Stephen had listened to these admirable remarks standing, supporting himself with his elbow against the mantelpiece. He felt faint and breathless, on the verge of one of those prolonged bouts of coughing after which his voice would leave him, and so expose the extremity of his condition. But he straightened, by an effort of his will alone.
‘I appreciate your interest. But I have neither the need nor the desire to sell my paintings.’
Taken unawares by this quite unexpected reply, Tessier nevertheless recovered himself quickly. He spoke soothingly.
‘Naturally, Monsieur Desmonde, one does not speak exclusively in terms of money to an artist such as you. But there are other considerations. For example … reputation. It is high time that you should be known.’
‘To be known is not my concern. Such a vanity can gratify only a very mediocre talent.’
‘But surely … you must desire fame?’
‘Would that serve as a gauge of my worth any more than my present obscurity? I have never sought to please the public, but only to please myself.’
‘Monsieur Desmonde … permit me to call you cher maître … you seriously distress me. You have something of great value to give the world. You cannot bury it. Remember the parable in the Scriptures.’
At the Biblical allusion coming from the shrewdist dealer in Paris, Stephen, still fighting to suppress that cough, could barely repress the flicker of a smile, transient, and so weary it distorted the drawn, haggard features. He said quietly, without rancour:
‘I gave the world something of value years ago. They burned it,’
‘Forget that. The market – that is to say,’ he drew himself up, ‘the time and circumstances are much more favourable. Come, cher maître, give me the opportunity to gather laurels for your brow.’
Stephen’s eyes rested on the other with a sort of contained irony, but his face remained impassive – the stiff muscles of expression, beyond a twitching of the pale lips, seemed unable to relax.
‘No. I have conceived a certain manner of painting. There is a certain interpretation of beauty which I wished to achieve. If my work is good it will one day find its place – as with most artists, after I am no longer here. In the meantime, having lived with my paintings, I propose to die with them.’
A pause followed. Tessier sat swinging one foot in circles; Desmonde’s expression, strained yet indifferent, was strangely disconcerting. Is it pique, he asked himself, a form of revenge because I once refused his work? Most artists, in his private opinion, were more or less unpredictable. No, he thought finally, this man is sincere. He simply does not care whether I, Tessier, take his paintings or not. And, becoming more and more aware of the signs of illness and extreme fatigue in Stephen’s face, a sudden understanding came to him.
‘Monsieur Desmonde,’ he said at last, slowly and without affectation. ‘ I need not say how profoundly you grieve me. I have no wish to importune you. It may be that you suspect me as a man of commerce. I am that, it is true. At the same time, I know beauty, and love it. This painting here, which I examined with excitement and delight before you came in – permit me to tell you it is superb. And if you will allow me to have it, at the price which you name, I give you my parole d’honneur that within three months I will donate it, through the Ministre des Beaux Arts, to the Luxembourg. Come now … you see that I am serious, that my motives are not altogether unworthy.’
While the other was speaking, Stephen’s look had softened, but the sad intensity of his posture did not relax. With unmoved stillness and sadness he shook his head slowly.
‘You must permit me the final luxury of refusing you. At the same time,’ he stilled the other’s protest, ‘I will make you a promise.
You have spoken of three months. Come back then … come to Cable Street, in Stepney … I don’t think you will be disappointed.’
There was a long silence. My God, thought Tessier, he is really ill, he is going to die … and he knows it. A shiver went over him – he was a man who loved the pleasures of life, to whom the very thought of the grave was distressing – but he concealed it, smiled and exclaimed:
‘Very well. I accept. It is an arrangement clearly understood. And now, you have been working all day … you are tired … I have already taken up too much of your time.…’ He saw indeed, with deeper intuition, that his visit must not be prolonged another moment. He picked up his portfolio, rose, held out his hand. ‘Au revoir, cher maître.’
‘Good-bye.’
With a last look at the painting, Tessier swung round, and, involuntarily, with a sudden display of emotion, theatrical perhaps, yet strangely dignified, embraced Stephen on both cheeks; then, in silence, he went out.
When the dealer had gone, Stephen, still standing, let his head drop upon his hand, and allowed his cough to have its way. The spasm lasted several minutes, after which, bent double, he struggled to regain his breath. Then he leaned back against the mantel. It was in this attitude that Jenny found him as, a moment later, she came quietly into the room.
‘Who was it, Stephen?’
He found his voice.
‘A man I once knew in Paris.’
‘I never saw such a swell. What did he want?’
‘Something he might have had a long time ago. He’s coming back again, Jenny … in three month’s time … to buy my pictures. You can trust him. He’s not a bad sort.…’
There was a pause. She studied his face anxiously.
‘Oh, my dear, you are dead-beat.’ She put a supporting arm around him. ‘ Let me get you into bed.’
He was about to submit, then, by a superhuman effort of the will, he forced himself erect.
‘I think … first of all … I’ll finish varnishing my Thames …’ He took a step forward, put his arm round Jenny’s waist and stood looking at his work. A smile barely touched his lips. ‘You know … he really meant it when he said it was superb.’
Chapter Seven
On an april afternoon in the year 1937 a man, to be exact, an elderly clergyman, and a boy in a long blue coat, yellow stockings and buckle shoes, descended from a bus at the north end of Vauxhall Bridge, turned off into Grosvenor Road, and by way of the Embankment entered the quiet precincts of Millbank. It was a lovely day. The air, fresh yet mild, smelled deliciously of spring. In Westminster Gardens daffodils waved and tulips stood gaily at attention; upon the trim green lawns the chestnut trees, in snowy flower, had spread a soft white carpet. The Thames, shimmering in the sunshine, glided beneath its bridges, silent and stately, as from time immemorial. Against the blue, flecked by a fleece of clouds, the Abbey stood out in exquisite tracery, beyond were the Houses of Parliament. Glinting in the distance, amidst a constellation of Wren churches whose spires and steeples ennobled the skyline of the city, was the major orb, the dome of St Paul’s. The Palace, though not visible, lay within bowshot. The standard flew, the royal family was in residence. Slowly Big Ben chimed the hour: then three deep notes. And the Rector, walking with young Stephen Desmonde, strangely stirred, lifted, despite the weight of years, by the beauty of the day, the vagrant primrose-scented airs of spring, a prey to many memories, thought to himself, Here beats the pulse of England, less strongly than of old perhaps, yet still it beats.
As the two came along the Embankment, at a leisurely pace, for Bertram, although his tall spare figure held fairly erect, was slowed by rheumatism, one sensed in their movements an air of custom, made manifest more particularly by a suggestion of polite sufferance on the part of the boy. Some fifty yards from the end of the street they crossed over and climbed the steps of a large building that stood behind railings and a small ornamental garden. Removing his hat, Bertram turned, stood for a moment at the entrance recovering his breath and viewing the sweeping panorama of sky, river and majestic edifices. Then the turnstiles clicked and they were both inside the Tate Gallery.
Few people were about, the long, high ceilinged rooms held that echoing quietude which pleased Bertram most, and, making their way, still
with that sense of habit, through the central gallery, past the glowing Turners and silvery Whistlers, the Sargents, Constables and Gainsboroughs, they bore to the left and finally sat down in a room, fretted by sunshine, on the west side. Upon the wall, directly opposite, exquisitely framed and hung, were three paintings. At these, silently, the boy as in duty bound, his elder with remote and meditative vision, gazed. Presently, without removing his eyes, Bertram spoke.
‘You are settling down quite well at Horsham?’
‘Quite well, thank you sir.’
‘You like the school?’
‘It’s not at all bad, sir.’
‘Of course, the first year is always difficult. But afterwards you’ll get into the swing of things. You’ve made some friends, I hope?’
‘Yes, sir. There’s a couple of boys, Jones minor and Piggot, that I’m chummy with.’
‘And you’re not bullied?’
‘Oh, no, sir. You have to look smart when the monitors tell you to do something, but if a fellow keeps on his toes and doesn’t josh they’re rather decent on the whole.’
‘Good.’
The conversation, hauntingly reminiscent of his talks with David and the other Stephen, so many years ago, brought a strange pain to Bertram’s heart. Yes, so long ago – and yet it seemed like yesterday when they first went off to Marlborough, nervously intent on the ordeal ahead, only half listening to his good advice. What an old man he was getting to be, an old fogey so given over to dreaming back that he mixed up the present with the past and sometimes, looking at this Stephen, fancied himself in company with his own dear son. The two were certainly alike – the living Stephen had the other’s delicate colouring, open brow and deep blue eyes, the same proud set of the head upon the still narrow shoulders. He looked a gentleman, thank God, a regular Desmonde. And Christ’s Hospital, while he would naturally have preferred Marlborough, was a fine sound school and would make a man of him. Under the circumstances, he could count himself lucky to have got the boy in on a foundation – they were hard to get these days, with everyone feeling the pinch. The uniform, too, was fetching – today, when they had taken luncheon at Simpson’s, in the Strand, the looks directed towards them, interested, amused, all flattering, had warmed him, more, much more than the pint of Chablis which, as a treat, he had permitted himself. For that matter, none of the vintages were half as good as they had been in the old days.
The desire to plant the good seed, the feeling that it was his duty to do so, drove him, rather against his will, to a little homily.
‘We expect fine things of you, my boy. You must stick in and do credit to your name. Are the lessons coming along?’
‘Pretty fair, I think, sir. We had a test before we broke up for the holidays.’
‘How did that come out?’
‘I did all right in English and arithmetic.’
A shadow crossed Bertram’s mind, he scarcely could bring himself to ask the question.
‘Do they give you drawing?’
‘Yes, sir. But I did badly in that. It seems I can’t draw at all.’ Unconsciously, Bertram gave out a little sigh of relief, glanced towards his grandson, who continued, ‘But Mother said I must tell you I got full marks for Scripture knowledge.’
‘Well done … well done,’ Bertram murmured. Who could tell? Perhaps even at this late hour the great hope of his life might be fulfilled, if the good Lord would only let him survive to realise it. He laid his blue-veined fingers on the boy’s hand and patted it approvingly.
Under the caress Stephen flushed and glanced round to see if they were observed. Although his grandfather aroused in him that mixture of constraint and awe, with an occasional flicker of amusement, which it is the sad lot of the aged to occasion in the young, he rather enjoyed these not infrequent expeditions which they took together, especially during term time, when a slap-up lunch of his own choosing, followed, if the programme were suitable, by a cinema, and ending, inevitably, by their pilgrimage to the Tate, constituted a thoroughly agreeable break in the routine of classes. But today, the beginning of the Easter vacation, after having been away from her for nine weeks, he was eager to see his mother, who would meet them at Waterloo Station and take him home with her. Several times in the last hour he had tactfully inquired of Bertram what the time might be, and was, indeed, about to do so again when a party of schoolgirls entered the room, under the escort of their mistress.
There were about a dozen of them, in dark green skirts and blazers of the same colour with a badge on the pocket, straw hats with a green ribbon, kept on by an elastic under the chin. All wore brown kid gloves, black stockings and shoes. The mistress, in restrained tweeds and flat-heeled shoes, was pale and earnest, bareheaded, bespectacled, and carried a little sheaf of notes, to which, as the cicerone conducting the tour, she referred from time to time. Exactly opposite Bertram and Stephen, but without taking any notice of them, she drew up.
‘And now, girls,’ she announced, ‘ we come to the Desmondes, three representative paintings purchased in 1930. The first, entitled Circus, distinguished by a marvellous sense of colour and composition, is of the artist’s early French period. Note in particular the grouping of the clowns in the foreground and the manner in which a sense of movement is given to the figure of the young woman on the bicycle.
‘The second painting, The Blue Wrapper, which I am sure you have seen reproduced many times, is a portrait of the artist’s wife. Here you will find the freedom of arrangement and unconventionality of design which characterised all Desmonde’s work. As you see, the subject is neither pretty nor young, yet by subtle colouring and a rhythmic flow of simple lines, an extraordinary feeling of beauty is created. Observe, too, that through the window at which she sits, there is an exquisitely suggested vista of the street outside, with some poor children engaged in a game of ball. This, incidentally, was the subject of another well-known Desmonde known as Children at Play, which may be seen in the Luxembourg, Paris.
‘The third, and largest painting, was the last work accomplished by the artist, and is considered to be his finest. It is, as you see, a large composition of the estuary of the Thames, showing all the crowded, turbulent movement of the river.’ She began here to consult her notes. ‘Observe, girls, that it is no mere pictorial representation. Note the skilful deformations, the audacity and subtlety of the colouring, the expressive divided tones, the projection upon the canvas of an interior drama of the spirit. See also how the light seems to emanate from the canvas, gleaming and vibrant, a luminosity that gives great intensity to the work. In a way it is reminiscent of the radiance of expression found in the great paintings of Rubens. Desmonde was not altogether a revolutionary painter. Just as the Impressionists drew from Turner, he drew, in his early years, from Manet, Degas, and Monet. There are some, indeed, who have contended recently that the Spanish period of his art stems from the painter Goya. But although he studied the masters, he went beyond them. He knew how to recognise beauty in all its forms, and his conscience forced him to reject any technique but his own. He was in every sense of the word an individualist whose work, even when most specialised, seemed to cover the whole span of life, a great original artist who, resisting every temptation to be repetitious, opened up a new era of expression. When we look at these works we know he had not lived in vain.’
Here the mistress discarded her notes and became human again. Looking around her pupils, she asked briskly:
‘Any questions, class?’
One of the girls, who stood close to the teacher, spoke up, in the manner of a favourite pupil.
‘Is he dead, Miss?’
‘Yes, Doris. He died as quite a young man, rather tragically, and almost unrecognised.’
‘But, Miss, didn’t you just tell us he was a great painter?’
‘Yes, Doris, but like so many others he had to die to become great. Don’t you remember what I told you about Rembrandt’s poverty, and Hals, buried in a pauper’s grave, and Gauguin, who could scarcely sell a sing
le picture when he was penniless, and Van Gogh …’
‘Yes, Miss … people didn’t understand, were mistaken about them.’
‘We can all make mistakes, dear … Gladys, do stop sniffing.’
‘Please, Miss, I have a cold.’
‘Then use your handkerchief … as I was saying, Doris, England may have erred over Stephen Desmonde, but she has made up for it handsomely. Here are these paintings in the Tate for all of us to admire. Now come along, follow me, don’t lag behind, girls, and we’ll take the Sargents.’
When they had gone, clattering down the long gallery, Bertram, still immobile, maintained his baffled contemplation of the pictures. How often, in these last few years, had he heard from its small beginning, yet ever growing, and swelling to a chorus, that panegyric on his son, the same fulsome words and phrases used a moment ago by the young art mistress to her class. All the evidence of failure that had seemed so certain, the cut-and-dried opinions of those who presumed to know, finally disproved; Stephen, his son, a great artist … yes, even the word genius was now being used without reserve. There was no pride in him at the thought, no belated triumph, but rather a strange bewildered sadness, and thinking of the pain and disappointment of a lifetime crowned too late, he wondered if it had all been worth it. Was any picture worth it – the greatest masterpiece ever wrought? What was beauty, after all, that men should martyr themselves in its pursuit, die for it, like the saints of old? It seemed to him that the conflict between life and art could never be resolved. Peering hard at the canvases, he tried to discern virtues in them not apparent to him before. Slowly, regretfully, he shook his head. He could not do so. He bowed again to the opinion of the experts as he had bowed before, yet in truth they remained to him indecipherable, as great an enigma as had been his son in every action of his life, most of all, in the utter, incomprehensible, careless unrepentance of his end. That last scene of all, he could never contemplate without a dull ache in his heart, when, in the grey morning, summoned by Glyn to the small back bedroom in Cable Street, he had found his son in extremis, ghostly pale and barely breathing, his speech completely gone, the larynx so destroyed as to make swallowing impossible, but still with a pencil and a sketch-block at the bedside and, as if that were not enough, a long cane tipped with charcoal, with which, while supine and helpless, he had only the day before been tracing strange designs upon the wall. Bertram had tried, his breast rent, to speak words of affection and consolation, striven, at the eleventh hour, to lead this wayward soul back to the Lord, but, as he was uttering a prayer, Stephen, writing weakly, had handed him a note: Too bad Father … I have never drawn you … you have a fine head. And then, incredibly, sunk in the pillows, he had begun to outline Bertram’s profile on his block. A final portrait … for presently the pencil slipped from his grasp, the fingers sought it feebly, instinctively, then, like all the rest of him, were still. Then, while Bertram sat bowed and broken, Glyn, with a hard, set competence, had begun immediately to make a death mask of the gaunt, passionless face.