Chapter III: Amateur Criticism

"Those busy subtle pronouns, I and Me,
Unsought and unexpected they appear;
No barriers heed they, and no laws revere;
But wind and penetrate, with dexterous force,
Through all the cracks and crannies of discourse."
JANE TAYLOR.

JEAN, in her neat grey dress, and grey hat with grey ostrich feathers, sat near the window of the dull sitting-room, looking into the dull street. She was waiting for Oswald; waiting, not impatiently, but with a certain forlorn wistfulness. When she and Oswald made an appointment, a tacit understanding was always included that he would keep the appointment, should nothing more agreeable intervene, but that she would keep it in the face of all obstacles. So he could always be sure of Jean, and she could never be sure of Oswald.

All the same, Jean trusted him through thick and thin. She trusted him because she loved him. Trust founded on love is but a rickety structure, compared with that more solid erection, love founded on trust.

Mr. Trevelyan had again an engagement which could not be set aside, and he went, in displeasure at Oswald's non-appearance.

"It is too bad," he said. "Mind, Jean—if Jem or anybody looks in, and offers to take you anywhere, don't refuse."

But of course, she would refuse. She would have sat till Domesday, looking for Oswald, sooner than have risked being absent when he did come.

This brother and sister, springing from the same stock, growing out of the same ground, surrounded by the same influences, had shot their branches in very different directions. In Oswald, self reigned supreme, and principle bowed before self-pleasing. He had indeed a certain Trevelyan hardihood and recklessness of danger; and in battle he would have rushed to the forefront without a thought of peril. But in everyday life, his personal comfort was a prime consideration; he liked an easy-chair existence, except during the intervals when amusement demanded exertion; and he spent a good deal of thought upon the pleasures of the palate.

Training can do much, but it cannot do everything. It is a mighty force for good or for evil; yet it has no power to change the actual texture of the substance on which it works. It can shape, subdue and modify, to almost any extent; but it cannot transform lead into gold, canvas into cambric.

A gardener has extraordinary power over plant-life, power to check or encourage growth; power to shape and modify. He can bring to splendour one attribute or another; he can let this or that part of a flower die out or become an abortion. But with all his cunning, he can never change a sunflower into a rose, or a cabbage into an oak. Each plant keeps untouched to the end its individuality.

Practically, no two persons, even of one family, ever can have precisely the same training, since variations are inevitable. In this case, not only had Jean always stayed at home, while Oswald went to school; but also Jean had been the worshipper, Oswald the worshipped; Jean had always yielded her will, Oswald had always gained his.

In any case, no training in the world could ever have made Jean into Oswald, nor Oswald into Jean, though it might have made something different of either.

His strong large figure, soldierly yet already inclining to stoutness, and his sunburnt self-satisfied visage were not more unlike Jean's slender form and refined outlines, than his whole inner being was unlike hers. So clear was the family perception of this fact, that the same was not expected from him as from Jean. That which in her would have been a heinous sin, was unhappily in him only what they had to expect. Deep in Mr. Trevelyan's heart lay a sore sense of disappointment about this only son; but he never spoke of it, even to Jean.

Past three o'clock! They had lunched at one, and Jean was beginning to feel rather hopeless. If he did not come, it would be a disappointment indeed. She had not seen him for months. Yet she waited quietly, with a book open on her knee, which she forced herself to read.

A ring at the front door.

"Oswald!" she said aloud, and a glow came to her cheeks.

"Sir Cyril Devereux!" was announced in stumbling accents by the awkward little maid.

"Jean! That's right! I was awfully afraid I shouldn't find you in! Jean, you do look handsome," exclaimed Cyril, greatly gratified, for the flush and radiance with which she had risen to welcome Oswald seemed to belong to himself. "I never saw you so handsome before. What is it? That dress! You never ought to put on anything but French grey for the rest of your life. But you haven't any flowers. You'll wear these—" and he placed in her hand two or three exquisite rose-buds, half open, creamy and pink-tipped, with a softening spray of maidenhair.

"I had a hunt to find what I wanted; and then I was afraid I should be too late. Dear Jean, you do look nice," he went on with boyish eagerness, yet not so boyish as a year earlier.

His hair was more closely cut, his manner was more decisive, his complexion was more sunburnt. Nothing could lessen the prettiness of the violet eyes, yet even they had gained a spice of independence.

"You do look nice: I never saw you look better," he repeated, though by this time colour and shining were gone, and Jean was her quiet self, with difficulty veiling keen disappointment. "You don't mind my saying so, do you? And you are glad to see me, Jean?—just a little! The one thing I cared for in coming to Town was to get a sight of you. Everything else is so idiotically stupid."

"Cyril, don't be absurd."

"I'm not. It's other folk that are absurd. What are you going to do with yourself this afternoon? You ought to be seen."

"As if anybody in London cared for my looks! Do talk sensibly."

"I'll try." Cyril sat down in an easy attitude, facing Jean. "You haven't told me yet—are you pleased to see me again? After such an age! I told aunt Sybella that go home I would this summer; and if she chose to stay away, I should go alone. So she cried and gave in. Crying doesn't mean much with her. Just a little ebullition of feeling. Such rot! Tearing over the Continent for nothing. I've seen ruined castles enough to last for twenty years. Well, you haven't told me yet—are you pleased?"

"You don't allow one a chance to say anything. Cyril, I do believe you never will grow up."

"Grow up! I'm five foot ten and three-quarters, and not narrow in proportion. How many extra yards do you want? Jem is no more; and Oswald is only five foot eleven and a half."

"Oswald would make two of you!" with a disdainful glance.

"Can't help not being corpulent. Is that what you want? I've tried no end of processes, and they don't answer. People are not all made alike, you know."

"I suppose not," Jean answered, dimly aware that her quondam slave was no longer absolutely subservient as of old. It had not been his wont to jest over any expression of opinion from her. "Where is Evelyn now?"

"Didn't you know? Staying at the Métropole; and she wants you to meet her at the Academy this afternoon. I'm to take you there. It's all right—Evelyn has settled things. Didn't you know she was in Town?"

"I was not sure as to dates. Hush—is that Oswald? No, I'm afraid I can't come, thanks. Oswald will be here, and he has promised to take me."

"To the Academy? That's right. We'll all go together; and I shall have you to myself. How jolly!"

By no means jolly in Jean's eyes! Her hopes of a long afternoon with Oswald were dying out. Yet, what could she say? To meet Evelyn would be a delight; only nicer in private, and this Jean suggested.

"Couldn't be a more private place than the Exhibition. Everybody is lost in a crowd. So you haven't seen Evelyn yet—or her new crony?"

"Miss Moggridge?"

"Hideous specimen of womankind!"

"Evelyn wrote from Milan where they first met, and said she was plain but charming."

"'Plain' is not the word. It's bald ugliness. No eyes or nose worth mentioning; thick lips; liver-coloured complexion; tow-coloured hair. I always counted Evelyn too sensible a woman to go in for gush; but one never knows. She's infatuated now, and no mistake. Imagine setting up house with such a companion! However, Miss Moggridge won't be at the Academy to-day. Seedy, I believe; or writing a pamphlet. Just the sort of person to pour out pamphlets by the dozen . . . I say, Jean, you won't wait much longer, if Oswald does not come. Evelyn is expecting us."

Jean was spared the need of reply; for another ring sounded, and Oswald strolled in, with his old confident air. No longer a dusty and begrimed school-boy, but a well-dressed and well-drilled young officer of Her Majesty's Service, he seemed superlatively content with himself, and not unwilling to patronise less favoured mortals. As Jean had said, he was considerably bigger than Cyril, who looked very boyish by his side. Oswald's movements were large as well as his frame, taking up a good deal of room; and the superiority of air sat rather oddly upon only three-and-twenty years. Aristocratic traditions reigned in Oswald's breast, as in Jean's: but to outward appearance he was rather military than aristocratic; and the chivalrous spirit, which ought, as a matter of noblesse oblige, always to accompany such traditions, was reserved for outsiders, thereby proving its non-genuine nature. Jean at least received no benefit from it.

Though able to make himself tolerably agreeable in society, he seldom exerted himself to be agreeable to his home-circle. The joyous beaming of Jean's face had no particular response; and if Jean did not notice the omission, perhaps because she was used to it, Cyril did, and was indignant.

"Couldn't get here sooner," was Oswald's sole apology for the long delay. He would have been profuse enough, had any lady except his sister been the one concerned. "I knew you'd wait for me. Ready? Come along!"

Jean pulled on her gloves, with a nervous trepidation, which Oswald alone had power to raise in her.

"I am going too. My sister will be there," Cyril said decisively, not asking leave.

Evelyn could not be immediately found in the crowds which thronged the Academy. She had appointed a meeting-place in the fourth room, if they should fail to see one another sooner.

Oswald was bent on taking each picture, big or little, in solemn succession; and Jean seemed in no haste. Merely to be by Oswald's side was happiness, though he bestowed his attention on the walls, and his remarks on Cyril. As already stated, he was not chivalrous, and Jean was merely his sister. Without any particular partiality for Cyril, he appreciated Sir Cyril Devereux' social standing, and he liked a listener. After the fashion of most self-confident people, entirely ignorant of art, he had a slap-dash opinion ready on all occasions, where art was under review.

"No. 56—'A Waterfall.' Frightful! Out of all proportion. No. 57—'A Highland Ferry.' Never saw such clouds: and I don't believe anybody else ever did either. No. 58— 'A Portrait.' Might as well say whose! What a daub! Really—how they can admit such rubbish! No. 59—'Two Children.' Another daub! Ridiculous simper on that girl's face; and such dresses! No. 60—Ah, a military piece! Now, that's not bad!" complacently screwing up his eyes, and putting on the air of a gratified connoisseur.

"Not at all bad considering. Foremost figure very well placed—very well placed indeed. No. 61—'Pasturage.' Miserably drawn."

"Jean, look at the foreshortening of those carthorses! Masterly," murmured Cyril, with reference to the same.

The examination of every picture in the Academy takes time, but Oswald's method of proceeding consumed as little as was possible under the circumstances. He went on at a steady jog-trot, apportioning his minutes with impartial regularity, ten or twenty seconds to each painting, quite irrespective of its merits. He had to "do" the Exhibition, and he was bent on "doing" it thoroughly, on securing, in fact, the full worth of his shilling. He had paid to see the pictures; and see them he would.

As for opinions, he wanted none but his own. Why should he? Any adverse suggestion from Cyril was quashed at once; and Jean's ideas were met with supreme disdain. She knew far more of art than did Oswald; but neither he nor she would have admitted the fact; and Cyril, whose cultivated taste was scandalised at every step, was far too wise to get up an argument with Oswald.

"What a bear it is!" he said to himself voicelessly once or twice; but he said little openly.

"No. 151—a lion! Ridiculous. Nobody ever saw a lion in that attitude, I'll be bound."

Conceivably, the artist had tried to produce an attitude from life; and Oswald's opportunities of observation had been limited to "the Zoo;" but second-class criticism jumps lightly over such small obstacles.

"No. 152—what's that? A long quotation. Some Eastern bosh or other. No. 153—worse still. A wretched symbolical affair. Mere clap-trap. No. 154—"

"O Oswald, wait a moment. Let me look. That colouring is grand. And the other—yes, I do like it. Don't you, Cyril—look—No. 153! It is wonderful!" Her artistic sense for once proving stronger than her subservience to Oswald. "So much underlying. And that woman's face—"

"Rubbish! Not worth a glance, I tell you. A mere farrago of notions, tossed together. No. 154—"

"Wait! Let her look in peace," interposed Cyril. "Your instinct is right, Jean. It is one of the best this season, not one that makes a great noise, but thought well of by good judges. But you won't get at the full beauty of conception without study."

"I could spend hours over that one face."

"Bosh!" repeated Oswald. "If one man says a picture is good, all the world runs mooning after him to say the same. I've no patience with such humbug. Who ever saw anything like that in real life? The artist must be crazy. Why, I can't make head or tail of the thing—" with an accent on the pronoun which plainly implied—If I can't, who can?

"No. 155—Now, there's something like art, for you! 'In the Chimney-Corner.' No high-flown rubbish, but real everyday life. Just see how the firelight falls on the tongs. And the rug-pattern is perfect—why, it might have been photographed? And the old lady's cap ribbons—positively transparent. And the bunch of flowers on the table—why, you might pick them up. And here's another—No. 156—'Portrait of the Hon. Amelia Jenkinson'—every inch as good. The spots in her veil stand out as if they were genuine."

"Best Brussels net, at one-and-elevenpence-halfpenny per yard," muttered Cyril, stealing a glance full of mischief at Jean.

For one moment Jean's lips quivered a response; then she drew up her head, offended. In anybody else such self-complacent trifling would have aroused her scorn: but Oswald might say or do what he willed: and that Cyril should laugh at Oswald was intolerable. Jean looked severe; and Cyril assumed an air of apology, not nearly so abject as it would have been fifteen months earlier.

"The true test of painting! Of art!" declaimed Oswald, not listening to other people's remarks. "Must be true to life. Creatures in impossible attitudes, wearing impossible dresses, doing impossible things—that's not art, you know. It's bosh. Something true to life is the thing. Flowers you want to pick up! A curtain you try to pull aside! A veil you'd like to lift! That's art! . . . No. 157. Now, here's something worth looking at again. No symbolical clap-trap, but the real thing. 'A landscape!' Now, these flowers on the bank—positively, one can count their leaves."

Their petals, he meant.

"Immense improvement on the old smudge and scratch style. Anything went down with people in those days. A blue patch stood for e sky, and a green blur did duty for a forest."

"I'm afraid a blue patch often does stand for the sky in London!" suggested Cyril, under his breath. "And a green blur does duty for a forest in my eyes—if the forest is far enough."

"Oswald does not mean that," promptly spoke up the devoted sister in his defence.

"Well—some question of distance is involved, certainly," admitted Cyril. "But if a forest, half-a-mile off, isn't a green blur, one can't on the other hand count its leaves. And a botanist can hardly count the stamens of a flower growing on a bank ten yards away."

"Not one person in a hundred knows a good picture when he sees it," declared Oswald. "Nature is the true test. What is true to Nature is true to Art. I'd sooner have a pair of tongs, with the firelight upon them, done well, than any number of fantastic things that mean, nobody knows what."

"I would have" settled the question, of course, permanently.

"Here she is!" Cyril's voice told of relief; and Jean found herself face to face with Evelyn.

That Evelyn should pass anywhere unnoticed was impossible: yet, as she came forward, she showed no consciousness of the many eyes turned in her direction. Jean had received a good deal of attention in the crowd hitherto, appreciated by Cyril, though unnoticed by Oswald or herself; but Jean would win few glances in Evelyn's neighbourhood, young and fresh as she was by comparison. There was that about Evelyn which age could not do away with.

Yet time had told upon her, and more severely than it ought to have done. The pure delicacy of girlish bloom had vanished, leaving a pale skin, with only a faint patch of colouring on either cheek; and she was thinner than of old, too thin and worn for actual beauty. It is only in novels that girls of twenty-nine necessarily bid farewell to youth, and join the ranks of middle-age; but this young widow, close upon twenty-nine, attractive as she still was, might often have passed for thirty-five.

The violet eyes, with their dark fringes, were lovely yet, and would have embellished even a plain face, which Evelyn's face could never be; but the old restless craving in them had deepened, chasing away all girlish sparkle. She had still the look of one for ever dissatisfied with the present, for ever grasping after something unattainable; while the lips were alike more sad and more satirical than four years earlier. With all this, every gesture was so full of grace, every motion was so fascinating, that it was no wonder she should become, wherever she went, a centre of observation.

"Jean! At last!" she said, and her fingers closed round Jean's with a soft pressure which spoke volumes. "My dear, how you have altered; and yet how entirely you are the same!"

She had not seen Oswald for some four or five years, and did not recognise him. Oswald stood as if spellbound.

"My brother—" Jean said, and she put out her hand, smiling.

"Of course—I ought to have known. We are old friends."

Then she turned again to Jean, standing in the middle of the room, oblivious of the crowd around. "It does me good to see you again. I have had such a want lately—to be with you! Have you ever wanted me? Sometimes I think you are the main attraction to home."

"And you will settle down there now?" asked Jean, captivated anew, as she always had been captivated, by the grace of Evelyn's presence. She forgot even Oswald for the moment. "You will not want to go away again directly?"

"No, not at present. Not at all, permanently, I hope. Why should I? There is nothing to take me away. Dutton Park is my home for life, and they say the place looks neglected. I think—" in a hushed voice—"he would not like that. I must do what he would wish. It has come over me lately. O no, I shall settle down at home, and look after things. I have found a friend to be my companion—so far as anybody can be—" in the old weary tone. "And you will be near too! You—" with an affectionate glance—"and your good father. I wish I could have seen Madame Collier again."

"Aunt Marie wished it too. She left a message."

"Ah, she was always charming—so delightfully unconventional . . . How soon am I coming? I don't know. There is nothing to hinder or hasten my movements. I wish there were!—" dropping her voice anew. "I am only too free—no ties or burdens, except the one burden of myself."

Then a faint smile: "You see I am the same Evelyn as of old, never content with what I have. If the ties existed, I should want to be rid of them. But you shall do me good, dear . . . What nice news this is about your cousin, Mr. James Trevelyan, and the Dutton living! I remember him, years ago, as very pleasant. And he has been in the East-End all this time!"

Then the pictures claimed renewed attention, under Oswald's patronage. He attached himself resolutely to Evelyn; and Jean fell behind with Cyril. Any other arrangement was hardly possible, since people cannot march, four abreast, through Academy crowds near the end of July: but to Jean it was a spoilt afternoon. She could see Oswald talking continuously to Evelyn; or, Evelyn listening with a courteous air; but she could not hear what was said. Cyril claimed continuous attention: and despite all Jean's efforts, he and she were left in the rear.

"Jean, I really wouldn't go in for all that—about painting," he remarked presently, hesitating for a word and leaving it to the imagination. "I wouldn't really. You know what I mean. Oswald's a capital fellow, of course; but everybody can't be artistic, and if it isn't in him, he's not to be blamed. Black spots on a lady's veil are all very well in a dressmaker's fashion-book, but that is not high art. And if an artist can't do more than make a coloured photo of grass and trees and human beings—Well, I admit that lots don't do more; but then they are not artists. They are only painters! They might just as well take to photography, and not bother their brains with an easel."

Jean was amazed. That Cyril should venture openly to attack Oswald's views to her was something unprecedented. She listened in bewildered silence.

"Don't you see, Jean? You understand."

"What more do you expect?" asked a constrained voice.

"As if you don't know! A great deal more. An artist has to get at the inner soul of things—the hidden meaning. Not merely to copy colours and shapes. A photo gives one single glimpse of a face—the impression of a moment—a grin, or a frown, or a simper, as the case may be. It can't do more. But an artist, painting that same face, ought to give you the man himself—the man as a whole. Not just one glimpse of a passing mood, but the essence of the character—a sort of resume of body and mind. Don't you see? An artist ought to be like a poet, able to dive deeper and rise higher than common men. You wouldn't think much of a poet who is always telling you that grass is green and the sky blue. Anybody can do as much, without poetic power. But half the modern painters don't tell us more, don't go deeper than the outside . . . I'm afraid Oswald would call all this 'bosh;' but, you know, you can't be in leading-strings to Oswald all your life. Oswald doesn't know everything; and you have brains enough to think for yourself."

Jean was still too much amazed to be able to analyse her own sensations. She said only, "Thanks."

"You don't like me to go against him in anything! Never mind! When you and I are married, you will learn to think as I do."

Jean did not blush.

It was Cyril who blushed; not Jean.

She only turned and faced him full, with calm wide-open eyes.

"When!!!" was all she said.

"Now what did make me say that?" Cyril demanded of himself, somewhat later. "Odd how things slip out! . . . After all, there's nobody like good old Jean! . . . If neither of us should come across anybody else in the next few years—Well, I really don't see why it shouldn't be! . . . Jean might take it as a joke—but—Anyhow, I am in no hurry."