Fenwick's Career Part 7

'Why does that fellow upstairs always pa.s.s you as though he were in a pa.s.sion with somebody?' said Richard Watson, stepping back as he spoke, palette on thumb, from the picture upon which he was engaged.

'He almost knocked me down this morning, and I am not conscious of having done anything to offend his wors.h.i.+p.'

His companion in the dingy Bloomsbury studio, where they were both at work, also put down palette and brush, examining the canvas before him with a keen, cheerful air.

'Perhaps he loathes mankind, as I did yesterday.'

'And to-day it's all right?'

'Well, come and look.'

Watson crossed over. He was a tall and splendid man, a 'black Celt'

from Merioneths.h.i.+re, with coal-black hair, and eyes deeply sunken and lined, with fatigue or ill health. Beside him, his comrade, Philip Cuningham, had the air of a shrewd clerk or man of business--with his light alertness of frame, his reddish hair, and sharp, small features.

A pleasant, serviceable ability was stamped on Cuningham's whole aspect; while Watson's large, lounging way, and dishevelled or romantic good looks suggested yet another perennial type--the dreamer entangled in the prose of life.

He looked at the picture which Cuningham turned towards him--his hands thrust into the vast pockets of his holland coat. It was a piece of charming _genre_--a crowded scene in Rotten Row, called 'Waiting for the Queen,' painted with knowledge and grace; owing more to Wilkie than to Frith, and something to influences more modern than either; a picture belonging to a familiar English tradition, and worthily representing it.

'Yes--you've got it!' he said, at last, in a voice rather colourless and forced. Then he made one or two technical comments, to which the other listened with something that was partly indulgence, partly deference; adding, finally, as he moved away, 'And it'll sell, of course--like hot potatoes!'

'Well, I hope so,' said Philip, beginning to put away his brushes and tubes with what seemed to be a characteristic orderliness--'or I shall be in Queer Street. But I think Lord Findon wants it. I shouldn't wonder if he turned up this afternoon!'

'Ah?' Watson raised his great shoulders with a gesture which might have been sarcastic, but was perhaps more than anything else languid and weary. He returned to his own picture, looking at it with a painful intensity.

'n.o.body will ever want to buy that!' he said, quietly.

Cuningham stood beside him, embarra.s.sed.

'It's full of fine things,' he said, after a moment. 'But--'

'You wish I wouldn't paint such d.a.m.ned depressing subjects?'

'I wish you'd sometimes condescend to think of the public, old fellow!'

'That--_never_!' said the other, under his breath. 'Starve--and please yourself! But I shan't starve--you forget that.'

'Worse luck!' laughed Cuningham. 'I believe Providence ordained the British Philistine for our good--drat him! It does no one any harm to have to hook the public. All the great men have done it. You're too squeamish, Master d.i.c.k!'

Watson went on painting in silence, his lips working. Presently Cuningham caught--half lost in the beard--'There's a public of to-day, though--and a public of to-morrow!'

'Oh, all right,' said Philip. 'So long as you take a public of some sort into consideration! I like your jester.'

He bent forward to look into the front line of the large composition crowded with life-size figures on which Watson was engaged. It was an ill.u.s.tration of some Chaucerian lines, describing the face of a man on his way to execution, seen among a crowd:

'a pale face Among a press ...'

so stricken that, amid all the thronging mult.i.tude, 'men might know his face that was bestead' from all the rest.

The idea--of helpless pain, in the grip of cruel and triumphant force--had been realised with a pa.s.sionate wealth of detail, comparable to some of the early work of Holman Hunt. The head of the victim bound with blood-stained linen, a frightened girl hiding her eyes, a mother weeping, a jester with the laugh withered on his lip by this sudden vision of death and irremediable woe--and in the distance a frail, fainting form, sweetheart or sister--each figure and group, rendered often with very unequal technical merit, had yet in it something harshly, intolerably true. The picture was too painful to be borne; but it was neither common nor mean.

Cuningham turned away from it with a shudder.

'Some of it's magnificent, d.i.c.k--but I couldn't live with it if you paid me!'

'Because you look at it wrongly,' said Watson, gruffly. 'You take it as an anecdote. It isn't an anecdote--it's a symbol.'

'What?--The World?--and The Victim?--from all time?--and to all time?

Well, that makes it more gruesome than ever. Hullo, who's that? Come in!'

The door opened. A young man, in some embarra.s.sment, appeared on the threshold.

'I believe these letters are yours,' he said, offering a couple to Cuningham. 'They brought them up to me by mistake.'

Philip Cuningham took them with thanks, then scanned the newcomer as he was turning to depart.

'I think I saw you at Berners Street the other night?'

John Fenwick paused.

'Yes--' he said, awkwardly.

'Have you been attending all the summer?'

'Pretty well. There were about half a dozen fellows left in August. We clubbed together to keep the model going.'

'I don't remember you in the Academy.'

'No. I come from the North. I've painted a lot already--I couldn't be bothered with the Academy!'

Watson turned and looked at the figure in the doorway.

'Won't you come in and sit down?'

The young man hesitated. Then something in his look kindled as it fell on Watson's superb head, with its strong, tossed locks of ebon-black hair touched with grey, the penthouse brows, and the blue eyes beneath with their tragic force of expression.

Fenwick came in and shut the door. Cuningham pushed him a chair, and Watson offered him a cigarette, which he somewhat doubtfully accepted.

His two hosts--men of the educated middle-cla.s.s--divined at once that he was self-taught, and risen from the ranks. Both Cuningham and Watson were shabbily dressed; but it was an artistic and metropolitan shabbiness. Fenwick's country clothes were clumsy and unbecoming; and his manner seemed to fit him as awkwardly as his coat. The sympathy of both the older artists did but go out to him the more readily.

Cuningham continued the conversation, while Watson, still painting, occasionally intervened.

They discussed the _personnel_ of the life-school Fenwick was attending, the opening of a new _atelier_ in North London by a well-known Academician, the successes at the current 'Academy,' the fame of certain leading artists. At least Cuningham talked; Fenwick's contributions were mostly monosyllabic; he seemed to be feeling his way.

Suddenly, by a change of att.i.tude on the painter's part, the picture on which d.i.c.k Watson was engaged became visible to Fenwick. He walked eagerly up to it.

'I say!'--his face flushed with admiration. 'That figure's wonderful.'

He pointed to the terror-stricken culprit. 'But that horse there--you don't mind, do you?--that horse is wrong!'

'I know he is! I've worked at him till I'm sick. Can't work at him any more!'

'It should be like this.'