She continued her walk with Cosimo.
V
POUNDS AND SHILLINGS
When Mr. Hamilton Dix, the renowned critic, had first mentioned Amory in print, he had made a perhaps pardonable error about her sex. But the error itself had been a compliment. In speaking of “Mr. Amory Towers” he had been misled by the rugged masculinity of “The Paviors,” her second exhibited picture.
Amory was not sure that she liked Mr. Dix very much. He seemed to her to have a rather remarkable faculty for slightly impairing the value of everything of which he wrote or spoke. His conclusions were undeniable; when Mr. Hamilton Dix had pronounced on a thing Q.E.D. might be written after that thing; there was no more to be said about it. But somehow all the fun had gone out of it. You told yourself, grossly unfairly, that if it interested Mr. Hamilton Dix it had no further interest for you. That was your loss, since Mr. Dix usually fastened on the best things. In appearance he was a big man with an overpowering presence, a promising eye, and brown curls that frothed all over his head like the “top” of a mug of porter; and you wondered whether a person could ever be so glad to see anybody whomsoever as Mr. Hamilton Dix appeared to be to see everybody. He still occasionally called Amory “Mr. Towers” by way of a joke.
Mr. Dix had no official connection with the Crozier Gallery. He frequently wrote of “another admirable Exhibition at the Crozier which no serious student of art must miss,” or “the gift of discovering the best among our younger artists which the proprietors of the Crozier seem to possess,” but that was all. As a professional critic he was not eligible for membership of the artists’ clubs, but he blew like a March gale through their studios, and the smaller and poorer the studio the more he irradiated it with the light of his optimistic eye.
During their earlier interviews he had carried Amory entirely off her feet. Though his tongue had cautioned and disclaimed, there had been no resisting the promise of his eye. Croziers’ were going to take her up, and—well, at the present stage “Mr. Towers” (ha, ha) would quite understand that Mr. Dix did not want to say too much about it.—But his very reticence had seemed a guarantee. It was not to be supposed that Messrs. Crozier took people up without a certain amount of belief in them.... And that had kept Amory’s head in the clouds for quite a long time.... But little by little it had dawned on Amory that time seemed of very little value to Messrs. Crozier. A thousand years in their sight—or two years, to be precise—was but as yesterday. Delay after delay had occurred; Messrs. Crozier had not judged this time to be quite ripe, had considered that market to be a little overstocked; it was necessary, if the success was to be made for which they hoped, that the time should be chosen to the hour; and so on and so forth.—“You’re far from being old yet, if I may say so without offence, Miss Towers,” Mr. Dix had remarked, rolling his eye over Amory’s small, straight little figure, as if the organ had been mounted on an universal joint....
But lately it had looked as if things really were in motion again. Amory had had several letters with the Crozier embossing on the envelope flap, asking her to state at once in what state of advancement her works were, and once she had even had a prepaid telegram.... Then things had slowed up once more, and Amory had fumed.
Then, on a morning in May, a hansom cab drew up at the greengrocer’s in Cheyne Walk, and Mr. Hamilton Dix, seeing Amory look out of the window, had waved his plump hand. He blundered up the stairs, and told Amory that he wished to see the canvases themselves, at once; at once, mind you.... There were between twenty-five and thirty of these canvases; they were stacked round the walls like the slates in a builder’s yard; and Mr. Dix rolled his eye over them as Amory set them, one after another, on her easel. Then he rolled the eye over Amory herself again. Again Amory somehow had the impression of gluten. It was as if the eye had left traces where it had rested.