The next morning early Wyndham jumped out of bed with a bewildered sense of some change in his life, and it was an instant or two before his faculties cleared and he remembered his adventure of the previous evening. His next thought was one of pleasure that he had at last carried out his resolution of rising early. The autumn had developed with unusual severity, but the morning was intensely clear, and the studio full of a strong light. He pushed aside the hanging, and looked down from the gallery on the familiar scene below. Ordinarily, on rising, the sight had filled him with disgust and apathy, but now a freshness and vigour pervaded him, a new imperious desire, not merely in his mind but in all his limbs and muscles, to enter again on the contest with men. As his thought ran back through the past intolerable year or two, his inaction and sloth seemed almost incredible. He saw himself rising at midday, suffering moral tortures before the work he was powerless to begin, letting the barren hours drift away into the deep, then regretting them passionately. Was it not all a nightmare from which he had been curiously released?
He dressed, and, whilst his little kettle was boiling, took careful stock of his professional materials. Colours, brushes, varnishes—all needed renewing; there seemed nothing but impracticable odds and ends, mere bits of wreckage from his disastrous life's venture. Then, too, the filth and disorder all around him struck him brusquely, stung him to annoyance. On every surface where dust might accumulate it lay in serene possession. Wherever spiders could spin, there the webs hung thick, amazing and complicated citadels, prodigious masses and networks.
He felt he could not endure it a day longer. There must be a thorough physical cleansing at once. And he must return to the luxury of a daily bed-maker. This preoccupation with household things took off the keenest edge of one's first energy and enthusiasm; he must reserve himself jealously for his high calling.
As he sipped his coffee he mused over the little financial difficulties that immediately beset him. Now that at last he had a valid ground for appealing to Mary, he felt reluctant; anxious to bring her only the sense of his success without alloy. He might explain the situation to Mr. Robinson, and ask for money in advance; but that seemed as impolitic as it was repugnant in this new rapture of fine upstanding dignity. Payment of the quarter's rent that was already due could be easily deferred—for the bare humiliation of making the request. But he needed something for equipment, and must face the sacrifice of some of the older pictures to which he had clung so long, accepting any sum in exchange, if only shillings.
He still felt no disposition to invest the accident that had turned the tide for him with any touch of superstition or romance. He regarded the whole matter in the same dry light as at his first acceptance of it the evening before. He had sat waiting for clients, and at last they had turned up. But he did not at all dislike the Robinsons: they were very much better than the great run of their class—they had evidently ideals, and aspired to a higher degree of refinement than they as yet possessed, or, perhaps, were capable of possessing. They were neither smug nor self-satisfied, and, in giving him this work, they had avoided indulging in any semblance of bourgeois patronage, whereas other people of their class, even if well meaning, might easily have been gross and intolerable.
He had studied his sitter pretty closely. The profile, as is not unfrequently the case with "plain" women, had a curious individual interest. He felt it offered scope for "construction," and he could import subtly into the drawing a certain distinguished sentiment that was not really in the original, though somehow it might easily have been there, and, in moments of enthusiasm on the part of the observer, might even be conceived to be there. Yes, the profile was undoubtedly the thing: that way, too, the great coil of hair could be handled the more effectively. Indeed, it seemed to him that, taking into consideration her dark eye with its soft lashes, and the long shapely arms, and the exquisite ivory tones of the old lace dress, the scheme should really turn out, as he had so promptly put it to Miss Robinson herself, "a most distinguished piece of portraiture." He was shrewd enough to understand the essential shyness of her disposition, and he felt he might well invest her expression with some suggestion of this, though it should come out as a sort of gentle spiritual modesty.
And now his imagination returned to the contemplation of his own fortunes, and went soaring skywards. His luck having once changed, who could say what might not turn up next? Another sitter might appear, one of your great heroines, stately and brilliant—a sort of Lady Betty, in fact: he might as well admit he had Lady Betty in mind! Such a portrait, appropriately conceived, would form a remarkable pendant to this one. Then, too, he might make another dash at his masterpiece! Such a display of versatility in the next year's exhibitions must place his name on everybody's lips, must surely pave the way to his reputation not only as a great decorative portrait painter, but also as a modern of the moderns, touched to inspiration by all the stress and striving of his age!
This roseate flight was abruptly disturbed by the advent of the postman. The rat-tat, one of the double sort, imperiously summoned him to the door. Had the "something else" already turned up? He rather prided himself on the coolness with which he rose to meet it. The postman handed him a packet and a letter. But at a glance he saw that the packet was a rejected drawing and the letter Mary's, and he went straight down into the depths again. He, however, affected a cheerful good morning to the postman; then, no sooner alone, tore open the letter, with the bitter taste of yesterday's scene with his sister full in his throat. To his astonishment, he pulled out two five-pound Bank of England notes, and only a few words accompanied them. "Dearest," she wrote,—"Since you left me to-day I have suffered beyond endurance. That you will ever forgive me for my harshness I cannot hope. I am the only soul you have to turn to, and yet I struck at you as with a whip. Your face as you turned away will haunt me for the rest of my life. I have been sobbing and sobbing, feeling my heart must break. I ask you to be good to me now, and take this little money. Darling, don't punish me by sending it back. Better times are coming presently, and, if God is good, this little help now may bring you the best of fortune.—Your loving sister, Mary."
Wyndham was unnerved; realising to the full the torture her gentle, sympathetic nature was inflicting on her. What it must have cost her to gather up her strength for that critical interview he could only remotely surmise. Yet it had failed her after all!
However touched he was by her sweetness, however much he was moved to respond to this prostration and surrender, he yet saw only too clearly that at bottom it was a failure of strength. The idea of using the money was singularly distasteful; even though he told himself he would have his hand cut off rather than doubt her perfect goodness and sincerity in sending it.