H’m—well——”

He stood up suddenly, listening.

There was a distant ring of a bell.

Anthony hurriedly folded his handkerchief over the scraps of food, and thrust them into his pocket.

He strode towards Pangbutt as though to say something—hesitated—he could not bring himself to ask for money. There was a second peal at the bell.

“I must be off,” he said—“I hear visitors.”

And waving his hand to Pangbutt he stepped quickly to the doorway.

When he reached the door he again hesitated—shook his head—and letting himself quietly out, closed the door gently after him.

Paul Pangbutt was alone.

He stood brooding.

His lips moved into a complacent smile:

“I believe my success awed him,” he said.