Unclouded Summer (20 page)

Slowly he turned back from the window, glided the four steps that were between them, took Francis by the arm, above the elbow, and led him to the window.

“Listen, my dear boy, and please, do not be offended by what I say. I may be wrong, completely wrong; but I have watched the development of many painters. I would like to explain to you what I felt, looking at those new pictures.”

Francis made no reply. Yes, here it comes, he thought, the sugar coating.

“I will tell you what I thought,” Van Ruyt continued, “or rather I will tell you what I wondered, because I am not sure. I beg you to believe that I am not sure. I wondered whether you had really found your medium yet; your ultimate medium shall we say. I wondered whether murals might not be your line, or decoration of some kind, stage designs perhaps.”

“Why do you say that? “

“Because – now please do not be offended.” He paused; he looked up, his head tilted like a bird's with its eye cocked, his hands not exactly raised for his elbows were against his sides, but the palms turned upwards. “Your merit, your very great merit let me add is your sense of landscape; in your portraits you can catch a likeness, and that is something that very often the finest painters fail to do. But somehow I never feel the personality of your sitters, not in the way that I feel your landscapes. That is your great merit, to make me
feel
a place.”

Again he paused. But Francis did not reply. The sugar was being put on very skilfully. But there was no doubt of the nature of the pill beneath. He listened carefully, for it was no doubt sound criticism and advice that he was being given; but even as he listened, he followed his own thoughts. What happens next, he asked himself. If Van Ruyt didn't want these pictures, he would be in a spot financially. He would need money badly if he went to England. If he were to work out the scheme that he had in mind he would need to take pictures with him, to establish himself as a painter there. What would be the use of taking to England pictures for which the Granby Gallery had no use? How could he hope to impress a foreign country with work that in his own country was of no account? To succeed in a foreign country you had first to be established in your own. How could he go to England, how could he fulfil his promise if he had not money in his pocket and immediate prospects?

“Yes,” Van Ruyt was continuing, “that is your special gift. But every gift has its corresponding, no I won't say blemish, that is too strong a word, but every positive has its corresponding negative and if there is one thing that I do miss in your
work, it is
intimité.
I don't always feel
you
behind the pictures.”

Francis' spirits sank. It was What Sir Henry had said in so many words, that there was no personality in his painting, suggesting on that account that he should take greater care over his choice of subject. Well, and he had taken that advice with a result so negative that Van Ruyt was suggesting now that he should devote himself to a different kind of work. The American art dealer, the American professional had confirmed the English patron, the English amateur. They were right almost certainly. If two such dissimilar judges felt alike, he could not ignore their verdict.

Disconsolately, he looked out of the window. Women close-wrapped in furs, their short squat umbrellas tucked under their arms, their tight-fitting “basin” hats lowered into the wind were hurrying impatiently past bareheaded young men in shaggy raccoon coats on their way to shelter. Everyone was harassed and uneasy. How different it had looked five months ago with the sun shining on the Sherry-Netherland and women in bright light clothes sauntering past the bright gay windows.

“That's why I was wondering,” the high-pitched voice went on, “Whether you might not be more effective in an ampler medium. The fact that you could produce eighteen pictures in so short a time shows that you can paint fast; you can sustain the same mood over a long piece of work; for that is the great problem you know for those who work slowly; in the process their mood has changed. With you on the other hand …”

But Francis was scarcely listening. Yes I know, he thought; poster work, broad effects, that's all I'm good for. But he was not worrying about that now. He had closer, more pressing problems. He was picturing himself in his room that night, writing the letter which would break the news to Judy. To have to admit failure, after all his boasting, after all his letters. After the way he had marked the score for her as a letter heading 11 done, 7 to go. He had so wanted to make her proud of him, then to have to make this admission. How would he phrase the letter: should he be abject or flippant or merely sad? Judy would despise him if her were abject: if on the other hand, he were too light-hearted, she might think he was trying to back out, that he was making an excuse, that from the safe distance of three thousand miles he had thought better of it.

“As a scenic designer…” Van Ruyt was saying.

“I should be listening,” Francis told himself, “this talk should be a landmark for me, a redirection. He's a fine judge, this man. He's giving me the benefit of a long experience. I should be listening.” But he could not listen. He was too absorbed in his personal problem. He waited till the voice had ceased.

“I'm very grateful. I'll think over what you've said. It'll be very useful. Now about these pictures, I might as well take them right away.”

“Only the half of them.”

“The half?”

“Wasn't that our agreement, that you should take half to England and leave half here, and that I should have a veto to see that you didn't take the best?”

“You mean you want them?”

“Why ever not?”

“After what you said? “

Van Ruyt burst out laughing.

“My dear boy, how you misunderstood me. I was simply taking a long view, a very long view of your future. Of course I want them. I am most impressed by what you have done, quite your best work: a great, a very great advance. Let's start in right away on the selection.”

It was not till later that Francis recalled a passage in the
New Yorker
profile referring to Van Ruyt's predilection for malicious playfulness “particularly towards those on whom fortune appeared to him to be shining over-brightly.”

That evening Francis returned home with a steamship ticket for a sailing ten days later. After dinner he had his first real talk with his father since his return.

“I don't know how long I'll be away,” he said. “It might be for quite a time, and I might need a substantial sum of money. I might need a first instalment hurriedly. Would you be able to advance me out of my inheritance $5000, spread over the next year, and if I cabled within a week of my arrival for $2000, would you be able to send it to me?”

His father looked at him steadily. “You'd rather not tell me anything about it, son ? “

“I'd rather not, Father. I may never need the money. It may be – well, just an idea I've had.”

“I see, my boy …” He hesitated. “I've known you have had something on your mind. I've wanted to ask you What it
was. But I dare say you are right. There are many things that are best not spoken of. I know you would never do anything that would disgrace our name. You're industrious, you're not extravagant. You've started well. You should go far. Yes, certainly you can have that much money if you need it. And if you should need more, don't be afraid to ask. It's often when a man's young that he needs his principal the most.”

“Disgrace our name.” Francis smiled ruefully to himself as he sat later that evening with a pile of Judy's letters scattered on his desk before him. Every week, sometimes twice a week through those five slow-passing months, a letter in that large back-sloping handwriting had arrived. He turned them over at random, reading a page, a phrase, a paragraph. There was the letter thanking him for the little ship, the ship that would “remind her that the miles were little.” She had put it on the mantelpiece in her own private sitting room, she wrote, the room where she kept things personal to herself; the “significant ship” she called it. “I kiss it every morning. Soon lipstick will have set a lovely patina upon its sails.”

He had sent her for Christmas the picture of Cap Ferrat seen in the framework of his bedroom window. “I shall love it,” she wrote, “both for its associations and itself. It hangs in a place of honor between a Cézanne and a Duncan Grant. I wonder what you will think of my little room. It contains such an odd jumble of unlikely objects. You won't, will you, be jealous, if I refuse to tell you why some of them are there?”

They were cheerful rambling letters, gossip about her friends, about plays she had been to, books she had been reading. She had been living rather quietly, she told him. Henry was very busy, he was chairman of some Royal Commission, he had to go up to London every day. “And of course he likes to have the house quiet in the evenings. I live like a hermit, driving my servants mad prying into odd corners to see if they've scamped their work; you wouldn't believe what a country mouse I am; half the time I'm on my knees grubbing in the garden for worms; but we do manage to have some fun over the weekend.” She wrote quite naturally of Henry, as a part of the permanent pattern of her life, just as Charlton was and the Mougins villa, just as he himself was seemingly. She had no doubt of her capacity nor of her right to keep all these wheels turning simultaneously under her control.

But it wasn't possible; of course it wasn't possible.

“Disgrace our name.” He knew what his father would advise. His father was a broad-minded man. Any young, any hot-blooded man, he would say, may find himself swept off his feet. It can happen to any of us. We can fall in love without realizing that we are doing so. No one blames a young man for landing in a fix. He is judged on how he behaves when he's got into it. Sometimes it's very difficult to extricate himself: sometimes he can't, honorably. His honor rooted in dishonor stands. You're lucky. You've got the Atlantic between you and this situation. Time heals everything. You've only got to play for time; let the thing move out of the foreground into the background of your life. You're lucky, very lucky. You've only to wait: the thing will heal itself.

That was what his father would advise. That was the worldly-wise thing to do. Himself he knew it too. But between that knowledge and the resolve to act on it stood Judy's memory, stood this high heap of letters, this testimony to her need of him.

It wasn't a craze. He was sure of that now, a craze couldn't have lasted for all these weeks. She did want him; she did need him. She was relying on him. Through all her letters, through all her friendly gossip ran the refrain “when you come over.” He shuffled among the letters.
A sors Vergiliana.
Any letter, any page, almost every paragraph was directed to that refrain. “First snowdrops in the drive today, and you not here to see them. By the time you are over here they'll be all gone. Couldn't you hurry a little faster?”

He picked out another letter. “I'm reading Somerset Maugham's new book
The Casuarina Tree.
There's a rather lovely story in it called ‘P. & O.' It's based on two quite elderly people, people of over forty, falling desperately in love. Isn't it strange to think that oneself in fifteen years' time might be falling in love like that? It somehow seems all wrong. Somehow it seems ugly at that age; but then when I was eighteen ‘ I couldn't understand how my younger aunt could get any fun out of dancing with her husband – poor thing she was only thirty – just my age. Doesn't one ever grow old? Six months ago I'd have liked to think one didn't, but now I would. I'd like to think that my whole life was a working up to that meeting on the Welcome terrace, that the whole of the rest of my life will be lived in the reflection of it. Darling, couldn't it be that way? Let's try and make it.”

Letter after letter with the same refrain. It wasn't a craze. She did mean it. Surely she must mean it. She was relying on
him, she was trusting him. He couldn't let her down.

He rose to his feet. He began to stride backwards and forwards up and down his room. He knew what was the prudent course. That steamship ticket in his pocket was the putting of his head into a noose. Heaven knew what would be the outcome of his trip to England. But in the scales against worldly wisdom, against prudence, against the practical ordering of life was set his word to Judy. She was the most wonderful person that he had ever met, her friendship was the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to him. It was a miracle that out of all the people that she knew, the brilliant, gifted, prominent, attractive people, she should have selected him. He must be worthy of that miracle. Never must there come a time when he could not look Judy in the face. First things first. Always whatever happened, whether happiness or sorrow or disaster was the outcome, always things must be right between himself and Judy.

He turned back to his desk, sat down, drew forward a sheet of paper.

“Dear one,” he wrote, “I'm sailing on the 17th. This morning I bought my ticket. This morning I took my pictures to Van Ruyt, and he thinks well of them. We've sorted out the ten that I'm to bring with me. I'm longing to know what you think of them.” He paused: how often during the last four months had he not phrased and rephrased the letter that he would have to write to her if he went to England. He had given her no hint that he would be writing it. Better to avoid arguments and discussions. What was it that Julia had said? “One of you must make up your mind.” Well, he had made up his.

“Dear one,” he wrote, “this is the last letter that I shall be writing you before I sail. I'm coming – you don't surely need telling that, for one reason only, to be with you again, to be with you as I much hope for always. But, Judy, there is one thing that you must realize. There is one thing I cannot do. I cannot come down to Charlton. I cannot accept your husband's hospitality. It was one thing to dream at Villefranche. But now we must be practical. There are only two courses for us. To say goodbye forever, or to start on a new life together. I'll be going therefore straight through to London, to the Savoy Hotel. If you were to join me there, we could leave at once for Spain or Italy. Or, if there are things you wanted to discuss first, we could talk them over in London first. But
one thing is absolutely certain. I cannot under these changed conditions come down to Charlton. Surely you must see that,..”