An Engagement of Convenience Part 1

An Engagement of Convenience.

by Louis Zangwill.

I

Miss Robinson had first seen Wyndham and fallen in love with him on the day that he appeared in the road as a neighbour and set up his studio there. But that was years before, and she had never made his acquaintance. He was the Prince Charming of the romances, handsome, of knightly bearing, with a winning smile on his frank face. From her magic window in the big corner house where the road branched off into two, she had narrowly observed his goings and comings, had watched eagerly all that was visible of his romantic, mysterious profession--the picturesque Italian models that pulled his bell, the great canva.s.ses and frames that, during the earlier years at least, were borne in through his door, to reappear in due course as finished pictures on their way to the exhibitions--and it was sometimes possible to catch glimpses of stately figure-paintings and fascinating scenes and landscapes.

Then, too, there was the suggestion of his belonging to a brilliant social world: she had indeed felt that at her first sight of him. Smart broughams and victorias in which nestled stylish people not unfrequently drew up at his studio about tea-time, and in the season he could be seen going off every night in garb of ceremony; not to speak of his occasional departures--to important country-houses, no doubt--with portmanteaus and dressing-bags stacked on the roof of his hansom.

And not less eagerly had Miss Robinson followed his work, scanning the magazines for his drawings, and haunting the galleries in the search for his paintings. No one guessed how much he was the interest of her life: her parents had no suspicion at all, though they knew of their unusual neighbour, and spoke of him occasionally at table. But Alice Robinson was the humblest of womankind. Her youth lay already in the past: she accounted herself the plainest of the plain. So she idealised and worshipped her hero at a distance, feeling immeasurably farther from him than the hundred yards of respectable Hampstead pavement that separated their lives.

One morning at breakfast her father read out from his paper the news of a sensational bankruptcy. A world-famous house of solicitors had fallen, and some of the first families in England were losers. Immense trust funds had gone for building speculations, and amongst the fashionable creditors who had been hit the worst were Mr. Walter Lloyd Wyndham, the artist, of Hampstead, and Miss Mary Wyndham, his sister. It seemed a curious little fact to Mr. Robinson that this affair should vibrate so near to them, and a mild and not unpleasant stimulation was thereby imparted to the breakfast-table. But Miss Robinson was hard put to it to dissimulate her deeper interest in the announcement. Her agitation was profound, shattering: she was glad to escape, and sit alone with her secret. It seemed a sacrilege that earthly vicissitude should touch this brilliant existence. And thereafter she watched her hero more narrowly than ever, reading in his bearing a stern defiance of adversity.

At first indeed there was little difference visible in Wyndham's outward seemings, and Miss Robinson was thankful that the calamity had ruffled him so imperceptibly. Yet, as the year went by, it began to dawn upon her that things nevertheless were changing. She had learnt to read with consummate skill all the little activities that beat around the studio, and it did not escape her attention that he was going into society rarely, that smart visitors were fewer, and that pictures were being returned to him after astonishingly brief intervals. And gradually, as if in corroboration of her own conclusions, she found his work missing from the exhibitions, and knew with a sinking of her heart that his brilliant days were waning.

And as time further pa.s.sed, and one year merged into another, she realised definitely that his vogue had ended. She could not even find anything of his in the magazines, though she purchased them prodigally, and searched them through with a hope that was desperation, and a fear that was well-nigh frenzy.

The last year or two a dead unnatural calm had settled over the studio.

Pictures were neither despatched nor returned: if models rang the bell, it was only to turn away the next minute with disappointed faces. Of fashionable visitors there was never a sign now: not even a comrade or fellow-artist came to look him up. But only a tall, sad-faced girl, who somehow resembled him, called there at long intervals, and Miss Robinson envied this sister the sympathy she could bring him.

He did not leave London now. All through the summer he kept in town, lying low, as Miss Robinson could well see from the pallor of his face on her return from her own conventional holiday at the seaside. She could cherish no delusions--he was a beaten man!

Time and again she brushed close to him, pa.s.sing him by chance in the street, and observed the languor of his step, the growing sadness of his features. Other details did not escape her. There was no one to attend on him; no one to care for him. Even a charwoman was a rarity at last, and Wyndham could be seen shopping almost furtively in the adjoining streets, and bearing back his own provisions to the studio. Miss Robinson divined, under their wrappings, the tin of sardines, the potted tongue, the loaf of bread. She knew that he never took a meal out now, and that, if he left the studio in the daytime, it was only to escape from the misery of solitude and hopelessness.

She alone observed him so minutely. Her mother had in some degree shared her interest in his work, and had sometimes accompanied her to the galleries; but the common interest of the family in their neighbour was casual and fitful. Miss Robinson hardly dared mention his name now: it seemed to her that to draw attention to his poverty was to humiliate him. Besides, she feared to reveal her own emotion.

One day Miss Robinson's own life caught her with a breathless upheaval.

An honoured and intimate friend of her father's, successful, opulent, came forward with an avowal of esteem for her; deferentially desired her a.s.sociation with him in his second essay in matrimony! Mr. Shanner seemed to spring it on her with untempered abruptness; though the attentive courtesies that had preceded the crisis might have glimmered some little warning. But Mr. Shanner's footing in the house was as old-established as the rest of his appertainings; and Miss Robinson's spirit was ever at the nadir of diffidence. Men as a rule shunned her: women cared as little to talk to her. That anybody might ever wish to marry her had seemed impossible, inconceivable. Mr. Shanner had many pretensions to style, yet, to her spoiled eye, he seemed merely of clay indifferent.

She strung herself to the ordeal of refusing him, though her real strength knew no faltering. For he proved insistent; wooed her--soberly--decorously--as became the dignity of five decades completed; wooed her with reasons of urgency, and implications of sentiment. He was to depart on a mission to the New World; wished to bear her promise with him. He would treasure it; would think of the new light to shine in his household. But within her lay an unfailing inspiration, and her innermost soul stood like a tower impregnable; though she was all wounds and distress, and quivered with the hurt. Was not her heart with her Prince Charming? her one dream in life the privilege of helping him?

Mr. Shanner had to sail away disconsolate!

But, though Miss Robinson's mind was occupied day and night with this problem of Wyndham's salvation, she could arrive at no plausible solution. For how should she ever dare to give him a sign? She who would have yielded her life for him could only watch him drifting downwards with an agonised sense of her helplessness.

And he all the while unsuspecting of this obscure, loving historian of his existence; of the warm heart that beat for him in these evil days on which he had fallen!

II

For hours the rain had beaten against his windows, and at last, now that a lull had declared itself, Wyndham dragged himself to the door, and looked out into the gray afternoon. His eye took in the familiar vista, but, as it rested on the great bow-windowed house at the corner where the road branched into two, he turned away with a shudder. For years the sight of that house had irritated him: its ugly brick bulk had been symbolic of all Suburbia, of everything in life to which he was instinctively hostile as an artist and a gentleman.

But presently he laughed: it had struck him as comic that he should have preserved in its freshness his full youthful contempt for all this Philistine universe!--he, a half-starved devil of an artist, down in the mouth, with a solitary half-crown in his pocket, speculating with bitter humiliation whether his hard-worked sister had yet a little to spare for him, after all the life-blood which, leech-like, he had sucked out of her! Nay, more, he was conscious that his distaste for this surrounding wilderness of affluent homes, in the midst of which he had so long dwelt as an isolated superior intelligence, had grown more marked in direct proportion as he had become poorer and poorer.

The prosperous figure of the owner of the bow-windowed house rose before him. Immersed in his own existence, Wyndham had deigned to notice very few indeed of his neighbours. But old Mr. Robinson was one of the few, not only because of the regularity with which he pa.s.sed the studio every day at six o'clock as he came home from business, but also because he invariably bore something in a plaited rush-bag that had a skewer thrust through it, suggesting visits to Leadenhall Market, and purchases of game or salmon for the good wife according to season. But Mr. Robinson's mild aspect, benevolent white beard, and gentle amble had never impressed Wyndham with much of a sense of human fellowship. He might concede that the old man was "a decent sort, no doubt, in his own way"; but they were creatures belonging to different planets.

Still amused at his own disdain, though the corners of his mouth were set a trifle grimly, Wyndham turned back into the studio with the idea of making himself presentable and going to see his sister--since it now seemed possible to get across town without the prospect of an absolute drenching. Happily his wardrobe had substantial resources: in the old days he had kept it well replenished, and his simple life of late here in the studio had made small demands on it. Thus he could still go out faultlessly clad and shod. n.o.body need suspect his poverty, he flattered himself, if he ever chose to dip into his own world again. Only he did not choose; there was always so much questioning to face. "We've seen nothing of yours in the last two or three Academies--when are you going to give us another masterpiece?" "Still on the big picture? How is it getting along?" However genially thrown out, such usual interrogation annoyed him beyond measure. It was so long since anything had been "getting along." On all sides he was regarded as a doomed man, and suspected it: suspecting it, he was morbidly sensitive. His life was unnatural and not worth the living. Months and months had been wasted in apathy. Each day he dreamt of a new lease of energy and courage to begin on the morrow; but, after making his bed and clearing away his breakfast and purchasing his food for the day, he would find himself dejected and incapable of a single stroke.

And yet he could not wholly realise the change that had come over the scene. He rubbed his eyes sometimes, as if expecting to awake from an unhappy dream. Was not the flourish of early trumpets still in his ears?

The dazzle of admiration still on his retina? The gush of extensive and important family connections still tickling his self-esteem? The sweeter approval of a superior art-clique still flattering his deeper vanity?

He had been born with a silver spoon; his childhood and youth had been ideally happy. From the playing-fields of Eton he had pa.s.sed to the quadrangles of Oxford. A distinguished student of his college?--not in the ordinary grooves; yet favourably known as an intellect with enthusiasms. Phidias was more of an inspiration to him than Aristotle; t.i.tian more actual than Todhunter. Ruskin, Pater, Turner, had stirred him; left his mind subdued to their colours. From boyhood had been his the swift skill with pencil that ran as easily to grace as to mockery.

And, left early arbiter of his own existence, with gold enough for freedom, he had made for the one career that called to him.

Genius cannot prove itself at a stroke: it has its adventurings to make.

Seldom it realises at the outset that it is adventuring in the dark, therein to grope as best it may to self-discovery. Even this first stage may be long deferred; yet, however sure of himself at last, the artist has still to tread the unending road with the great light of self-realisation ever in the distance. There are the years of strenuous search, of faithful labour; of bitterest failure on failure to bring the deep, mysterious impulses to bloom and fruition. But there is yet another, if independent, adventuring. The great light that crowns the artist's journey shines only in his own spirit. The world sees and knows nothing of it. He has none the less to find his way into that other light--the lurid, mocking limelight of the world's acceptance; to seek a place beside or beneath the charlatan. This is the bitterest stage of all--- to stand shivering in marketplaces that are knee-deep with dung and offal; to be upholding precious things to the vision of swine. What wonder if in the course of so harsh a journeying, as he lives and breathes in his own universe of striving, his precise moral relation to things external grows dim, intangible; and, if money one day give out, he clutches at any crust for sustenance.

Wyndham began his journeyings. His advantages were many and obvious; his disadvantages subtle and unseen. There was the danger that facile talent and social prestige might bring him an early delusive success; a failure, rightly seen, however tricked out with glamour.

His beginnings, indeed, were pleasant: it was great fun throwing himself into this new queer Bohemian world of art. He worked hard as a student, the sheer interest of his labours lightening them astonishingly. And, after some preliminary swayings in varying directions, he at last "found himself," as he supposed; developing a dexterous imitative craft, and joining an advanced crowd with Whistler and Sargent for his deities.

Wherever he pursued his studies--in London, or Paris, or Italy--there he was remarkably popular. Everybody said: "Wyndham belongs to very good people. They're swells--tip-top!" And indeed he had obviously the stamp of being "the real thing," and even the elect of Bohemia were flattered and fascinated by personal a.s.sociation with him.

When ultimately he set up his studio here in Hampstead, he had his policy definitely before him. With the means and the leisure to aim at a high career, he would make no concessions to popularity or the market.

He had chosen the locality deliberately. It was London, and within reach of the world; but not so near the world as to endanger his labours. The little tide of fashion that rolled up to his door was not a tribute to fame, but merely the fuss and interest of his non-Bohemian circle pleased for a time with the novelty of having a studio and a genius connected with them.

So in the early years he worked enthusiastically, and was able to win some footing in the galleries. But, in the eyes of his numerous family connections, he was seriously launched; especially when a couple of his pictures at last attracted buyers, and he moreover found himself earning guineas from the patronage of friendly editors whose humbler commissions he carried out in the same spirit of the dignified, ambitious worker.

Then the financial crash came, leaving brother and sister entirely dependent on their labours. Both met the crisis with commendable philosophy. Mary, who had long before taken up educational work as an amateur, was soon able to establish herself as a professional, and had taught ever since at a high school in Kensington; picturesquely settling herself in a tiny flat in an artisan's building, and living as a homely worker. The dignity and serene simplicity of her life had of late furnished the one ideal thing for Wyndham's contemplation.

Wyndham himself had stood up straight and felt very strong; had rea.s.sured his fussy, frightened folk that he could rely on his profession. He felt in himself an endless ardour for achievement, a confidence of triumph in the contest with men. Nay, more, he would gain his bread without descending from his high standpoint! The task was fully as difficult as he had antic.i.p.ated; but at any rate he contrived to live for a couple of years. Then, somewhat to his surprise, the Academy began to return his pictures; and somehow, to his greater surprise, everything else went against him at the same time. He could not even get "ill.u.s.trating" to do. Those who had acclaimed him before because he was a "swell" were now turning against him apparently for the same reason. Your aristocrats were never to be taken seriously; they were necessarily amateurs! It was all so unanimous, so settled and persistent, that it had almost the air of a conspiracy. Wyndham saw well enough that everybody had tired of his work, that he had had his hour and his vogue; his career lay like a squib that had blazed itself out.

All bangs and fizzings, and then a blackened bit of casing, silent, extinguished! Yet he had the discernment to recognise that the dying-down had been really inevitable; that his present relative poverty had little or nothing to do with it. He had been dexterous on the surface, but the sameness of his note--without even the saving grace of convention--had destroyed him commercially.

Well, he believed in himself, and he refused to accept this erasure. On the contrary, he would launch out more daringly than ever. An end to facile imitation of other people's styles! He must express his own deeper self. The strict Whistlerian creed was much too narrow. Art was not merely a bare abstract aesthetics: humanity counted for something after all. Was woman's loveliness something really apart from woman herself? True that art meant beauty--in the largest sense, of course; but why should not humanity and beauty fuse together?

So, sc.r.a.ping together all he could command in the way of money, he set himself to work out a large dramatic idea, suggested by the sight of a May-day demonstration. The canvas was gigantic, and he strove to depict a mob of strikers straggling out of the Park after their great meeting, with elements of fashion caught in this _melee_ of labour. The pictorial irony had greatly interested him, and he felt that this painting on the grand scale was being sincerely born out of his own emotion, that it would trumpet out a warning to the age.

The beginnings were full of promise, and he decided to stake everything on it. But for so realistic a representation of Hyde Park Corner he needed to make a great many sketches on the spot. So, through the friendly offices of an amiable acquaintance, he obtained access to a convenient window in Grosvenor Place, and made free use of the privilege. The master of the house, a n.o.bleman of the old school, who at first sight seemed stately as the portraits in his own dining-room, proved on acquaintance to be singularly bluff and genial, sometimes almost slap-dash. He had made Wyndham welcome and at his ease, bidding him come and go as he pleased, and "never to mind a bit about turning the room into a studio." And this charming n.o.bleman had likewise a charming daughter, who sometimes came for a minute or two to talk to Wyndham and interest herself in the sketches. Lady Betty was a brilliant figure of a girl; had travelled a good deal and knew the world. She was sunny and friendly, yet naturally on a pedestal. She was clear-headed and capable; in the home supreme mistress. Wyndham was the subject of many graceful little attentions. If he came in the morning she saw that his gla.s.s of sherry and biscuit was never neglected; in the afternoon she presided over tea in the drawing-room and expected him to appear there.

Of course poor Wyndham never dared tell himself that he was in love with her. A girl like that must naturally be reserved for a great match, as regards both position and fortune. He could not think of her save as presiding over a plurality of palaces or voyaging in a magnificent yacht. Palaces and yachts were not the rewards of painters, so Wyndham kept his mind sternly fixed on the purpose for which he was there. Even so, the intervals between his appearances grew wider and wider. And when, after some couple of years of toil, discipline, searching, it had come home to him that in this terrible picture he had undertaken a task beyond his strength and experience, he found himself too shamefaced to "abuse" further the courtesy that had been extended to him. The consciousness, too, of his growing poverty was becoming acuter and acuter. Already he was drawing back into his sh.e.l.l, and, once he had ceased going to Grosvenor Place for the sake of his work, he had not the heart to continue his visits as an ordinary acquaintance. More than a year afterwards he read of Lady Betty's engagement in the papers--it was the very match one would naturally look for. Yet the news "shattered him to bits"--absurdly enough, he told himself, since he had known her at best irregularly, and not in the ordinary course of social intimacy.

He was really half-surprised at receiving an invitation to the wedding.

He could not prevail on himself to go; but, remembering she had once admired one of his Academy pictures, he sent her a photograph of it on a miniature silver easel as a trifling wedding gift. She wrote back a gracious acknowledgment, which had since remained one of his treasures.

Meanwhile he had been struggling on with the picture, determined to conquer. But its difficulties and problems were endless. After all his toil it stood on his easel in a terribly unfinished condition, though he had stinted his own body to lavish his money on it. At last, gulping down the humiliation, he was forced to accept of Mary's little store of savings to pay his rent and his models. It was his first step of the kind, and he paid the full proverbial cost of it. But he had still the hope of returning the loan a thousandfold. Was not his success to redeem her life as well as his?

Certainly Mary believed in him and the picture, and looked forward to its scoring a great triumph. The whole heart and hope of the sister centred on that vast canvas. She sometimes ran across town to see it, though--poor child!--Hyde Park Corner always looked the same to her at every stage of its long creation. But the picture was Wyndham's backbone; it was his stock-in-trade before his world. He was more and more of a recluse now, refusing all invitations, discouraging his friends from coming to interrupt him--as he put it. Certainly Wyndham would rather have died than confess to failure after all the magnificent trumpeting. Even as it was, the time came soon enough when the big picture no longer served to protect his dignity. He imagined half-pitying glances and ironic smiles, and so eventually he found himself avoiding everybody without exception.

It was only on Lady Betty's wedding day, after more than three years of futile striving, that he had the resolution to remove the great canvas from the easel and stand it with its face to the wall.

He was tired now, but he must make an effort to emanc.i.p.ate himself from Mary's exchequer. Till then he could not hold his head up. So he painted some smaller and pleasanter pictures, but again he could do nothing with them. The Academy sent them back, the minor galleries sent them back, the Salon sent them back the following year. The dealers offered less than the cost of the frames. Meantime he had ceased to count up the five-pound notes Mary had starved herself to keep for him. He knew he was a coward and dared not. He had reached that stage of moral confusion which Nietzsche registers as in the natural history of the artist-type, and which may not be eyed too harshly from the point of vantage of ordered and organised existence in this outer universe. One idea stood clear beyond all others; grew into his mind; grew till it became his mind. He must cling to his studio, hold desperately to this atmosphere of paint and canva.s.ses.

He was getting on in years now--past thirty-three. It was like the striking of a pitiless clock, this adding of swift year after year to his unsuccessful life. His hand began to fail him. The necessity of now doing his own house-work; of bothering with coals and cinders, preparing his makeshift monotonous meals, pouring oil into lamps, and boiling kettles, and washing plates and teacups, had begun by encroaching on his time and energies, and ended by absorbing them altogether. The care of ministering to his own primary needs had at last superseded art as his profession. Even so, the cobwebs multiplied and the dust lay thick.