“What a little brute!” said Kent. “Why don't you try to reform him—make him human?”
“He is human,” cried Clytie with some warmth. “That's why I cultivate him. Delightfully human! Refreshing! As for reforming him”—with a shrug of her shoulders—“I am not a Sunday-school teacher. I have nothing to do with the submerged tenth; let the good respectable folks who have submerged them raise them with their polite and respectable hands. I am an artist—a student of life—what you will. Each one to his trade. Perhaps when I have got what I want out of Jack it may amuse me to show him the desirability of not 'lamming cats' bloomin' 'eds open with a chopper.' I don't know—I'm not altogether devoid of moral sense. Winifred's tender heart may be touched, and between the two of us we may turn him out a mild-eyed journeyman carpenter, a member of the Y. M. C. A., a model of all the virtues. But I very much doubt it. He has vice in his blood. But perhaps I am wounding some of your susceptibilities, Mr. Kent? You may be a social reformer, and keener than I on these matters. If so, pardon me. We artists are privileged, you know, to view life from our own standpoint.”
Kent threw up his hand and dropped it—a little gesture of deprecation. He, too, had large views on humanity and its needs. He was even then sacrificing comfort, fame, ease, such as other men understand them, so as to serve it. But it was according to his own capabilities. It was a darling scientific work, that on the most modest computation would take him twenty years to complete—an unthankful task; his name to be remembered with reverential gratitude by some half dozen workers, to perish unheard of by the remaining millions of mankind. But these half dozen would use the result of his life's energies to the advancement of human prosperity, and that thought glowed within Kent's heart. Still a man has not time for all things. He honestly disclaimed pretensions to being a social reformer. He was also artistically sympathetic enough to appreciate Clytie's attitude as regards Jack. He was nearer to her in spirit than Winifred, who was pained at Clytie's speech. She would have cried out with the sharpness of the pain had it not been for Kent's presence. And she would have been revolted at the cynical callousness had it not been for the blind adoration with which she bowed before Clytie. Whatever Clytie did was right, she told herself, and she was a poor little body who could not understand these things. But her heart bled for Jack, and she wondered why Clytie's did not bleed also.
“I spoke idly,” said Kent. “I am sorry. If all artists set about reforming their models, their hands would be too full for art. But he is a little brute all the same, and, as you say, Peckham Rye would be startled by him. But why do you want to shock Philistia?”
“Would you like to live in it, be of it, and worship at comfortably timed intervals in its correctly appointed temple of Dagon?”
“No,” laughed Kent. “They wouldn't have me in it. I think they could stand less of me than I of them. They are God's creatures after all, you know. If you prick them, they bleed—and so forth. If they admire your little pictures, which I too admire vastly, there must be some saving grace in the Philistines.”
Clytie shrugged her shoulders.
“But why should I be obliged to paint in their way, and not in my way? That is what irritates me.”
“Have you tried them with your way, as you call it?”
Even Winifred could scarcely forbear flashing at Clytie a little smile of tender malice.
“God bless my soul!” she whispered softly, and the two broke into unconstrained laughter.
“Winifred is quoting, Mr. Kent. It was an elderly gentleman, stout, florid, lots of watch-chain—one of my patrons. He had bought one of my pictures at the dealer's, and came for another. Burrowes showed him one of my own own things. Winifred and I happened to be at the back of the shop at the time. The old gentleman put on his spectacles, looked at the picture, gave such a jump, held it in the light, and then gasped out: 'God bless my soul, Burrowes, has the young woman taken to drink?'”
“What did you do?”
“I don't know what I should have done if Winnie had not held me back.” As it was, Burrowes whispered to him that the artist was overhearing the conversation.
“'Well, it will do her good,' says the old gentleman, and he went out storming. Then Burrowes came to me and complained that I had lost him a customer. He has the soul of a pork-butcher, that man!”
Then turning to Kent, her cheeks still flushed with anecdotal animation:
“That's how it is, you see!”
“Well,” said Kent, “perhaps you have reason to owe Philistia a grudge. I haven't. If it shuts its respectable doors on me, I shrug my shoulders and set up my wigwam outside, where I can smoke my pipe in peace. It is better not to care for the world—or anything, for that matter, if one has work to do. One's keenness on life ought to leave one no time for hating one's fellow-creatures.”
Winifred looked at Clytie, expecting to see her resent the implied rebuke. But Clytie only laughed softly to herself, leaning back in her chair, looking at her finger tips.
“You are by way of being a tonic, Mr. Kent,” she said, without looking at him.
Kent was disconcerted, could not find a reply. He stroked his tawny beard and moustache with his free hand, and looked at her somewhat puzzled. He had uttered his own robust faith, and she had seized a personal reference with which she appeared not displeased.
At last he said:
“I don't mean to imply that you are cynical, Miss Davenant. But you are a little vindictive. I, too, often think of that passage in 'Sartor Resartus' where Carlyle strips the clothes off the courtiers at St. James's and leaves them bare, with their bowings and scrapings—do you remember? Well, it would be a very good thing for them. You would come down to pure humanity and find it really a very lovable, great-hearted thing after all.”
“Then, for goodness' sake, let us begin to strip the clothes off them at once!” cried Clytie, changing her attitude, with her usual suddenness. “That's what I want to do. I want real men, real women; that's why I take human nature in the rough”—making a comprehensive sweep with her hand round the studio—“The clothes these things wear don't matter; you can see the passions working through the rents and tears.”
“Umph!” said Kent. “You may see something that will frighten you one of these days. There's plenty of good in humanity, but there's plenty of bad. You had better get hold of what is good first. It will give you a foundation.”
Shortly afterwards Kent took his leave. He had paid a longer visit than he had anticipated. He found himself pitying Clytie again upon new, less definable grounds. He was much struck by her work, her frankness, her independence. She was a novelty to him, different from the few other women he knew. She seemed to have everything calculated to make a woman happy and her life full, and yet he was sorry for her. Why, he could not tell.
He went up to his attics, and prepared to spend his usual working evening. Afterwards, towards half-past eleven, he might walk across to South Kensington. He took from one of the cupboards beneath the dresser-table plates, knife and fork, a half-finished tin of sardines, bread and butter. This, together with a bottle of beer, formed his frugal evening meal. His midday dinner he took at an Italian restaurant near the Museum. He ate standing, walking about his room between the mouthfuls, selecting the books he would require for his work, and pausing now and then over an idly opened volume. His meal finished, he collected the soiled utensils and stacked them on the landing outside his door for Mrs. Gurkins to remove, wash, and return to the same place in the morning. Then he lit his pipe, and settled down to his long evening's work.
Thoughts of burned hand, new-found friends, occupied him not. The crisp whisk of the leaves of his reference-books, the rapid whirr of his quill pen, the occasional bubble of his green-shaded reading-lamp, were the only signs of external life of which he was conscious. The rest of the bare-floored room, with its oddly covered walls, was deep in shadow.