CHAPTER XLI

Philip walked down the Boulevard du Montparnasse. It was not at all like
the Paris he had seen in the spring during his visit to do the accounts of
the Hotel St. Georges--he thought already of that part of his life with a
shudder--but reminded him of what he thought a provincial town must be.
There was an easy-going air about it, and a sunny spaciousness which
invited the mind to day-dreaming. The trimness of the trees, the vivid
whiteness of the houses, the breadth, were very agreeable; and he felt
himself already thoroughly at home. He sauntered along, staring at the
people; there seemed an elegance about the most ordinary, workmen with
their broad red sashes and their wide trousers, little soldiers in dingy,
charming uniforms. He came presently to the Avenue de l'Observatoire, and
he gave a sigh of pleasure at the magnificent, yet so graceful, vista. He
came to the gardens of the Luxembourg: children were playing, nurses with
long ribbons walked slowly two by two, busy men passed through with
satchels under their arms, youths strangely dressed. The scene was formal
and dainty; nature was arranged and ordered, but so exquisitely, that
nature unordered and unarranged seemed barbaric. Philip was enchanted. It
excited him to stand on that spot of which he had read so much; it was
classic ground to him; and he felt the awe and the delight which some old
don might feel when for the first time he looked on the smiling plain of
Sparta.

As he wandered he chanced to see Miss Price sitting by herself on a bench.
He hesitated, for he did not at that moment want to see anyone, and her
uncouth way seemed out of place amid the happiness he felt around him; but
he had divined her sensitiveness to affront, and since she had seen him
thought it would be polite to speak to her.

"What are you doing here?" she said, as he came up.

"Enjoying myself. Aren't you?"

"Oh, I come here every day from four to five. I don't think one does any
good if one works straight through."

"May I sit down for a minute?" he said.

"If you want to."

"That doesn't sound very cordial," he laughed.

"I'm not much of a one for saying pretty things."

Philip, a little disconcerted, was silent as he lit a cigarette.

"Did Clutton say anything about my work?" she asked suddenly.

"No, I don't think he did," said Philip.

"He's no good, you know. He thinks he's a genius, but he isn't. He's too
lazy, for one thing. Genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains. The
only thing is to peg away. If one only makes up one's mind badly enough to
do a thing one can't help doing it."

She spoke with a passionate strenuousness which was rather striking. She
wore a sailor hat of black straw, a white blouse which was not quite
clean, and a brown skirt. She had no gloves on, and her hands wanted
washing. She was so unattractive that Philip wished he had not begun to
talk to her. He could not make out whether she wanted him to stay or go.

"I'll do anything I can for you," she said all at once, without reference
to anything that had gone before. "I know how hard it is."

"Thank you very much," said Philip, then in a moment: "Won't you come and
have tea with me somewhere?"

She looked at him quickly and flushed. When she reddened her pasty skin
acquired a curiously mottled look, like strawberries and cream that had
gone bad.

"No, thanks. What d'you think I want tea for? I've only just had lunch."

"I thought it would pass the time," said Philip.

"If you find it long you needn't bother about me, you know. I don't mind
being left alone."

At that moment two men passed, in brown velveteens, enormous trousers, and
basque caps. They were young, but both wore beards.

"I say, are those art-students?" said Philip. "They might have stepped out
of the Vie de Boheme."

"They're Americans," said Miss Price scornfully. "Frenchmen haven't worn
things like that for thirty years, but the Americans from the Far West buy
those clothes and have themselves photographed the day after they arrive
in Paris. That's about as near to art as they ever get. But it doesn't
matter to them, they've all got money."

Philip liked the daring picturesqueness of the Americans' costume; he
thought it showed the romantic spirit. Miss Price asked him the time.

"I must be getting along to the studio," she said. "Are you going to the
sketch classes?"

Philip did not know anything about them, and she told him that from five
to six every evening a model sat, from whom anyone who liked could go and
draw at the cost of fifty centimes. They had a different model every day,
and it was very good practice.

"I don't suppose you're good enough yet for that. You'd better wait a
bit."

"I don't see why I shouldn't try. I haven't got anything else to do."

They got up and walked to the studio. Philip could not tell from her
manner whether Miss Price wished him to walk with her or preferred to walk
alone. He remained from sheer embarrassment, not knowing how to leave her;
but she would not talk; she answered his questions in an ungracious
manner.

A man was standing at the studio door with a large dish into which each
person as he went in dropped his half franc. The studio was much fuller
than it had been in the morning, and there was not the preponderance of
English and Americans; nor were women there in so large a proportion.
Philip felt the assemblage was more the sort of thing he had expected. It
was very warm, and the air quickly grew fetid. It was an old man who sat
this time, with a vast gray beard, and Philip tried to put into practice
the little he had learned in the morning; but he made a poor job of it; he
realised that he could not draw nearly as well as he thought. He glanced
enviously at one or two sketches of men who sat near him, and wondered
whether he would ever be able to use the charcoal with that mastery. The
hour passed quickly. Not wishing to press himself upon Miss Price he sat
down at some distance from her, and at the end, as he passed her on his
way out, she asked him brusquely how he had got on.

"Not very well," he smiled.

"If you'd condescended to come and sit near me I could have given you some
hints. I suppose you thought yourself too grand."

"No, it wasn't that. I was afraid you'd think me a nuisance."

"When I do that I'll tell you sharp enough."

Philip saw that in her uncouth way she was offering him help.

"Well, tomorrow I'll just force myself upon you."

"I don't mind," she answered.

Philip went out and wondered what he should do with himself till dinner.
He was eager to do something characteristic. Absinthe! of course it was
indicated, and so, sauntering towards the station, he seated himself
outside a cafe and ordered it. He drank with nausea and satisfaction. He
found the taste disgusting, but the moral effect magnificent; he felt
every inch an art-student; and since he drank on an empty stomach his
spirits presently grew very high. He watched the crowds, and felt all men
were his brothers. He was happy. When he reached Gravier's the table at
which Clutton sat was full, but as soon as he saw Philip limping along he
called out to him. They made room. The dinner was frugal, a plate of soup,
a dish of meat, fruit, cheese, and half a bottle of wine; but Philip paid
no attention to what he ate. He took note of the men at the table.
Flanagan was there again: he was an American, a short, snub-nosed youth
with a jolly face and a laughing mouth. He wore a Norfolk jacket of bold
pattern, a blue stock round his neck, and a tweed cap of fantastic shape.
At that time impressionism reigned in the Latin Quarter, but its victory
over the older schools was still recent; and Carolus-Duran, Bouguereau,
and their like were set up against Manet, Monet, and Degas. To appreciate
these was still a sign of grace. Whistler was an influence strong with the
English and his compatriots, and the discerning collected Japanese prints.
The old masters were tested by new standards. The esteem in which Raphael
had been for centuries held was a matter of derision to wise young men.
They offered to give all his works for Velasquez' head of Philip IV in the
National Gallery. Philip found that a discussion on art was raging.
Lawson, whom he had met at luncheon, sat opposite to him. He was a thin
youth with a freckled face and red hair. He had very bright green eyes. As
Philip sat down he fixed them on him and remarked suddenly:

"Raphael was only tolerable when he painted other people's pictures. When
he painted Peruginos or Pinturichios he was charming; when he painted
Raphaels he was," with a scornful shrug, "Raphael."

Lawson spoke so aggressively that Philip was taken aback, but he was not
obliged to answer because Flanagan broke in impatiently.

"Oh, to hell with art!" he cried. "Let's get ginny."

"You were ginny last night, Flanagan," said Lawson.

"Nothing to what I mean to be tonight," he answered. "Fancy being in
Pa-ris and thinking of nothing but art all the time." He spoke with a
broad Western accent. "My, it is good to be alive." He gathered himself
together and then banged his fist on the table. "To hell with art, I say."

"You not only say it, but you say it with tiresome iteration," said
Clutton severely.

There was another American at the table. He was dressed like those fine
fellows whom Philip had seen that afternoon in the Luxembourg. He had a
handsome face, thin, ascetic, with dark eyes; he wore his fantastic garb
with the dashing air of a buccaneer. He had a vast quantity of dark hair
which fell constantly over his eyes, and his most frequent gesture was to
throw back his head dramatically to get some long wisp out of the way. He
began to talk of the Olympia by Manet, which then hung in the
Luxembourg.

"I stood in front of it for an hour today, and I tell you it's not a good
picture."

Lawson put down his knife and fork. His green eyes flashed fire, he gasped
with rage; but he could be seen imposing calm upon himself.

"It's very interesting to hear the mind of the untutored savage," he said.
"Will you tell us why it isn't a good picture?"

Before the American could answer someone else broke in vehemently.

"D'you mean to say you can look at the painting of that flesh and say it's
not good?"

"I don't say that. I think the right breast is very well painted."

"The right breast be damned," shouted Lawson. "The whole thing's a miracle
of painting."

He began to describe in detail the beauties of the picture, but at this
table at Gravier's they who spoke at length spoke for their own
edification. No one listened to him. The American interrupted angrily.

"You don't mean to say you think the head's good?"

Lawson, white with passion now, began to defend the head; but Clutton, who
had been sitting in silence with a look on his face of good-humoured
scorn, broke in.

"Give him the head. We don't want the head. It doesn't affect the
picture."

"All right, I'll give you the head," cried Lawson. "Take the head and be
damned to you."

"What about the black line?" cried the American, triumphantly pushing back
a wisp of hair which nearly fell in his soup. "You don't see a black line
round objects in nature."

"Oh, God, send down fire from heaven to consume the blasphemer," said
Lawson. "What has nature got to do with it? No one knows what's in nature
and what isn't! The world sees nature through the eyes of the artist. Why,
for centuries it saw horses jumping a fence with all their legs extended,
and by Heaven, sir, they were extended. It saw shadows black until Monet
discovered they were coloured, and by Heaven, sir, they were black. If we
choose to surround objects with a black line, the world will see the black
line, and there will be a black line; and if we paint grass red and cows
blue, it'll see them red and blue, and, by Heaven, they will be red and
blue."

"To hell with art," murmured Flanagan. "I want to get ginny."

Lawson took no notice of the interruption.

"Now look here, when Olympia was shown at the Salon, Zola--amid the
jeers of the Philistines and the hisses of the pompiers, the academicians,
and the public, Zola said: `I look forward to the day when Manet's picture
will hang in the Louvre opposite the Odalisque of Ingres, and it will
not be the Odalisque which will gain by comparison.' It'll be there.
Every day I see the time grow nearer. In ten years the Olympia will be
in the Louvre."

"Never," shouted the American, using both hands now with a sudden
desperate attempt to get his hair once for all out of the way. "In ten
years that picture will be dead. It's only a fashion of the moment. No
picture can live that hasn't got something which that picture misses by a
million miles."

"And what is that?"

"Great art can't exist without a moral element."

"Oh God!" cried Lawson furiously. "I knew it was that. He wants morality."
He joined his hands and held them towards heaven in supplication. "Oh,
Christopher Columbus, Christopher Columbus, what did you do when you
discovered America?"

"Ruskin says..."

But before he could add another word, Clutton rapped with the handle of
his knife imperiously on the table.

"Gentlemen," he said in a stern voice, and his huge nose positively
wrinkled with passion, "a name has been mentioned which I never thought to
hear again in decent society. Freedom of speech is all very well, but we
must observe the limits of common propriety. You may talk of Bouguereau if
you will: there is a cheerful disgustingness in the sound which excites
laughter; but let us not sully our chaste lips with the names of J.
Ruskin, G. F. Watts, or E. B. Jones."

"Who was Ruskin anyway?" asked Flanagan.

"He was one of the Great Victorians. He was a master of English style."

"Ruskin's style--a thing of shreds and purple patches," said Lawson.
"Besides, damn the Great Victorians. Whenever I open a paper and see Death
of a Great Victorian, I thank Heaven there's one more of them gone. Their
only talent was longevity, and no artist should be allowed to live after
he's forty; by then a man has done his best work, all he does after that
is repetition. Don't you think it was the greatest luck in the world for
them that Keats, Shelley, Bonnington, and Byron died early? What a genius
we should think Swinburne if he had perished on the day the first series
of Poems and Ballads was published!"

The suggestion pleased, for no one at the table was more than twenty-four,
and they threw themselves upon it with gusto. They were unanimous for
once. They elaborated. Someone proposed a vast bonfire made out of the
works of the Forty Academicians into which the Great Victorians might be
hurled on their fortieth birthday. The idea was received with acclamation.
Carlyle and Ruskin, Tennyson, Browning, G. F. Watts, E. B. Jones, Dickens,
Thackeray, they were hurried into the flames; Mr. Gladstone, John Bright,
and Cobden; there was a moment's discussion about George Meredith, but
Matthew Arnold and Emerson were given up cheerfully. At last came Walter
Pater.

"Not Walter Pater," murmured Philip.

Lawson stared at him for a moment with his green eyes and then nodded.

"You're quite right, Walter Pater is the only justification for Mona Lisa.
D'you know Cronshaw? He used to know Pater."

"Who's Cronshaw?" asked Philip.

"Cronshaw's a poet. He lives here. Let's go to the Lilas."

La Closerie des Lilas was a cafe to which they often went in the evening
after dinner, and here Cronshaw was invariably to be found between the
hours of nine at night and two in the morning. But Flanagan had had enough
of intellectual conversation for one evening, and when Lawson made his
suggestion, turned to Philip.

"Oh gee, let's go where there are girls," he said. "Come to the Gaite
Montparnasse, and we'll get ginny."

"I'd rather go and see Cronshaw and keep sober," laughed Philip.

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