But this evening Philip, undecided, wanted to talk
about himself. Fortunately it was late already
and Cronshaw’s pile of saucers on the table,
each indicating a drink, suggested that he was prepared
to take an independent view of things in general.
“I wonder if you’d give me some advice,”
said Philip suddenly.
“You won’t take it, will you?”
Philip shrugged his shoulders impatiently.
“I don’t believe I shall ever do much
good as a painter. I don’t see any use
in being second-rate. I’m thinking of chucking
it.”
“Why shouldn’t you?”
Philip hesitated for an instant.
“I suppose I like the life.”
A change came over Cronshaw’s placid, round
face. The corners of the mouth were suddenly
depressed, the eyes sunk dully in their orbits; he
seemed to become strangely bowed and old.
“This?” he cried, looking round the cafe
in which they sat. His voice really trembled
a little.
“If you can get out of it, do while there’s
time.”
Philip stared at him with astonishment, but the sight
of emotion always made him feel shy, and he dropped
his eyes. He knew that he was looking upon the
tragedy of failure. There was silence. Philip
thought that Cronshaw was looking upon his own life;
and perhaps he considered his youth with its bright
hopes and the disappointments which wore out the radiancy;
the wretched monotony of pleasure, and the black future.
Philip’s eyes rested on the little pile of saucers,
and he knew that Cronshaw’s were on them too.
Two months passed.
It seemed to Philip, brooding over these matters,
that in the true painters, writers, musicians, there
was a power which drove them to such complete absorption
in their work as to make it inevitable for them to
subordinate life to art. Succumbing to an influence
they never realised, they were merely dupes of the
instinct that possessed them, and life slipped through
their fingers unlived. But he had a feeling that
life was to be lived rather than portrayed, and he
wanted to search out the various experiences of it
and wring from each moment all the emotion that it
offered. He made up his mind at length to take
a certain step and abide by the result, and, having
made up his mind, he determined to take the step at
once. Luckily enough the next morning was one
of Foinet’s days, and he resolved to ask him
point-blank whether it was worth his while to go on
with the study of art. He had never forgotten
the master’s brutal advice to Fanny Price.
It had been sound. Philip could never get Fanny
entirely out of his head. The studio seemed strange
without her, and now and then the gesture of one of
the women working there or the tone of a voice would
give him a sudden start, reminding him of her:
her presence was more noticuble?? now she was dead
than it had ever been during her life; and he often
dreamed of her at night, waking with a cry of terror.
It was horrible to think of all the suffering she
must have endured.
