“If she goes on like this there is no knowing what will happen.”
“Where did the child get these repulsive and ungirlish notions from?” the old man asked querulously.
The conception of the picture was not that of a young girl, and though the execution was crude and untrained, there was a bold cruelty of touch that saved it from being amateurish. The canvas was divided into two panels. On the one was painted a tiny bully of a boy with his arm rounded across his throat, about to strike a weakly, poverty-stricken little girl. They were children of the poorest classes, the boy realistically, offensively dirty—the petit morveux in its absolute sense. Behind them was the open doorway of a red-brick, jerry-built cottage, showing a strip of torn and dirty matting along the passage that lost itself in the gloom beyond. On the other panel was the corner of a public house in a low slum, the window lights and a gas-lamp throwing a lurid glare upon wet pavement and the figures of a woman and a drunken man. The faces were those of the children in the first picture, and the eternal tragedy was repeating itself. The man's face was loathsome in its sodden ferocity; the woman, with a child in her arms, was reeling from the blow. The evident haste in which the panels had been painted, the glaring, unsoftened colouring, heightened as if by impressionist design the coarse realism of the effect. Above was written the legend, “La joie de vivre” and in the left-hand bottom corner, “Clytie Davenant pinxit.”
“She has certainly grown much worse of late,” sighed Mrs. Blather, holding out her thin, short hand to shield her face from the fire.
There was a pause of some moments. Mr. Davenant ceased nursing the picture and stood it on the floor.
“Have you quite made up your mind, papa,” said Mrs. Blather at length, “not to let Clytie go to the Slade School in London?”
“It is out of the question,” replied the old man.
“I don't think so, papa. It would perhaps do her good. A year or so's hard work would take all these silly ideas out of her.”
“I question it,” said Mr. Davenant. “They are not silly ideas. They are debased, degraded ideas.”
“My dear papa, they are only fads. All young girls have them. Look how crazy Janet was to join the cookery classes. We let her join, and now she hates the sight of a pie-dish. With Clytie it is quite the same, only she wants to daub.”