I
Wynne Rendall was a seven months’ child; the fact is significant of a personality seeking premature prominence upon this planet. He spent the first weeks of his infancy wrapped in cotton wool and placed in a basket as near the fire as safety allowed. He scaled precisely two pounds fifteen ounces, and the doctor, who manipulated the weights and was interested in mathematics, placed two pounds fifteen ounces over seven months and shook his head forebodingly at the result.
“If he lives he will be a sickly child, nurse.”
This opinion the nurse heartily endorsed, and added, in tribute to the kindliness of her disposition:
“Poor little thing!”
Mrs. Rendall did not show great concern at the untimely arrival of her offspring. She accepted it, as she accepted all things, with phlegmatical calm. A great deal was required to still Mrs. Rendall’s emotions, so much, in fact, that it was not within the recollection of any of her intimates that they ever had been stirred. It did not occur to her that the birth of a child, mature or premature, was a matter of moment. If it lived, well and good, and the best must be done for it. If it died, the occurrence must be regarded as sad and an occasion for shedding a given number of tears. It was clearly useless to foreshadow either event, since one was as likely as the other and could be as readily treated with when the time arose.
It must not be thought that Mrs. Rendall’s calm was the result of philosophy. That would be far from the truth. It occurred simply and solely from a vacant mind—a mind nourished by the dead-sea fruit of its own vacuity. She lacked impulse and intelligence, and was, indeed, no more than a lifeless canal along which the barges of domesticity were drearily towed. Her ideas were other people’s, and valueless at that; her conversation was a mere repetition of things she had said before.
When the doctor, rubbing his hands to lend an air of cheerful optimism to a cheerless situation, declared, “We shall pull that youngster through, see if we don’t,” she responded, “Oh, yes,” with a falling inflexion. If he had said the opposite, her reply would have been the same—delivered in the same manner.
In some cases heredity ignores personalities, and this, in the instance of Wynne Rendall, was hardly difficult of achievement. From his mother he took nothing, unless it were a measure of her fragility, which was perhaps the only circumstance about her to justify attention. The characteristics that he did not bring into the world with himself he inherited from his grandfather, via his own sire.
The grandfather was certainly the more notable of the two gentlemen, and had achieved some astonishing ideals on canvas, very heartily disapproved of by the early Victorian era, and some memorable passages of wit which had heightened his unpopularity. He was an artist who went for his object with truly remarkable energy. To seek a parallel among modern men, his work possessed some of the qualities of Aubrey Beardsley’s, combined with the vigour of John S. Sargent. But the world was not ready for such productions, and, casting its eyes upward in pious horror, hurried from the walls on which they were exhibited. Old Edward Tyler Rendall scorned them as they departed, but he understood the situation notwithstanding.
“I’ve come too soon,” he mused, “too soon by a generation or more.”
His belief in his art was so great that he determined to sacrifice his liberty and get married, in the hope that he might have a son who would carry on the work for the benefit of a world enlightened by broader-minded civilization.
In due course the son was born, and when he reached an age of understanding, the reason of his being was dinned into his ears.
“Get away from old traditions; build something new, dextrous, adroit, understanding. See what I mean, Robert boy? Be plucky—plucky in line, composition, subject. Always have a purpose before you; don’t mind how offensive it is—no one cares for that if you’ve the courage to declare your meaning in honest black and white.”
The result of this intensive artistic culture was that Robert Everett Rendall, at the age of sixteen and a half, ran away from home and took a position as office boy in a large firm of tea-tasters in the City.
This case presents unusual features, being in itself an inversion of the usual procedure.
Old Rendall made one heroic effort to win him back, and stormed the City citadel to that end; but here he encountered from Robert a metropolitan manner so paralysing that he fled the office in wholesome disgust.
Ever courageous, he urged his wife to labour anew, and was rewarded by a daughter who unhappily perished. The disappointment was acute, and when some three years later a son was born his energies had so far abated that he made no further effort to inculcate the spirit of artistry which had been the essence of his being.
Meanwhile Robert Everett Rendall lived a sober and honourable life in the City, and heartily abused all matters pertaining to art. Nothing infuriated him more than to find himself drawing, with an odd facility, strange little designs on the corners of his blotting paper while engaged in thinking out the intricacies connected with the tasting of tea.
The suppression of a natural ability sometimes produces peculiar results and the deliberate smothering of all he had been taught or had inherited from his father brought about in Robert Everett Rendall a deplorable irritability and high temper. This he was discreet enough to keep in hand during City hours, but in his own home he allowed it full sway.
At such times his actions were abnormal. He would pick up any object convenient to hand and throw it with surprising accuracy of aim at one or another of the highly respectable water-colour paintings which adorned the walls of his abode.
But even in this matter his City training stood him in good stead, for there was very little spontaneity in the act. According to the degree of his ill-humour, so was the target chosen. If he were in a towering rage the 20x30 drawing of Clovelly would be bound to have it; and so down the scale of anger to the 10x7 of Beachy Head. It made no difference whether the picture were large or small, his projectile struck it with never-failing precision. The tinkle and crash of the falling glass seemed to restore his calm, for when the blow had been struck he returned to more normal habits.
Had Mrs. Rendall been gifted with observation she would have known exactly, according to his mood, which picture would fall, and would thus have saved herself much ducking over the dining-room table. Such conclusions, however, were beyond the reach of her unsubtle soul.
In connection with this matter she produced, and that unintentionally, one of her only flights of humour:
“If you would throw your serviette ring, Robert, it would not matter so much, but the salt-cellar makes it so uncomfortable for every one else.”