John Powys - After My Fashion

Nelly burst out laughing at this. ‘Mr Storm doesn’t judge literature by the smell,’ she said. ‘Everyone hasn’t got such terrible second-sight as you have, Robert. Most of us have to read a thing before we know what it’s like.’

But Mr Canyot could not be stopped. The consciousness that he was making a fool of himself drove him on.

‘Experiments! You talk of experiments. What we want nowadays is knowledge and serious hard work.

‘It’s just the same with everything. I have no doubt Mr Storm is a Sinn Feiner and a pro-Bolshevik, and believes in Egypt for the Egyptians and India for the Indians. Some people are interested in nothing else but experiments; and they’ll go on experimenting till everything bursts up. I tell you, what we want in these times is carefully tested first-hand knowledge — not pretty theories; and hard steady work, not ramping around being “original”!’

Nelly’s social anxiety to keep the peace was rapidly breaking down now under an extreme schoolgirl longing to burst into an uncontrollable fit of giggling.

The forced smile assumed by Richard and his weary air of abysmal superiority struck her fancy as quite as comic as the excited rudeness of Canyot. She thought within herself, these poor dears! — how they do go on! And it suddenly struck her how complicated life is made for women by the mania men have for asserting their intellectual prejudices and losing all interest in the actual details before them. She herself was the ‘actual detail’ before them now, and here they were, glutting their respective mental vanities on what she knew was a perfectly irrelevant discussion, betraying that as a matter of fact they were really more interested in one another’s pompous ‘attitudes’ than in any possible opinion she might profess.

She had once seen, in Arundel Park, two homed stags fighting over a deer. Those animals also seemed to forget the cause of their conflict in the sheer joy of battle.

It certainly did make things more difficult when the very persons who hated one another because one liked them both displayed so much more anxiety as to just how they impressed each other than how they impressed oneself.

That part of the business they both seemed to take for granted!

She found herself wishing that there was a third man in this tea party.

‘Surely you will not deny,’ she heard Richard saying when her wandering attention returned, ‘that the least new ripple of a new point of view, of a new impression of things, of a new tone or rhythm in our reaction to things, has a profound psychological interest, even if, from the highest standard, it remains tentative and formless?’

‘I do, I do deny it,’ cried the young painter, striking the honey- pot a severe blow with the end of his knife. ‘These “new ripples”, as you call them, are not the real forward movement of the great tradition. That , when it appears, dominates us all, conservatives and modernists alike, by its universal human power. In my art you have a Cézanne or a Renoir. In yours you have a William Blake or a Paul Verlaine. You will notice that Cézanne and Renoir carry on the tradition of the subtlest of the great masters, just as the lyrics of Blake and Verlaine remind you of Shakespeare’s—’

Richard’s voice violently interrupted him. ‘No! No! No! you traditionists are always so unfair to us. You treat us just as the Church treats its visionaries. Blake isn’t in the least like Shakespeare, nor is Verlaine in the least like Villon, as you were probably going to remark. And how are you to know, may I ask, when to look for the new Renoirs and Verlaines if you take no interest in the experiments of the new people?’

Richard positively scowled at Nelly at that point because he caught her looking with interest at a dog fight in the street. Robert Canyot struck the honey-pot a terrific blow.

‘Experiments,’ he cried, ‘are not achievements! When your new people work hard enough, and study the great men deeply enough, and stop putting down every confounded thing that comes into their heads, they’ll force me to respect them. They’ll be artists then. Meanwhile they’re just amateur triflers, like the people who fuss over them!’

Richard’s face grew dark and his fingers clenched. Was this young puppy actually daring to tell him that his monographs upon René Ghil, Gustave Kahn, Jules Laforgue, Grégoire Le Roy, and so forth, were wasted labour, unworthy of a first-class intellect?

‘I suppose you’d class Rémy de Gourmont among your experimenters,’ he snarled sarcastically, making a naïvely unconscious movement with his hand, as if to retain the attention of Miss Moreton who had risen from her seat to watch the dogs being separated. But his antagonist was too wary to be caught. ‘I know nothing of the person you speak of. No doubt from your tone I ought to, and perhaps I ought. If I ought, some day no doubt I shall; for in the end one always does come across the real achievements.’

‘Perhaps that’s what these “fussy amateurs” you scoff at are for ,’ flung back the older man; ‘in order that these deserving ones shall not have to wait till they’re dead for the honour of being appreciated by Mr Robert Canyot!’

At this point — was it with the intention of letting her new friend have the last word? — Nelly Moreton resolutely broke in. ‘Sorry to change the conversation,’ she said, ‘but if we’re to get back in time for supper we must really make a start.’

Less shamefaced than they deserved, and avoiding one another’s eyes so obviously that the girl couldn’t help comparing them to the two dogs who were now being dragged away by their respective masters, the men rose to their feet, and Canyot went to the little desk to pay for their meal.

They moved off together back again up the street which was now golden and mellow with the slanting sunshine.

Richard felt tempted, when the artist had secured his belongings at the close-gate, to suggest that he should accompany them some portion of their way, for the fact of his having, as he felt, put the young man into his place gave him a feeling of magnanimity.

But Nelly Moreton bade him goodbye at that point in so very definite a manner that his project was nipped in the bud. Canyot, pleased at the thought of having his friend to himself for that pleasant walk through the buttercups, shook hands with him graciously, almost apologetically. And Richard himself turned away not unpleased, since her final word to him was emphatic. ‘You must come over and see my father.’

It was not till much later in the day, when recalling every incident of that afternoon, that he remembered a sharp piercing look that Canyot had turned upon him and Nelly at one moment during their conversation. That fellow can’t be easily fooled , he thought.

It was always a luxurious and pleasant moment for Nelly, when after a knock as gentle as her round knuckles could administer, the all-competent Grace brought her hot water and tea. It was delicious to lie with closed eyes, still half-wrapped in the filmy cloud of sleep, while the sweet airs floated in through the open windows, mingled with the crooning of the dove and the reedy call of the blackbird.

Generally she let Grace put down the tray and the bright-polished can, and carry off her outdoor shoes, without movement or sign. But on the morning after her day in Selshurst she sat up in bed with wide-open eyes.

‘I likes to see ’ee with all that pretty hair, Miss Nelly. Mercy, ‘tis a shame a lovely young lady like you should have to fasten ‘un up. None do know,’ cept those as sees ’ee like this and They Above, how winsome a body ’ee be grown into.’