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One bright spring morning, some two years after his arrival in Paris, Wynne received a surprise. A broad-shouldered figure came under the shadow of the awning and seated himself at one of the small round tables.
“It’s Uncle Clem!” gasped Wynne to himself. He straightened his waistcoat and went outside.
“M’sieur!” he said.
“Un bock,” came the reply.
Unrecognized, Wynne retired and returned a moment later with a glass tankard which he set upon the table.
“Beau temps, m’sieur!”
“Ah, oui!”
“Just such another day as the one we spent in Richmond Park together.”
The big Englishman turned his head and raised his eyes sharply.
“Good Gad! It’s the Seeker!” he exclaimed. His hand shot out, enveloped Wynne’s, and wrung it furiously. “Sit down! What the devil are you up to?”
“Waiting,” Wynne smiled; “but I haven’t given up hope.”
“Splendid—and this is fine”—he tweaked the apron. “Serious?”
“Oh, very.”
“A man now, eh?”
“Something of the kind.”
“Fine! though why the hell you couldn’t let us know what had become of you—”
“Touch of pride, Uncle Clem. I neither wanted to please my people nor disappoint you.”
“Ah, now, now, now! None of that—none of it. They wouldn’t gloat and I might have helped.”
Wynne seated himself thoughtfully.
“Yes, I think that’s true; but I wonder if you believe me when I say that never once has it crossed my mind as a way out of the difficulty. When I left home I left finally, not experimentally. If my father were to see me as I am now he would say I had slipped down hill, but I haven’t—I haven’t. Downhill I may have gone with a bit of rush, but I’m gathering impetus all the time, getting up weigh for the climb ahead. You see that, don’t you? This is all to the good, isn’t it?”
There was an honest, genuine sincerity in the way he spoke.
“Every time. All to the good. I should say it is. Hullo! who the devil is this?”
“This” was M. le Patron, highly incensed at the sight of one of his waiters sitting at a table.
“Ça fait rien,” began Uncle Clem. Then to Wynne, “Oh, you tell him it’s all right; tell him I’m your uncle—say you’re coming out for the afternoon. Here’s ten francs. Get your hat, and shove that damned dicky in your pocket. Tell the old fool he’s a good fellah and to go to the devil.”
A certain amount of foregoing advices were translated, and M. le Patron, placated by the ten-franc note, granted Wynne leave of absence and conversed affably with Uncle Clem while Wynne mounted the stairs and changed his coat.
“Come on,” said Uncle Clem. “Let’s get somewhere where we can talk.”
He hailed a fiacre and they drove to the Bois de Boulogne. Here they alighted, and sprawled upon the grass beneath a tree.
“Now let’s have the story from the word Go.”
So Wynne wound himself up and reeled off all his experiences in the unfriendly city. Once or twice during the recital Uncle Clem frowned, and once or twice looked at his nephew in some perplexity, but in the main he nodded encouragement or gave little ejaculations of praise.
“Plucky enough,” he remarked at the close.
“I wonder sometimes. Is it plucky merely to fight for existence?”
“Did you merely fight for existence—was there no impulse behind it all?”
“Yes, the impulse to do and to know has helped me over the stonier parts.”
“The painting was not a success, eh?”
“It isn’t my medium.”
“Have you found out what is?”
The question was hard to answer. It would sound futile to reply, “Writing,” when one had but a few occasional jottings on the back of envelopes to substantiate the claim.
“I haven’t had much time,” said Wynne, ruefully.
“Of course not. After all, the medium doesn’t matter—it’s the motive that counts. Have you determined on your motive?”
“I have learnt enough to show people what they are.”
“Then don’t. That’s a cynic’s task, not an artist’s.”
“Sometimes I think that one is but another name for the other.”
“Not it. An artist shows people what they might be.”
“Yet many have climbed to the peaks” (he was too self-conscious and diffident, with added years, to say the Purple Patch) “by holding up a mirror.”
Uncle Clem shook his head.
“A mirror should only reflect beautiful folk,” he replied. “There are better things than to be a man with a camera.”
“I sometimes wonder if there are.”
“Don’t wonder. Beauty is not to be found by sorting out dustbins. Beauty is in the woods, Wynne. Listen! You can hear the leaves in the tree above us whispering of her, and the little waves in the pool yonder, are leaping up lest they should miss her as she passes by. Can’t you feel the wonder of her everywhere, now in the spring, when she leaps splendid from her winter hiding? D’y’know, when April’s here I throw open my window and look up into the blue and then I see her riding on a cloud. You know the kind of cloud—the great white sort, which brings the summer from the seas. Ha! Yes, and I shout my homage as I brush my hair, and sometimes my poor man Parsons thinks I’m cracked. But what’s the matter if she smiles—for she’s a smiling lady if ever there was one, and her breath is like a breeze which is filtered through a copse of violets.”
“Oh Lord, you are just the same old Uncle Clem as ever,” laughed Wynne.
“Damn your eyes,” came the colloquial rejoinder—“if you’re not patronizing me!”
“Not I. Believe me, I wouldn’t have you different, but perhaps I’ve changed a bit, and these dream pictures aren’t so real as they were.”
“Then make ’em real—they’re worth it.”
Wynne hesitated, then said:
“I’m beginning to see the world as it is, and it doesn’t look like that any longer. I see it as a vast machine built up of cranks and gears, and bolts and cogs—some odd, but mostly even. A thing of wheels and reciprocal activity, for ever revolving and for ever returning to the point from which it started. It’s hard to believe in fairies when one thinks like that.”
“Then don’t think like that, or, if you do, think of the energy that moves the machine—that’s where the mystery and the essence lie. The wheels are nothing—it is the power which drives ’em that counts. Why, heavens above! that should be the task for you, and such as you—to find and refine the essence, to know and increase the power. For God’s sake don’t scorn a thing because it goes round, but give it a push that it may revolve faster. That’s the job! and a fine job too. It’s easy to acquire cheap fame by jeering at a man because he goes to bed at night and gets up in the morning—easy—but no good. Give him something to get up early for and sleep the better for; that’s the way to earn your own repose.”
“And you were the man who first showed me a satyr,” said Wynne.
“And I was the man who told you of the Purple Patch,” came the reply.
“I know, and I shall get there in the end.”
“But not by being of the clever ones. They sit on the lower slopes. They bark—they don’t sing.”
“Up against intellect now?”
“I’m against obvious intellect all the time, because it’s perishable. Look here, I may not make myself clear, but of this I am sure—a great man is not great because he is clever, but he is clever because he is great. The cleverness of the clever is merely an irritant. For a season it may tickle the public palate, but it will never endure.”
“And how does a man become great?”
“By the strength of his ideals. Ideals never perish because they are never wholly realized—besides, they spring from other causes.”
“And what is the fountain of ideals?”
“Feeling—human feeling. Don’t you know that—yet?” He turned a penetrating glance on his nephew. “Never been in love?”
Wynne coloured slightly.
“No,” he replied, “I’ve never been in love.”
“Then be in love.”
“But that’s rather—”
“No it ain’t. You must be in love—it’s God’s great education to mankind. A man knows nothing of himself, or of anything else, unless he is a lover. Happy—wretched—sacred or profane—love is the mighty teacher. What the devil d’you mean by never having been in love?”
Wynne laughed. “Couldn’t I ask the same question of you?” he asked.
“No, you couldn’t, for I always am. Ah, I may not be married—and that is a great blessing for some poor dear unknown—but I’m always in love. Sometimes it’s a girl with whom I have never exchanged a word, sometimes a dead queen or a goddess of ancient times, and sometimes in silly, sordid ways which lonely men will follow. But the spark of love that is, or the spark of a love that was, I keep for ever burning. What sort of life do you imagine mine would be without it?”
“Isn’t there a difference,” said Wynne. “You’re not a striver—you are content—”
“Yes, I’m a loafer—a dilettante—who whistles his song of praise in the country lanes—but—”
“The country lanes are the lover’s lanes; there is no time for love in the great highways. How does the line go? ‘He travels fastest who travels alone.’ ”
Uncle Clem rose and, stretching out a hand, pulled Wynne to his feet.
“He may travel fast,” he said, “but he don’t get so far. Come on! What do you think—lunch chez Fouquet?”
They made a very excellent déjeuner at the pleasant little restaurant under the shadow of the Arc de Triomphe, and when it was over, and Uncle Clem had produced two delicate Havana cheroots, the conversation turned to Wynne’s future.
“You’ve done enough of this waiting business,” he said. “Better come back with me at the end of the week.”
“Sorry,” said Wynne, “but it won’t run to it yet.”
“Well, I’m your uncle—so that’s that, ain’t it?”
“It’s that as far as the relationship goes, but no farther.”
“D’you mean you won’t be helped?”
“Yes, but it doesn’t mean I’m not grateful.”
“But look here—”
“Don’t make me,” pleaded Wynne. “It would be so easy that way.”
“But it’s all nonsense. You’ve proved your mettle—no harm relaxing a trifle.”
“I have proved my mettle to the extent of being a waiter,” said Wynne, “and that isn’t as far as I want my mettle to carry me.”
“You might be here for years.”
“Perhaps. It will be my fault if I am. I have to prove my right to climb. Help would disprove it.”
“ ’Pon my soul I admire your pluck.”
“It’s all you do admire, isn’t it?”
“Ah, get away with you! I talk a lot, that’s all; but I’ve a mighty strong conviction that you’ll do.”
“I’ll do and do,” said Wynne. “Maybe you won’t approve, but I hope you will.”
“I hope so, and believe so—for the elements are yours—but I shan’t tell you so if I don’t.”
With which somewhat cryptic remark they parted. Wynne had not gone very far down the street, however, before he was overtaken by a somewhat breathless Uncle Clem, who said:
“But, for God’s sake, fall in love if you can.”