Illyrian Spring

by Ann Bridge

  ‘That’s because you couldn’t understand, no doubt,’ he retorted crushingly. ‘She’s a particularly good teacher, as a matter of fact. Even when I’d no idea who she was, I realised that I was getting far more good from her than I did from Zarini.’

  ‘Oh well, Zarini!’ Linnet’s tone dismissed the Corsican as summarily as Halther had done. ‘He’s not in Mums’s class at all.’ But she did not resume her own point and develop it argumentatively, as her habit was; instead she looked thoughtfully at the young man beside her. That was twice in about two hours that he had rather noticeably championed her mother. Funny. Mums was funny, too; she was so – so definite, somehow; marching them all up here to see this creature’s pictures, when anyone could see that the creature himself was terrified, and his appalling Father ready to blow up at any moment. It wasn’t like Mums, any of it – she was usually so peace-at-any-price.

  At the hotel M. Breuil walked quickly round Nicholas’s pictures, as he pulled them out from a corner of his room one after another and propped them on and against various pieces of furniture – the buildings and street scenes; the portrait of Grace, and a ludicrous painting of the hall porter at the Imperial, standing in full uniform at his own flamboyant portals, full of the inane and rather swollen dignity of his kind – finally the conversation piece of Dr Halther being ‘tongued’ by his cook. At this last M. Breuil made his first observation – ‘Tiens, c’est le vieux Halther, de Vienne!’

  ‘You know him?’ Lady Kilmichael asked.

  ‘Mais oui – c’est un de mes meilleurs clients. C’est bien, ça – c’est fort drôle!’ He passed on to the next, while the rest stood round looking on – the General increasingly restless, and evidently aghast at this prodigious display of the forbidden activity, the girls amused and curious, breaking into fits of mirth over the portrait of the hall porter. But Nicholas himself stood, his fingers nervously fiddling with a button of his coat, and on his face the same strained expression which it had worn that first night on the boat, when he showed his sketches to Lady Kilmichael. Having been round once M. Breuil began again at the beginning, more slowly and carefully now – taking one picture at a time and propping it on a chair in front of the French window leading onto the balcony, to get the light. He took off his pincenez and peered closely at the brushwork, pushing his thin nose almost into the canvas, oblivious of everything and everybody else. But Grace suddenly realised that for Nicholas the whole thing was becoming quite unbearable – all these spectators, the girls, his father, herself. He was looking quite ill with nervous tension – his inside would certainly go wrong again tonight if this went on! M. Breuil stepped back, snapping his pince-nez open and shut; she knew that trick of his – it expressed satisfaction. And with sudden decision – ‘We will rejoin you later, for tea; for the moment we will leave you in peace,’ she said, and carried the others off to go back and shop at Mme Amandi’s. Linnet protested a little. ‘Oh Mums, this is such fun!’ she whispered.

  ‘Miss Humphries wants to buy her jacket – this way, General,’ her mother returned, and Linnet, too astonished for further expostulation, followed.

  On the way down to Lina Amandi’s Lady Kilmichael expanded to the General on the subject of M. Breuil. She mentioned casually some of the great names in modern painting for whom he was the principal agent – but these proving unimpressive, since the names conveyed nothing to the General, she was reduced to the deplorable expedient of praising M. Breuil’s skill as a dealer, and instancing the prices which he had recently got her for her work. By this the General was impressed – ‘But of course your name’s made,’ he said. (He had gathered, he could not quite have said how, that in her own way Lady Kilmichael was really rather important, and these sums she mentioned – really ridiculous, just for a picture – confirmed the impression.)

  ‘Yes, but M. Breuil made it. He took me up and boomed me – I hardly sold anything before then,’ she told him frankly.

  He chewed this over. ‘Of course Celia paints very well,’ he said presently. ‘If this dealer fellow’s really as good as all that, it seems a pity he shouldn’t see some of her things, too.’

  ‘Yes indeed – has she any of her work with her?’

  ‘Oh, she’s at it all the time, you know, off and on, when she gets the chance. Mightn’t be a bad plan to bring one or two up for him to look at.’

  ‘An excellent plan, I think,’ said Lady Kilmichael.

  Celia glanced round. ‘My dear Daddy, he can perfectly well see mine on the boat,’ she put in repressively.

  ‘Ah, but that’s not quite the same thing,’ replied the General. ‘He might as well see them now, alongside your brother’s, while he’s really going into it.’

  ‘Very much better,’ Lady Kilmichael urged. ‘Couldn’t you bring one or two up? I should so much like to see them myself, too.’

  So the General, after some argument with his daughter as to which of her masterpieces should be produced, also set off for the harbour. Under cover of their discussion – ‘Mums, her pictures are really tripe; they’re not in the least like his.’ Linnet murmured. ‘He’s pretty good, isn’t he?’

  ‘I think it would be nice for M. Breuil to see them, all the same,’ her mother returned smoothly. ‘Yes, I think Nicholas is good, probably.’ She turned away to Celia, with ‘Now, Miss Humphries, what about your jacket. Do you want a red one or a blue one?’ And raising her pretty eyebrows, ‘What has come over Mums?’ Linnet asked herself. If this wasn’t a leg-pull, she had never seen one. Celia herself had said, frequently, that her brother ‘thought mud’ of her pictures, and had mentioned the trouble over his career; he must have told Mums about it all if they’d been drifting about, painting and being ill, all this time. But when had Mums ever been known even to tweak or twitch, let alone pull, anyone’s leg?

  They all reassembled for tea on the terrace at the Imperial. Lady Kilmichael and the two girls got back first, shortly followed by Sir Walter, who had successfully made his arrangements with the steamer. (Sir Walter was of that order of beings whom railway and steamship companies are delighted to honour, even to the point of slightly modifying the arrangements of a cruise.)

  ‘What about rooms, Grace? Have you got them for us?’ he enquired, sitting down next to his wife, who was deep in a conversation with M. Breuil.

  ‘No, Walter – I’ve been shopping with the children.’

  ‘Hadn’t we better do something about it?’ he asked, a little surprised. Usually when asked if she had done anything which she hadn’t, his wife said, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ and hastened to repair her omission forthwith.

  ‘Yes, do. Let Linnet go with you and look at them. Try to get them in front, Walter – the view is so lovely,’ she replied tranquilly.

  ‘What is your number?’ he said, rising. It was clear that she had no intention of coming herself, which surprised him still more.

  ‘Sixty-five – second floor. Linnet knows where it is; she’s been up.’

  ‘Not to yours, Mums.’

  ‘No, but it’s next to Nicholas’s.’ She turned back to the Frenchman. ‘Évidemment, il manque de technique encore,’ she said, ‘mais—’ There wasn’t much time, half the party would be going back to the Mindora Star at dinner time; she must get in her talk to M. Breuil now, while she had the chance. Walter and Linnet were quite capable of getting their own rooms, bless them. Breuil thought well of the pictures, but he must be made to realise the position. And while Sir Walter and the girls went off, the two Kilmichaels in a state of suppressed astonishment at being allowed, indeed encouraged, to choose their rooms for themselves without the usual maternal supervision – because that was the sort of thing Mums always thought no one but she could do properly, Linnet reflected – Lady Kilmichael, in confidence, told the dealer a good deal about Nicholas and his relations to his family, the General’s preoccupation with money, and the plan to make the young man an architect.

  ‘Mais c’est rigolo! Il est formidable comme talent! C’est une bêtise inou
ïe!’ the Frenchman protested, scandalised beyond measure. There was a future before this young man – his draughtsmanship was inconcevable à son age, and with so little work behind him. He continued to analyse Nicholas’s technique, with intervals of frowning and drumming on the table; Lady Kilmichael recognised the symptoms of intense mental calculation. She had seen M. Breuil reckoning with new talent before – but she had never before seen him display such reckless appreciation. Her heart rose. She had not been wrong about Nicholas’s gift, and Breuil had said emphatically that he had gained a lot from her. If only they could make the General see reason!

  That gentleman was presently seen coming up the hill, burdened with a couple of canvases. At the same moment Sir Walter, Linnet and Celia reappeared and gathered round the table under the palms. Grace began to pour out, while she enquired after their success in the matter of rooms. Yes, they had got good ones, same floor, a little further along, and the bus was going down to the harbour to fetch their kit before dinner. Sir Walter had packed while he was on board – Linnet must nip down and put her things together the moment she had done her tea. And then the General, with a ‘There you are, Monsieur,’ put down two smallish canvases, one after another, on two small white chairs, and stood back, mopping his brow, to watch the effect.

  There ensued a rather appalling pause. Nicholas looked as if he were going to be sick. Sir Walter preserved an appearance of civil indifference. Linnet looked at the sky – and then at Nicholas; and finally at her mother, with a familiar expression – a ‘Now-you-see-what-you’ve-been-and-done’ look. Celia looked at her shoes. Lady Kilmichael glanced with curiosity at the two pictures. They were the usual uninspired, not very competent, purely derivative effort of the ungifted amateur with ‘a feeling for colour’ – or a feeling for something; they were, alas, as Linnet had said, tripe. They were much, much worse than she had anticipated; she had expected that they would be comfortably bad, but not as bad as that. And with mounting horror she watched to see how M. Breuil would deal with this situation of her own reckless creating.

  M. Breuil dealt with it, as he dealt with everything, deliberately, blandly and quite finally. He rose, teacup in hand, and stood politely before first one canvas and then the other. ‘Très-joli,’ he said at length, nodding at one; ‘Très-joli,’ he repeated, nodding at the other; then with a little bow to Celia – ‘Mademoiselle s’occupe dehors – c’est charmant!’ he said. And that was all. Without an instant’s pause he turned away to Nicholas, and began talking to him rapidly in French. Lady Kilmichael, pouring out tea for the General, who had only understood the words très-joli, and in his innocence still regarded them as praise, listened with half an ear, and indeed presently was drawn into their conversation. M. Breuil, it soon appeared, was offering to buy from Nicholas, there and then, six pictures – the Halther, the hall porter, the portrait of Grace, the Franciscan cloister, the Piazza scene, and the San Salvatore when finished – it would be done by the time the boat called for the Kilmichaels on its return from Venice. And he was offering to pay for them, now, by cheque, a sum in francs which fairly staggered Grace, a sum on which any young man could live in perfect comfort for a year and a half at least; a sum which would make him totally independent of his Father or anyone else for the time being. The condition, of course, was that he should sign a contract to sell only to Breuil for a term of years. Miss Stanway had a similar contract; she would explain it to him. And in eighteen months’ or two years’ time, M. Breuil again had a plan – a one-man show in his gallery, to lancer the new artist definitely. M. Humphress would in the interval work, paint, produce – but there it was, his offer. And while Grace glowed, and Linnet and Celia gasped with unutterable astonishment, and Sir Walter pulled out a notebook and began to scribble in it, the dealer leant back in his chair, with a satisfied expression, to receive the young man’s delighted acceptance.

  It didn’t come. Nicholas, with a stubborn mouth, said – ‘The portrait of Madame is not for sale.’

  ‘Comment? Mais c’est le clou’ Breuil expostulated. He looked as astonished as a man could. He must have that – it was exceptional, by much the best; why could he not have it?

  ‘It isn’t for sale,’ Nicholas repeated. Apart from that, M. Breuil’s offer was everything that was acceptable; he was most grateful, he thanked him warmly. He could have anything else instead, of course. But though his mouth was stubborn, his eyes for one moment turned in a sort of helpless appeal to Lady Kilmichael.

  ‘Mais par exemple!’ M. Breuil was beginning, with rising irritation, when Grace intervened, in her soft, rather appealing voice. She ought to have explained at once, she said, that the portrait was hers; it was so stupid of her not to mention it. She was so terribly sorry; it was entirely her fault.

  ‘It is a commission?’ Breuil snapped.

  ‘Mais évidemment!’ she answered quietly. But Linnet, catching sight of the expression of – well, really, worship was the only word – in the young man’s eyes at that moment, realised in a flash that her mother was, for some reason, lying; and apparently very well. And again, What has happened to Mums? she asked herself.

  M. Breuil perforce subsided. He was not going to have une histoire with Miss Stanway on any account, but the rapidity and relative good grace of his subsidence, more than anything else, gave Lady Kilmichael the measure of his opinion of Nicholas’s work. Meanwhile there was the General to be dealt with. This was being an extraordinary day, she reflected; one person after another to be dealt with, and never a moment to think. One just had to go from one thing to the next, taking the most urgent first – and some extraordinary force seemed to be bearing her on, enabling her to see, to make cool choices in a hurry, to put aside the less important things, like getting rooms for Walter and Linnet, in a way she had never done before. She was of course putting off one of the more important things, the most important of all – dealing with Walter; but there would be lots of time for that later. She hadn’t even tried to explain this to him, by so much as a look; but he would realise that for himself, she felt sure. (It was only later that the thought came to her that it was years and years since she had relied on Walter to understand anything! She had always hurried to do, hastened to explain, for fear of his reproaches. How much simpler just to rely, which really merely meant having a little faith in his good sense and his good feeling.)

  Now, however, she braced herself to the task of dealing with the General. She translated the dealer’s offer for him. To her surprise – and it aroused her warm admiration, after the appalling snub the girl’s own work had just received – Celia came vigorously to her aid, pointing out the advantages of accepting the offer. ‘It really means, Daddy, that he will be completely off your hands from now on, if he takes this,’ she ended stoutly.

  ‘Does he want to buy yours, too?’ her father asked.

  ‘No, darling. I’m not nearly good enough yet. Nicky’s a bit of a genius, you know. But really, Daddy, it’s a terribly good plan, don’t you think?’

  Before he could really express his views of the plan, Sir Walter weighed in, notebook in hand. He had worked out the sum offered, at the current rate of the franc, in sterling. ‘I was not making that amount a year, General, at his age,’ he said. ‘Were you?’

  The General had not been making half that sum. He had been a subaltern, heavily subsidised by his parents. It was all very confusing: Celia’s pictures overlooked and the boy’s, which didn’t seem to him nearly so pretty, being worth, apparently, such extraordinary sums. He could not in the least understand it, or why the Frenchman – and all the rest, it seemed – thought so highly of the boy’s things. Still, as an architect he was certainly going to have been an expense for years to come – Celia was right about that; and if he could support himself in this peculiar way, perhaps he’d better do it, at least till he got sick of it. It was – again – so awkward; no privacy, no chance for a quiet talk with them all standing round, it was really extremely difficult to say anything but ‘yes.’ And under th
e pressure of hurry, uncertainty and public opinion, the General succumbed.

  ‘Very well, Nicholas,’ he said, rather grudgingly. ‘If your Mother makes no objection to this, I shan’t.’ He failed to observe, though Grace did not, the very neat little wink with which Celia greeted the reference to her Mother.

  ‘Thank you, Father.’

  So the bargain was concluded, the cheque signed; the canvases were packed as carefully as might be in the time, and sent down to the harbour on the hotel bus, escorted by Linnet, who was going back to the ship ‘to garner a few effects’ as she said, for her three days’ stay in Ragusa. The General and Celia were despatched to the Dance, the little chapel of the paupers’ graveyard, to see the other Nicolo Ragusanos; M. Breuil, at his own earnest request, went up to see what pictures Miss Stanway had been doing since last they met. He bought the Stradone and the one of the irises out of hand, writing her another fantastic cheque for them; he adjured her to complete the one of the reed bed and the Ombla, and that of the Franciscan cloister, and to do more work generally. Ce jeune homme, he said, had much more energy than she; look, he beseeched her, at the work he had done in the time! She should remember what Flaubert said – ‘Le génie, c’est travailler tous les jours!’ And then as they went back to the garden, with an earnestness unusual with him he thanked her – ‘in the name of Art’ – for what she had done for Nicholas, setting his feet again on the only path he could follow with satisfaction, and rescuing him from a wasteful and uncongenial career.

  ‘It’s you who have done that, Monsieur,’ she protested, happily.

  ‘Disons que nous l’avons fait ensemble!’ the Frenchman said, kissing her hand. ‘Au revoir, Madame!’ And he went off with Nicholas to see the other picture at the barber’s shop, on his way back to the steamer; while Lady Kilmichael, left alone, walked over to where Sir Walter, also alone, sat under a palm. He rose as she approached, and glanced round him – the hotel garden was fairly well filled with groups of people. ‘What do you say to going for a short walk before dinner?’ he said as she came up.