Delphi Collected Works of W. Somerset Maugham (Illustrated)

by William Somerset Maugham

  “I say, I wish you’d come and look at my drawing. I’ve got in an awful mess.”

  “Thank you very much, but I’ve got something better to do with my time.”

  Philip stared at her in surprise, for the one thing she could be counted upon to do with alacrity was to give advice. She went on quickly in a low voice, savage with fury.

  “Now that Lawson’s gone you think you’ll put up with me. Thank you very much. Go and find somebody else to help you. I don’t want anybody else’s leavings.”

  Lawson had the pedagogic instinct; whenever he found anything out he was eager to impart it; and because he taught with delight he talked with profit. Philip, without thinking anything about it, had got into the habit of sitting by his side; it never occurred to him that Fanny Price was consumed with jealousy, and watched his acceptance of someone else’s tuition with ever-increasing anger.

  “You were very glad to put up with me when you knew nobody here,” she said bitterly, “and as soon as you made friends with other people you threw me aside, like an old glove” — she repeated the stale metaphor with satisfaction— “like an old glove. All right, I don’t care, but I’m not going to be made a fool of another time.”

  There was a suspicion of truth in what she said, and it made Philip angry enough to answer what first came into his head.

  “Hang it all, I only asked your advice because I saw it pleased you.”

  She gave a gasp and threw him a sudden look of anguish. Then two tears rolled down her cheeks. She looked frowsy and grotesque. Philip, not knowing what on earth this new attitude implied, went back to his work. He was uneasy and conscience-stricken; but he would not go to her and say he was sorry if he had caused her pain, because he was afraid she would take the opportunity to snub him. For two or three weeks she did not speak to him, and, after Philip had got over the discomfort of being cut by her, he was somewhat relieved to be free from so difficult a friendship. He had been a little disconcerted by the air of proprietorship she assumed over him. She was an extraordinary woman. She came every day to the studio at eight o’clock, and was ready to start working when the model was in position; she worked steadily, talking to no one, struggling hour after hour with difficulties she could not overcome, and remained till the clock struck twelve. Her work was hopeless. There was not in it the smallest approach even to the mediocre achievement at which most of the young persons were able after some months to arrive. She wore every day the same ugly brown dress, with the mud of the last wet day still caked on the hem and with the raggedness, which Philip had noticed the first time he saw her, still unmended.

  But one day she came up to him, and with a scarlet face asked whether she might speak to him afterwards.

  “Of course, as much as you like,” smiled Philip. “I’ll wait behind at twelve.”

  He went to her when the day’s work was over.

  “Will you walk a little bit with me?” she said, looking away from him with embarrassment.

  “Certainly.”

  They walked for two or three minutes in silence.

  “D’you remember what you said to me the other day?” she asked then on a sudden.

  “Oh, I say, don’t let’s quarrel,” said Philip. “It really isn’t worth while.”

  She gave a quick, painful inspiration.

  “I don’t want to quarrel with you. You’re the only friend I had in Paris. I thought you rather liked me. I felt there was something between us. I was drawn towards you — you know what I mean, your club-foot.”

  Philip reddened and instinctively tried to walk without a limp. He did not like anyone to mention the deformity. He knew what Fanny Price meant. She was ugly and uncouth, and because he was deformed there was between them a certain sympathy. He was very angry with her, but he forced himself not to speak.

  “You said you only asked my advice to please me. Don’t you think my work’s any good?”

  “I’ve only seen your drawing at Amitrano’s. It’s awfully hard to judge from that.”

  “I was wondering if you’d come and look at my other work. I’ve never asked anyone else to look at it. I should like to show it to you.”

  “It’s awfully kind of you. I’d like to see it very much.”

  “I live quite near here,” she said apologetically. “It’ll only take you ten minutes.”

  “Oh, that’s all right,” he said.

  They were walking along the boulevard, and she turned down a side street, then led him into another, poorer still, with cheap shops on the ground floor, and at last stopped. They climbed flight after flight of stairs. She unlocked a door, and they went into a tiny attic with a sloping roof and a small window. This was closed and the room had a musty smell. Though it was very cold there was no fire and no sign that there had been one. The bed was unmade. A chair, a chest of drawers which served also as a wash-stand, and a cheap easel, were all the furniture. The place would have been squalid enough in any case, but the litter, the untidiness, made the impression revolting. On the chimney-piece, scattered over with paints and brushes, were a cup, a dirty plate, and a tea-pot.

  “If you’ll stand over there I’ll put them on the chair so that you can see them better.”

  She showed him twenty small canvases, about eighteen by twelve. She placed them on the chair, one after the other, watching his face; he nodded as he looked at each one.

  “You do like them, don’t you?” she said anxiously, after a bit.

  “I just want to look at them all first,” he answered. “I’ll talk afterwards.”

  He was collecting himself. He was panic-stricken. He did not know what to say. It was not only that they were ill-drawn, or that the colour was put on amateurishly by someone who had no eye for it; but there was no attempt at getting the values, and the perspective was grotesque. It looked like the work of a child of five, but a child would have had some naivete and might at least have made an attempt to put down what he saw; but here was the work of a vulgar mind chock full of recollections of vulgar pictures. Philip remembered that she had talked enthusiastically about Monet and the Impressionists, but here were only the worst traditions of the Royal Academy.

  “There,” she said at last, “that’s the lot.”

  Philip was no more truthful than anybody else, but he had a great difficulty in telling a thundering, deliberate lie, and he blushed furiously when he answered:

  “I think they’re most awfully good.”

  A faint colour came into her unhealthy cheeks, and she smiled a little.

  “You needn’t say so if you don’t think so, you know. I want the truth.”

  “But I do think so.”

  “Haven’t you got any criticism to offer? There must be some you don’t like as well as others.”

  Philip looked round helplessly. He saw a landscape, the typical picturesque ‘bit’ of the amateur, an old bridge, a creeper-clad cottage, and a leafy bank.

  “Of course I don’t pretend to know anything about it,” he said. “But I wasn’t quite sure about the values of that.”

  She flushed darkly and taking up the picture quickly turned its back to him.

  “I don’t know why you should have chosen that one to sneer at. It’s the best thing I’ve ever done. I’m sure my values are all right. That’s a thing you can’t teach anyone, you either understand values or you don’t.”

  “I think they’re all most awfully good,” repeated Philip.

  She looked at them with an air of self-satisfaction.

  “I don’t think they’re anything to be ashamed of.”

  Philip looked at his watch.

  “I say, it’s getting late. Won’t you let me give you a little lunch?”

  “I’ve got my lunch waiting for me here.”

  Philip saw no sign of it, but supposed perhaps the concierge would bring it up when he was gone. He was in a hurry to get away. The mustiness of the room made his head ache.

  XLVII

  In March there was all the excitement o
f sending in to the Salon. Clutton, characteristically, had nothing ready, and he was very scornful of the two heads that Lawson sent; they were obviously the work of a student, straight-forward portraits of models, but they had a certain force; Clutton, aiming at perfection, had no patience with efforts which betrayed hesitancy, and with a shrug of the shoulders told Lawson it was an impertinence to exhibit stuff which should never have been allowed out of his studio; he was not less contemptuous when the two heads were accepted. Flanagan tried his luck too, but his picture was refused. Mrs. Otter sent a blameless Portrait de ma Mere, accomplished and second-rate; and was hung in a very good place.

  Hayward, whom Philip had not seen since he left Heidelberg, arrived in Paris to spend a few days in time to come to the party which Lawson and Philip were giving in their studio to celebrate the hanging of Lawson’s pictures. Philip had been eager to see Hayward again, but when at last they met, he experienced some disappointment. Hayward had altered a little in appearance: his fine hair was thinner, and with the rapid wilting of the very fair, he was becoming wizened and colourless; his blue eyes were paler than they had been, and there was a muzziness about his features. On the other hand, in mind he did not seem to have changed at all, and the culture which had impressed Philip at eighteen aroused somewhat the contempt of Philip at twenty-one. He had altered a good deal himself, and regarding with scorn all his old opinions of art, life, and letters, had no patience with anyone who still held them. He was scarcely conscious of the fact that he wanted to show off before Hayward, but when he took him round the galleries he poured out to him all the revolutionary opinions which himself had so recently adopted. He took him to Manet’s Olympia and said dramatically:

  “I would give all the old masters except Velasquez, Rembrandt, and Vermeer for that one picture.”

  “Who was Vermeer?” asked Hayward.

  “Oh, my dear fellow, don’t you know Vermeer? You’re not civilised. You mustn’t live a moment longer without making his acquaintance. He’s the one old master who painted like a modern.”

  He dragged Hayward out of the Luxembourg and hurried him off to the

  Louvre.

  “But aren’t there any more pictures here?” asked Hayward, with the tourist’s passion for thoroughness.

  “Nothing of the least consequence. You can come and look at them by yourself with your Baedeker.”

  When they arrived at the Louvre Philip led his friend down the Long

  Gallery.

  “I should like to see The Gioconda,” said Hayward.

  “Oh, my dear fellow, it’s only literature,” answered Philip.

  At last, in a small room, Philip stopped before The Lacemaker of Vermeer van Delft.

  “There, that’s the best picture in the Louvre. It’s exactly like a Manet.”

  With an expressive, eloquent thumb Philip expatiated on the charming work.

  He used the jargon of the studios with overpowering effect.

  “I don’t know that I see anything so wonderful as all that in it,” said

  Hayward.

  “Of course it’s a painter’s picture,” said Philip. “I can quite believe the layman would see nothing much in it.”

  “The what?” said Hayward.

  “The layman.”

  Like most people who cultivate an interest in the arts, Hayward was extremely anxious to be right. He was dogmatic with those who did not venture to assert themselves, but with the self-assertive he was very modest. He was impressed by Philip’s assurance, and accepted meekly Philip’s implied suggestion that the painter’s arrogant claim to be the sole possible judge of painting has anything but its impertinence to recommend it.

  A day or two later Philip and Lawson gave their party. Cronshaw, making an exception in their favour, agreed to eat their food; and Miss Chalice offered to come and cook for them. She took no interest in her own sex and declined the suggestion that other girls should be asked for her sake. Clutton, Flanagan, Potter, and two others made up the party. Furniture was scarce, so the model stand was used as a table, and the guests were to sit on portmanteaux if they liked, and if they didn’t on the floor. The feast consisted of a pot-au-feu, which Miss Chalice had made, of a leg of mutton roasted round the corner and brought round hot and savoury (Miss Chalice had cooked the potatoes, and the studio was redolent of the carrots she had fried; fried carrots were her specialty); and this was to be followed by poires flambees, pears with burning brandy, which Cronshaw had volunteered to make. The meal was to finish with an enormous fromage de Brie, which stood near the window and added fragrant odours to all the others which filled the studio. Cronshaw sat in the place of honour on a Gladstone bag, with his legs curled under him like a Turkish bashaw, beaming good-naturedly on the young people who surrounded him. From force of habit, though the small studio with the stove lit was very hot, he kept on his great-coat, with the collar turned up, and his bowler hat: he looked with satisfaction on the four large fiaschi of Chianti which stood in front of him in a row, two on each side of a bottle of whiskey; he said it reminded him of a slim fair Circassian guarded by four corpulent eunuchs. Hayward in order to put the rest of them at their ease had clothed himself in a tweed suit and a Trinity Hall tie. He looked grotesquely British. The others were elaborately polite to him, and during the soup they talked of the weather and the political situation. There was a pause while they waited for the leg of mutton, and Miss Chalice lit a cigarette.

  “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair,” she said suddenly.

  With an elegant gesture she untied a ribbon so that her tresses fell over her shoulders. She shook her head.

  “I always feel more comfortable with my hair down.”

  With her large brown eyes, thin, ascetic face, her pale skin, and broad forehead, she might have stepped out of a picture by Burne-Jones. She had long, beautiful hands, with fingers deeply stained by nicotine. She wore sweeping draperies, mauve and green. There was about her the romantic air of High Street, Kensington. She was wantonly aesthetic; but she was an excellent creature, kind and good natured; and her affectations were but skin-deep. There was a knock at the door, and they all gave a shout of exultation. Miss Chalice rose and opened. She took the leg of mutton and held it high above her, as though it were the head of John the Baptist on a platter; and, the cigarette still in her mouth, advanced with solemn, hieratic steps.

  “Hail, daughter of Herodias,” cried Cronshaw.

  The mutton was eaten with gusto, and it did one good to see what a hearty appetite the pale-faced lady had. Clutton and Potter sat on each side of her, and everyone knew that neither had found her unduly coy. She grew tired of most people in six weeks, but she knew exactly how to treat afterwards the gentlemen who had laid their young hearts at her feet. She bore them no ill-will, though having loved them she had ceased to do so, and treated them with friendliness but without familiarity. Now and then she looked at Lawson with melancholy eyes. The poires flambees were a great success, partly because of the brandy, and partly because Miss Chalice insisted that they should be eaten with the cheese.

  “I don’t know whether it’s perfectly delicious, or whether I’m just going to vomit,” she said, after she had thoroughly tried the mixture.

  Coffee and cognac followed with sufficient speed to prevent any untoward consequence, and they settled down to smoke in comfort. Ruth Chalice, who could do nothing that was not deliberately artistic, arranged herself in a graceful attitude by Cronshaw and just rested her exquisite head on his shoulder. She looked into the dark abyss of time with brooding eyes, and now and then with a long meditative glance at Lawson she sighed deeply.

  Then came the summer, and restlessness seized these young people. The blue skies lured them to the sea, and the pleasant breeze sighing through the leaves of the plane-trees on the boulevard drew them towards the country. Everyone made plans for leaving Paris; they discussed what was the most suitable size for the canvases they meant to take; they laid in stores of panels for sketching; th
ey argued about the merits of various places in Brittany. Flanagan and Potter went to Concarneau; Mrs. Otter and her mother, with a natural instinct for the obvious, went to Pont-Aven; Philip and Lawson made up their minds to go to the forest of Fontainebleau, and Miss Chalice knew of a very good hotel at Moret where there was lots of stuff to paint; it was near Paris, and neither Philip nor Lawson was indifferent to the railway fare. Ruth Chalice would be there, and Lawson had an idea for a portrait of her in the open air. Just then the Salon was full of portraits of people in gardens, in sunlight, with blinking eyes and green reflections of sunlit leaves on their faces. They asked Clutton to go with them, but he preferred spending the summer by himself. He had just discovered Cezanne, and was eager to go to Provence; he wanted heavy skies from which the hot blue seemed to drip like beads of sweat, and broad white dusty roads, and pale roofs out of which the sun had burnt the colour, and olive trees gray with heat.

  The day before they were to start, after the morning class, Philip, putting his things together, spoke to Fanny Price.

  “I’m off tomorrow,” he said cheerfully.

  “Off where?” she said quickly. “You’re not going away?” Her face fell.

  “I’m going away for the summer. Aren’t you?”

  “No, I’m staying in Paris. I thought you were going to stay too. I was looking forward….”

  She stopped and shrugged her shoulders.

  “But won’t it be frightfully hot here? It’s awfully bad for you.”

  “Much you care if it’s bad for me. Where are you going?”

  “Moret.”

  “Chalice is going there. You’re not going with her?”

  “Lawson and I are going. And she’s going there too. I don’t know that we’re actually going together.”

  She gave a low guttural sound, and her large face grew dark and red.