An Engagement of Convenience Part 6

This necessity of a difficult decision disturbed the nice cool balance with which he had started out to face the day. There was nothing for it but to put aside the letter for the present in the hope that counsel would come to him later. And in the meanwhile he went on with his programme. He tidied his papers, went to hunt out his old charwoman, and, ultimately leaving her in possession of the studio, he ran into town to get his new materials, and look up the various accessories for the scheme of the picture.

His first visit was to a shop in Oxford Street, where he had dealt ever since his student days, and where he could order what he needed without immediate payment. A burly man in a Norfolk jacket and knickerbockers was making purchases at one of the counters, and his back seemed not unfamiliar. Wyndham brought out his list and was going through the various items with one of the a.s.sistants when a heavy hand was placed on his shoulder, and, turning, he beheld the big powerful head and pointed beard of one of the old gang of his Latin Quarter days.

"Sadler!" he exclaimed.

The big head was convulsed with laughter, and Wyndham's hand wrung in a mighty grip.

"How jolly! I was coming to look you up! I've just ferreted out your address; you're still fixed out there at Hampstead?"

"Oh, do come--I shall be delighted," said Wyndham genially. "Have you been in London long?"

"Three weeks. After knocking about for five years--what do you think of that, my boy? First went all over Spain--made scores of studies. Gee!

First-rate! Cheapest place in Europe--exchange thirty-five to the sovereign--and lots of good eating. Went to see a bit of Velasquez down at Madrid. Gee-rusalem! And the t.i.tans, stuck up in a funny little room! You never see anything so fine in your life."

"Oh, I've been there," smiled Wyndham.

The vigour and enthusiasm of his old friend, the nasalities of the deep voice, had almost a complete freshness for him, after the long interval since their last meeting. He was pleased at the encounter--it brought him whiffs of old days of happy comradeship. He felt the stirring of the war-horse.

"Then I put in a nice couple of years at Munich; saw some Boecklin. Gee!

He's great!"

"I once saw some wretched things of his, though," said Wyndham. "I remember--at a modern exhibition at Venice."

"I grant there are one or two rotten ones," conceded Sadler; "but they're interesting, if you take them in the right way--experiments that failed, though they were fine as he had them in him. Well--then I did a bit of a tour all over the shop--came along through Holland--made cart-loads of sketches; and then I came right along here. Been getting lots of fun in London; been round with the boys, and had a rattling good time. Taking the opportunity, too, of getting some nice suits of clothes." And here Sadler turned abruptly from art, and plunged into sartorial details. His interest in such matters was astonishing, almost touching. He revelled in fancy waistcoats and rioted in tweeds and broadcloths. London was the only place in the world where you could get the rakish cut. He, Sadler, had never suspected what a lovely figure he had, till this latest cutter had revealed him to himself!

He paused at last for breath.

"Anything particular on with you?" he was presently impelled to ask, observing that Wyndham was exercising a marked fastidiousness in the choice of his canvas.

"A portrait," said Wyndham. "Not a bad little commission."

"Good!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Sadler, his face shining enthusiastically. "A lady?"

"Yes," answered Wyndham, "and I've rather a charming scheme."

"Good!" roared Sadler again. "I heard you hadn't been doing much of late. They were running your work down--some of the boys, and I said they were talking rot. We nearly came to blows about it. I think I fairly shut them up."

Wyndham had at first winced a little. Then he felt like shrugging his shoulders. After all, the past had to be lived down. Besides, Sadler's championship was genuine and influential.

"That was very kind of you. You always did stick up for me."

"Don't you mind 'em a bit, my boy. You just go ahead, and you'll come out at the top of the tree."

"I'll do my best," said Wyndham, smiling.

"That'll be good enough, I guess," said Sadler. "Perhaps this portrait will open up other things for you."

"How so?" inquired Wyndham.

"It all depends on the crowd you strike--I heard you came a bit of a cropper, and I daresay you're not too well off now to despise a job or two--you can always put decent work into them. Now there's Jim Harley--he struck a rich middle-cla.s.s lot ten years ago, rotten out-and-out Philistines, twenty guineas apiece--and they've been keeping him going ever since. Does fifty of 'em a year."

"The prospect hardly tempts me. After all, the main thing is to get back to big work."

Sadler smiled. "I guess I should be the first to drag you back again--after a while. But Jimmy married young. A boy and girl affair.

His wife's family weren't satisfied with his financial position, and there was a mighty row at the time. Of course the girl had only her pretty eyes."

"Ah, you don't approve of idealistic love affairs."

"Not of that kind. I'm forty, and I've seen something in my time."

Wyndham had finished his purchases, and was telling the a.s.sistant to send the parcel to his studio. As they left the shop presently, Sadler pressed Wyndham very hard to lunch with him at a particular restaurant he mentioned, and Wyndham could not do otherwise than accept the invitation, though he confessed the place was unknown to him. Whereat Sadler expressed great astonishment. It was one of the very few places in London where the food was fit to eat! Why, the cooking was even better than at Lavenue's in the Quarter, and that was saying a great deal. He, Sadler, could not endure any other place during his sojournings in London. Wyndham let the dear fellow gallop on to his heart's content. Sadler was a fine painter, and in the old days Wyndham as the junior had sat at his feet, and in the matter of technique had been greatly indebted to him. But he had observed with covert amus.e.m.e.nt at a very early stage in the acquaintanceship that Sadler, like so many others in the hard-working, hand-to-mouth world of the arts, had an amiable weakness for "being in the know" anent the good things of life, and affected a lavishness in public that was off-set by a sharp economy in the less visible phases of his existence.

At the restaurant Sadler scrutinised the carte with the confident eye of a man about town, grumbled a little, held a fussy colloquy with the waiter, and finally ordered oysters and chablis to begin upon, the while a chateaubriand was being prepared for them.

Over the meal Sadler talked a great deal of old times. He seemed to have kept himself well in touch with scores of men they had known in common, despite scatterings and vicissitudes. His mind kept leaping across the world, beating them all out of their lairs for Wyndham's enlightenment.

Did he remember Pycherley--the biggest duffer of them all? Well, he had married an heiress on the strength of his genius, and was painting awful stuff out in California; and Snyders, who had shared his studio, had built himself a Moorish house high up on a mountain-side overlooking the Gulf of Salerno; a third had settled down to "black-and-white" in a queer little creeper-clad house in St. John's Wood; a fourth was decorating a munic.i.p.al building at Toronto. Marlowe was still in the avenue du Maine, where the fascinating American actress he had wed had since borne him a sheaf of daughters: and the beautiful Mrs. Smith they had known at Fontainebleau, the summer they had spent there together, had long ago divorced her husband, and married the Italian sculptor, in whose studio she had made such sensational progress. She now exhibited regularly, and had already received a gold medal of the second cla.s.s.

And so the conversation continued--for the most part about men who were now pretty well getting on into middle life, whose destinies had found definite declaration and were visible to all Wyndham expressed his pleasure that his own future, on the contrary, still lay wrapped in mystery; that, though the curtain was full up, the interest of the drama was by no means played out.

"You can afford to talk like that, Wyndham," shouted Sadler. "What are you? You're only a boy! But I'm forty, and I tell you I'd give up the interest of the drama for a safe income, and think it a d.a.m.ned good bargain. I get along, I sell my stuff, but I tell you I sweat and groan."

"I admit I should like my old income back again," said Wyndham; "not for itself, but for the sake of the splendid freedom to work."

"That's just my point," shouted Sadler. "What the h.e.l.l do I care about money for itself? And I tell you what, my boy, the right thing for an artist is to marry a woman with money." He struck the table hard with his big fist, making the whole restaurant rattle.

Wyndham almost jumped. "Good gracious! So that's what you were driving at! The idea to me is perfectly loathsome."

"That's just what I used to think," exclaimed Sadler. "But you can't go on for ever with your head in the clouds."

"The thing's so awfully brutal and sordid," insisted Wyndham, shuddering visibly. "It makes my blood run cold."

"You make me tired," snapped Sadler pettishly. "Where's the sordidness?

I don't say a man ought to run after a fortune--but enough to steady things. Taking it all round, we artists have less chance of making money for ourselves than other men of the same worth; and since most of us do marry some time or other, we ought to look to marriage to help our work, and not to drag it down."

Wyndham was unconvinced. "If you take away the poetry out of life, the rest of it is too hideous to bother about. If a man marries to make himself comfortable, he's no better than a contented pig wallowing in muck. Rather than surrender the ideal, I'd give up marriage altogether, stand by my guns, and die fighting."

"We artists are a d.a.m.ned sentimental lot," shouted Sadler. He lifted a juicy morsel to his mouth. "This chateau's jolly good, isn't it?"

"Excellent," admitted Wyndham.

"Now you see I wasn't exaggerating when I said it's as good here as at Lavenue's." Sadler swallowed his mouthful. "We all begin with your idyllic ideas--Rossetti, Meredith, and all the rest of it. But I tell you it's h.e.l.l! You dig the work out of yourself with sweat, with blood!"

The veins began to swell in Sadler's mighty forehead. "And when you're not one of the lucky ones, what does the world do to help you to work for it?" He had wrought himself up to a tense excitement, and put the question with a hoa.r.s.e shout. "Nothing! It prints your name in the papers, it talks about you at dinner parties! Painting is starvation--painting is death! By the time you've worried along till you're forty, you begin to see a bit straight, my boy. Look around you--what do you see on all sides? You see the best of us and the luckiest of us fixing up some pretty little nook here in town or in the country, and then trying to clear a few hundreds or so by tempting somebody to buy it for double what it cost. We begin with ideals, and afterwards we are glad to come down to the level of the common speculator. Let us have no delusions about it--there's n.o.body keener for necessary money than we artists when we begin to feel the years slipping by. I tell you it's h.e.l.l!" He gulped down a gla.s.s of wine and wiped his lips.

"I see your point of view," said Wyndham; "but I detest it. Better to fight to the end, and stand alone."

"You make me tired," snapped Sadler again. "There are plenty of women of the right sort who'd prefer an artist with a name to some d.a.m.ned bore of a b.o.o.by who hasn't an idea in his head. They're not fools, those women, I tell you. They know there's no money in the profession; they know you can't get everything in life. Life's a compromise. You've got to give and take. And when women have money, you'll find they understand these things better than when they haven't. A romantic boy runs after a rosy-cheeked, bread-and-b.u.t.ter miss with nothing. The chit gives herself airs, expects what they call 'an establishment'--the rotten Philistines!--and then starts out to please herself in every way, places her whims and caprices first, and the happiness of the household nowhere. The brute exacts every sacrifice, and if she has to make the tiniest concession, it rankles in her all her life."

Wyndham dissented. The same things might happen even if the chit were a millionaire.