that same afternoon the five other male occupants of the studios dropped in to tea with barnabas. they frequently did. they liked the cakes he bought at a shop in the fulham road, and, incidentally, they appreciated barnabas himself. they had one and all announced their intention previously.
“meaning me to buy cakes,” said barnabas. and he had sent his man to the fulham road to make the purchases.
barnabas poured out the tea, which was drunk out of cream-coloured cups with festoons of flowers on them. there were not enough chairs, but a couple of packing-cases had been pressed into service, and they sat round an oak table—gate-legged. barnabas had picked it up for a mere song at a filthy little shop in a back street. he was very proud of the bargain.
the six men were curiously dissimilar in appearance and in character. one took in the outlines of that, as one took in their appearance at the first glance.
next to barnabas was dan oldfield, huge, red-haired, and untidy-looking. he was one of a large [pg 64]family, and had begun his artistic career at a suburban art school, where he had risen to the post of pupil teacher, and later to that of assistant master. at twenty-two he had been left three hundred a year by an uncle, and had come to london to study at the slade schools. he was now thirty, and had never lost the idea of minute finish inculcated in him at the art school. it found expression in his tiny pictures of almost miniature-like work, pictures which the palm of one of his huge hands would have covered.
beside dan was jasper merton, sallow, clean-shaven, discontented in expression, his previous history unknown to the six studios. he painted altar pieces at low rates for high churches in poor districts, which paintings were usually the gift of benevolent and religiously-minded spinster ladies. he looked—as barnabas had once said—as if he were wearing a hair shirt for the good of his soul, and as if the shirt were an extra-prickly one.
beyond him was alan farley, who, like david of old, was “fair and of a ruddy countenance.” nature had intended him for a cheerful soul, but art of the ultra-mystic type had taken him prisoner. he painted shadowy figures with silver stars on their brows, non-petalled roses, and purple chalices; he read swinburne and the poems of fiona macleod, and talked about creative genius.
“creative genius!” barnabas had said to him one day. “man, you don’t understand the first principles of it. your painting is pure slither. do you think creation is slither? it’s travail, it’s agonizing. what does your work cost you? nothing. an airy fancy, half an hour’s mental indigestion, and there’s a canvas covered with purples, greys, and greens. the colour’s all right, but what on earth is the thing worth? i’m not talking monetary jargon. you say that purple mass in the corner is a veiled woman, and she’s talking through opal mists to a silver star. who on earth’s going to find that out unless you go round like a kind of animated catalogue to your own pictures. get hold of form, man. study it. draw—draw—draw—till you can express ideas tangibly. leave poetry alone for a bit till you’re honoured with the power of understanding it. you’re being mentally sensual and don’t know it. you talk of passion! great scot! you don’t understand the meaning of the word, nor the a b c of nature.”
and alan had listened and taken the harangue meekly, though it had had, apparently, little effect.
next to alan was paul treherne, seated on a packing-case. he was a man well above the medium height, and with a lean-limbed look about him. he had grey eyes, sad—like his mouth, which was partly hidden by a small moustache. fate had started him in an office, which he hated. later she had taken him abroad, where he had lived in a tent and under the open sky, where he had experienced hardships few men of his class have known, and where he had three times been face to face with death. he had looked at sunsets across open plains, and seen mountains bathed in gold and purple, and the crimson fire of tropical evenings. he had seen the blue shadows of palm trees on yellow sand; he had seen the scarlet of pomegranate flowers, the gold of oranges against azure skies, till his whole being was saturated in colour. and lastly he had returned to england at the age of twenty-seven to find in the soft greys and lilacs of smoky london an even more wonderful charm. he had then an income of eight hundred a year, four of which he gave to his widowed mother, who lived in a little house in hampshire. he was at last able to turn to art, which he had always loved passionately, and from his knowledge of character gained through much experience of men and women, and with his wonderful sense of colour, he took to portrait painting. he now, besides his invested income, earned, at the age of thirty-seven, about six hundred a year by his brush. he sang in an untrained mellow baritone in a way that brought tears to one’s eyes.
between paul and barnabas was michael chester, a small man, one shoulder higher than the other, and with one leg shrunken and twisted. he had had a pencil in his hand since babyhood. in illustration and line work he excelled, though his choice of subjects was morbid. his paintings of the river and grey london streets were beautiful. there was something almost whistler-ish about them. he had the heart of a true poet, and the tongue of a cynic, and he played the violin like a god. an ultra-morbidity regarding his own appearance had lost him to the world as a public violinist. nothing would have induced him to mount a platform or enter a crowded drawing-room. the studios alone were given the benefit of his talent.
and finally, master of the ceremonies, seated on another packing-case was barnabas—tall, brown-haired, green-eyed, and sunny hearted, outwardly indolent, and beloved of his fellow-men. he followed in the footsteps of paul as a portrait painter, though he was apt to say it was “the devil of a way behind.”
the conversation during tea had somehow centred round a certain unconscious old lady, who was at that moment cleaning oil paints from a large mahogany palette, and looking with humorous disgust at a canvas on which were large and unsteady blobs of pink paint above a smear of green and gold. they were intended to represent pink roses in a sèvres bowl, but had failed horribly in the intention.
the conversation had begun airily enough, five of the men taking part in it, barnabas alone being silent. after about ten minutes it began to be slightly strained, and three of the men had more or less dropped out of it. dan had, however, continued to express his views somewhat clearly and with a certain amount of gruffness. jasper was being annoyingly christian-like in his attitude.
“i intend to call on the lady, at all events,” he said at last, with exasperating decision. “after what you two fellows said yesterday i felt that i at least——”
“not you only, my child,” interrupted barnabas good-humouredly, speaking for the first time. “we’re all going. we begin on sunday.”
“won’t the lady be a trifle overwhelmed?” asked paul.
“i didn’t mean all at the same time, or on the same day,” explained barnabas. “i intended that we should go in detachments. i thought dan and i could begin—take the initial step, so to speak.”
“and who next?” asked paul, smiling.
“jasper and alan, as jasper’s so keen about it,” said barnabas. “then you and michael.”
michael looked at the tip of his cigarette through half-closed eyes.
“you can leave me out of the little programme,” he said. “i don’t pay calls.”
“and i’m calling on my great aunt’s stepmother on sunday,” said dan. “sorry, barnabas, but it’s a prior engagement.”
“you can send a wire to that purely fictitious person—if you know her address—and put her off,” replied barnabas.
“i’ll be damned——” began dan.
jasper got up from his chair. “i will leave you five to make your own arrangements,” he said. “i shall call upon miss mason at five o’clock on monday afternoon. if alan comes with me i shall be pleased. i’ve got an engagement now. good-bye.”
he left the studio. there was a very slight and almost unconscious movement of relief among the remaining men.
“your language jarred on his nervous susceptibilities, dan,” said michael. “and he thinks our attitude altogether unchristian.”
“wish he’d get himself fixed up in one of the panels of his own altarpieces, and carried off to the highest church in london,” said dan. “it would be much the best place for him.”
“i’ll not call with him,” said alan firmly. “if i do make a martyr of myself it will be by myself or with one of you others.”
there was a silence. then quite suddenly barnabas told them of miss mason’s little speech to sally. somehow he had been unable to mention it in jasper’s presence.
again there was a pause. then dan laughed.
“you’re confoundedly sentimental, barnabas, my son. i suppose i’ll have to send that wire.”
michael smiled, a queer twisted smile.
“barnabas has a curious faculty for keeping silence till the crucial moment,” he said. “he then makes some little trivial remark which invariably manages to upset all our preconceived notions.”
“he is,” said paul, “as dan says, a pure sentimentalist.”
the atmosphere had lightened. jasper’s departure and barnabas’ little speech had had a curious effect upon it. a mental fog had previously crept into the studio. it often found its way into the rooms jasper entered. sometimes he seemed to leave it behind, but it generally came to find him, creeping thin and ghostlike through the keyhole, through the cracks in the doors, through the chinks in the windows, settling thickly round him, and casting its gloom over the room and the other occupants.
and the gods of joy and laughter, who cannot breathe in such an atmosphere, would silently depart. now, however, they had found their way back, slipping easily and gladly into the place they loved.
when, half an hour later, michael limped down the garden path with paul, he nodded in the direction of studio number seven.
“shall we say tuesday afternoon for our call?” he asked carelessly.
paul had a momentary feeling of surprise. he did not show it.
“right,” he replied equally carelessly.
and the little faun laughed to hear them, and piped a madder dance still to the rose-petals which had whirled below his pedestal at intervals throughout the day.
