Thorley Weir

"Oh, I say, Mr. Craddock," he exclaimed, "but it is jolly of you to come round to see me. Do say that you'll stop for lunch. It will be quite beastly by the way, but I promised to cook lunch for Lady Crowborough who is coming. But there are things in tins to eke out with."

Indeed this was a very different sort of protégé from him who had spilt the port last night, so much easier to deal with, so much more conscious of benefits. Gratitude and affection were so infinitely more becoming than the envious mistrust that Frank habitually exhibited. And how handsome the boy was, with his fresh colour, his kindled eyes, and unconscious grace of pose as he stood there palette on thumb! How fit to draw after him, like a magnet, the glances of some tall English girl. And at the thought, and at the remembrance of the injury he had done Charles, Craddock felt his dislike of him stir and hiss once more.

"I can't do that my dear Charles," he said, "as I have only a quarter of an hour to spare. Besides I am far too prudent to think of incurring Lady Crowborough's enmity by spoiling her tête-à-tête with you. But on this grey morning I felt it would do me good to see your Serene Joyfulness, and also the presentment of your Joyfulness' Mother which you tell me is finished."

Charles looked deprecating.

"I'm rather frightened," he said. "You see, I've changed it a lot since you saw it. I took out the whole of the head and painted it quite fresh and quite differently."

Craddock frowned … it was as if Armstrong had interpolated an act in "Easter Eggs" without permission.

"My dear fellow, I don't think you had any business to do that without consulting me," he said. "I had said I would buy the picture: you knew too that I immensely admired it as it was. Where is it? Let me see it."

Charles seemed to resent this somewhat hectoring and school-master-like tone. Below the Serene Joyfulness there was something rather more firm and masculine than Craddock had expected.

"Oh, I can't concede to you the right to tell me how I shall paint," he said. "Just after you saw the picture the other day I suddenly saw I could do better than that. I must do my best. And as a matter of fact I don't think you will mind when you see it. Here it is, anyhow."

He wheeled the picture which was on an easel, face to the wall into position, and stood rather stiff and high-headed.

"I shall be sorry if you don't like it," he said, "but I can't help it."

Somehow it struck Craddock that Charles had grown tremendously in self-reliance and manliness since he had first seen that shy incredulous boy at the weir. He was disposed to take credit to himself for this: these weeks of happy expansion, of freedom from the dragging sense of dependence had made a man of him. And then still blameful he looked at the picture. Long he looked at it and silently, and quickly in his mind the conviction grew that he must climb quite completely down from his hectoring attitude. But, after all, it was not so difficult: there were compensations, for the lower he had to go, the higher the picture soared, soared like some sunlit ship-in-air.

"You were perfectly right," he said at length. "It was the rashest presumption in me to suppose that I knew better than you. That will make you famous. I was an utter fool, my dear Charles, to have imagined that you could have spoiled it."

"Oh, that's all right," said Charles, tall amid his certainties.

Again Craddock looked long at it.

"Is it finished now?" he asked humbly.

"I think so. It seems to be what I see, and a picture is finished when that's the case. I daresay I shall see more sometime: then I shall do another."

Craddock felt no call on his superlatives.

"I must say I shall be seriously anxious if I thought you were going to scrape it out again," he said, "though this time I shouldn't dream of interfering. Now what other work have you got on hand? I am off to Egypt in two days, and I should like to know I leave you busy. Did Mrs. Fortescue come to your studio? I recommended her to."

"I know: it was awfully good of you, and I am going to paint her. You told me to charge two hundred guineas, which seemed a tremendous lot."

"Not in the least. You won't remain at that figure long."

Charles made a face of comic distaste.

"I – I don't quite know how to paint her," he said. "I can't make her as young as it is clear she thinks herself, and I can't make her such a bore as I think her."

"How could your portrait show you think her a bore?" asked Craddock.

"How it shall not is my difficulty. I must try not to get a weary brush. Then Lady Crowborough says she will sit to me when she comes back in the spring. I shall love doing that. By the way – "

Charles hesitated a moment.

"You've been so extraordinarily kind to me," he said, "that perhaps you don't mind my consulting you. She told me to propose myself to go down and see my copy of the Reynolds picture when it was framed and in its place, and for the last month I've been ready to do so any day. But Mr. Wroughton wrote me rather a queer letter. He suggested that I should go down after they left for Egypt. It read to me rather as if he didn't want to see me. And I was so friendly with them all. What can have happened?"

Craddock assumed his most reassuring manner.

"Happened?" he said. "What on earth could have happened? You know our respected host down at the Mill House. I assure you when I was there three weeks ago for one night he could think about nothing but his underclothing for Egypt, and the price of pith-helmets. He had already, I believe, begun to pack his steamer-trunks and his medicine-chests. Do not give it another thought."

Charles gave a sigh of relief.

"I'm so glad you think that is the reason," he said. "All the same I should have liked to go down and say goodbye to – to them."

"To her, don't you mean?" said Craddock.

Charles flushed and laughed.

"Well, yes, to her," he said. "Why not?"

"Why not indeed? Every sensible young man likes to say some goodbye to a charming girl, if he can do no more than that. My dear fellow, if only I was your age, I should take a leaping heart to Egypt. And now that we've pricked that little troublesome bubble, tell me a little more about yourself and your life. I meant to have seen much more of you this last week or two, but I have been distractedly busy, and have seen no one but people on business. Apart from your work, have you been going about much?"

"Hardly at all. I don't know so many people you see. I dined with Lady Crowborough, though, a couple of nights ago, and she took me to a big party. Oh, and I met there such a strange queer fellow, name of Armstrong, who said he knew you. He wrote "Easter Eggs": such a ripping play. Have you seen it? He is going to take me to it next week."

Craddock puffed the smoked-out end of his cigarette from its amber tube into the grate.

"Yes, I know him," he said. "I should not have thought there was much in common between you."

"I'm not sure. I should like to find out. And, heavens, how I should like to paint his portrait. Where's the charcoal?"

Charles seized a stick and spread a loose sheet of paper on the table.

"Eye like that," he said, "with the eyebrow like a pent-house over it. Face, did you ever see such a jaw, square like that and hungry. That's the sort of face it pays to paint. There's something to catch hold of. And his ears are pointed, like a Satyr's. I think I must ask him to sit to me. I'll give him the portrait if he will."

Craddock took up this six-line sketch.

"Yes, very like, indeed," he said, "and a terrible face. And now I must go. But I wonder if you will resent a word of advice."

"Try," said Charles encouragingly.

"Well, I will. Now, my dear Charles, you are a young man just beginning your career, and it is immensely important you should get among the right people. The Latin quarter in Paris is one thing: Bohemianism in London is quite another. For the next forty years your work will be to paint these charming mothers and daughters of England. They have got to come and sit to you in your studio. They won't if they find that it savours of the Bohemian. You can't be too careful as to your friends, for the strongest and most self-sufficient people take their colour from their friends: they can't help it."

He laid his plump white hand, which he had been observing, on Charles' shoulder.

"You must pardon me," he said, "but I have got to the time of life when an unmarried man wishes he had a son growing up. But I have none, – I have to expend my unfruitful potentiality of parentage elsewhere. If you were my son, I should choose your friends for you so carefully."

There was something pathetic and unexpected about this, which could not but touch Charles. But somehow he felt as if he ought to have been more touched…

"À propos of Armstrong?" he suggested.

"À propos of intimacy with Mr. Armstrong in general," said Craddock, feeling somehow that he had missed fire, and that it was as well to get behind a hedge again.