barely half an hour after miss mason’s sudden decision barnabas set out for a small and rather unwholesome street somewhere in the direction of the world’s end. it was given by pippa as the locality in which mrs. higgins had her residence.
it was not entirely on miss mason’s account that barnabas was anxious to make further enquiries regarding the child. as he walked along the king’s road, with its pavement slippery and muddy from the feet of many passers-by, his mind travelled back to memories which pippa’s face had awakened in him.
they were memories some fourteen or fifteen years old, of the time when he was a young art student. a scene he had almost forgotten came clearly back to him. he saw a big class-room full of easels and men working and smoking. he saw himself, very young, very full of enthusiasm, yet at the moment very full of despair. he saw himself looking with disgust at his own somewhat feeble attempt to reproduce on canvas the figure of the nude model who was standing on the platform before [pg 137]him. he saw the master coming near, and heard his words. they were few but sarcastic. he had felt that the whole room was listening to them. first an insane desire to sink into the floor had overwhelmed him, then a feeling that he had better take his canvas and brushes and fling them into the river. it had been mere presumption on his part to dream of art as a career. he had seen the other figures in the room through a kind of hazy blur. the voice of the master as he went from easel to easel had come to him as through cotton-wool. he did not notice that almost equally sarcastic remarks were being levelled at the other canvases, and were being received by their owners with indifference or with good-humoured laughter. he had heard the door close presently as the master left the room. then he heard a voice at his elbow—a curiously musical voice:
“it’s a pity saltby looks upon sarcasm in the light of instruction in art. he can paint quite decently himself, but he has no more notion of teaching than a tom cat.”
barnabas remembered that he had turned to look at the speaker, and had seen a dark foreign-looking man standing beside him. the man had looked at him sharply.
“that fellow has worried you,” he said. “they’re just calling rest. come along out and have a smoke.”
barnabas remembered following him into the corridor. he remembered the curious feeling of restful strength the man had given him as they walked up and down together.
“i’m going to give you a bit of advice,” he had said suddenly. “remember this, that the opinion of one man, even if he happens to be your master, counts for nothing. the moment you touch any art—painting, sculpture, music, or literature—you’re laying yourself open to criticism, and you’ll find any amount of it adverse. don’t let it discourage you. if you’ve got the inner conviction that you can do something, forge ahead and do it. don’t be damped by adverse criticism. if you can learn from it, learn; but don’t let it kill the germ of belief in yourself.”
“but can’t one be mistaken in the belief that one can do something?” barnabas remembered asking.
“if you are mistaken you’ll find it out for yourself,” the man had replied earnestly. “my dear boy, the men who can’t, and never will, do anything are those who are so cocksure of themselves that they are impervious to sarcasm and every adverse criticism under the sun. it simply doesn’t hurt them. it does hurt us. it touches us on the raw. but we’ve got to go on. you felt like chucking the whole thing just now. i’ll be bound it wasn’t exactly that your self-vanity was wounded, but because you felt that it had been utterly presumptuous of you ever to have attempted to lift your eyes to the immortal goddess. my dear boy, she loves men to look at her and worship her, from however far off. it’s those who say they are paying her homage, but who all the time are looking at and worshipping themselves, for whom she has no use. go on worshipping her. keep big ideas before you and one day you may get near the foot of her throne. it’s not given to many to touch her knees. but to worship at the foot of the throne is something. why, even to look at her from afar is worth years of struggle. saltby keeps one eye on her i grant, but he keeps the other on himself, and it makes him the damned conceited and sarcastic ass he is....”
barnabas seemed to hear the voice distinctly, to feel the magnetism of the man who had spoken the words so many years ago.
he remembered later in the evening hearing two students speaking of the man.
“kostolitz is a weird chap,” one had said; “mad as a hatter.”
“spends half his time like a tramp,” said the other, “going around the country and writing poetry, and the other half in sculpting. every now and then he takes it into his head to come in here and draw a bit. he says it freshens him up to see beginners on their way to fame.”
barnabas remembered that kostolitz had come to him at the end of the morning and had suggested their walking back to chelsea together. it had been the beginning of their friendship.
the man’s face came persistently before him this evening as he pursued his way towards the world’s end.
other little speeches of his returned to his mind. “i love colour,” he seemed to hear him saying, “but i can’t work in paints. they aren’t my medium. i want to get to the solid. give me a lump of clay and i’m happy. it’s nonsense to say there’s only colour in actual coloured things. there is colour in everything—words, music, thoughts—the world’s steeped in colour if you can only see it. why, man, it may seem odd to you, but people even give me the sense of colour. perhaps it’s the old eastern idea of auras, i don’t know. anyhow, that idea is too mixed up with spiritualism and closed rooms to appeal to me. give me the open air, the sunshine, flowers, and singing birds. i can believe in fairies, gnomes, the people of the wind, and the people of the trees, anything that is of the spirit of nature. there they sit together—nature and art—the two great goddesses, bless them; and men try to separate art from nature. they can’t, man, i tell you they can’t.”
barnabas could almost see the man’s eyes—passionate grey eyes—fixed on him as he remembered the words. and it was the memory of those eyes that pippa’s eyes had awakened in him, and with their memory had brought the other scenes before him. the memory had awakened as he had [pg 141]watched her listening entranced to the story of “the sleeping beauty.” he had seen the eyes of his friend kostolitz looking at him from the small pale face, and suddenly he had seen the whole wonderful likeness the child bore to the man. kostolitz was dead, had been dead now many years. had he left behind him this scrap of humanity, holding perhaps a spirit as poetical and intense as his own, to battle with the world? if it were so, for the sake of that friendship, it must be protected. and something told barnabas that he was not mistaken in his belief.
he turned now into the small dark street. he found the house whose number pippa had given him, and knocked on the door. it was opened by a large, slatternly woman with a watery eye.
“that you, pippa?” she exclaimed. “’ere, you come in, and i’ll give you somethink staying hout like this.”
then she saw barnabas. visions of n.s.p.c.c. inspectors rose suddenly before her mind. mrs. higgins quailed inwardly.
“well?” she asked, and her voice was truculent because her spirit was quaking, “and wot can i do for you, sir?”
“am i,” asked barnabas suavely, “addressing mrs. higgins?”
“that’s my nime,” replied the lady, arms akimbo.
“i believe,” continued barnabas, still suavely, “that you have had charge of a child—a little girl named pippa.”
“i ’ave,” said mrs. higgins defiantly, “and a more hungrateful, huntruthful, little baggage i hain’t never set heyes on. hif you ’ave hanythink to say about ’er, per’aps you’ll kindly step hinside.”
barnabas stepped into the small passage. it was ill-smelling, redolent of dirt and boiled cabbage. mrs. higgins herself breathed gin. she was, however, at the moment tolerably sober.
“i understand,” said barnabas, “that she came here with a madame fournier.”
mrs. higgins blazed. “she did. a french ’uzzy wot took and disappeared last june, leaving me with ’er child. friend’s child she called it. i know them gimes. just about as much a friend’s child as madame ’ad a right to ’er title or ’er ring wot she wore so conspikus, i’ll be bound. leaving me with the child on me ’ands, wot i kep’ from charity, and never so much has a penny piece to pay for ’er keep but wot she gets from them hartists as she goes to.”
“then the child,” asked barnabas, “is no relation of yours?”
“relation of mine!” cried mrs. higgins indignantly and virtuously. “do yer think hif she belonged to me as i’d allow ’er to be standing naked fer men to look at. i’m a respectable woman, i am, i thanks the halmighty.” mrs. higgins ended with a loud sniff.
barnabas suddenly felt a sensation of almost physical nausea. he seemed to hear kostolitz’s voice begging him to leave the place, to get away from the filth of the atmosphere, and above all never to let the child return to it.
“then,” said barnabas decisively, “you will no doubt be glad to be relieved from the burden of maintaining her. she will not return here, and she will be provided for.”
mrs. higgins gasped at the suddenness of the statement. she felt something like dismay. she saw pippa’s earnings, which had added largely to her weekly income, disappearing in the distance.
“and ’ow about the hexpense i’ve been put to!” she exclaimed. “yer don’t feed a growing child for six months fer nothink, and me as kind to ’er as hif i’d been ’er own mother.” mrs. higgins began to sob here, moved to tears by the memory of her own tenderness.
barnabas’ mouth set grimly.
“i think, mrs. higgins,” he remarked, “that the less you say about your treatment of the child the better. as far as her keep is concerned her own earnings have no doubt paid you more than adequately for the food you have given her. as however you will lose them in the future——”
he pulled two sovereigns from his pocket.
“take these,” he said briefly, “and good evening.”
he turned from the house leaving mrs. higgins gaping and astonished. it is a mercy when the mrs. higginses of the world can be thus easily disposed of.
barnabas walked away down the street, marvelling at the fact that man had originally been created by god in his own image.
he went straight back to studio number seven, where he found miss mason anxiously awaiting him. he sat down and gave her a brief account of his search and its results, omitting, however, a description of the dirt and smells.
“and so,” he ended, smiling, “you mean to keep this waif?”
“i couldn’t let her go,” said miss mason. “did you see her eyes?”
barnabas had. but the look in them had hurt him too much for him to care to think about it. so he merely said lightly:
“where is she now?”
“asleep on half a dozen cushions and among blankets on the floor of my room. she has had a bath and been wrapped again in that red silk. she’ll have to live in it till i can get her some more clothes. i’ve burnt the others, and put the hat, coat, and boots in the dust hole. in spite of her poor little attempts at cleanliness, one never knows.”
“one does not,” said barnabas grimly, thinking of the house she had come from. “may i smoke?” he asked.
“certainly,” said miss mason. she liked the scent of tobacco in her studio. she felt it to be part and parcel of bohemia.
there was a long silence.
miss mason was thinking of the child lying asleep in the next room. she had an odd feeling that the fates had sent pippa directly to her that she might in a way atone to herself for her own lonely childhood by making this morsel of humanity happy. she had already begun to weave the dreams that are woven by fairy godmothers.
and barnabas’ thoughts had again travelled back to his friend kostolitz, and the thoughts made his eyes grave and a little sad.
“i am going over to paris to-morrow,” he said suddenly, breaking the silence.
“yes?” queried miss mason.
“you know that oil-portrait that hangs by my mantelpiece?” he asked. “doesn’t a likeness strike you?”
miss mason looked up. she felt suddenly a little anxious.
“of course,” she said slowly. “i never thought of it before. it’s the image of pippa.”
barnabas nodded.
“i saw it when i came back into the studio and found her at tea.”
there was a pause.
“who is the portrait?” asked miss mason.
“a man i knew long ago,” said barnabas. [pg 146]“his name was philippe kostolitz. he was a strange man—an hungarian. he was a true vagabond, yet certainly of good birth. i knew nothing of his people, if he had any. he was half gipsy and wholly artist. the statue of the little faun in my garden is his work. he gave it to me. we were great friends.”
“ah,” said miss mason softly. “and where is he now?”
barnabas made a swift sign of the cross. he had been baptized a catholic, and in spite of his present rather pagan views regarding life he had retained this beautiful custom. there was an innate instinct of reverence in barnabas.
“in paradise i hope. he was killed nine years ago in a railway accident. it was a horribly prosaic ending for a man whose whole nature was the essence of poetry.”
miss mason was silent. after a moment she spoke.
“then you think that pippa——” she broke off. she was looking straight at barnabas.
“i don’t know,” he said bluntly. “the likeness is extraordinary. in paris i might find out something from the artists for whom she posed. i know one or two of them personally.”
“thank you,” said miss mason. “the journey, of course, will be my affair.”
“that,” said barnabas, “is pure nonsense. if pippa—you see, kostolitz was my friend.”
“but i wish it,” said miss mason. and something in her voice made barnabas give way.
ten minutes or so later he left the studio.
before miss mason put out her light that night she went across to the heap of cushions and blankets and looked at pippa. she touched her cheek gently with one wrinkled hand. it was long before miss mason slept. she lay awake listening to the regular sound of the child’s breathing.
the morning, with the variability of english weather, broke still and sunny, a touch of frost in the air.
barnabas looked in at miss mason’s studio before he left for paris.
he found that lady sitting in her chair knitting. pippa was curled up on the hearthrug, the red silk tightly swathing her slim body. a pair of shoes and stockings of sally’s, many sizes too big for her, covered her feet. she was watching miss mason with the eyes of an adoring puppy.
she scrambled to her feet as she saw barnabas.
“ah!” she cried, a note of great pleasure in her voice. “it is ze so sunny monsieur. i wis you good morning.”
barnabas came over and stood on the hearthrug.
“i’m just off,” he said.
“i knew you’d look in,” said miss mason. “i waited for you before going out to buy garments.”
“going away?” asked pippa, looking at him [pg 148]with troubled eyes. she had had experience of people who went away and did not return.
“only for a few days, and mainly on business which concerns you, little one,” he replied.
pippa gave a relieved sigh.
“come back ver’ quick,” she said. and then suddenly: “what is your name?”
he laughed. “you must call me barnabas,” he said.
she nodded her head. “monsieur barnabas,” she said slowly. then she turned to miss mason “what sall i call you?” she asked.
a sudden little tender thought sprang into miss mason’s mind. she put it aside.
“you can call me,” she said rather gruffly, “aunt olive.”
again the child nodded her head. “aunt oleeve and monsieur barnabas, c’est bon.” she looked an odd little elfin figure as she stood there watching them.
“i must be off,” said barnabas. “i’ve no time to lose.”
pippa came to the door with him.
“bon voyage,” she cried, waving her hand. and then suddenly she saw the marble faun in the next garden.
“ah!” she cried. “quel beau petit garçon!” she darted down one path and up another.
the last thing barnabas saw, as he looked back before leaving the courtyard, was a poppy-coloured figure standing in the wintry sunshine beside a white marble faun. the child had her arms familiarly round the faun’s neck.
he painted that picture later when the days were warmer. it was a picture that was to travel far away from england, and it was to keep alive in the heart of a woman the memory of a secret—a secret of three weeks of glorious happiness and a strange regret—a secret known only to herself and to three other living people.
