“You young men of the present day make me tired!” she exclaimed. “You all seem to think that larks ought to fall ready roasted into your mouth. There’s not a blessed thing in this world worth having without sacrifice. The big people, the people that have the big things in life are those that have paid or are prepared to pay the big price for them.”
“I don’t see why you should round on me like that,” said Tommy. “After all, a little while ago I made no bones about sacrificing the loaves and fishes for the sake of my art—I don’t want to brag—but fiat justitia at any rate.”
“I know what you did,” said Clementina, mollified, “and if you hadn’t done it, I shouldn’t be talking like this to you. And you’re a painter and my very dear Tommy, and you can understand—Of course, I’ll go on painting—I’ve got it in my blood. I could no more do without a paint brush handy than a tooth brush. But it’s going to be secondary. I’ll be the gifted amateur. Clementina Wing, painter of portraits to the nobility, gentry, mayoralty, and pork-butchery of Great Britain and Ireland is dead. You can paraphrase the epitaph. ‘Here lies Clementina Wing, the married woman.’ And, Tommy, my dear,” she added in a softer voice, “You can add to it; ‘Sic itur ad astra.’ ”
“I do hope you’ll be jolly happy,” said Tommy.
On their way back it happened that the postman met them with the household budget. She took the letters into the hall and sorted them. Tommy went off with his precious epistle from Etta. Huckaby appeared in quest of his chief’s correspondence, and, seeing her alone, congratulated her on her approaching marriage. She thanked him and held out a letter addressed to him from Dinard.
“I’ve been dealing in quotations lately,” she said. “And I find I’ve got one for you. ‘Go thou and do likewise.’ ”
Huckaby sighed and laughed.
“One of these days, perhaps,” said he.
So the idyll that seemed to be coming to an end had only just begun. They returned to London, and while Clementina (in whose charge Sheila now remained) painted frenziedly to finish the work she had in hand, Quixtus, with her help, reorganised the great gaunt house in Russell Square. The worm-eaten scarecrow of a billiard table was removed from the billiard-room built by Quixtus’s father over the garden at the back of the house, and the room, spacious and top-lighted, was converted into a studio for the bride to be. Tommy, enthusiastically iconoclast, being given authority, under Clementina’s directions, to refurnish, condemned rep curtains, mahogany mid-Victorian furniture—a dining-room sideboard disfigured by carvings of plethoric fruit had sent shivers down his back since infancy—Turkey carpets and all the gloom of a bygone age, and converted the grim abode into a bower of delight.
And towards the end of October the oddly mated pair were married, and Clementina went to her husband’s home and the patter of the feet of the beloved child of their adoption was heard about the house and great joy fell upon them.