Читать книгу Gray youth - Oliver Onions - Страница 12

When Mr. Hamilton Dix, the renowned critic, had first mentioned Amory in print, he had made a perhaps pardonable error about her sex. But the error itself had been a compliment. In speaking of “Mr. Amory Towers” he had been misled by the rugged masculinity of “The Paviors,” her second exhibited picture.

Amory was not sure that she liked Mr. Dix very much. He seemed to her to have a rather remarkable faculty for slightly impairing the value of everything of which he wrote or spoke. His conclusions were undeniable; when Mr. Hamilton Dix had pronounced on a thing Q.E.D. might be written after that thing; there was no more to be said about it. But somehow all the fun had gone out of it. You told yourself, grossly unfairly, that if it interested Mr. Hamilton Dix it had no further interest for you. That was your loss, since Mr. Dix usually fastened on the best things. In appearance he was a big man with an overpowering presence, a promising eye, and brown curls that frothed all over his head like the “top” of a mug of porter; and you wondered whether a person could ever be so glad to see anybody whomsoever as Mr. Hamilton Dix appeared to be to see everybody. He still occasionally called Amory “Mr. Towers” by way of a joke.

Mr. Dix had no official connection with the Crozier Gallery. He frequently wrote of “another admirable Exhibition at the Crozier which no serious student of art must miss,” or “the gift of discovering the best among our younger artists which the proprietors of the Crozier seem to possess,” but that was all. As a professional critic he was not eligible for membership of the artists’ clubs, but he blew like a March gale through their studios, and the smaller and poorer the studio the more he irradiated it with the light of his optimistic eye.

During their earlier interviews he had carried Amory entirely off her feet. Though his tongue had cautioned and disclaimed, there had been no resisting the promise of his eye. Croziers’ were going to take her up, and—well, at the present stage “Mr. Towers” (ha, ha) would quite understand that Mr. Dix did not want to say too much about it.—But his very reticence had seemed a guarantee. It was not to be supposed that Messrs. Crozier took people up without a certain amount of belief in them. … And that had kept Amory’s head in the clouds for quite a long time. … But little by little it had dawned on Amory that time seemed of very little value to Messrs. Crozier. A thousand years in their sight—or two years, to be precise—was but as yesterday. Delay after delay had occurred; Messrs. Crozier had not judged this time to be quite ripe, had considered that market to be a little overstocked; it was necessary, if the success was to be made for which they hoped, that the time should be chosen to the hour; and so on and so forth.—“You’re far from being old yet, if I may say so without offence, Miss Towers,” Mr. Dix had remarked, rolling his eye over Amory’s small, straight little figure, as if the organ had been mounted on an universal joint. …

But lately it had looked as if things really were in motion again. Amory had had several letters with the Crozier embossing on the envelope flap, asking her to state at once in what state of advancement her works were, and once she had even had a prepaid telegram. … Then things had slowed up once more, and Amory had fumed.

Then, on a morning in May, a hansom cab drew up at the greengrocer’s in Cheyne Walk, and Mr. Hamilton Dix, seeing Amory look out of the window, had waved his plump hand. He blundered up the stairs, and told Amory that he wished to see the canvases themselves, at once; at once, mind you. … There were between twenty-five and thirty of these canvases; they were stacked round the walls like the slates in a builder’s yard; and Mr. Dix rolled his eye over them as Amory set them, one after another, on her easel. Then he rolled the eye over Amory herself again. Again Amory somehow had the impression of gluten. It was as if the eye had left traces where it had rested.

“Excellent. Admirable. Very choice. Very good indeed,” said Mr. Dix. “And now, Miss Towers, I’m afraid I’ve a disappointment for you.”

If Mr. Dix spoke of a disappointment it was sure not to be so bad as it sounded. Amory watched him a little anxiously, however. Another postponement would be really too bad.

“It’s the old difficulty, the difficulty of fitting in the dates,” Mr. Dix said. “Mr. Hugh Crozier is deeply apologetic about it; he’s quite as much disappointed as you can possibly be; but—well, I see I shall have to tell you a secret that must on no account pass these four walls.”

Mr. Dix told his secret. It was that Herbertson, the brilliant pastelist, was not expected to live through the week.

“Not a word, mind,” Mr. Dix cautioned Amory. “It’s only because the circumstances in your case are special that I have Mr. Hugh’s permission to tell you this at all. But you see the difficulty it places him in. Poor Herbertson’s exhibition will be ten times as valuable if it comes while the papers are still full of his obituary—valuable to poor Mrs. Herbertson, I mean—I’m sure you’ll see that——”

Even the little thrill of being taken into Mr. Dix’s confidence did not altogether compensate for Amory’s disappointment. Another postponement now would mean no exhibition until the autumn. Slowly she took down from the easel the canvas she had last placed there.

“In that case I suppose there’s no hurry,” she said, plunging into dejection once more.

But Mr. Dix’s plump white hand went so far as to pat her reassuringly on the shoulder. The touch of his hand was only slightly more a contact than the resting of his eye.

“But you mustn’t suppose that that is all I came to tell you,” he said. “My dear young lady, Mr. Crozier isn’t that kind of man. He quite appreciates the hardship this is on you, and—don’t look dismayed—it doesn’t at all suit those pretty eyes—he has authorized me to make you a proposal.”

“What?” said Amory. She did not like the remark about her pretty eyes. Cosimo never spoke of her pretty eyes.

“It is this: that I am empowered to ask you if it would be convenient to you that he should pay you a sum of money now, in advance and on account of sales, at our customary rate of interest in such cases, the pictures themselves to be our security, at a valuation to be arrived at in consultation between Mr. Crozier and yourself? In fact, substantially the same terms that were accepted by poor Herbertson.”

Amory’s heart had given a leap. She did not entirely understand, but there was one thing that she did understand, namely, that Mr. Dix was offering her money at once. Money at once would enable her to begin her tenancy at Cheyne Walk at once. … Mr. Dix looked into the pretty eyes again, smiled, and continued.

“Well, what shall we say? If you were to ask my private opinion—but there, I’ve no right to try to influence you. But a considerable sum now—say a hundren pounds—eh——?”

He almost winked at Amory. It was as if he advised her to cry “Done” at once before Mr. Crozier had time to change his mind.

A hundred pounds! Amory thought. …

“Mr. Crozier doesn’t mean that he buys the pictures for a hundred pounds, does he?” she asked presently.

Mr. Dix laughed heartily. “My dear Miss Towers! … I can assure you that if Mr. Crozier had meant that he’d have had to find another messenger. No, no. You may regard this, if you like, as a mere solatium for the postponement—to be a first charge, of course, on whatever the pictures may ultimately fetch. That, we trust, will be a far greater sum. We’re watching the market very keenly, and you may trust Mr. Crozier to make the most of it when it comes. … Well, what am I to tell him?”

A hundred pounds, now!——

Almost precipitately Amory accepted.

“Bravo!” cried Mr. Dix, as if Amory had performed a deed of bravery. And he bent gallantly over her hand.

Amory was beside herself with importance and delight. She had not now a mere promise from Croziers’—she was to have a proper contract, and a cheque for a hundred pounds posted to her the very moment the contract was signed. All that day she could not sit still for a minute in one place, and in the afternoon she suddenly started up, crammed her hat on her head, and ran out to the confectioner’s in the King’s Road, where the use of a telephone was to be had for twopence. She must tell Dorothy that she particularly wanted to see her at the studio that afternoon—why, she refused to say. Then, treading on air, she returned to the studio again, humming Laura’s song “The Trees they do Grow High” as she went. Still singing, she began to potter about among the tins in the little cupboard, to see in which one the tea was kept.

Dorothy came running in an hour later, just as Amory sat down before the plate of bread-and-butter and the saucerless cup she had placed on the little gate-legged table. Her eyes were as big as the heads of Amory’s hatpins.

“What is it?” she cried breathlessly. “Not Cosimo——?”

“How Cosimo?” Amory asked, staring a little.

“I mean, I thought—I thought perhaps he’d proposed——”

Only for a moment or so was Amory a little stiff. “I think Cosimo can be trusted not to do anything quite so obvious,” she replied. “You don’t seem to understand, Dorothy. … No, it’s far more exciting than that——”

And she told her.

Somehow it struck Amory that Dorothy received the news in an unexpectedly critical spirit. She had expected her to jump up with delight, or at least to say that she was glad. But instead of that Dorothy stared at Amory until Amory felt quite uncomfortable, and had to say “Well?” If this was the way Dorothy took it, she was rather sorry she had rung her up.

“Tell me what Mr. Dix said again,” said Dorothy, still almost glaring at Amory.

Amory did so.

“And he’s sending for the pictures to-morrow?”

“Yes, but you don’t understand; this isn’t the price of the pictures.”

“And he doesn’t say when the Show will be?”

Amory spoke gently; of course it must be difficult for Dorothy to realize that Picture Exhibitions were not Catalogues.

“It will be as soon as the market is favourable. They wait for a favourable market and then——” She made an upward gesture with her hands. “And you see, Dorothy,” she explained kindly, “pictures aren’t much good to a dealer either just to shut up in a cellar and keep. They buy them in order to sell them again. That’s their business.”

But Dorothy hardly seemed to hear.

“And they’ve got thirty pictures?” she asked presently.

“Twenty-eight.”

“And can you exhibit new ones anywhere else?”

“They’ll take the new ones too, at the same rate.”

“But can you exhibit them anywhere else if you want?”

“Not for two years.”

“Then,” said Dorothy slowly, “I don’t think I’d sign the contract, Amory.”

Amory took a drink of tea; then she leaned back with the air of one who might say, “This is interesting.”—“Oh? Why not?” she asked.

“Well, if it’s as you say, it seems to me that they just muzzle you for two years.”

“Well, I can hardly expect to have dealings with two sets of people at once, can I? I don’t want to exhibit anywhere else. That would be to nobody’s interest. And my Show would have been next except for——” She checked herself; she had almost forgotten that Herbertson’s condition was a secret. “And anyway, Mr. Dix is going to write a number of articles on me at once, and Mr. Dix doesn’t write articles for amusement, I can assure you. There are wheels within wheels, Dorothy. I call it a splendid bargain. I’m perfectly satisfied——”

The last words seemed to say, “So if I am, I don’t see what anybody else has got to complain about.” She was a little disappointed in Dorothy. She thought that friends ought to rejoice at one another’s good fortune. She hoped there was not just a trace of jealousy in Dorothy’s demeanour.

When Dorothy next spoke Amory wondered, too, whether she had come from Oxford Street entirely in obedience to her telephone-summons. For Dorothy, it appeared, also had something to say. For the last ten days Dorothy had been very little in the studio in Cheyne Walk; the reason for this, Amory understood, was that certain of her fellow-artists (she supposed they called themselves that) had been given a holiday; and now Dorothy was telling Amory that Cheyne Walk was about to see even less of her.

“You see,” Dorothy explained, “I’ve known for some time that Miss Porchester was after a job on the Daily Speculum, and now she’s got it. That means that Miss Benson takes her place. And as there are all sorts of things going on, I shall simply have to be there most of my time. There’s this re-building, you see. Mr. Miller—he’s Hallowell’s manager, and we’re doing one or two of their jobs now—he’s making all sorts of new plans. They’re going to launch out in all directions, he says; in fact, they’re going to waken London up. So what I was going to say—I hope you won’t find it inconvenient, and of course there are a few weeks yet——”

There was no need for Dorothy to be more precise. Amory nodded. Dorothy wanted to be released from her share of the Cheyne Walk place. That simplified things. With Amory living there the place certainly would not have been big enough for the pair of them.

“Well, if you hadn’t mentioned it I suppose I should have had to do so,” she said. “I think I shall be able to manage now.”

“You mean you’re accepting that offer?”

“Accepting it? Of course I’m accepting it,” said Amory with a laugh. “I should be a perfect goose not to accept it.”

“Oh, well,” said Dorothy with a shrug. “I only meant that if any other dealer happened to want you you’re tied hand and foot for two years.”

Amory laughed again. “Oh, I’ll risk that,” she assured Dorothy. “And now,” she said unselfishly, “tell me more about the changes at your place.”

For of course she was glad that, in her own peculiar line, Dorothy also stood in advancement’s way.

On the next day but one she signed her contract.

When, on the day following that, there was brought to Glenerne, by an ordinary postman, along with other ordinary letters, an ordinary envelope addressed to Miss Amory Towers with a cheque for ninety-five pounds inside it, Glenerne felt that it was indeed privileged to participate in the making of history. Amory was a little taken aback to find that interest at the rate of five per cent. had already been deducted from the sum; there seemed, not (of course) an indelicacy, but a very great promptitude about this clipping at the round figure. She would have liked the full hundred, if only to call hers for a day; and she had not quite realized that the euphemism “five per cent.” meant five real pounds.—But that was not Glenerne’s way of looking at it. The breakfast-table gaped with astonishment. Ninety-five pounds for Miss Amory’s pictures! … Pictures, of course, were pictures; they had never denied that; very pretty to look at, and hang on walls and all that, especially water-colours: but—ninety-five pounds! … Had ninety-five tongues of fire settled upon Amory’s bright head they could hardly have held her in greater awe. They looked at her anew. They had actually been living in the same house with this prodigious young woman! And Mr. Edmondson had asked her whether she did not get “fed up” with painting towards the end of the day! “Fed up!” They should think so! It would take a lot of feeding up of that sort before the boarders of Glenerne cried “Enough!” … Mr. Edmondson was not there when the cheque arrived; Mr. Edmondson rose at five-thirty, cleaned his boots, made himself a cup of tea over the little spirit-lamp in his bedroom, and was out of the house before half-past six; but Mr. Rainbow missed the nine-two that morning, and Uncle George, who never went to business before ten and (it was reverentially whispered) hardly needed to go before lunch unless he chose, took the whole morning off. He had something to say to Amory.—“He’s going to advise her about investments,” Mr. Geake murmured to Miss Addams as Mr. Massey and Amory left the breakfast-table together.

What Uncle George had really taken Amory apart for was, in the new turn events had taken, a delight crowning a delight. At any other time she would have had quite a number of interior comments to make on Mr. Massey’s bashful communication; her attitude about such as have not the gift of continence was sometimes almost Pauline in its severity: but that morning all was a golden hurly-burly. Mr. Massey, in a corner of the double drawing-room that had been dusted, lisped, blushing, that he and her aunt had been talking matters over—that they had come to the conclusion that there seemed no sufficient reason why their marriage should not take place earlier than July—and so in the circumstances. … Here Mr. Massey had hissed himself to a complete standstill.

“There is really nothing to wait for,” he went on presently, recovering a little. “I have taken the house on the Mall from the June quarter, and—and—I am sure you’ll understand—at any rate I hope you will some day——”

Amory, hardly hearing, said that she hoped so too.

“So,” Mr. Massey continued, “we had come to that decision, and now this happy circumstance has befallen—I think my bed will have been made; if you will come into my bedroom there is a little business we might discuss——”

Mr. Massey’s bed had not been made, but Mr. Massey modestly covered its disarray with the counterpane. Then placing a chair for Amory, he plunged into the little matter of business.

An hour later Amory’s pecuniary circumstances stood as follows:—

From her godmother she had long had her thirteen pounds a quarter, and now she had her ninety-five pounds. This sum Mr. Massey had begged, with many delicate preliminaries, to be allowed to bring up to the round figure again out of his own pocket—“simply as a slight present, Amory—please don’t thank me—it is such a pleasure to be of assistance to those who know how to help themselves.” And in view of the hastened marriage Mr. Massey had further to announce that of her aunt’s tiny fortune a sum was to be earmarked sufficient to allow Amory the continuance of the pound or so a week that had been paid for her at Glenerne. That, Mr. Massey said, made a steady two pounds a week, plus the very nice little nest-egg of a hundred pounds.

“And dear Geraldine and I fully expect to see you a Kauffman or a Butler or a Rosa Bonheur yet,” he beamed in conclusion.

Amory hoped that the event would prove them to be mistaken, but for the first time she kissed Uncle George. The educational bookseller wiped his glasses. Somehow or other Amory had the impression that even his engagement to Aunt Jerry had seemed to him to lack something without this sanction of her own.

All that day Amory did nothing but build palaces of fairy gold, laying them low again only to re-erect them more shining than before. Say her pictures sold at the very lowest figure, ten pounds apiece (but twenty or thirty or more would be nearer the mark—Croziers’ didn’t dabble in mere ten-pound prices). Some of them she had painted in a day, but call it two days, or even two pictures a week. Why, there, at the most ridiculously low estimate, was a thousand pounds a year! Fifteen hundred would really be nearer the mark, and that without counting the moral encouragement that would come by mere force of success. Two thousand would hardly be too much; but call it a thousand in order to be perfectly safe. Her two pounds a week would be mere glove-money. She could spend that on handkerchiefs. Not real lace ones, of course; she would have to do better even than a thousand before she could afford real lace ones, with everything else to match; but this, after all, was only a beginning. Ten pounds a canvas? Why, Morton, who did not paint half as well as she did, had got three hundred for that rubbishy “Fête Galante” only the other day—a thing shockingly out of drawing, and the colour—oh dear! “Aha!” (Amory smiled). Let them wait just a bit! She would show them at the McGrath! She would make the saturnine Mr. Jowett sit up presently! And she would help the less fortunate, too, provided they were deserving. She would publish a book of Walter’s drawings for him; they were really quite good—better, at any rate, than a good deal of the stuff that was published. That was what the country had wanted for a long time; not so much patrons who bought pictures, but patrons who knew what they had got when they had bought them. And even if she only painted a few pictures a year, that, when she had made her name. …

Of course she laughed at herself from time to time; she knew she was piling it on, but it was delicious for all that. Like a queen she received their full chorus of congratulations at Glenerne that night—a stately little queen, crowned with the barbaric red gold of her hair. She forbore to ask them whether they had thought that artists painted pictures for the mere sake of killing time; she did not want to rub in their booking-clerkships and estate-agencies too much. It was enough that they saw things now as they really were. Young Mr. Edmondson would no more have dared to speak to her of squeezing at the Crystal Palace now than he would have dared to discuss with her the subjects that made her friendship with Cosimo so wonderful; it was, rather, a quite aged and very much subdued Mr. Edmondson who for a full hour talked of Closing Prices to Mr. Rainbow. … And even when, the felicitations over, Mr. Sandys slapped his hands together in a business-like way and said to Mrs. Deschamps, “Well, what about a tune, Mrs. D.?” that too in its way was a tribute. It meant that even of exalted things poor weak human nature can have more than its fill. Amory knew that she had given Glenerne something to talk about for many, many months to come.

Then, on the morrow, setting her cloud-castle building sternly on one side, she riveted her attention to immediate things. She was going to remove to Cheyne Walk immediately; she had announced the fact to Miss Addams. Not only had no opposition been offered; it had been tacitly accepted that Glenerne was no place for one to whom these stupendous things could happen. Amory would seek Cosimo that morning; without Cosimo nothing could be done. Dorothy, she was afraid, would have to make other arrangements at once; she must telephone to Dorothy that day.

Blithely she tripped down the Glenerne steps and sought the Goldhawk Road tram. It was early; it was not likely that Cosimo would have gone out. She might even have time to call at Katie Deedes’s and get The Golden Ass on the way.

When, two days later, there arrived at Glenerne a blue press-cutting envelope containing an article nearly a column long on “The Art of Miss Amory Towers,” by Hamilton Dix—and when, a day or two later still, there followed half a dozen quotations from that same article from the provincial papers—Glenerne was almost glad of Amory’s translation. The honour was too heavy. It was felt on all hands that the crags of Sinai, and not the boarding-houses of Shepherd’s Bush, were the proper habitation for Miss Towers and her renown.