“You do not know what work is. You work with your hands. Yes. But do you ever work till your head swims, and your eyes ache because they can see more inside than they can outside? If I cannot paint I shall die. I shall be like a bird that cannot sing, like a woman that has no child, like a man that has no strength. I tell you I shall die if I cannot paint.”
“Yes, he will die,” said Golda. “He will surely die.”
“He will die of starvation if he goes on painting,” replied Jacob.
“And if you had not been able to sleep you would have died of starvation for all that work ever did for you,” cried Golda, convinced that Mendel was speaking the truth.
Shortly before this crisis Mendel had discovered a further aspect of the Christian world. A good young man from an Oxford settlement had heard of him and had sought him out. This young man’s name was Edward Tufnell. He was the son of a rich Northern manufacturer, and he believed that the cultured classes owed something to the masses. He believed there must be mute, inglorious Miltons in the slums, and that they only needed fertilization. When, therefore, he heard of the poor boy who sat in his mother’s kitchen painting oranges and fish and onions, he was excited to bring the prodigy within reach of culture. He made him attend lectures on poetry and French classes. These duties gave Mendel a good excuse for escaping from home in the evenings, and he attended the classes, but hardly understood a word of what was said. He liked and admired Edward Tufnell, who was very nearly what he imagined a gentleman to be—generous and kind, and quick to appreciate the human quality of any fellow-creature, no matter what his outward aspect might be. Edward Tufnell treated Golda exactly as he would have treated an elderly duchess.
To Edward Tufnell, therefore, Mendel bore his difficulty, and Edward took infinite pains and at last, through his interest with the Bishop of Stepney, procured him a situation in a stained-glass factory, where he was set to trace cartoons of the Virgin Mary and S. John the Baptist and other figures of whom he had never heard. But, though he had never heard of them, yet he understood that they were figures worthy of respect, and it shocked him to hear the workmen say: “Billy, chuck us down another Mary,” or “Jack, heave up that there J. C. . . .” He was acutely miserable. To draw without impulse or delight was torture to him, and he could not put pencil to paper without a thrill of eagerness and desire, which was immediately baffled when his pencil had to follow out the conventional lines of the stained-glass windows. And the draughtsmen with whom he worked were empty, foul-mouthed men, who seemed to strive to give the impression that they lived only for the mean pleasures of the flesh. They knew nothing, nothing at all, and he hated them.
He was paid five shillings a week, and was told that if he behaved himself, by the time he was twenty or twenty-one he would be making thirty shillings a week. Jacob was very pleased with this prospect, and told his unhappy son that he would soon settle down to it, and he even began to upbraid him for not painting in the evenings. Mendel could not touch his brushes. He tried hard to think of himself as an ordinary working boy, and he endeavoured to pursue the pleasures of his kind. He went with Harry to boxing matches and joined him in the raffish pleasures of the streets, which, however, left him weary and disgusted. He had known something truer and finer, and he could not help a little despising Harry, who pursued girls as game, and directly they were kindled and moved towards him he lost interest in them, and, indeed, was rather horrified by them.
Strange in contrast was Mendel’s relation with Edward Tufnell, who was entirely innocent and could see nothing in his protégé but a touching sensitiveness to beauty. The urchin with his complete and unoffended knowledge of the life of the gutter was hidden from him. Edward found, and was rejoiced to find, that the boy was sensitive to intellectual beauty and to ideas. He gave him poetry to read—Keats and the odes of Milton—and was very happy to explain to him the outlines of Christianity and the difference that the coming of Christ had made to the world. He did not aim at making a convert, but only at feeding the boy’s appetite for tenderness and kindness and all fair things. Mendel was striving most loyally to be resigned to his horrible fate, and the teachings of Christ seemed to fortify his endeavour. When, therefore, he asked if he might read the New Testament, Edward lent it to him without misgiving.
The result was disastrous. Mendel pored over the book and it seemed to let light into his darkness. He read of the conversion of S. Paul and his own illumination was apparently no less complete. The notion of holding out the other cheek appealed to him, for he felt that the whole world was his enemy. It had insulted him with five shillings a week, and if he were meek it would presently add another five. . . . And then what a prospect it opened up of a world where people loved each other and treated each other kindly and lived without the rasping anger and suspicion and jealousy that filled his home.