"Paint good pictures? How can I tell without seeing some of your work?
Doesn"t it come back to me that at Oxford you used to sketch very prettily? But that"s the last thing that matters."
"What does matter then?" Nick asked with his eyes on his companion.
"To be on the right side--on the side of the "fine.""
"There"ll be precious little of the "fine" if I produce nothing but daubs."
"Ah you cling to the old false measure of success! I must cure you of that. There"ll be the beauty of having been disinterested and independent; of having taken the world in the free, brave, personal way."
"I shall nevertheless paint decently if I can," Nick presently said.
"I"m almost sorry! It will make your case less clear, your example less grand."
"My example will be grand enough, with the fight I shall have to make."
"The fight? With whom?"
"With myself first of all. I"m awfully against it."
"Ah but you"ll have me on the other side," Nash smiled.
"Well, you"ll have more than a handful to meet--everything, every one that belongs to me, that touches me near or far; my family, my blood, my heredity, my traditions, my promises, my circ.u.mstances, my prejudices; my little past--such as it is; my great future--such as it has been supposed it may be."
"I see, I see. It"s splendid!" Nash exclaimed. "And Mrs. Dallow into the bargain," he added.
"Yes, Mrs. Dallow if you like."
"Are you in love with her?"
"Not in the least."
"Well, she is with you--so I understood."
"Don"t say that," said Nick Dormer with sudden sternness.
"Ah you are, you are!" his companion p.r.o.nounced, judging apparently from this accent.
"I don"t know _what_ I am--heaven help me!" Nick broke out, tossing his hat down on his little tin table with vehemence. "I"m a freak of nature and a sport of the mocking G.o.ds. Why should they go out of their way to worry me? Why should they do everything so inconsequent, so improbable, so preposterous? It"s the vulgarest practical joke. There has never been anything of the sort among us; we"re all Philistines to the core, with about as much esthetic sense as that hat. It"s excellent soil--I don"t complain of it--but not a soil to grow that flower. From where the devil then has the seed been dropped? I look back from generation to generation; I scour our annals without finding the least little sketching grandmother, any sign of a building or versifying or collecting or even tulip-raising ancestor. They were all as blind as bats, and none the less happy for that. I"m a wanton variation, an unaccountable monster. My dear father, rest his soul, went through life without a suspicion that there"s anything in it that can"t be boiled into blue-books, and became in that conviction a very distinguished person. He brought me up in the same simplicity and in the hope of the same eminence. It would have been better if I had remained so. I think it"s partly your fault that I haven"t," Nick went on. "At Oxford you were very bad company for me--my evil genius: you opened my eyes, you communicated the poison. Since then, little by little, it has been working within me; vaguely, covertly, insensibly at first, but during the last year or two with violence, pertinacity, cruelty. I"ve resorted to every antidote in life; but it"s no use--I"m stricken. _C"est Venus toute entiere a sa proie attachee_--putting Venus for "art." It tears me to pieces as I may say."
"I see, I follow you," said Nash, who had listened to this recital with radiant interest and curiosity. "And that"s why you are going to stand."
"Precisely--it"s an antidote. And at present you"re another."
"Another?"
"That"s why I jumped at you. A bigger dose of you may disagree with me to that extent that I shall either die or get better."
"I shall control the dilution," said Nash. "Poor fellow--if you"re elected!" he added.
"Poor fellow either way. You don"t know the atmosphere in which I live, the horror, the scandal my apostasy would provoke, the injury and suffering it would inflict. I believe it would really kill my mother.
She thinks my father"s watching me from the skies."
"Jolly to make him jump!" Nash suggested.
"He"d jump indeed--come straight down on top of me. And then the grotesqueness of it--to _begin_ all of a sudden at my age."
"It"s perfect indeed, it"s too lovely a case," Nash raved.
"Think how it sounds--a paragraph in the London papers: "Mr. Nicholas Dormer, M. P. for Harsh and son of the late Right Honourable and so forth and so forth, is about to give up his seat and withdraw from public life in order to devote himself to the practice of portrait-painting--and with the more commendable perseverance by reason of all the dreadful time he has lost. Orders, in view of this, respectfully solicited.""
"The nineteenth century"s a sweeter time than I thought," said Nash.
"It"s the portrait then that haunts your dreams?"
"I wish you could see. You must of course come immediately to my place in London."
"Perfidious wretch, you"re capable of having talent--which of course will spoil everything!" Gabriel wailed.
"No, I"m too old and was too early perverted. It"s too late to go through the mill."
"You make _me_ young! Don"t miss your election at your peril. Think of the edification."
"The edification--?"
"Of your throwing it all up the next moment."
"That would be pleasant for Mr. Carteret," Nick brooded.
"Mr. Carteret--?"
"A dear old family friend who"ll wish to pay my agent"s bill."
"Serve him right for such depraved tastes."
"You do me good," said Nick as he rose and turned away.
"Don"t call me useless then."
"Ah but not in the way you mean. It"s only if I don"t get in that I shall perhaps console myself with the brush," Nick returned with humorous, edifying elegance while they retraced their steps.
"For the sake of all the muses then don"t stand. For you _will_ get in."
"Very likely. At any rate I"ve promised."
"You"ve promised Mrs. Dallow?"
"It"s her place--she"ll _put_ me in," Nick said.