“Would you believe it, I hadn’t been home a week, when who should appear one night past ten o’clock but that girl? Upon my word, I broke out in a cold sweat all over. I’m as weak as water, and—she was divine. I tell you—I had an awful job altogether. I quieted her down first, then I had to bathe her feet, such pretty pink little ones, but all torn and bruised. If you believe me, she had walked from ten miles this side of Godalming. I got her some food and gave her up my bed, and somehow or other I got her back next day; she’d have stayed on any terms, poor little soul! Girls are queer fish,” he said modestly, “one never can tell what’ll fetch them. It was all pretty hot on the mother, however, so I gave her the few shillings I had, and then she wrote to say that the girl got fever from the walk, so of course I’ve had to help them, and I regret to say my boots have gone for a change to mine uncle’s. I shall be paid on Friday, and then I’ll bloom back into my pristine glory and accept invitations.
“I wonder,” he went on reflectively, “if there’s any way of keeping a fellow from making a fool of himself. If you have happened to hear of any in your travels, an anti-love philtre now, for Heaven’s sake divulge it, it ruins one’s work getting in love in a promiscuous way, it’s a brutal nuisance too, and devilish expensive. I know I always have to pay compound interest for my pleasures in this line, and they’re absolutely mawkish too, in their innocence,” he added, with a little injured sigh.
Strange watched the boy curiously, wondering what possible motive, or train of motives, combined to keep his life so clean, with its every condition on the side of uncleanness.
“He has neither convictions nor religion to hold him, he is as passionate and sensual a fellow as any going, he is steeped to the lips in Zola and others of that ilk; theoretically, innocence and he are as far apart as the poles. He is a fool, no doubt, but I wish to God the folly would last.”
Brydon guessed the elder man’s thoughts, or perhaps his own were running on the same lines, as he sketched in the strong steady cool face with a breadth of technique that was marvellous in a boy of his age and opportunities.
“I wonder myself,” he said, “I don’t make more of my pleasures. A fellow has opportunities somehow,” he added with pleasing diffidence, “no matter how poor he is but I have a sort of notion I might lose in Art what I should gain in pleasure. It would be idiotic to run that risk, wouldn’t it? I have a sort of theory, it’s probably rot though it has a sound of truth about it, that the cleaner one keeps one’s body and soul, the clearer one’s eyes keep and the better able to tackle the truth in Nature.”
He paused, a little embarrassed; any expression, even of the most primitive morality, brings a blush of shame to the cheek of youth.
“That sounds like a workable theory,” assented Strange, “and upon my word, I believe you will find it so. The opposite is playing the deuce with the modern Italian school, and it strikes one like a blow in a lot of the work of the youngsters there. I would thresh out that theory, if I were you, nothing half and half will do.”
“No,” said Brydon ruefully, “no, that is where the grind comes in.”
Strange laughed, the fellow’s face and accent fitted his speech so comically.