GEORGE SHAW - The Complete Works

“Ah! I thought you had something to do with it. And now let me tell you, Mary, that it is perfectly disgraceful, the open way in which you hanker after—”

“Aunt!”

“ — that common man. I wonder at a girl of your tastes and understanding having so little selfrespect as to to let everybody see that your head has been turned by a creature without polish or appearance — not even a gentleman. And all this too while you are engaged to Adrian Herbert, his very opposite in every respect. I tell you, Mary, it’s not proper: it’s not decent. A tutor! If it were anybody else it would not matter so much — but Oh for shame, Mary, for shame.”

“Aunt Jane—”

“Hush, for goodness sake. Here he is.”

“Who?” cried Mary, turning quickly. But it was only Adrian, equipped for sketching.

“Good morning,” he said gaily, but with a thoughtful, polite gaiety. “This is the very sky we want for that bit of the undercliff.”

“We were just saying how late you were,” said Mrs Beatty graciously. He shook her hand, and looked in some surprise at Mary, whose expression, as she stood motionless, puzzled him.

“Do you know what we were really saying when you interrupted us, Adrian?”

“Mary,” exclaimed Mrs. Beatty.

“Aunt Jane was telling me,” continued Mary, not heeding her, “that I was hankering after Mr Jack, and that my conduct was not decent. Have you ever remarked anything indecent about my conduct, Adrian?”

Herbert looked helplessly from her to her aunt in silence. Mrs. Beatty’s confusion, culminating in a burst of tears, relieved him from answering.

“Do not listen to her,” she said presently, striving to control herself. “She is an ungrateful girl.”

“I have quoted her exact words,” said Mary, unmoved; “and I am certainly not grateful for them. Come, Adrian. We had better lose no more time if we are to finish our sketches before luncheon?”

“But we cannot leave Mrs. Beatty in this—”

“Never mind me: I am ashamed of myself for giving way, Mr Herbert. It was not your fault. I had rather not detain you.”

Adrian hesitated. But seeing that he had better go, he took up his bundle of easels and stools, and went out with Mary, who did not even look at her aunt. They had gone some distance before either spoke. Then he said, “I hope Mrs Beatty has not been worrying you, Mary?”

“If she has, I do not think she will do it again without serious reflexion. I have found that the way to deal with worldly people is to frighten them by repeating their scandalous whisperings aloud. Oh, I was very angry that time, Adrian.”

“But what brought Jack on the carpet again? I thought we were rid of him and done with him?”

“I heard that he was very badly off in London; and I asked Colonel Beatty to get him made bandmaster of the regiment in place of John Sebastian Clifton — the man you used to laugh at — who is going to America. Then Aunt Jane interfered, and imputed motives to my intercession — such motives as she could appreciate herself.”

“But bow did you find out Jack’s position in London.”

“From Madge Brailsford, who is taking lessons from him. Why? Are you jealous?”

“If you really mean that question, it will spoil my day’s work, or rather my day’s pleasure; for my work is all pleasure, nowadays.”

“No, of course I do not mean it. I beg your pardon.”

“Will you make a new contract with me, Mary’”

“What is it?”

“Never to allude to that execrable musician again. I have remarked that his name alone suffices to breed discord everywhere.”

“It is true,” said Mary, laughing. “I have quarreled a little with Madge, a great deal with Aunt Jane, almost with you, and quite with Charlie about him.”

Then let us consider him, from henceforth, in the Index expurgatorius. I swear never to mention him on a sketching excursion — never at all, in fact, unless on very urgent occasion, which is not likely to arise. Will you swear also?”

“I swear,” said Mary, raising her hand.” Lo giuroas they say in the Opera. But without prejudice to his bandmastership.”

“As to that, I am afraid you have spoiled his chance with Colonel Aunt Jane?”

“Yes,” said Mary slowly: “I forgot that. I was thinking only of my own outraged feelings when I took my revenge. And I had intended to coax her into seconding me in the matter.”

Herbert laughed.

“It is not at all a thing to be laughed at, Adrian, when you come to think of it. I used to fancy that I had set myself aside from the ordinary world to live a higher life than most of those about me. But I am beginning to find out that when I have to act, I do very much as they do. As I suppose they judge me by my actions and not by my inner life, no doubt they see me much as I see them. Perhaps they have an inner life too. If so, the only difference between us is that I have trained my eye to see more material for pictures in a landscape than they. They may even enjoy the landscape as much, without knowing why.”

“Do you know why?”

“I suppose not. I mean that I can point out those aspects of the landscape which please me, and they cannot. But that is not a moral difference. Art cannot take us out of the world.”

“Not if we are worldly, Mary.”

“But how can we help being worldly? I was born into the world: I have lived all my life in it: I have never seen or known a person or thing that did not belong to it. How can I be anything else than worldly?”

“Does the sun above us belong to it, Mary? Do the stars, the dreams that poets have left us, the realms that painters have shewn us, the thoughts you and I interchange sometimes when nothing has occurred to disturb your faith? Do these things belong to it?”

“I don’t believe they belong exclusively to us two. If they did, I think we should be locked up as lunatics for perceiving them. Do you know, Adrian, lots of people whom we consider quite foreign to us spiritually, are very romantic in their own way. Aunt Jane cries over novels which make me laugh. Your mother reads a good deal of history, and she likes pictures, I remember when she used to sing very nicely.”

“Yes. She likes pictures, provided they are not too good.”

“She says the same of you. And really, when she pats me on the shoulder in her wise way, and asks me when I will be tired of playing at what she calls transcendentalism, I hear, or fancy I hear, an echo of her thought in my own mind. I have been very happy in my art studies and I don’t think I shall ever find a way of life more tranquil and pleasant than they led me to; but, for all that, I have a notion sometimes that it is a way of life which I am outgrowing. I am getting wickeder as I get older, very likely.”

“You think so for the moment. If you leave your art, the world will beat you back to it. The world has not an ambition worth sharing, or a prize worth handling, Corrupt success, disgraceful failures, or sheeplike vegetation are all it has to offer. I prefer Art, which gives me a sixth sense of beauty, with selfrespect: perhaps also an immortal reputation in return for honest endeavor in a labor of love.”

“Yes, Adrian. That used to suffice for me: indeed, it does so still when I am in the right frame of mind. But other worlds are appearing vaguely on the horizon. Perhaps woman’s art is of woman’s life a thing apart, ’tis man’s whole existence; just as love is said to be the reverse — though it isn’t.”

“It does not scan that way,” said Adrian, with an uneasy effort to be flippant.

No,” said Mary, laughing. “This is the place.”

“Yes,” said Adrian, unstrapping the easels. “You must paint off the fit of depression that is seizing you. The wind has gone round to the southwest. What an exquisite day!”