Chapter IX—SENTIMENTAL EDUCATION
FAME and fortune were coming at last. There was no doubt of it in Jimmie's optimistic mind. For years they had lagged with desperately heavy feet, but now they were in sight, slowly approaching, hand in hand. Jimmie made fantastic preparations to welcome them, and wore his most radiant smile. In vain did Aline, with her practical young woman's view of things, point to the exiguity of the price fixed by Her Serene Highness. If that was the advent of fortune, she came in very humble guise, the girl insinuated. Jimmie, with a magnificent sweep of the hand, dismissed such contemptible considerations as present pounds, shillings, and pence. He was going to paint the portrait of the sister of a reigning monarch. Did not Aline see that this might lead to his painting the portrait of the reigning monarch himself? Would not the counterfeit presentment of one crowned head attract the attention of other crowned heads to the successful artist? Did she not see him then appointed painter in ordinary to all the emperors, kings, queens, princes, and princesses of Europe? He would star the Continent, make a royal progress from court to court, disputed for by potentates and flattered by mighty sovereigns. He grew dithyrambic, a condition in which Aline regarded him as hopelessly impervious to reason. His portraits, he said, would adorn halls of state, and the dreams that he put on canvas, hitherto disregarded by a blind world, would find places of honour in the Treasure Houses of the Nations. It would be fame for him and fortune for Aline. She should go attired in silk and shod with gold. She should have a stall at the theatre whenever she wanted, and a carriage and pair to fetch her home. She should eat vanilla ices every night. And then she might marry a prince and live happy ever after.
“I don't want to marry a prince or any one else, dear,” Aline said once, bringing visions down into the light of common day. “I just want to go on staying with you.”
On another occasion she hinted at his possible espousal of a princess. Again Jimmie dropped from the empyrean, and rubbed his head ruefully. There was only one princess in the world for him, an enthroned personage of radiant beauty who now and then took warm pity on him and admitted him to her friendship, but of whom it were disloyalty worse than all folly to think of. And yet he could not help his heart leaping at the sight of her, or the thrill quivering through him when he saw the rare softness come into her eyes which he and none other had evoked. What he had to give her he could give to no other woman, no other princess. The gift was unoffered: it remained in his own keeping, but consecrated to the divinity. He enshrined it, as many another poor chivalrous wretch has done, in an exquisite sanctuary, making it the symbol of a vague sweet religion whose secret observances brought consolation. But of all this, not a whisper, not a sign to Aline. When she spoke of marriageable princesses, he explained the rueful rubbing of his head by reference to his unattractive old fogeydom, and his unfitness for the life of high society.
But Aline ought to have her prince. The coming fortune would help to give the girl what was due to her. For himself he cared nothing. Cold mutton and heel of cheese would satisfy him to the end of his days. And fame? In quieter moments he shrugged his shoulders. An artist has a message to deliver to his generation, and how can he deliver it if he cannot sell his pictures? Let him give out to the world what was best in him, and he would be content. Let him but be able to say, “I have delivered my message,” and that would be fame enough.
These were things of the depths. The surface of his mood was exuberant, almost childish, delight, tempered with whimsical diffidence in his power of comporting himself correctly towards such high personages. For the duchess, who never did things by halves, and was also determined, as she had said, of not buying a pig in a poke, had conveyed to him the intimation that Her Serene Highness the Princess of Herren-Rothbeck would honour him with a visit to his studio on the following Thursday. Jimmie and Aline held long counsel together. What was the proper way to receive a Serene Highness? Jimmie had a vague idea of an awning outside the door and a strip of red baize down the steps and across the pavement. Tony Merewether, who was called into consultation, suggested, with the flippancy of youth, a brass band and a chorus of maidens to strew flowers; whereat Aline turned her back upon him, and Jimmie, adding pages in fancy dress to hold up the serene train and a major-domo in a court suit with a wand, encouraged the offender. Aline retired from so futile a discussion and went on sewing in dignified silence. At last she condescended to throw out a suggestion.
“If I were you, Jimmie, I should get the princess some portraits to look at.”
“God bless my soul,” cried Jimmie, putting down his pipe, “I never thought of it. Tony, my boy, that child with the innocence of the dove combines the wisdom of the original serpent. My brain reels to think what I should be without her. We'll telegraph to all the people that have sat to me and ask them to send in their portraits by Thursday.”
He crossed the studio and began to rummage among the litter on the long table. Aline asked him what he was looking for.
“Telegram forms. Why have n't we got any? Tony, run round the corner to the post-office, like a good boy, and get some.”
But Aline checked the execution of this maniacal project. Three portraits would be quite sufficient. Jimmie would have to pick out three ladies of whom he could best ask such a favour, and write them polite little notes and offer to send a van in the orthodox way to collect the pictures. Jimmie bowed before such sagacity, and wrote the letters.
In the course of the week the portraits arrived, and the studio for a whole day became the undisputed kingdom of Aline and a charwoman. The long untidy table, so dear to Jimmie, was ruthlessly cleared and set in dismaying order. The frame-maker was summoned, and the unsold pictures that had long slumbered sadly on the ground with their faces to the wall, were dusted and hung in advantageous lights. The square of Persian carpet, which Jimmie during an unprotected walk through Regent Street had once bought for Aline's bedroom, was brought down and spread on the bare boards of the model-platform. A few cushions were scattered about the rusty drawing-room suite, and various odds and ends of artists' properties, bits of drapery, screens, old weapons, were brought to light and used for purposes of decoration. So that when Jimmie, who had been banished the house for the day, returned in the evening, he found a flushed and exhausted damsel awaiting him in a transfigured studio.
“My dear little girl,” he said, touched, “my dear little girl, it's beautiful, it's magical. But you have tired yourself to death. Why did n't you let me do all this?”
“You would never have done it yourself, Jimmie. You know you wouldn't,” said Aline. “You would have gone on talking nonsense about red baize strips and flower-girls and pages—anything to make those about you laugh and be happy—and you would never have thought of showing off what you have to its full advantage.”
“I should never have dreamed of robbing your poor little room of its carpet, dear,” he said.
They went upstairs for their simple evening meal, and returned as usual to the beloved studio. Aline filled Jimmie's pipe.
“Do you think I dare smoke in all this magnificence?”
She laughed and struck a match.
“You did not realise what a lot of beautiful pictures you had, did you?”
“They make a brave show,” he said, looking round. “After all, I'm not entirely sorry they have never been sold. I should not like to part with them. No, I did not realise how many there were.” In spite of his cheeriness the last words sounded a note of pathos that caught the girl's sensitive ear.
“'Let us make a tour of inspection,” she said. They went the round, pausing long before each picture. He said little, contrary to his habit, for he was wont to descant on his work with playful magniloquence. He saw the years unfold behind him and disclose the hopes of long ago yet unfulfilled. What endless months of dreams and thrills and passionate toil hung profitless upon these walls! Things there were, wrought from the depths of his radiant faith in man, plucked from the heart of his suffering, consecrated by the purest visions of his soul. Had Aline been an older woman, a woman who had loved him, lived with him in a wife's intimate communion, instead of being merely the tender-hearted child of his adoption, she would have wept her heart out. For she, alone of mortals, would have got behind such imperfections as there were, and would have seen nothing but a crucifixion of the quivering things torn out of the life of the beloved man. Only vaguely, elusively did the girl feel this. But even her half-comprehending sympathy was of great comfort. She thought no one in the world could paint like Jimmie, and held in angry contempt a public that could pass him by. She was hotly his advocate, furious at his rejection by hanging committees, miserably disappointed when his pictures came back from exhibitions unsold, or when negotiations with dealers for rights of reproduction fell through. But she was too young to pierce to the heart of the tragedy; and Jimmie was too brave and laughter-loving to show his pain. Other forces, too, had been at work in her development. Recently her mind had been grappling with the problem of her unpayable debt to him. This silent pilgrimage round the years brought her thoughts instinctively to herself and the monstrous burden she had been.
“I have been wondering lately, Jimmie dear,” she said at last, “whether you would not have been more successful if you had not had all the worry and expense and responsibility of me.”
“Good Lord!” he cried in simple amazement, “whatever are you talking of?”
She repeated her apologia, though in less coherent terms. She felt foolish, as a girl does when a carefully prepared expression of feeling falls upon ears which, though inexpressibly dear, are nevertheless not quite comprehending.
“You have had to do pot-boilers,” she said, falling into miserable bathos, “and I remember the five-shillings-a-dozen landscapes—and you would have spent all that time on your real work—Oh, don't you see what I mean, Jimmie?”
She looked up at him pathetically—she was a slight slip of a girl, and he was above the medium height. He smiled and took her fresh young face between his hands.
“My dear,” he said, “you're the only successful piece of work I've ever turned out in my life. Please allow me to have some artistic satisfaction—and you have been worth a gold-mine to me.”
Thus each was comforted. Jimmie settled down to his pipe and a book, Aline sat over her sewing—the articles to which she devoted her perennial industry were a never solved mystery to him—and they spent a pleasant evening. The inevitable topic naturally arose in conversation. They discussed the princess's visit, the great question—how was she to be received?
“The best thing you can do,” said the practical Aline, “is to go to Mrs. Deering to-morrow and get properly coached.”
Jimmie looked at her in admiration.
“You are worth your weight in diamonds,” he said. “I will.”
He carried out his project, and not only did he have the pleasure of finding Connie at home undisturbed by strange tea-drinking women, but Norma Hardacre came in soon after his arrival. The two ladies formed themselves into a committee of advice, and sent Jimmie home with most definite notions regarding the correct method of receiving Serene Highnesses. He also brought Aline the news that the committee would honour him with a visit the following morning, accompanied by Mrs. Hardacre, who had been pleased to express a desire to see his pictures.
The appointed hour came, and with it the ladies. Mrs. Hardacre's lips smiled sweetly at the man who was to be taken up by a duchess and to paint the portrait of a princess. She declared herself delighted with the studio and professed admiration for the pictures.
“Are they all really your own, Mr. Padgate?” she asked, turning towards him, her tortoise-shell lorgnon held sceptre-wise.
“I'm afraid so,” answered Jimmie, with a smile. “Sometimes I wish they were not so much my own.”
“But I should feel quite proud of them, if I were you,” said the lady, desirous to please.
Connie broke into a laugh, and explained that Jimmie had implied a regret that they had found no purchasers. Mrs. Hardacre sniffed. She did not like being laughed at, especially as she had gone out of her way to be urbane. This was unfortunate for Jimmie; for though he strove hard to remove the impression that he had consciously dug a pit of ridicule for her entrapment, Mrs. Hardacre listened to his remarks with suspicion and became painfully aware of the shabbiness of his coat. Presently she regarded one of the portraits—that of a pretty, fluffy-haired woman.
“Dear me,” she remarked somewhat frigidly, “that is Mrs. Marmaduke Hewson.”
Jimmie, in the simplicity of his heart, was delighted.
“Yes. A most charming lady. Do you know her?”
“Oh, no; I don't know her, but I know of her.”
Her stress on the preposition signified even deeper and more far-reaching things than the nod of Lord Burleigh in the play.
“What do you know of her?” asked Jimmie, bluntly. Mrs. Hardacre smiled frostily, and her lean shoulders moved in an imperceptible shrug.
“Those matters belong to the realm of unhappy gossip, Mr. Padgate; but I'm afraid the duchess won't find her portrait attractive.”
“It is really rather a good portrait,” said Jimmie, in puzzled modesty.
“That is the pity of it,” replied Mrs. Hardacre, sweetly.
The victim smiled. “Surely the private character of the subject can have nothing to do with a person's judgment of a portrait as a specimen of the painter's art. And besides, Mrs. Hewson is as dear and sweet and true a little woman as I have ever met.”
“You are not the first of your sex that has said so.”
“And I most sincerely hope I shall not be the last,” said Jimmie, with a little flush and a little flash in his eyes and the politest of little bows. Whereupon Mrs. Hardacre bit her lip and hated him. Norma, seizing the opportunity of contributing to the final rout of her mother, unwittingly did Jimmie some damage.
“We women ought not to have given up fancy work,” she said in her hardest and most artificial tones. “As we don't embroider with our fingers, we embroider with our tongues. You can have no idea what an elaborate tissue of lies has been woven about that poor little Mrs. Hewson. I agree with Mr. Padgate. I am sorry you believe them, mother.”
Jimmie's grateful glance smote her undeserving heart. She had gained credit under false pretences and felt hypocritical—an unpleasant feeling, for the assumption of unpossessed virtues was not one of her faults. She succeeded, however, in rendering her mother furious. In a very short time Mrs. Hardacre remembered an engagement and went away in a hansom-cab, refusing the seat in Connie's carriage, which was put at her disposal on the condition of her waiting a few moments longer. She had thanked Jimmie, however, for the pleasure afforded by his delightful pictures with such politeness when he saw her into the cab, that he did not for a moment suspect that the lady who had entered the house with expressions of friendliness had driven away in a rage, with feelings towards him ludicrously hostile. He returned to the studio at peace with all womankind; not sorry that Mrs. Hardacre had departed, but only because courtesy no longer demanded his relegating to the second sphere of his attention the divine personage of whom he felt himself to be the slave. No suspicion of Mrs. Hardacre's spiteful motive in deprecating the display of his most striking piece of portraiture ever entered his head. He ran down the studio stairs with the eagerness of a boy released from the flattering but embarrassing society of his elders and free to enjoy the companionship of his congeners. And he was childishly eager to show his pictures to Norma, to hear her verdict, to secure her approval, so that he should stand in her eyes as a person in some humble way worthy of the regard that Morland said she bestowed on him.
He found his visitors not looking at pictures at all, but talking to Aline, who rushed to him as soon as he entered the studio.
“Oh, Jimmie—just fancy! Mrs. Deering is going to take me to Horlingham on Saturday, and is coming upstairs with me to see what I can do in the way of a frock. You don't mind, do you?”
Jimmie looked down into the happy young face and laughed a happy laugh.
“Mrs. Deering is an angel from the most exclusive part of heaven,” he said. And this was one of the rare occasions on which he was guilty of a double meaning. Had not the angel thus contrived an unlooked-for joy—a few minutes' undisturbed communion with his divinity?
The first words that Norma spoke when they were alone were an apology.
“You must not take what my mother said in ill part. She and I have been bred, I'm afraid, in a hard school.”
“It was very kind of Mrs. Hardacre to warn me of the possibility of the duchess being prejudiced against me by the exhibition of a particular portrait. I can't conceive the possibility myself. But still Mrs. Hardacre's intention was kindly.”
Norma turned her head away for a moment. She could not trust herself to speak, for a stinging sarcasm with just a touch of the hysterical would have been all she could utter, and she had not the heart to undeceive him. She shot into the by-path of the gossip concerning Mrs. Hewson.
“Mother believes the stories about her. So do I in the loose sort of way in which our faith in anything is composed—even in our fellow-creatures' failings.”
“You defended her,” said Jimmie.
“You made me do so.”