Part 22 (1/2)
Garstin, who was as mischievous as a monkey, and who loved to play cat and mouse with a woman, continued to gaze at her with his a.s.sumption of fierce attention.
”But Leighton being unfortunately dead, we can't go to him for your portrait,” he continued gravely. ”I think we shall have to hand you over to McEvoy. Smith!” he suddenly roared.
”Well, what is it, d.i.c.k, what is it?” said the sculptor in a thin voice, with high notes which came surprisingly through the thicket of tangled hair about the cavern of his mouth.
”Who shall paint Beryl as Ceres?”
”I refuse to be painted by anyone as Ceres!” said Miss Van Tuyn, almost viciously.
”It ought to have been Leighton. But he's been translated. I suggested McEvoy.”
”Oh, Lord! He'd take the substance out of her, make her transparent!”
”I have it then! Orpen! It shall be Orpen! Then she will be hung on the line.”
”You talk as if I were the week's was.h.i.+ng,” said Miss Van Tuyn, recovering herself. ”But I would rather be on the clothes-line than on the line at the Royal Academy. No, d.i.c.k, I shall wait.”
”What for, my girl?”
”For you to get over your acute attack of Cafe Royal. You don't know how they laugh at you in Paris for always painting morphinomanes and chloral drinkers. That sort of thing was done to death in France in the youth of Degas. It may be new over here. But England always lags behind in art, always follows at the heels of the French. You are too big a man--”
”I've got it, Smith,” said Garstin, interrupting in the quiet even voice of one who had been indulging an undisturbed process of steady thought, and who now announced the definite conclusion reached. ”I have it. Frank d.i.c.ksee is the man!”
At this moment Jennings, who for some time had been uneasily groping through his beard, and turning the rings round and round on his thin damp fingers, broke in with a flood of speech about modern French art, in which names of all the latest painters of Paris spun by like twigs on a spate of turbulent water. The Georgians were soon up and after him in full cry. It was now nearly closing time, and several friends of Garstin's, models and others, who had been scattered about in the cafe, and who were on their way out, stopped to hear what was going on. Some adherents of Jennings also came up. The discussion became animated.
Voices waxed roaringly loud or piercingly shrill. The little Bolshevik, suddenly losing her round faced calm and the shepherdess look in her eyes, burst forth in a voluble outcry in praise of the beauty of anarchy, expressing herself in broken English, spoken with a c.o.c.kney accent, in broken French and liquid Russian. Enid Blunt, increasingly guttural, and mingling German words with her Bedford Park English, refuted, or strove to refute, Jennings's ecstatic praise of French verse, citing rapidly poems composed by members of the Sitwell group, songs of Siegfried Sa.s.soon, and even lyrics by Lady Margaret Sackville and Miss Victoria Sackville West. Jennings, who thought he was still speaking about pictures and statues, though he had now abandoned the painters and sculptors to their horrid fates in the hands of Garstin and Smith, replied with a vivacity rather Gallic than British, and finally, emerging almost with pa.s.sion from his native language, burst into the only tongue which expresses anything properly, and a.s.sailed his enemy in fluent French. Thapoulos muttered comments in modern Greek. And the Turkish refugee from Smyrna quoted again and again the words of praise from Pierre Loti, which had made of him a moral wreck, a nuisance to all who came into contact with him, a mere prancing megalomaniac.
Miss Van Tuyn did not join in the carnival of praises and condemnations.
She had suddenly recovered her mental balance. Her native irony was roused from its sleep. She was once more the cool, self-possessed and beautiful girl from whose violet eyes satire looked out on all those about her.
”Let them all make fools of themselves for my benefit,” was her comfortable thought as she listened to the chatter of tongues.
Even Garstin was being thoroughly absurd, although his adherents stood round catching his vociferations as if they were so many precious jewels.
”The most ridiculous human beings in the world at certain moments are those who work in the arts,” was Miss Van Tuyn's mental comment.
”Painters, poets, composers, novelists! All these people are living in blinkers. They can't see the wide world. They can only see studies and studios.”
She wished she had Craven with her to share in her silent irony. At that moment she felt some of the very common conceit of the rich dilettante, who tastes but who never creates, for whom indeed most of the creation is arduously accomplished.
”They sweat for me, exhaust themselves for me, tear each other to pieces for me! If I were not here, if the world contained no such products as Beryl Van Tuyn and her like, female and male, what would all the Garstins, and Jenningses and Smiths and Enid Blunts do?”
And she felt superior in her incapacity to create because of her capacity to judge. Wrongly she might, and probably did, judge, but she and her like judged, spent much of their lives in eagerly judging. And the poor creators, whatever they might say, whatever airs they might give themselves, toiled to gain the favourable judgment of the innumerable Beryl Van Tuyns.
Closing time put an end at last to the fracas of tongues. Even geniuses must be driven forth from the electric light to the stars, however unwilling to go into a healthy atmosphere.
There was a general movement. Miss Van Tuyn put on her hat and fur coat, the latter with the a.s.sistance of Jennings. Garstin slipped into a yellow and brown ulster, and jammed a soft hat on to his head with its thick tangle of hair. He lit another cigar and waved his hand to Cora, who was on her way out with a friend.
”A free woman--by G.o.d!” he said once more, swinging round to where Miss Van Tuyn was standing between Jennings and Thapoulos. ”I'll paint her again. I'll make a masterpiece of her.”
”I'm sure you will. But now walk with me to the Hyde Park Hotel. It's on your way to Chelsea.”