Читать книгу The Jacob Street Mystery - R. Austin Freeman - Страница 6

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IN all the busy town that seethed around him, there can have been but few persons whose lives were as untroubled as was that of Thomas Pedley. He had, in fact, not a care in the world. His work yielded a modest income which was more than enough to supply his modest needs, and the doing of that work was a pleasure that time could not stale. He never tired of painting. If he had come into a fortune, he would still have gone on painting for the mere joy of the occupation, and might then have missed the added satisfaction of living by his industry. At any rate, he craved no fortune and envied no one, except, perhaps, those artists whose work he considered better than his own.

Thus, through the uneventful years, Tom pursued "the noiseless tenor of his way" in quiet happiness and perfect contentment, up to the period at which this history now arrives, when we have to record the appearance of a cloud upon his usually serene horizon. It was only a small cloud; but its little shadow was enough to cause a sensible disturbance of his habitually placid state of mind.

The trouble was not connected with the Gravel-pit Wood incident. That had never occasioned him any anxiety, even though he had been aware—with a slightly amused interest—that the police had by no means forgotten his existence. But as the weeks had passed and the "Unsolved Mystery" had gradually faded from the pages of the daily papers, so had it faded from his own memory and ceased to be of any concern to him.

The cloud was, in fact, a feminine cloud. His troubles, like those of Milton Perkins, were connected with the female of his species. For Tom, as the reader has probably inferred, was a bachelor; and it was his considered intention to remain a bachelor. Wherefore, though he liked women well enough, he avoided all feminine intimacies and kept a wary eye on any unattached spinsters who came his way, and as for widows, he viewed them with positive alarm.

Now it happened that, on a certain afternoon, Tom was working with great enjoyment at a subject picture which his dealer had commissioned when the jangling of the studio bell announced a visitor. With a snort of annoyance he laid down his palette and brushes and went forth to confront the disturber of his peace; when he discovered on the threshold a rather tall woman, dressed— and painted—in the height of fashion, who turned at the sound of the opening gate, and greeted him with a smile that made his flesh creep.

"You are Mr. Pedley, I think," said she.

Tom was of the same opinion, and said so.

"I hope you won't consider me troublesome," she said in a wheedling tone, "but I should be so grateful if you would lend me a sheet of Whatman. I have a piece of work to do, and I want to start on it at once, but I have run out of paper."

Now, if the smile had made Tom's flesh creep, the request positively made it crawl. For he knew—and so must she if she were a painter—that there was an excellent artists' colourman's shop within five minutes' walk of the place where they were standing, from whence, indeed, Tom got most of his supplies. It looked suspiciously like a pretext for making his acquaintance.

"Perhaps I should explain," she continued, "that I am your next-door neighbour—Mrs. Schiller."

Tom bowed. He had observed the recent appearance of a brass plate bearing this name, and was now slightly reassured. At least, she was a married woman—unless she was a widow! In any case, he couldn't keep her waiting on the doorstep.

"I'll let you have a sheet with pleasure," said he. "Won't you come in?"

She complied with alacrity, and, as he conducted her along the passage, he asked: "What sort of surface would you like? I generally use 140, Net."

"That will do perfectly, if you can spare me a sheet. I will let you have it back; at least, not the same sheet, you know, but an equivalent."

"You needn't," said Tom, with a view to heading her off from another visit. "I have a good stock. Just laid in a fresh quire, and I don't use a lot as I work mostly in oil. This is my show."

He indicated the open door, and, as she stepped into the studio, his visitor looked around with a little squeak of surprise.

"But how enormous!" she exclaimed. "And how magnificent! I do envy you. My studio isn't really a studio at all. It is just my sitting-room, though it is quite a good room, with a nice big window. You must let me show it to you, sometime."

Tom groaned inwardly. A very pushing young person, this. He began to suspect that she must be a widow, and decided that he must "mind his eye."

"Well," he replied, "you don't really need a place of this size to paint in, though, of course, it's a convenience to have plenty of elbow-room."

He went to a set of wide shelves and, drawing out the imperial size portfolio in which he kept his stock of paper, opened it on the table and selected a sheet, which he rolled slightly and secured with a turn of string.

Meanwhile, his visitor had taken her stand before the easel and was inspecting the nearly finished picture; a simple, open-air subject such as Tom liked to paint, showing a group of gipsies on a heathy common, tending their fire, with a couple of vans in the background.

"But how wonderful!" she exclaimed. "And how curious and interesting."

Tom paused in the act of tying the knot and looked round suspiciously.

"Why curious?" he asked.

"I mean," she explained, "the extraordinary representationalism. It might almost be a photograph. Do you always paint like this?"

Now Tom held privately the opinion that the comparison of a finished, realistic painting to a photograph was the hallmark of the perfect ignoramus. But he did not say so. He merely answered the question.

"I try to get as near as I can to the appearances of nature; but, of course, the best of us fall a long way short."

"Exactly," said she. "Imitative painting must be very difficult, and after all, you can't compete with the photographer. That is the advantage of abstract art. You are not trying to imitate anything in particular; you just let your personality express itself in terms of abstract form and colour. Have you ever experimented in the new progressive art?"

"No," replied Tom. "This is the way I paint, and it seems to me to be the right way; and I suppose my dealers and private clients take the same, view, as they are willing to buy my pictures at a fair price. At any rate, such as it is, I had better get on with it."

By way of enforcing this blunt refusal of the attempted discussion, he held out the roll of paper and glanced wistfully at his palette.

"Yes," she agreed, taking the paper from him with an engaging smile, "I mustn't waste your time now, though I should like to talk this question over with you some day. But now I will take myself off, and thank you so much for the loan of the paper. I promise faithfully to repay it."

Once more Tom assured her that no repayment was necessary, though he now realized, hopelessly, that the promise would certainly be kept. Nevertheless, as he bade her adieu on the doorstep and watched her trip round to her own door, he resolved afresh to "mind his eye" and ward off any attempt to establish more definitely intimate relations; an admirable resolution but one which, to a scrupulously polite gentleman such as Tom Pedley, presented certain difficulties in practice, as he was very soon to discover. For, of course, the loan of the paper was repaid promptly; on the following day, in fact; and Tom's efforts, as he received the rolled sheet, to "close the incident" failed ignominiously. He did not on this occasion invite his fair visitor to come in. But though he conducted the transaction on the doorstep, the closure of the incident was but the prelude to the opening of another.

"I won't detain you now," said she with a smile that displayed between her scarlet lips a fine set of teeth, "but I do want you to see my studio, and especially I want you to tell me what you think of my work. A few words of criticism from an experienced artist like you would be so helpful. Now, you will come, won't you? Any time that suits you. This afternoon if you like, say about four o'clock. How would that do?"

Of course, it wouldn't do at all if there were any possibility of escape. But there was not. Tom looked at her helplessly, mumbling polite acknowledgments and thinking hard. But what could he say? Obviously he could not refuse; and this being clear to him, he decided to get the visit over at once and take precautions against its repetition.

"Very well," said she, "then we will say four o'clock; and if you are very good and don't slate my pictures too much, I will give you a nice cup of tea."

With a friendly nod and a further display of teeth she tripped away briskly in the direction of Hampstead Road, and Tom, muttering objurgations, retired to bestow the sheet of paper in the portfolio.

It need hardly be said that the afternoon's visit did nothing towards "closing the incident." As she opened the street door in response to his ring at the bell, removing a cigarette to execute a smile of welcome, his hostess received him as though he had been "the companion of her childhood and the playmate of her youth." She shook his hand with affectionate warmth, and, still holding it, led him into a large front room where a brand new easel, flanked by a small table, stood close to the window. Tom cast a comprehensive glance around and rapidly assessed the occupant in professional terms. Apart from the easel and the colour-box, brushes and water-pot on the table, it was just a typical woman's sitting-room, in which the tea-table with its furnishings seemed more at home than the easel.

"This is my humble workshop," said his hostess; "a poor affair compared with your noble studio, but still—"

"It would probably have been good enough for Turner or DeWint," said Tom. "It's the painter that matters, not the studio. Shall we have a look at some of your work?"

"Yes, let's," she replied brightly, leading him towards the easel. "This is my latest. I am not quite satisfied with it but I don't think I will carry it any further for fear of spoiling it. What do you think?"

Tom stared at the object on the easel and gibbered inarticulately. A half-sheet of Whatman had been pinned untidily on a board and covered with curved streaks of bright colour, evidently laid, very wet, on damped paper, producing an effect like that of an artist's colourman's sheet of samples.

"Well," he stammered, recovering himself slightly, "I don't see what more you could do to it. Perhaps the—Dr—the subject is—Dr—just a little obscure. Not perfectly obvious, you know. Possibly—Dr—"

"Oh, there isn't any subject," she explained; "not in an imitative sense, that is. It is just an essay in abstract colour. I propose to call it 'A Symphony in Green and Blue.' Do you think it sounds pretentious to call it a symphony?"

"I wouldn't say pretentious," he replied, "but I don't much like calling things by wrong names. It isn't a symphony, you know. A symphony is a combination of sounds, whereas this work is a—is a—well, it's a painting."

Mrs. Schiller laughed softly. "You were going to say 'it's a picture,' and then you thought better of it. Now didn't you?"

"Well," Tom admitted with an apologetic grin, "it isn't quite what I should call a picture, but then I really don't know anything about this new form of art. I suppose it is an abstract picture."

"That is just what it is; an entirely non-representational abstraction of colour. Rather an extreme example, perhaps, so we will change it for something more representational."

She fished out a portfolio from under a settee and took from it a small mounted drawing which she stood up on the easel.

"The first one," she explained, "is a study of abstract colour. Now this one is an essay in abstract form. But it has a subject. I have called it 'Adam and Eve.' How do you like it?"

Tom considered this new masterpiece with knitted brows and a feeling of growing bewilderment. It represented two human figures such as might have been drawn by an average child of nine or ten with no natural aptitude for art, in a heavy, clumsy pencil outline filled in with daubs of colour; As the serious production of a sane adult, the thing was incredible.

"They are a good deal alike," Tom remarked, by way of saying something.

"Yes," she agreed, "but of course they would be, as they haven't any clothes, poor things. The bigger one would naturally be Adam, though it really doesn't matter. The title is only a convention. The picture is really a study in essential form."

"I see," said Tom, though he didn't; but he continued to gaze at the work with bulging eyeballs while the lady looked over his shoulder with a curious cryptic smile—which vanished instantly when he turned towards her. After a prolonged inspection with no further comment, he cast a furtive glance at the portfolio, whereupon his hostess removed the figure subject and replaced it by another painting, apparently representing a human head and shoulders, and, in character, very much like those "portraits" with which untalented school-children adorn blank spaces in their copybooks. Such, in fact, Tom at first assumed it to be, but the artist hastily corrected him.

"Oh, no," said she. "It is not imitative. I have called it 'Madonna,' but it is just a study in simplification based on the architectural structure of the human head, with all the irrelevant details eliminated."

"Yes," Tom commented, "I noticed that there had been a good deal of elimination. Those brown patches, I suppose, represent the hair?"

"They don't represent it," she replied. "They merely acknowledge and connote its existence. Perhaps, in a non-representational work, they are really superfluous, but they are useful in elucidating the pattern."

This explanation left Tom speechless as did the other selections from the portfolio. They were all much of the same kind; either meaningless streaks of colour or childish drawings of men and animals. Some of them he judged to be landscapes from the appearance in them of green, mop-like shapes, which might have "connoted" trees, and in one the simplified landscape was inhabited by abstract animals suggesting the cruder productions of a toy-shop.

"Well," said Mrs. Schiller as she returned the last of them to the portfolio, "that is my repertoire; and now that you have seen them all, I want you to tell me frankly what you think of them. You need not mind being outspoken. Candid criticism is what I want from you."

"But my dear Mrs. Schiller," Tom exclaimed despairingly, "I am quite incompetent to criticize your work. I know nothing whatever about this modernist art excepting that it is a totally different thing from the art which I have always known and practised. And we can't discuss it because we are not speaking the same language. When I paint a picture I aim at beauty and interest; and since there is nothing so beautiful as nature, I keep as close to natural appearances as I can. And as a picture is a work of imagination and not a mere representation like an illustration in a scientific textbook, I try to arrange my objects in a pleasing composition and to make them convey some interesting ideas. But, apparently, modernist art avoids truth to nature and any kind of intellectual or emotional interest. I don't understand it at all."

"But," she objected, "don't you find beauty in abstract form?"

"I have always supposed," he replied, "that abstract form appertains to mathematics, whereas painting and sculpture are concerned with visible and tangible things. But really, Mrs. Schiller, it's of no use for me to argue the question. We are talking and thinking on different planes."

"I suppose we really are," she agreed, "but it's rather disappointing. I had hoped to profit by your experience, but I see now that it has no bearing on modern art. But never mind, we will drown our disagreements in the teapot. Will you take this chair while I boil the kettle, or would you prefer a softer one?"

"I like a hard chair," replied Tom.

"So do I. Odd, isn't it, that women seem to want a chair stuffed like a feather bed and piled up with cushions? I could never understand why, seeing that they are lighter than men, as a rule, and better covered."

"Perhaps," Tom suggested, as he subsided on to the wooden-seated chair, "it is because they wear less clothes and want the cushions for warmth."

"Well, at any rate," said she, as she put a match to the gas-ring on the hearth which supported a handsome copper kettle, "we are on the same plane in the matter of chairs, so we have one agreement to start with."

She drew up a light mahogany armchair, and, seating herself, gave her attention to the kettle; and while it was heating she continued the discussion with a whimsical mock-seriousness that Tom found quite pleasant. In fact, there was no denying that Mrs. Schiller's personality was distinctly attractive if one could forget the atrocities of her painting; and Tom, who liked women well enough so long as they did not want him to marry them, realized with some surprise that he was finding the little informal function quite agreeable (though he was still resolved that this visit should "close the incident"). The excellent China tea was brewed to perfection, the table appointments, including the kettle, were pleasant to look on, and his hostess's bright flippancies kept him mildly amused.

Presently the conversation reverted to the subject of painting, and Tom ventured to seek some solution of the mystery that had perplexed him.

"Have you always painted in the modernist manner?" he asked.

"Always!" she repeated with a smile. "I haven't always painted at all. It is a completely new venture on my part, and it came about quite by chance; a very odd chance it seems when I look back on it. A girl friend of mine asked me to go with her to a show at a gallery in Leicester Square; an exhibition of works of modern masters. I didn't want to go, because I had never felt the least interest in pictures and didn't know anything about them, but she insisted that I must go because everybody was talking about these pictures, and the art critics declared they were the latest discoveries in art.

"So I went, and, to my surprise, I was tremendously impressed and interested. The pictures were so different from anything that I had ever seen before; so quaint and curious. They looked as if they might have been done by children. I was really charmed with them; so much so that I decided to try if I could do anything like them. And I found that I could. Isn't it strange? I had never drawn or painted before, and yet I found it quite easy to do. Don't you think it is very remarkable?"

"Very remarkable," Tom agreed quite sincerely, though not quite in the sense that she meant. For him the mystery was now completely solved, though there were other matters concerning which he was curious.

"Do you send in to the exhibitions?" he asked. "It is rather necessary if you expect to make a living by your work."

"I haven't actually exhibited," she replied, "but I am getting a collection together in readiness, and I go to see the modernist shows to see what sort of prices works of my kind fetch, or, at least, are offered at. They seem to me rather high, but I notice that very few of the pictures are sold."

"Yes," said Tom, "there are not many picture-buyers nowadays, and the few picture-lovers who do buy mostly prefer work of the traditional kind. But your best plan would be to try some of the dealers who specialize in modernist works. They would know what your pictures are worth in their market, and they might be able to give you some useful advice. They might even buy some of your works—at their own price, of course."

"That's an excellent idea," said she. "I will certainly try it. Perhaps you could give me the names of one or two dealers. Would you?"

Tom shook his head. "My dealers would be no good for you. They are old-fashioned fellows who deal in old-fashioned work. No modernist stuff for them. They'd be afraid of frightening away their regular customers."

"That doesn't sound very encouraging," she remarked with a wry smile.

"I suppose it doesn't," Tom admitted; and in the pause that followed it was suddenly borne in on him that these comradely confidences were not very favourable to the "closure of the incident." And then, in the vulgar but convenient phrase, he "put the lid on it."

"You appear," said he, "to work exclusively in water colour. Do you find that more suitable than oil?"

"The truth is," she replied, "that I have never tried oil painting because I don't quite know how to go about it; I mean as to mixing the paint and putting it on with those queer-looking stiff-haired brushes. But I should like to paint in oil, or at least give the medium a trial." She paused for a few moments. Then in an insinuating tone she continued, "I wonder whether my kind and helpful neighbour would come to my assistance."

Tom looked at her apprehensively. "I suppose I'm the neighbour," said he, "but I don't quite see what you want me to do."

"It is only a modest request," she urged, "but I should be so grateful if, sometime when you are at work, you would let me come and look on."

"But to what purpose?" he demanded. "My painting and your painting are not the same kind of thing at all."

"I know," she agreed. "But, after all, modernist painters use the same materials and implements as artists of the more old-fashioned type. Now, you know all about the methods of oil painting, and, if I could watch you when you are working, I should see how you do it, and then I should be able, with a little practice, to do it myself. Won't you let me come once or twice? I promise not to waste your time or interrupt you by talking."

Tom looked at the smiling, wheedlesome face and realized that he was cornered. It would be churlish to refuse, and indeed, utterly unlike him to withhold any help from a fellow artist, no matter how bad. But still it was necessary for him to "mind his eye." It would never do to give this enterprising young woman the run of his studio.

"When I am at work," he said at length, "I like to be alone and concentrate on what I am doing, but I shall be very pleased to give you a demonstration of the technique of oil painting. What I would suggest is that you bring in one of your pictures, and that I make a copy of it in oil, while you look on. Then you can ask as many questions as you please and I will give you any tips as to the management of the medium that seem necessary. How will that do?"

"But it is the very thing that I would have asked for if I had dared. I am delighted, and more grateful than I can tell you. Perhaps you will let me know when I may come for the demonstration."

"I will," he replied. "It won't be for a day or two, but when I have finished the picture that I have in hand, I will drop a note into your letter-box giving one or two alternative dates. And I hope," he continued as he rose to depart, "that you will like the medium and do great things in it."

As he re-entered his studio and occupied himself in cleaning his palette and brushes and doing a few odd jobs, he cogitated profoundly on the events of the afternoon. One thing was plain to him; the "closure of the incident" was "off." The good lady had fairly taken possession of him. Already she had established herself definitely as an acquaintance, and he saw clearly that the next interview would put her on the footing of a friend. It was an unfortunate affair, but he must make the best of it and continue to "mind his eye"—if the word "continue" was strictly applicable.

As to the woman herself, he was completely puzzled. He could make nothing of her. Was she simply an impostor or did she suffer from some extraordinary delusion? The plain and obvious facts were that she could not draw at all, that her water-colour painting was that of an untalented child and that she seemed to have no artistic ideas or the capacity to invent a subject. But was it possible that she had some kind of artistic gifts which he was unable to gauge? The supposition seemed to be negatived by her own admission that she had never felt any interest in pictures. For the outstanding characteristic of real talent is the early age at which it shows itself. Pope "lisped in numbers, for the numbers came;" Mozart and Handel were accomplished musicians, and even composers, when they were small children; John Millais was a masterly draughtsman at the age of five; Bonington died in the twenties with a European reputation; and so with Fred Walker, Chantrey, and a host of others. No, a person who reaches middle age without showing any sign of artistic aptitude is certainly not a born artist.

The only possible conclusion seemed to be that Mrs. Schiller was either a rank impostor or the subject of some strange delusion; and at that he had to leave it. After all, it was not his affair. His concern was to see that he was not involved in any entanglements; and the lady's masterful ways promised to give him full occupation in that respect without troubling about her artistic gifts.