IS MAN FREE ONLY 
 WHEN CORRUPT? 
 
 BY 
 
 PEATTIE. 
 CANNAN is, per- 
 ;ext to George Moore, 
 st emancipated man 
 wri'ling. More emanci- 
 pated than' Shaw or than 
 Wells. They are, all four of them, 
 unbroken stallions plunging about a 
 copious paddock, but Cannan and Moore 
 are the worst of the lot, though 
 no more talented than the others. Of 
 course, Shaw isn't sure \vhat he means, 
 and Wells has only recently found con- 
 viction, while Moore always knows what 
 ho means, and Cannan is at least sure 
 of many things which he does not mean. 
 :iy, he does' not mean ever to ad- 
 limits, bounds, proprieties, conven- 
 , or traditional virtues. He feels 
 liberal toward the sins. He forgives 
 ything except the arranged, the 
 sterilized, and the expected. 
 
 Read " MENDEL " and you will see 
 what I mean. {George H. Doran, N. Y..) 
 Mendel is the hero. He is an Austrian 
 Jew who is reared in the London slums, 
 and he can paint like a demon. That is 
 :y, he can almost paint like Cezanne. 
 But it is many years before he gets to 
 Cezanne. He comes up through bitter 
 poverty to the art schools, through the 
 art schools to his own methods, through 
 lils own methods to stand spellbound 
 before the face with the crooked mouth 
 which Cezanne said was that of his wife, 
 unhappy man that he was to have to 
 own it! 
 
 Mendel admits that he has a dingy 
 eoul, and the reader regards the epithet 
 as mild. The .truth is, Mendel adores 
 which, however, does not prevent 
 him from/ loving beauty any more than 
 zest for sin kept Villon or Verlaine, By- 
 ron or Wilde, from loving exquisiteness. 
 Ghetto did not offend Mendel. He 
 liked the smells and the reek of his own 
 people, was contented when surrounded 
 with their solemnity, their observances, 
 ir fanaticism. Not that these 
 . hings affected his conduct. He had as 
 many women as Jean Christophe, but 
 .Cannan seems to think a pure and high 
 minded girl mighty lucky when at last 
 she got Mendel for an accepted husband. 
 
 The girl regarded herself as blessed 
 among women, though she had been told 
 yLhing about Mendel's life which 
 telling took a long time and immense 
 candor. But why Cannan should have 
 taken the trouble to make this woman 
 pure and to keep her steadfast cannot 
 quite be imagined. Why this clinging 
 +o 'i^rown supe Why this 
 
 to a "*" ejudice? 
 
 t 'ated, 
 
 -nit- 
 re 
 : h 
 m 
 
 tre- 
 e of 
 .wish 
 id to 
 who 
 i his 
 
 . .v.alth of 
 >med verit- 
 power. Lo- 
 and his av^d 
 i.n aer caresses; 
 
 r/ond li 
 upon hei 
 _, his semi-n 
 ::il passion ' 
 _iie source of he . 
 a too, the Scotch a 
 n who slew him 
 
 Mitchell, the English gentle-man 
 found bohernia an active poison; 
 .d some of the little models and 
 venches are . clever, indeed. It makes 
 a. great welter altogether, and Cannan 
 handles it with sinister mastery. But 
 'tis an ill book, Judge it how you will. 
 The theory -th^t man is only free when 
 he is denied doesn't sound very con- 
 vincing to me, and reiteration doesn't 
 strengthen the argument.
 
 / 
 
 
 . i-
 
 MENDEL 
 
 GILBERT CANNAN
 
 MENDEL 
 
 A STORY OF YOUTH 
 
 BY 
 
 GILBERT GANNAN 
 
 AUTHOR OP "THREE SONS AND A MOTHER," "OLD MOLE," 
 "ROUND THE CORNER," ETC., ETC. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
 
 COPYRIGHT, IQl6, 
 BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 
 
 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
 
 To D. C. 
 
 Shall tears be shed because the blossoms fall, 
 Because the cloudy cherry slips away, 
 
 And leaves its branches in a leafy thrall 
 Till ruddy fruits do hang upon the spray? 
 
 Shall tears be shed because the youthful bloom 
 And all th'excess of early life must fade 
 
 For larger wealth of joy in smaller room 
 To dwell contained in love of man and maid? 
 
 Nay, rather leap, O heart, to see fulfilled 
 In certain joy th'uncertain promised glee, 
 
 To have so many mountain torrents spilled 
 For one fair river moving to the sea. 
 
 2039116
 
 CONTENTS 
 BOOK ONE: EAST 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. LONDON WHERE THE KING LIVES . . . . n 
 
 II. POVERTY 21 
 
 III. PRISON 35 
 
 IV. FIRST LOVE 53 
 
 V. A TURNING-POINT 64 
 
 VI. EDGAR FROITZHEIM AND OTHERS . . . . 75 
 
 VII. THE DETMOLD 84 
 
 VEIL HETTY FINCH 97 
 
 IX. THE QUINTETTE no 
 
 X. MORRISON 137 
 
 BOOK TWO: BOHEMIA 
 
 I. THE POT-AU-FEU 149 
 
 II. LOGAN 161 
 
 III. LOGAN SETS TO WORK 173 
 
 IV. BURNHAM BEECHES 190 
 
 V. HAPPY HAMPSTEAD 204 
 
 VI. CAMDEN TOWN T ". . . . . . . . 218 
 
 VII. MR. TILNEY TYSOE . 231
 
 8 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 PAGE 
 
 VIII. THE MERLIN'S CAVE 246 
 
 IX. "GOOD-BYE" 258 
 
 X. PARIS . 270 
 
 BOOK THREE: THE PASSING OF YOUTH 
 
 I. EDWARD TUTNELL 295 
 
 II. THE CAMPAIGN OPENS 307 
 
 III. SUCCESS 3!8 
 
 IV. REACTION 332 
 
 V. LOGAN GIVES A PARTY 343 
 
 VI. REVELATION 359 
 
 VII. CONFLICT . 378 
 
 VIII. OLIVER 397 
 
 IX. LOGAN MAKES AN END 420 
 
 X. PASSOVER
 
 BOOK ONE: EAST
 
 BOOK ONE: EAST 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 LONDON WHERE THE KING LIVES 
 
 THE boat-train had disgorged its passengers, who 
 had huddled together in a crowd round the luggage 
 as it was dragged out of the vans, and then had jostled 
 their way out into the London they had been so long 
 approaching. When the crowd scattered it left like a 
 deposit a little knot of strange-looking people in brilliant 
 clothes who stared about them pathetically and helplessly. 
 There were three old men who seemed to be strangers 
 to each other and a handsome Jewess with her family 
 two girls and three boys. The two elder boys carried 
 on their backs the family bedding, and the youngest 
 clung to his mother's skirts and was frightened by the 
 noise, the hurrying crowds of people, the vastness and 
 the ugly, complicated angular lines of the station. The 
 woman looked disappointed and hurt. Her eyes searched 
 through the crowds, through every fresh stream of peo- 
 ple. She was baffled and anxious. Once or twice she 
 was accosted, but she could not understand a word of 
 what was said to her. At last she produced a piece of 
 paper and showed it to a railway official, who came up 
 thinking it was time these outlandish folk moved on. 
 
 ii
 
 12 MENDEL 
 
 He could not read what was written on it, for the 
 paper was very dirty and the characters were crabbed 
 and awkwardly written. He turned to the old men, one 
 of whom said excitedly the only English words he knew 
 "London Jewish Society." The official looked re- 
 lieved. These people did not look like Jews, and the 
 eldest girl and the little boy were lovely. He went away, 
 and the woman, whose hopes had risen, once more looked 
 disconsolate. The little boy buried his face in her apron 
 and wept. 
 
 A surburban train came wheezing into the platform, 
 which was at once alive with hurrying men in silk hats 
 and tail-coats. Catching sight of the brilliantly attired 
 group, the handsome woman and the lovely girl, the 
 boys with their heads bowed beneath the billowing piles 
 of feather bedding, some of them stopped. The little 
 boy looked up with tears in his eyes. One man put his 
 hand in his pocket and threw down a few coppers. Oth- 
 ers followed his example, and the little boy ran after 
 the showering pennies as they bounced in the air, and 
 rolled, span, and settled. He danced from penny to 
 penny and a crowd gathered; for, in his bright jerkin 
 and breeches and little top-boots, dancing like a sprite, 
 gay and wild, he was an astonishing figure to find in the 
 grime and ugliness of the station. Silver was thrown 
 among the pennies to keep him dancing, but at last he 
 was exhausted and ran to his mother with his fists full 
 of money, and the men hurried on to their offices. 
 
 The official returned with an interpreter, who discov- 
 ered that the woman's name was Kiihler, that she had 
 expected to be met by her husband, that she had come 
 from Austrian Poland, and that the address written on 
 the piece of paper was Gun Street. The number was in- 
 decipherable.
 
 LONDON WHERE THE KING LIVES 13 
 
 The three old men were given instructions and they 
 went away. The interpreter took charge of the fam- 
 ily and led them to a refuge, where he left them, saying 
 that he would go and find Mr. Kiihler. With a roof 
 over her head and food provided for her children, Mrs. 
 Kiihler sat stoically to wait for the husband she had 
 not seen for two years. She had no preconceived idea 
 of London, and this bleak, bare room was London to 
 her, quite acceptable. The stress and the anxiety of the 
 detestable journey were over. This was peace and good. 
 Her husband would find her. He had come to make a 
 home in London. He had sent for her. He would come. 
 
 Hours passed. They slept, ate, talked, walked about 
 the room, and still Mr. Kiihler did not come. The peace 
 of the refuge was invaded with memories of the jour- 
 ney, the rattle, rattle, rattle of the train-wheels, the 
 brusque officials who treated the poor travellers like par- 
 cels, the soldiers at the frontiers, the wet, bare quay 
 in Holland, the first sight of the sea, immense, ominous, 
 heaving, heaving up to the sky; the stinking ship that 
 heaved like the sea and made the brain oscillate like milk 
 in a pan ; the solidity of the English quay, wet and bare, 
 and of the English train, astonishingly comfortable. . . . 
 And still Mr. Kiihler did not come. 
 
 The girls were cold and miserable. The boys wrestled 
 and practised feats of strength with each other to keep 
 warm, and looked to their mother for applause. She gave 
 it them mechanically as she sat by the little boy, whom 
 she had laid to sleep on the bedding. He would be 
 hungry, she thought, when he woke up, and she must get 
 him food. There was the money which had been thrown 
 to him, but she did not know its value. People do not 
 throw much money away. At home people do not throw 
 even small money away. There such a thing could not
 
 14 MENDEL 
 
 happen. There money, like everything else, avoids the 
 poor. But this was rich England, where it rained money. 
 
 When the boy woke up she would go out and buy 
 him something good to eat, and if Mr. Kuhler did not 
 come to-morrow she would find some work and a room, 
 or a corner of a room, to live in. Perhaps Jacob had 
 gone to America again. He had been there twice, and 
 both times suddenly. People always went to America 
 suddenly. He went out and bought a clean collar, and 
 said he was going and would send money for her as 
 soon as he had enough. . . . Poor Jacob, he could not 
 endure their poverty and he would not steal, but he would 
 always fight the soldiers and the bailiffs when they came 
 to take the bedding. . . . The sea heaved, and it rained 
 money. The two boys began to fight, a sudden fury 
 in both of them. Their sisters rushed to part them and 
 Mrs. Kiihler rose. 
 
 At the end of the long room she saw Jacob peering 
 from group to group. He looked white and ill, as he had 
 done when he came again and again to implore her to 
 marry him, and she felt half afraid of him, as she had 
 done when the violent fury of love in him had broken 
 down her resistance and dragged her from her comfort- 
 able home to the bare life he had to offer her. He came 
 to her now with the same ungraciousness that had marked 
 his wooing, explained to her that he had just got a job 
 and could not get away to meet her, and turned from her 
 to the children. The boys were grown big and strong, 
 and the eldest girl was a beauty. He was satisfied, 
 stooped and picked up little Mendel in his strong arms. 
 The child woke up, gave a little grunt of pleasure as he 
 recognised the familiar smell of his father, and went to 
 sleep again.
 
 LONDON WHERE THE KING LIVES 15 
 
 "He's heavy," said Mrs. Kiihler. "You cannot carry 
 him all the way." 
 
 "His face is like a flower," said Jacob. 
 
 He went first, carrying the boy, and his family fol- 
 lowed him into the roaring streets. The lamps were 
 lit and the shops were dazzling. There were barrows of 
 fruit, fish, old iron, books, cheap jewellery, all lit up with 
 naphtha flares. The children were half frightened, half 
 delighted. The smells and the noise of the streets ex- 
 cited them. Every now and then they heard snatches 
 of their own language and were comforted. They came 
 to shops bearing Yiddish characters and London no 
 longer seemed to them forbiddingly foreign, though they 
 began to feel conscious of their clothes, which made them 
 conspicuous. The boys cursed and growled under the 
 bedding and began to complain that they had so far to 
 go. Mr. Kiihler found the child too heavy and had to 
 put him down. Mendel took his mother's hand and trot- 
 ted along by her side. 
 
 They turned into a darkish street which ran for some 
 length between very tall houses. It was obscure enough 
 to allow the clear sky to be seen, patched with cloud and 
 deep blue, starry spaces. At the end of it was a build- 
 ing covered with lights and illuminated signs. They 
 shone golden and splendid. Never had Mendel seen any- 
 thing so glorious, so rich, so dream-like, so clearly cor- 
 responding to that marvellous region where all his 
 thoughts ended, passed out of his reach, and took on a 
 brilliant and mighty life of their own, a glory greater 
 than that of the Emperor at home. But this was Eng- 
 land and had only a King. 
 
 "Does the King live there?" he asked his mother. 
 
 "No; that is a shop." 
 
 "Has father got a shop like that?"
 
 16 MENDEL 
 
 "Not yet." 
 
 "Will he soon have a shop like that?" 
 
 "Very soon." 
 
 Mendel would have liked to have stood and gazed at 
 the glorious, glittering shop. He felt sure the King 
 must buy his boots there, and he thought that if he 
 stayed long enough he would see the King drive up in 
 his crystal coach, with his crown on his head, and go 
 into the shop. But his father led the way out of the 
 darkish street into another that was still darker, very 
 narrow, and flanked with little low houses. One of these 
 they entered, and in a small, almost unfurnished room 
 they had supper, and Mendel went to sleep hearing his 
 father say to his mother, "Thirteen shillings." Just be- 
 fore that his father had held his hands out under the 
 candle, and they were raw and bleeding. 
 
 One room was luxury to them. At home in Austria 
 they had had a corner of a room, and the three other cor- 
 ners were occupied by the carpenter, the stableman, and 
 the potter. In the centre of the room stood the common 
 water-bucket and the common refuse-tub. London had 
 showered money on them and provided them with a 
 whole room. They felt hopeful. 
 
 Mr. Kiihler made thirteen shillings a week polishing 
 walking-sticks, and when that trade was bad he could 
 sometimes get work as a furrier. He had intended to 
 take his family over to America, but finding work in 
 London, he thought it better to stay there. Besides, he 
 had a grudge against America, for while there he had 
 invented a device for twisting tails of fur, but his in- 
 vention had been stolen from him and he had missed his 
 chance of making a fortune. America was evil and liv- 
 ing was very dear. London was the more comfortable
 
 LONDON WHERE THE KING LIVES 17 
 
 place for the struggle. And in London he had found 
 Abramovich, the friend of his boyhood, the one creature 
 in the world upon whom he relied. He had no reason 
 for his faith. Abramovich had never done him any good, 
 but he was not of those who pass. He might disappear 
 for years, but he always came back again, and time made 
 no difference. He was always the same. If help was 
 needed he gave it, and if he needed help he asked for it. 
 Abramovich was a very strong reason for staying in 
 London. . . . The boys would soon be working and the 
 eldest girl was a beauty. The match-makers would be 
 busy with her. Another two years, and the match-mak- 
 ers would find her a rich man who would help them all 
 and put money into a business. That was Jacob's desire, 
 to have a business of his own, for he loathed working 
 for another man. He could not do it for long. Always 
 he ended with a quarrel, perhaps with blows, or he simply 
 walked out and would not return. 
 
 He was a devout Jew and despised Christians, as he 
 despised luxury, pleasure, comfort, not actively nor with 
 any hatred. He simply did not need them. He had lived 
 without them, and he asked nothing of life. He was 
 alive ; that was enough. Passions seized him and he fol- 
 lowed them. Without passion he never moved, never 
 stirred a finger except to keep himself alive. Passion 
 had chosen his wife for him. Golda, the beautiful, was 
 his wife. In her he was bound more firmly to his race 
 and his faith, and there was no need to look beyond. . / 
 He was rooted. She had borne him children, but he had * 
 no more ambition for them than for himself. Leah, the 
 beauty, should wed a rich man, not for ambitious rea- 
 sons, but because, in life, beauty and riches were proper 
 mates. There is a certain orderliness about life, and cer- 
 tain things can only be prevented by an irruption of pas-
 
 i8 MENDEL 
 
 sion. If that happens, then life takes its revenge and 
 becomes hard and bleak, but it is still life, and only a fool 
 will complain. Jacob never complained, and he took his 
 Golda's reproaches in silence, unless she became unjust, 
 and then he silenced her brutally and callously. She 
 bore with him, because she prized his honesty, his stead- 
 fast simplicity, and because she knew that his passion 
 had never wakened a profound answer in herself. She 
 had very slowly been roused to love, which had flowered 
 in her with the birth of her youngest child, in whom she 
 had learned a power of acceptance almost equal to her 
 husband's. Like him, she clung to her race and her faith 
 and never looked beyond. 
 
 In London she found that she was left alone and her 
 life was no longer hemmed in by a menacing world of 
 soldiers and police and peasants, who swore the Jews 
 cheated them and spread terrifying tales of Jewish prac- 
 tices upon Christian children. Christian London was in- 
 different to the Jews, and she could be indifferent to 
 Christian London. She had no curiosity about it and 
 never went above a mile from her house. She mad no at- 
 tempt to learn English, but could not help gleaning a few 
 words from her children as they picked it up at school. 
 The synagogue was the centre of her life, and from it 
 came all the life she cared to have outside her family. She 
 was absorbed in little Mendel, by whom her world was 
 coloured. If he was happy, that was sunshine to her. 
 If he was oppressed and tearful, her sky was overcast. 
 If he was ill, it seemed to her a menace of the end. 
 
 He was a strange child and very slow in growing into 
 a boy. The other children had seemed to shoot into in- 
 dependence almost as soon as they could walk. But 
 Mendel clung to her, would not learn to feed himself, 
 and would not go to sleep at night unless she sang to
 
 LONDON WHERE THE KING LIVES 19 
 
 him and rocked him in the cradle, in which he slept even 
 after he went to school. As long as he could curl up 
 in it he slept in his cradle, and he made her learn as much 
 as she could of an English song which had caught his 
 fancy. It was the only English song she ever knew, 
 and night after night she had to sing it over and over 
 again as she rocked the heavy cradle : 
 
 Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do; 
 I'm half crazy, all for the love of you. 
 
 She had no idea what the words meant, but the boy 
 loved the tune and her funny accent and intonation, and 
 even when she was ill and tired she would sing him to 
 sleep, and then sit brooding over him with her fingers 
 just touching his curly hair. And in her complete ab- 
 sorption in his odd, unchildlike childhood she was per- 
 fectly content, and entirely indifferent to all that happened 
 outside him. Brutal things, terrible things happened, but 
 they never touched the child, and if she could, she hid 
 the knowledge of them from him. 
 
 Abramovich collected a little capital and persuaded 
 Mr. Kiihler to join him in a furrier's business. They 
 were not altogether unsuccessful, and Mr. Kiihler took 
 a whole house in Gun Street and bought a piano, but 
 soon their capital was exhausted and they had given 
 more credit than they were accorded and the business 
 trickled through their ringers. Mr. Kiihler took to his 
 bed, for he could sleep at will and almost indefinitely, 
 and so could avoid seeing poverty once more creeping 
 up like a muddy sea round his wife and children. It 
 had been bad enough when that happened at home, where 
 at the worst there were his relations to help, and there 
 were the potato fields to be despoiled, and, at least, the
 
 20 MENDEL 
 
 children could be happy playing in the roads or by the 
 river, or on the sides of the mountain. But here in Lon- 
 don poverty was black indeed, and there was no one but 
 Abramovich to help, and he was in almost as bad case as 
 himself. Yet astonishingly Abramovich came again and 
 again to the rescue. He was a little squat, ugly man, 
 the stunted product of some obscure Russian ghetto, and 
 he seemed to live by and for his enthusiasm for the 
 Kuhler family. In their presence he glowed, greedily 
 drank in every word that Jacob or Golda said, and was 
 always loud in his praises of the beautiful children. . . . 
 "The sky is dark now," he used to say, "but they will 
 be rich, and they will give you horses and carriages, and 
 Turkey carpets, and footmen, and flowers in the winter, 
 and they will bring English gentlemen to the house and 
 what you want, that you shall have. ..." "I want noth- 
 ing," Jacob would say. "I want nothing. I will work 
 and be my own master. I will not steal or help other 
 men to steal." "You wait," Abramovich would reply. 
 "These children have only to go out into London and 
 all will be given to them." 
 
 Only the eldest girl listened to these conversations, and 
 she used to hold her head high, and her face would go 
 pale as ferociously she followed up the ideas they sug- 
 gested to her. 
 
 But Abramovich could bring no consolation. Jacob 
 would not go back to the stick-polishing, and at last he 
 could bear it no longer, went out and bought a clean 
 collar, clipped his beard, and without a word of farewell, 
 went to America.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 POVERTY 
 
 THEN followed, for Golda, the blackest years of her 
 life. She removed once more to one room in Gun 
 Street, and she and the two boys earned enough to keep 
 body and soul together. She found work in other peo- 
 ple's houses, helped at parties, and when nothing else was 
 available she went to a little restaurant to assist as scul- 
 lery-maid, and stayed after closing-time to scrub the ta- 
 bles and sweep the floor. For this she was given crusts 
 of bread and scraps from the plates. She never had a 
 word from her husband, and she knew she would not 
 hear unless he made money. If he failed again, as of 
 course he would, he would live in silence, solitary, proud, 
 avoiding his fellow-men, who would have nothing to do 
 with him except he made the surrender of dignity which 
 it was impossible for him to make. She would not hear 
 from him, and he would return one day unannounced, 
 without a word, as though he had come from the next 
 street ; and as likely as not he would have given the coat 
 off his back to some one poorer than himself. . . . Jacob 
 was like that. He would give away on an impulse things 
 that it had cost him weeks of saving to acquire. Low 
 as he stood in the world, he seemed always to be looking 
 downwards, as though he could believe in what came 
 up from the depths but not in anything that went beyond 
 
 21
 
 22 MENDEL 
 
 him. Golda could not understand him, but she believed 
 in him absolutely. She knew that he suffered even more 
 than she, and she had learned from him not to complain. 
 The Jews had always suffered. That was made clear in 
 the synagogue, where, in wailing over the captivity in 
 Babylon, Golda found a vent for her own sorrows. She 
 would weep over the sufferings of her race as she wept 
 for those who were dead, her father and her mother, 
 and her father's father and her little brother, on the an- 
 niversary of their death. However poor she might be 
 she had money to buy candles for them, and whatever 
 the cost she kept the observances of her religion. 
 
 So she lived isolated and proud, untouched by the ex- 
 citements her children found in the houses of their 
 friends and in the streets. 
 
 Very wild was the life in the neighbourhood of Gun 
 Street. There were constant feuds between Jews and 
 Christians, battles with fists and sticks and stones. Old 
 Jews were insulted and pelted by Christian youths, and 
 the young Jews would take up their cause. There were 
 violent disputes between landlords and tenants, husbands 
 and wives, prostitutes and their bullies. Any evening, 
 walking along Gun Street, you might hear screaming 
 and growling in one of the little houses. Louder and 
 louder it would grow. Suddenly the male voice would 
 be silent, the female would rise to a shriek, the door 
 would open, and out into the street would be propelled a 
 half-naked woman. She would wail and batter on the 
 door, and, if that were of no avail, she would go to the 
 house of a friend and silence would come again. . . . Or 
 sometimes a door would open and a man would be shot 
 out to lie limp and flabby in the gutter. 
 
 Harry, the second boy, took to this wild life like a 
 duck to water. He practised with dumb-bells and learned
 
 POVERTY 23 
 
 the art of boxing, and so excited Mendel with his feats 
 of strength that he too practised exercises and learned 
 to stand on his hands, and cheerfully allowed his brother 
 to knock him down over and over again in his ambition 
 to learn the elements of defence and the use of the 
 straight left. In vain: his brain was not quick enough, 
 or was too quick. His hands would never obey him in 
 time, but he dreamed of being a strong man, the strong- 
 est man in the world, who by sheer muscle should compel 
 universal admiration and assume authority. 
 
 In the family the child's superiority was acknowl- 
 edged tacitly. He had his way in everything. He wanted 
 such strange things, and was adamant in his whims. If 
 he were not allowed to do as he wished, he lay on the 
 ground and roared until he was humoured; or he would 
 refuse to eat ; or he would go out of the house with the 
 intention of losing himself. As he was known all 
 through the neighbourhood for his beauty that was im- 
 possible. He was an object of pride to the neighbours, 
 and whenever he was found far from home, there was 
 always some one who knew him to take him back. But 
 Golda could not realise this, and she suffered tortures. 
 
 The boy loved the streets and the shops, the markets 
 with their fruit-stalls and fish-barrows, the brilliant col- 
 ours in Petticoat Lane. He would wander drinking in 
 with his eyes colour and beauty, shaking with emotion 
 at the sight of the pretty little girls with their little round 
 faces, their ivory skins, and their brilliant black eyes. 
 Ugliness hurt him not at all. It was the condition of 
 things, the dark chaos out of which flashed beauty. But 
 cruelty could drive him nearly mad, and he would trem- 
 ble with rage and terror at the sight of a woman with 
 a bloody face or a man kicking a horse. 
 
 He had a friend, a Christian boy, named Artie Beech,
 
 24 MENDEL 
 
 who adored him even as Abramovich adored his father. 
 Golda was alarmed by this friendship, thinking no good 
 could come out of the Christians, and she tried to for- 
 bid it, but the boy had his way, and he loved Artie 
 Beech as a child loves a doll or a king his favourite. To- 
 gether the two boys used to creep home from school gaz- 
 ing into the shop windows. One day they saw a brightly 
 coloured advertisement of a beef extract: a picture of a 
 man rending a lion. "It will make you stronger than a 
 lion," said Mendel. "Yes," said Artie, "one drop on the 
 tip of your tongue." "I would be stronger than Harry 
 if I ate a whole bottle," replied Mendel, and they decided 
 to save up to buy the strength-giving elixir. It took them 
 seven weeks to save the price of it. Then with immense 
 excitement they bought the treasure, took it home, and, 
 loathing the taste of it, gulped it down and tossed a but- 
 ton for the right to lick the cork. Feeling rather sick, 
 they gazed at each other with frightened eyes, half ex- 
 pecting to swell so that they would burst their clothes. 
 But nothing happened. Mendel took off his coat and felt 
 his biceps and swore that they had grown. Artie took 
 off his coat : yes, his biceps had grown too. 
 
 They went through the streets with growing confi- 
 dence, and at school they were not afraid. Mendel's 
 new arrogance led him into the only fight he ever had 
 and he was laid low. Aching with humiliation, he 
 shunned Artie Beech and went alone to gaze at the pic- 
 ture of the man rending the lion. It took him a week 
 of hard concentrated thought to realise that the picture 
 and its legend were not to be taken literally, and his close 
 study led him to another and a strangely emotional in- 
 terest in the picture. His eyes would travel up the line 
 of the man's body along his arms to the lion's jaws, and 
 then down its taut back to its paws clutching the ground.
 
 POVERTY 25 
 
 The two lines springing together, the two forms locked, 
 gave an impression of strength, of tremendous impact, 
 which, as the boy gazed, became so violent as to make 
 his head ache. At the same time he began to develop an 
 appetite for this shock, and unconsciously used his eyes 
 so as to obtain it. It would sometimes spring up in him 
 suddenly, without his knowing the cause of it, when he 
 watched his mother sitting with her hands folded on her 
 stomach, or cooking with her hand her big, strong, 
 working hand on a fish or a loaf of bread. 
 
 One day in Bishopsgate, that lordly and splendid thor- 
 oughfare which led from the dark streets to the glitter- 
 ing world, he came on a man kneeling on the pavement 
 with coloured chalks. First of all the man dusted the 
 stones with his cap, and then he laid another cap full 
 of little pieces of chalk by his side, and then he drew and 
 smudged and smudged and drew until a slice of salmon 
 appeared. By the side of the salmon he drew a glass 
 of beer with a curl of froth on it and a little bunch of 
 flowers. On another stone he drew a ship at sea in a 
 storm, a black and green sea, and a brown and black 
 sky. Mendel watched him enthralled. What a life! 
 What a career ! To go out into the streets and make the 
 dull stones lovely with colour! He saw the man look 
 up and down and then lay a penny on the salmon. A 
 fine gentleman passed by and threw down another penny. 
 . . . Oh, certainly, a career ! To make the streets lovely, 
 and immediately to be rewarded! 
 
 From school Mendel stole some chalk and decorated 
 the stones in the yard at Gun Street. He drew a bottle 
 and an onion and a fish, though this he rather despised, 
 because it was so easy. Always he had amused himself 
 with drawing. As a tiny child, the first time his father 
 went to America he drew a picture of a watch to ask
 
 26 MENDEL 
 
 for that to be sent him, and this picture had been kept 
 by his mother. And after that he often drew, but chiefly 
 because it made his father and mother proud of him, 
 and they laughed happily at everything he did. The pave- 
 ment artist filled him with pride and pleasure in the 
 doing of it : and every minute out of school and away 
 from the Rabbi he devoted to drawing. His brothers 
 bought him a box of colours, and he painted imaginary 
 landscapes of rivers and swans and cows and castles. 
 Every picture he made was treasured by his mother. 
 They seemed to her, as they did to himself, perfectly 
 beautiful. He used his water-colours as though they 
 were oils, and laid them on thick, to get as near the 
 pavement artist's colours as possible. At school there 
 were drawing-lessons, but they seemed to have no re- 
 lation to this keen private pleasure of his. 
 
 In the evenings he would lie on the ground in the 
 kitchen and paint until his eyes and his head ached. 
 Sometimes his perpetual, silent absorption would so ex- 
 asperate his brothers that they would kick his paints 
 away and make him get up and talk to them. Then he 
 would curse them with all the rich curses of the Yiddish 
 language, and rush away and hide himself; for days 
 he would live in a state of gloom and dark oppression, 
 feeling dimly aware of a difference between him and them 
 which it was beyond his power to explain. He would 
 try to tell his mother what was the matter with him, 
 but she could not understand. His happiness in paint- 
 ing, the keen delight that used to fill him, were to her 
 compensation enough for her anxiety and the stress and 
 strain of her poverty. 
 
 His little local fame procured her some relief. At 
 school he won a prize accorded by vote for the most 
 popular boy. This had amazed him, for he had very little
 
 POVERTY 27 
 
 traffic with the others, and during playtime used to stand 
 with his back to the wall and his arms folded, staring with 
 unseeing eyes. When his sister asked one of the boys 
 why Mendel had won the vote, the answer she received 
 was: "He can draw." As a result his brothers were 
 helped and his mother was able to get work as a semp- 
 stress. They were relieved from the poverty that 
 paralyses. They could go from day to day and carry 
 their deficit from week to week. They could afford 
 friends, and the visits of friends on a ceremonious 
 basis, and Abramovich was always trying to interest 
 rich men in the wonderful family. 
 
 It was Abramovich who bought Mendel his first box 
 of oil-paints, not so much to give the boy pleasure as 
 with the idea that he might learn to paint portraits from 
 photographs. That, however, was not in the boy's idea. 
 He abandoned his imaginary landscapes and began to 
 paint objects, still in the manner of the pavement artist, 
 thrilled with the discovery that he could more and more 
 exactly reproduce what he saw. He painted a loaf of 
 bread and a cucumber so like the originals that Abramo- 
 vich was wildly excited and rushed off to bring Mr. 
 Jacobson, a Polish Jew, a timber-merchant and very rich, 
 to see the marvel. 
 
 Mendel was unprepared. He sat painting in the 
 kitchen with his mother and Lotte, his younger sister. 
 Abramovich and Mr. Jacobson came in. Jacobson was 
 ruddy, red-haired, with a strange broad face and a 
 flat nose, almost negroid about the nostrils. He wore a 
 frock-coat, a white waistcoat with a cable-chain across 
 it, and rings upon his fingers. Mendel had a horror of 
 him, and was overcome with shyness. Mr. Jacobson put 
 on his spectacles, stared at the picture. "Ye-es," he said. 
 "That bread could be eaten. That cucumber could be
 
 28 MENDEL 
 
 cut and put into the soup. The boy is all right. Eh? 
 Ye-es, and a beautiful boy, too." Mendel writhed. Golda 
 was almost as overcome with shyness as he. In silence 
 she produced all the boy's drawings and pictures and laid 
 them before the visitors. Abramovich was loud in his 
 praises, but not too loud, for he knew that Mr. Jacob- 
 son loved to talk. And indeed it seemed that Mr. Jacob- 
 son would never stop. He stood in the middle of the 
 room and wagged his fat, stumpy hands and held 
 forth : 
 
 "In my country, Mrs. Kiihler, there was once a poor 
 boy. He was always drawing. Give him a piece of 
 paper and a pencil and he would draw anything in the 
 world. The teacher at school had to forbid him to 
 draw, for he would learn nothing at all. So one day 
 the teacher could not find that boy. And where do 
 you think they find him ? Under the table. The teacher 
 pulled him out and found in his hand a piece of paper 
 a piece of paper. The teacher looked down at the 
 piece of paper and fainted away. The boy had drawn 
 a picture of the teacher so like that he fainted away. 
 Well, when the teacher came to himself, he said : 'Boy, 
 did you do that?' 'Yes/ said the boy, 'I did that.' 
 'Then,' said the teacher, 'I will tell you what you must 
 do. You must paint a portrait of the King and take it 
 to the King, and he will give you money, and carriages, 
 and houses, and rings, and watches, for you and your 
 father, and your uncles and all your family.' Ahin and 
 aher. The boy did that. He painted a portrait of the 
 King and he took it to the palace. He went to the 
 front door arid knock, knock, knock. A lady opened 
 the door and she said: 'What do you want, little boy?' 
 'I want to see the King. I have something to show him.' 
 'I am the Queen,' said the lady. 'You can show it to
 
 POVERTY 29 
 
 me.' The boy showed the picture and the Queen fainted 
 away. The servants and the King came running in to 
 see what had happened, and they stood like stone. 'Who 
 did that?' said the King. 'I did,' said the boy. 'I don't 
 believe him,' said the King. 'Shut him up for a day 
 and a night, give him paint and brushes, and we will see 
 what he can do.' Well, they shut the boy up for a day 
 and a night, and in the morning the door was opened 
 and the King and the Queen came in. The King took 
 off his hat and put it on the table and it fell to the ground. 
 That boy had painted a picture of a table so like that the 
 King thought it was a real table and tried to put his 
 hat on it. It is true, and the boy painted the King's 
 portrait every Saturday until he died, and he had houses 
 and money and footmen and statues in his garden, and 
 his father and mother drove in their carriages and wore 
 sables even in the summer. And some day, Mrs. Kiihler, 
 we shall see you in your carriage and this boy painting 
 the portrait of the King." 
 
 The story was received in silence. The emotions it 
 aroused in Golda and her son were so profound, so vio- 
 lent that they were dazed. The tension was relieved 
 by a giggle from Lotte, who knew that kings do not wear 
 hats. Mendel sat staring at his picture, which, try as 
 he would, he could not connect with the story. 
 
 Abramovich said : "I told you so, Mrs. Kiihler. I 
 told you something would come of it." Already he was 
 convinced that Mendel only had to go out into London 
 to make the family's fortune. 
 
 But Golda replied : "There's time enough for that, 
 and don't go putting ideas into the boy's head." 
 
 There was no danger of that. Mendel's was not the 
 kind of head into which ideas are easily put. He was 
 slow of comprehension, powerful in his instincts, and
 
 30 MENDEL 
 
 everything he perceived had to be referred to them. 
 Schgol was to him a perfectly extraneous experience. 
 What he learned there was of so little use to any pur- 
 pose of which he was conscious, and it could not be 
 shared with his mother. To her schooling was the law 
 of the land. A strange force took her boy from her 
 every day and, as it were, imprisoned him. When he 
 was fourteen he would be free. She must endure his 
 captivity as she had learned to endure so much else. 
 
 When Mr. Jacobson had gone she said : "There have 
 been boys like that, and a good boy never forgets his 
 father and mother." 
 
 Mendel looked puzzled and said: "When 7 drew a 
 picture of teacher he caned me." 
 
 "Caned you?" cried Golda, horrified. 
 
 "He often does." 
 
 "Thrashed you!" cried Golda; "on the hands?" 
 
 "No," replied Mendel, "on the seat and the back." 
 
 Golda made him undress, and she gave a gasp of 
 anger when she saw the weals and bruises on his back. 
 "But what did you do?" she cried. 
 
 "I don't know," answered Mendel. This was true. 
 At school he would suddenly find the teacher towering 
 over him in a fury; he would be told to stay behind, 
 and then he would be flogged. He had suffered more 
 from the humiliation than from the pain inflicted. He 
 could never understand why this fury should descend 
 upon him out of his happy dreams. And now as his 
 mother wept over the marks upon his body the suffering 
 in him was released. All the feeling suppressed in him 
 by his inability to understand came tearing out of him 
 and he shook with rage. He could find no words to 
 express these new emotions, which were terrible and 
 frightened him.
 
 POVERTY 31 
 
 Lotte came up and felt the weals on his back with 
 her fingers, and she said: "They don't do that to 
 girls." 
 
 "Be quiet, Lotte," said Golda. "Don't touch him. 
 You will hurt him." And she stood staring in amaze- 
 ment at the boy's back. "That's an awful mess," she 
 said to herself, and her thoughts flew back to men who 
 had been flogged by the soldiers in Austria. But this 
 was England, where everybody was left alone. She 
 could not understand it. She did not know what to do. 
 The boy could not be kept from school, for they would 
 come and drag him to it. There were often dreadful 
 scenes in Gun Street when children were dragged off to 
 school. She made Lotte sit at the table and write: 
 "Please, teacher, you must not beat my son. His back 
 is like a railway-line, and it is not good to beat chil- 
 dren." She could think of no threat which could intimi- 
 date the teacher, no power she could invoke to her aid. 
 Her powerlessness appalled her. She signed the letter 
 and thought she would go to the Rabbi and ask him 
 what she must do. "Yes," she said, "the Rabbi will 
 tell me, and perhaps the Rabbi will write to the teacher 
 also." She could feel the torture in the boy, and she 
 knew that it must be stopped. It was all very well to 
 knock Harry or Issy about. They could put up with 
 any amount of violence. But Mendel was different. 
 With him pain went so deep. That was what made 
 it horrible. He was like a very little child. It was 
 wicked to hurt him. His silence now was almost more 
 than she could bear. 
 
 There came a knock at the door. Lotte went to open 
 it and gave a little scream. It was her father come 
 back from America. He came into the room, not dif- 
 ferent by a hair from when he went away; thinner,
 
 32 MENDEL 
 
 perhaps, a little more haggard and hollow under the 
 eyes, so that the slight squint in his right eye, injured 
 to avoid conscription, was more pronounced. He came in 
 as though he had returned from his day's work, nodded 
 to his wife, and looked at the boy's back. 
 
 "Who has done that?" he asked. 
 
 "At school," replied Golda. "The teacher." 
 
 Jacob took off his coat, rolled up his sleeves, picked 
 up a chair and smashed it on the floor. Mendel put 
 on his shirt and coat again and said : "It is like when 
 you knocked the soldier over with the glass." 
 
 Jacob gave a roar: "Ah, you remember that? Ah! 
 yes. That was when I had the inn near the barracks. 
 He was an officer. Two of them came in. They were 
 drunk, the swine ! The man made for your mother and 
 the officer for your sister. The glasses were big, with 
 a heavy base. I took one of them . . ." 
 
 "And the man spun round three times and fell flat 
 on the floor," said Mendel. 
 
 "Ah! you remember that? Yes. And I lifted him out 
 into the street and left him there in the snow. I was 
 a strong man then. I wanted nothing from them, but 
 if they touch what is mine . . . !" He seized Mendel 
 and lifted him high over his head. He was tremendously 
 excited and could not be got to sit down or to talk of 
 his doings in America or of his voyage. That was his 
 way. He would talk in his own time. His doings would 
 come out piecemeal, over years and years. Now he was 
 entirely absorbed with his fury. He was nearly ill with 
 it and could not eat. Up and down the room he walked, 
 lashing up his rage. Mendel was sent to bed, and until 
 he went to sleep he could hear his father pacing up and 
 down and his mother talking, explaining, entreating. 
 
 Next morning Mendel had almost forgotten the ex-
 
 POVERTY 33 
 
 citement and went to school as usual. In the middle of 
 an arithmetic lesson in walked Jacob, very white, with 
 his head down. He went quickly up to the teacher and 
 spoke to him quietly. The class was stunned into silence. 
 Jacob raised his fist and the teacher went down. Jacob 
 picked him up, shook him, and threw him into a corner. 
 Then he shouted: "You won't touch my boy again!" 
 shook himself like a dog, and walked out, closing the 
 door very quietly. The teacher hurried out and did not 
 return. The class slowly recovered from its astonish- 
 ment, shrill voices grew out of the silence like a strong 
 wind, and books and inkpots began to fly. Soon the 
 walls were streaked and spattered with ink and when it 
 became known that it was Kiihler's father who had done 
 it, Mendel found himself a hero. But he took no pride 
 in it. He was haunted by the teacher's white, terrified 
 face. He had always thought of the teacher as a nice 
 man. The thrashings inflicted on him had always seemed 
 to him impersonal and outside humanity altogether. 
 Yet because it was his father who had thrashed the 
 teacher he accepted it as right. At home his father, 
 even in his absence, was the law, and could do no wrong. 
 The violent scene seemed to Mendel to have nothing 
 to do with himself, and he resented having become the 
 centre of attention. 
 
 The head master hurried in, quelled the class, went 
 on with the lesson where it had been interrupted. Men- 
 del could not attend. He was bewildered by a sudden 
 realisation of life outside himself. It was no longer a 
 procession of events, figures, scenes, colours, shapes, light 
 and darkness passing before his eyes, always charming, 
 sometimes terrifying, but something violent which met 
 another something in himself with a fearful impact. It 
 could hurt him, and he knew that it was merciless, for
 
 34 MENDEL 
 
 the thing in himself that answered to it and rushed 
 out to meet it was wild and knew no mercy either. He 
 had heard of a thing called the maelstrom in the sea, a 
 kind of spout, with whirling sides, down which great 
 ships were sucked. And he felt that he was being sucked 
 down such a spout, in which he could see all that he 
 had ever known, the mountain and the river in Austria, 
 the train, the telegraph wires, towns, buses, faces, the 
 street, the school, Artie Beech, Abramovich, his father. 
 . . . Only his mother stood firm, and from her came a 
 force to counteract that other force which was drag- 
 ging him towards the whirlpool. 
 
 He became conscious of the discomfort in which he 
 lived and was acutely aware of the people by whom he 
 was surrounded.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 PRISON 
 
 THIS time in America Jacob had fared better, and 
 by dint of half-starving himself and sleeping when 
 he had nothing to do, he had managed to save over fifty 
 pounds. Abramovich borrowed another fifty, and once 
 again they set up in business as furriers. They took 
 one of the old Georgian houses off Bishopsgate, started a 
 workshop in the top rooms, and in the lower rooms 
 the Kiihler family lived, with Abramovich in lodgings 
 round the corner. They were only twenty yards from 
 the synagogue and Golda was happy; Jacob too, for 
 in such a house he felt a solid man. And, indeed, amid 
 the extreme poverty with which they were surrounded he 
 could pass for wealthy. He had his name on a brass 
 plate on the door and was always proud when he wrote it 
 on a cheque. He took his eldest son into his workshop 
 to rescue him from the fate of working for another 
 master, and he assumed a patriarchal authority over his 
 family. His sons were never allowed out after half- 
 past nine, and, tall youths though they were, if they 
 crossed his will he thrashed them. The girls were for- 
 bidden to go out alone. They were kept at home to await 
 their fate. 
 
 The eldest boy flung all his ardour into dancing, and 
 was the champion slow waltzer of the neighbourhood. 
 
 35
 
 With egg-shells on his heels to show that he never 
 brought them to the ground, he could keep it up for 
 hours and won many prizes. Harry scorned this po- 
 lite prowess. For him the romance of the streets was 
 irresistible: easy amorous conquests, battles of tongues 
 and fists, visits to the prize-ring, upon which his young 
 ambition centred. A bout between a Jew and a Christian 
 would lead to a free-fight in the audience, for the Jews 
 yelled in Yiddish to their champion, and the British 
 would suspect insults to them or vile instructions, and 
 would try to enforce silence . . . And Harry would 
 bring gruff young men to the house, youths with puffy 
 eyes and swollen or crooked or broken noses, and he 
 would treat them with an enthusiastic deference which 
 found no echo in any member of the family save Men- 
 del, who found the world opened up to him by Harry 
 large and adventurous, like the open sea stretching away 
 and away from the whirlpool. 
 
 There was one extraordinarily nice man whom Harry 
 brought to the house. His name was Kuit, and he had 
 failed as a boxer and had become a thief, a trade in 
 which he was an expert. His talk fascinated Mendel, 
 and indeed the whole family. None could fail to listen 
 when he told of his adventures and his skill. He had 
 begun as a pickpocket, plying his trade in Bishopsgate 
 or the Mile End Road, and to show his expertise he 
 would run his hands over Jacob's pockets without his 
 feeling it, and tell him what they contained. Or he 
 would ask Golda to let him see her purse, and she would 
 grope for it only to find that he had already taken 
 it. He had advanced from picking pockets to the higher 
 forms of theft: plundering hotels or dogging diamond 
 merchants, and he was keenly interested in America.
 
 PRISON 37 
 
 It was through him that the family knew the little that 
 was ever revealed to them of Jacob's doings there. 
 
 Kuit said he would go to America and not return 
 until he had ten thousand pounds, all made by honest 
 theft, for he would only rob the rich, and, indeed, he 
 was most generous with his earnings, and gave Golda 
 many handsome pieces of jewellery, and he lent Jacob 
 money when he badly needed it. That, however, was 
 not Jacob's reason for admitting Kuit to his family cir- 
 cle. He liked the man, was fascinated by him, and 
 thought his morals were his own affair. He knew his 
 race and the poor too well to be squeamish, and never 
 dreamed of extending his authority beyond his family. 
 He warned Harry that if he took to Kuit's practices 
 he would no longer be a son of his, and as the accounts 
 of prison given to Harry by some of his acquaintances 
 were not cheering, Harry preferred not to run any risks. 
 Instead, he devoted himself to training for the glory of 
 the prize-ring. 
 
 For Mendel the moral aspect of Kuit's profession had 
 been settled once and for all by his seeing the Rabbi 
 with his face turned to the wall, in the middle of the 
 most terrible of prayers, filch some pennies from an 
 overcoat. Religion therefore was one thing, life was 
 another, and life included theft. Kuit was the only man 
 who could think of painting apart from money, and it 
 was Kuit who gave him a new box of oil colours, stolen 
 from a studio which he broke into on purpose, and en 
 passant from one rich house in Kensington to another. 
 Kuit used to say : "One thing is true for one man and 
 another for another. And what is true for a man is 
 what he does best. For Harry it is boxing, for Issy it 
 is women and dancing, and for Mr. Kiihler it is being 
 honest. For me it is showing the business thieves that
 
 38 MENDEL 
 
 J 
 
 they cannot have things all their own way, and out- 
 witting the police. Oh yes ! They know me and I know 
 them, but they will never catch me." 
 
 So charming was Mr. Kuit that Jacob could not ob- 
 ject to taking care from time to time of the property 
 that passed through his hands, and the kitchen was often 
 splendid with marble clocks and Oriental china and Shef- 
 field plate, which never looked anything but out of place 
 among the cheap oleographs and the sideboard with its 
 green paper frills round the flashing gilt china that was 
 never used. The kitchen was the living-room of the 
 house, for Jacob only ate when he was hungry, and it 
 was rarely that two sat down to a meal together. 
 
 As often as not Mendel had his paints on the table, 
 and the objects he was painting were not to be moved. 
 He clung to his painting as the only comfort in his 
 distress, and he would frequently work away with his 
 brushes though he could hardly see what he was at, 
 and knew that he was entirely devoid of the feeling that 
 until the discomfort broke out in his soul had never 
 failed him. He dared not look outside his circumstances 
 for comfort, and within them was the most absolute 
 denial of that cherished feeling for loveliness and col- 
 our. Beyond certain streets he never ventured. He felt 
 lost outside the immediate neighbourhood of his home, 
 and only Mr. Kuit reassured him with the confidence 
 with which he spoke of such remote regions as Kensing- 
 ton and Bayswater and Mayfair. The rest clung to the 
 little district where the shops and the language and the 
 smells were Jewish. Yet there, too, Mendel felt lost, 
 though he had an immense reverence for the old Jews, 
 for the Rabbis who pored all day long over their books, 
 and the ancient bearded men who, like his mother, could 
 sit for hours together doing nothing at all. He loved
 
 PRISON 39 
 
 their tragic, wrinkled faces and their steadfast peace, 
 so stark a contrast to the chatter and the wrangling 
 and the harshness that filled his home. 
 
 There were constant rows. Harry upset the house- 
 hold for weeks after his father forbade him to pursue 
 his prize-fighting ambitions. Jacob would not have a 
 son of his making a public show of himself. To that 
 disturbance was added another when Issy began to court, 
 or was courted by, a girl who was thought too poor 
 and base-born. If he was out a minute later than half- 
 past nine Jacob would go out and find him at the corner 
 of the street with the girl in his arms. Issy would be 
 dragged away. Then he would sulk or shout that he was 
 a man, and Jacob would tell him in a cold, furious voice 
 that he could go if he liked, but, if he went, he must 
 never show his face there again. For a time Issy would 
 submit. Poor though the home was, he could not think 
 of leaving it except to make another for himself. But 
 there was no keeping the girl away, and he would be 
 for ever peeping into the street to see if she were there, 
 and if she were he could not keep away from her. 
 
 Leah, the eldest girl, had her courtships too. The 
 match-makers were busy with her, and a number of 
 men, young and old, were brought to view her. She 
 was dressed up to look fine, and Jacob and Golda would 
 sit together to inspect the suitors, and at last they chose 
 a huge, ugly Russian Jew, named Moscowitsch Abra- 
 ham Moscowitsch, a timber-merchant, who had pulled 
 himself up out of the East End and had a house at 
 Hackney. He was a friend of Kuit's and was willing 
 to take the girl without a dowry. Leah hid herself 
 away and wept. It was in vain that Golda, primed by 
 Jacob, told her that she would be rich, and would have 
 servants and carriages, and could buy at the great shops :
 
 she could not forget the Russian's bristling hair and 
 thick lips and coarse, splayed nostrils. The tears were 
 of no avail; the marriage had been offered and accepted. 
 The wedding was fixed, and nothing was spared to make 
 it a social triumph. The bride was decked out in con- 
 ventional English white, with a heavy veil and a bouquet : 
 and very lovely she looked. Jacob wore his first frock- 
 coat and a white linen collar, Golda had a dress made 
 of mauve cashmere, with a bodice heavily adorned with 
 shining beads, and Mendel had a new sailor suit with 
 a mortar-board cap. There were three carriages to drive 
 the party the twenty yards to the synagogue. The wed- 
 ding group was photographed, and a hall was taken for 
 the feast and the dance in the evening. The wedding 
 cost Jacob the savings of many years and more, but he 
 grudged not a penny of it, because he had a rich son-in- 
 law and wished it to be known. There were over fifty 
 guests at the feast. 
 
 Within a week Leah came home again, pale, thin, 
 and shrunken. Moscowitsch had been arrested. He had 
 gone bankrupt and had done "something with his books." 
 
 "Bankrupt!" said Jacob; "bankrupt!" 
 
 He stood in front of his weeping daughter and beat 
 against the air with his clenched fists. She moaned and 
 protested that she would never go back to him. Jacob 
 shook her till her teeth chattered together. 
 
 "You dare talk like that ! He is your husband. You 
 are his wife. It is a misfortune. You should be with 
 the lawyers to find out when you can see him. I am 
 to lose everything because he is unfortunate! A dog 
 will not turn from a man in his misery, and must a 
 woman learn from a dog? You are a soft girl! Go, I 
 say, and find out when you can see him. Was ever
 
 a man so crossed by Fate ! Where I go, there luck takes 
 wings." 
 
 His violence shook Leah out of the dazed misery 
 in which she had come home, having no other idea, no 
 other place to which to go. Jacob was at first for 
 making his daughter wait in her new home until her 
 husband was returned to her. His simple imagination 
 seized on the idea and visualised it. It seemed to him 
 admirable, and Golda had hard work to shake it out 
 of his head. As a piece of unnecessary cruelty he could 
 not realise it, but when it was brought home to him that 
 he would have to pay the rent of the house in Hackney, 
 he yielded and allowed the girl to stay at home. 
 
 Moscowitsch was sentenced to six months' imprison- 
 ment, and a gloom, such as not the darkest days of povr 
 erty had been able to create, descended upon the house. 
 Jacob was ashamed and irritable. He insisted upon 
 the most scrupulous observance of all the rites of his 
 religion, and he forbade Mendel to paint. Painting had 
 nothing to do with religion and he would have none 
 of it. He trampled on Mendel's friendship with Artie 
 Beech. The Christian world of police and judges and 
 the law had destroyed his happiness, and not the faintest 
 smell of Christendom should cross his door. Friction 
 between the father and his two sons was exasperated, 
 and it seemed to Mendel that Hell was let loose. He 
 was nearly of an age to leave school, and he dreamed 
 by the hour of the freedom he would have when he 
 went to work. He would go out early in the morning 
 and come home late in the evening. He would stay in 
 the streets and look at the shops and watch the girls 
 go by. He would go one day out beyond London to 
 see what the world was like there. He would find a 
 place where there were pictures, and he would feast
 
 42 MENDEL 
 
 on them : for when he went to work he would paint 
 no more, since painting would be shed with the miserable 
 childhood that was so fast slipping away from him. 
 
 Yet a worse calamity was to happen. Once again 
 the Christian world of police, law, and judges was to in- 
 vade the home of the Kiihlers, and this time it was 
 Jacob himself who was taken. He was charged with re- 
 ceiving stolen goods. A detective-inspector and two con- 
 stables invaded the house and took possession of an 
 ormolu clock, a number of silver knives, and a brooch 
 which Mr. Kuit had given to Golda. Five of Mr. Kuit's 
 friends had been arrested, but Mr. Kuit himself was not 
 implicated. He paid for the defence of the prisoners 
 and took charge of the Kiihler family, transferred the 
 business into Issy's name, and advanced money to keep 
 it going. He spared neither time nor trouble to try to 
 establish Jacob's innocence, but it looked almost as though 
 some one else was taking an equal amount of trouble 
 to prove his guilt, for every move of Mr. Kuit's was 
 countered, and Jacob himself was so bewildered and 
 enraged that he could not give a coherent answer to 
 the questions put to him. He babbled and raved of an 
 enemy who had done this thing, of a rival who had 
 plotted his ruin, but as he could not give a satisfactory 
 account of the articles found in his possession, his pas- 
 sionate protestations and his fanatical belief in his own 
 honesty were of no avail. From the dock in which he 
 was placed with Mr. Kuit's other friends he delivered a 
 vehement harangue in broken English, not more than 
 ten words of which were intelligible to the judge and 
 jury. The judge was kindly, the jury somnolent. Jacob 
 was the only member of the party with a clean record, 
 and he received the light sentence of eighteen months; 
 the rest had double that term and more. In the Sunday
 
 PRISON 43 
 
 papers they were described as a dangerous gang, and 
 their portraits were drawn like profiles on a coin by an 
 artist whose business it was to make villains look villain- 
 ous for the delectation of the sober millions who tasted 
 the joys of wickedness only in print. Golda was stag- 
 gered by the blank indifference of the world to her hus- 
 band's honesty. His word to her was law, but the 
 judge and the newspapers swept it aside, and he was 
 regarded as one with the wicked men whose crooked 
 dealings had involved the innocent. This was the worst 
 disaster that had ever broken upon her: husband and 
 son-in-law both swept away from her, as it seemed 
 now, in one moment. The sympathy she received from 
 the neighbours touched her profoundly, and she accepted 
 their view that the sudden abstraction of male relatives 
 was a natural calamity, like sickness or fire. Thanks to 
 Mr. Kuit the business would be kept together, and 
 thanks to Abramovich she never lacked company. That 
 faithful friend would come in in the evenings and go 
 over the trial, every moment of which he had heard, 
 and recount every word of Jacob's speech, which to him 
 was a piece of magnificent oratory. "Not a tear was 
 left in my eyes," he said. "Not a throb was left in my 
 heart, and the judge was moved, for his face sank into 
 his hands and I could see that he knew how unjust he 
 must be." And he spent many days ferreting out a vil- 
 lain to be the cause of it all, some inveterate, implacable 
 enemy who had plotted the downfall of the most honest 
 man in London. He fixed on a certain Mr. Rosenthal, 
 who years ago had tried to sell them machines for the 
 business when they had already bought all that were 
 necessary. He was quite sure it was Mr. Rosenthal 
 who had bribed the thieves to hold their tongues, when 
 any one of them could have cleared Jacob in a mo-
 
 44 MENDEL 
 
 ment. And Golda believed that it was Mr. Rosenthal 
 and dreamed of unattainable acts of revenge. 
 
 Mendel used to listen to them talking, and their voices 
 seemed to him to come from very far away. The up- 
 heaval had stunned him, had destroyed his volition and 
 paralysed his dreams. He felt as though a tight band 
 were fixed round his head. He had neither desire nor 
 will. The world could do as it liked with him. If the 
 world could suddenly invade his home and brand its 
 head and lawgiver as thief, then the world was empty 
 and foolish and it did not matter what happened. It 
 amazed him that his brothers and sisters could go about 
 as usual : that Harry could come home and talk of prize- 
 fighters and sit writing to girls, and that Issy could go 
 out to meet his Rosa at the corner of the street. It 
 was astonishing that his mother could still cook ancf 
 they could still eat, and that every morning Harry could 
 go down and open the door to let in the workpeople to 
 clatter up the stairs. . . . And Harry disliked getting out 
 of bed in the morning. In his father's absence he ven- 
 tured to apply his considerable ingenuity to the problem, 
 and rigged up a wire from his bed to the knob of the 
 front-door. Nor was this the only sign of the removal 
 of the centre of authority from the family, for Issy ac- 
 tually brought his girl Rosa to the house and made his 
 mother be pleasant to her. . . . Golda felt that her chil- 
 dren were growing beyond her, and she thought it was 
 time Issy was thinking of getting married, though not 
 to Rosa, whose father was a poor cobbler and could 
 give her no money. 
 
 At regular intervals Golda swallowed down her dread 
 of the busy streets and went to Pentonville, where 
 through the bars of the visitors'-room Jacob received 
 her report and gave his instructions. He decreed against
 
 Rosa, who accordingly was forbidden to enter the house 
 again. He had orders for every one of his children ex- 
 cept Mendel, as to whom Golda did not consult him. 
 Deep in her inmost heart she was in revolt against 
 her husband, for she had begun to see that he had car- 
 ried pride to the point of folly, and all her hopes, all 
 her dreams, all her ambitions were centred upon her 
 darling boy. Her ambitions were not worldly. She 
 knew nothing at all about the world, and did not believe 
 three parts of what she heard of it. Only she longed 
 for him to escape the bitterness and bareness that had 
 been her portion. The boy was so beautiful and could 
 be so gay and could dance so lightly, and would some- 
 times be so tempestuous and masterful. It would be a 
 sin if he were to be cramped over a board or were sent 
 to work in a tailoring shop. She herself had a love of 
 flowers and of moonlight and the stars shining through 
 the smoky sky, and she would sometimes find herself 
 being urged to the use of strange words, which would 
 make Mendel raise his head and cock his ears as though 
 he were listening to the very beat of her heart. To 
 that no one in the world had ever listened, and her 
 life seemed very full and worthy when Mendel in his 
 childish fashion was awake to it. ... Pentonville 
 seemed to suit Jacob. He looked almost fat and said 
 the cocoa was very good. 
 
 The time came for Mendel to leave school and Issy 
 said he had better be taken into the workshop. Harry 
 wanted him in the timber-yard in which he loafed away 
 his days. Abramovich was for getting Mr. Jacobson to 
 take him into his office, for Mr. Jacobson never failed 
 to ask after the boy who painted the pictures. Now it 
 so happened that Mendel had found a bookshop, outside 
 which he had discovered a life of W. P. Frith, R.A.
 
 46 MENDEL 
 
 In daily visits over a period of three weeks he had read 
 it from cover to cover, the story of a poor boy who 
 had become an artist, rising to such fame that he had 
 painted the portrait of the Queen. There it was in 
 print, and must be true. Mr. Jacobson's boy was only 
 in a story, but here it w r as set down in a book, with 
 reproductions of the artist's wonderful pictures "The 
 Railway Station," "Derby Day." The book said they 
 were wonderful. The book spoke with reverence and 
 enthusiasm of pictures and the men who painted them. 
 
 With tremulous excitement he secretly produced his 
 box of paints again, and squeezed out the colours on 
 to the plate he used for a palette. He adored the col- 
 ours and amused himself with painting smooth strips of 
 blue, yellow, green, red, orange, grey, for the sheer de- 
 light of handling the delicious stuff. It was a new pleas- 
 ure, the joy of colours in themselves without reference 
 to any object, or any feeling inside himself except this 
 simple thrilling delight. He could forget everything in 
 it, for it was his first taste of childish glee. Nothing 
 would ever be the same again. Nothing could ever 
 again so oppress and overwhelm him as distasteful and 
 even pleasant things had done in the past. He would be 
 an artist, a wonderful artist, like W. P. Frith, R.A. 
 
 So when he was called into the kitchen one night and 
 they told him he was to go into Mr. Jacobson's office, 
 he looked as though their words had no meaning for 
 him, and he said : 
 
 "I want to be an artist." 
 
 An artist? Nobody knew quite what that meant. 
 Golda thought it meant painting pictures, but she could 
 not imagine a man devoting all his time to it a child's 
 pastime. 
 
 "He means the drawing!" said Abramovich. "I had
 
 PRISON 47 
 
 a friend at home who used to paint the flowers on the 
 cups." 
 
 "I'm going to be an artist," said Mendel. 
 
 "But you've got to make your money like everybody 
 else," replied Issy. 
 
 Mendel retorted with details of what he could remem- 
 ber of the career of his idol. Issy said that was a 
 Christlicher kop. There weren't such things as Jewish 
 artists ; whereon Harry threw in the word "Rubinstein." 
 Asked to explain what he meant, he did not know, but 
 had just remembered the name. 
 
 Abramovich said he thought Rubinstein was a con- 
 ductor at the Opera, and there were Jewish singers 
 and actors. 
 
 "My father," said Harry, "won't hear of that. He 
 won't have a son of his making a public show of him- 
 self." 
 
 Mendel by this time was white in the face, and his 
 eyes were glaring out of his head. He knew that not 
 one of them had understood his meaning, and he felt 
 that Issy was bent on having his way with him. He 
 was in despair at his helplessness, and at last, when 
 he could endure no more, he flung himself down on the 
 floor and howled. Issy lost his temper with him, picked 
 him up, and carried him, kicking and biting, upstairs, 
 and flung him on his bed. 
 
 The subject was dropped for a time, but Mendel re- 
 fused to eat, or to sleep, or to leave the house. He 
 was afraid that if he put his nose outside the door 
 Abramovich would pounce on him and drag him off to 
 Mr. Jacobson's office. 
 
 However, the matter could not be postponed for long, 
 because money was very scarce and the boy must be 
 put into the way of providing for himself. Golda
 
 48 MENDEL 
 
 asked Abramovich to find out what an artist was and 
 how much a week could be made at the trade. Abramo- 
 vich came in one evening with a note-book full of facts 
 and figures. He had read of a picture being sold for 
 tens of thousands of pounds, and this had made a great 
 impression on him. Mendel was called down from the 
 room in which he had exiled himself. 
 
 "Well?" said Abramovich kindly. "So you want to 
 be an artist? But how?" 
 
 "I don't know. I shall paint pictures." 
 
 "But who will feed you? Who will buy you paints, 
 brushes ?" 
 
 "I shall sell my pictures." 
 
 "Where, then? How?" 
 
 "To the shops." 
 
 "Where are the shops? Tell me of any shop near 
 here, for I don't know a single one." 
 
 Again Mendel felt that they were too clever for him, 
 and he was on the brink of another fit of despair when, 
 fortunately for him, Mr. Macalister, a commercial trav- 
 eller in furs, came in. When he was in London he 
 made a point of calling on the Kiihlers, whom he liked, 
 much as he liked strong drink. He was a man of some 
 attainments, a student of Edinburgh, who had found 
 the ordinary walks and the ordinary people of life too 
 tame for his chaotic and vigorous temper, and he went 
 from place to place collecting just such strange people 
 as these Polacks, as he used to call them. He looked 
 for passion in men and women, and accepted it grate- 
 fully and even greedily wherever he found it. ... He 
 had red hair and a complexion like a white-heart cherry, 
 with little twinkling eyes as blue as forget-me-nots. 
 
 He kindled at once to the passion with which Mendel 
 was bursting, stooped over Golda's hand and kissed it
 
 PRISON 49 
 
 for he knew that was how foreigners greeted a lady 
 and then he sat heavily waiting for the situation to be 
 explained to him. Mendel instinctively appealed to him. 
 . . . Oh yes! he knew what an artist was, and some 
 painters had made tidy fortunes, though they were not 
 the best of them. There were Reynolds, and Lawrence, 
 and Raeburn, and Landseer, and some young fellows at / 
 Glasgow, and Michael Angelo a tidy lot, indeed. Never Y 
 a Jew, that he had heard of. 
 
 "I told you so!" said Abramovich. 
 
 Golda showed Mr. Macalister the boy's pictures, and 
 he was genuinely impressed, especially by a picture of 
 three oranges in a basket. 
 
 "It's not," he said, "that they make you want to eat 
 them, as that they make you look at them as you look 
 at oranges. I'll look closer at every orange I see now. 
 That's talent. Yes. That's talent. Aye." 
 
 Mendel was so grateful to him that he forgot the 
 others and began to point out to him how well the or- 
 anges were painted, with all their fleshiness and rotundity 
 brought out. And very soon they were all laughing at 
 him, and that made the meeting happier. 
 
 Mr. Macalister explained that in old days artists used 
 to take boys into their studios, but that now there were 
 Schools of Art where only very talented people could 
 survive. He certainly thought that Mendel ought to 
 be given a chance, and if it were a question of money, 
 he, poor though he was, would be only too glad to help. 
 Golda would not hear of that, and Abramovich pro- 
 tested that, in an unhappy time like this, he regarded 
 himself as the representative of his unfortunate friend. 
 
 The corner was turned. Feeling was now all with 
 Mendel, and he went to bed singing in head and heart: 
 "I'm an artist! I'm an artist! I'm an artist!"
 
 50 MENDEL 
 
 So the ball was set rolling. Jacob, seen behind the 
 bars, raised no objection. He had had time to think, 
 and, to the extent of his capacity, availed himself of it. 
 When he was told that his youngest son wanted to be 
 an artist and wept at the suggestion of anything else, 
 he thought: "Who am I to say 'Yea' or 'Nay'?" and 
 / he said "Yea." "Let the boy have a little happiness 
 while he may, for the Christians are very powerful and 
 will take all that he cherishes from him." 
 
 The question of ways and means was considered, and 
 here Abe Moscowitsch took charge. His business had 
 prospered during his enforced absence, and his bank- 
 ruptcy had been very profitable. He was a decent man, 
 and anxious to make amends to his young wife and 
 her family for the trouble his adventurousness had 
 brought on them. To please her he took a new house 
 with bow-windows and a garage, and to please them 
 he jumped at the opportunity of helping Mendel, and 
 offered to pay his fees at a School of Art. When the 
 boy heard this he ran to his brother-in-law's office and, 
 before all his workmen, flung his arms round his neck and 
 embraced him. 
 
 "That'll do. That'll do," said Moscowitsch. "Don't 
 forget us if you're a rich man before I am." 
 
 "I shall never leave home," said Mendel. "I shall 
 never marry. I shall live all my days with my mother, 
 painting." 
 
 There arose the difficulty that no one had ever heard 
 of a School of Art. Mr. Macalister was deputed to 
 look into the matter. He inquired, and was recom- 
 mended to the Polytechnic as being cheap and good, 
 and the Polytechnic was decided on. 
 
 Mr. Kuit came in at the tail of all this excitement, 
 and added to it by saying that he was just off to Amer-
 
 PRISON 51 
 
 ica, first-class by the Cunard Line, for he was going to 
 start in style, live in style, and come back in style. He 
 was delighted to hear of the brilliant future opening 
 up before Mendel, and told wonderful stories of famous 
 pictures that had been stolen, cut out of their frames and 
 taken away under the very noses of the owners. He was 
 wonderfully overdressed, not loudly or vulgarly, but 
 through his eagerness to be and to look first-class. He 
 produced a pack of cards and showed how he could 
 shuffle them to suit himself, and three times out of five, 
 through the fineness of the touch, he could "spot" a card. 
 He was a wonderful man. The Kiihlers gaped at him, 
 and Moscowitsch, in emulation, was led on to brag of 
 his smartness in business, and how he had thrice burned 
 down his timber-yard and made the insurance people 
 pay up. Yet, though he warmed up as he boasted, he 
 lacked the magic of Mr. Kuit and could not conceal the 
 meanness of his deeds behind their glamour. He lum- 
 bered along like a great bear behind Mr. Kuit, and 
 was vexed because he could not overtake him, and when 
 the glittering little Jew, who seemed more magician than 
 thief, said he would give Mendel a new suit of clothes 
 for his entry into the world of art, Moscowitsch prom- 
 ised to provide a new pair of boots. Mr. Kuit countered 
 with two new hats, Moscowitsch with underclothes. On 
 they went in competition until Mendel was magnificently 
 equipped, and at last Moscowitsch laid two new sov- 
 ereigns on the table and said they were for the boy's 
 pocket-money. Not to be outdone, Mr. Kuit produced a 
 five-pound note and gave it to Golda to be put into the 
 Post Office Savings Bank. 
 
 In her inmost heart Golda was alarmed. For the 
 first time she began to realise the vast powerful London 
 with which she was surrounded. At home, in Austria,
 
 52 MENDEL 
 
 people stole because they were poor, because they were 
 starving. She herself had often sent Harry and Issy 
 out into the market with a sack and a spiked stick with 
 which to pick up potatoes and cabbages and bread, but 
 here the old simplicity was lacking. The swagger and 
 the magnitude of Mr. Kuit's operations and her son-in- 
 law's frauds alarmed her, and she felt that no good 
 could come of it. They belonged to some power which 
 moved too fast for her, and it was being invoked for 
 Mendel, her youngest-born, her treasure. Truly it was a 
 black day that took Jacob from her. Where he was, 
 there was simplicity. Everything was kept in its place 
 when he was in authority. Everything was kept down 
 on the earth. There was the good smell of the earth 
 in all his dealings, all his emotions. Never in him was 
 the easy fantastic excitement of Kuit and Moscowitsch. 
 . . . They were mad. Surely they were mad. Their 
 excitement infected everybody. Golda could feel it creep- 
 ing in her veins like a poison. It came from the world 
 to which these men belonged, the world of prison. That 
 one word expressed it all for Golda. She had only been 
 out into it to go to the prison, and to her that seemed 
 to be the cold empty centre of it all. The bustle and 
 glitter of the streets led to the prison, and she had 
 always to fight to get back into her own life, where 
 things were simple and definite ugly, maybe but clear 
 and actual. . . . And now into that world of hectic ex- 
 citement playing about the prison and about Mendel was 
 to go, to be she knew not what, to learn to play with 
 brushes and colours, to practise tricks which seemed 
 to her not essentially different from Mr. Kuit's sleight 
 with the cards. She was sure no good could come of it ; 
 but for the present the boy had his happiness, and to 
 that she yielded.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 FIRST LOVE 
 
 FOR Mendel every day became romantic, though" he 
 suffered tortures of shyness and used to bolt like a 
 rabbit through the doors of the Polytechnic, rush up- 
 stairs to his easel, and never raise his eyes from it ex- 
 cept to gaze at the objects placed before him. He worked 
 in a frenzy, convinced that it was his business to translate 
 the object on to the canvas. When he had done that 
 he felt that the object had no further existence. It 
 ought to vanish as completely as his consuming interest 
 in it. As a matter of fact, it never did vanish, but it 
 was lost in the praises of Mr. Sivwright, and the young 
 women and old ladies who attended the class. The first 
 task set the class after he joined it was a ginger-beer 
 bottle, of which his rendering was declared to be a 
 marvel, even to the high light on the marble in the neclc 
 of the bottle. 
 
 He was rather small for his age and was almost ab- 
 surdly beautiful, with his curly hair, round Austrian 
 head, and amusing pricked ears. His eyes were set 
 very wide apart. They were blue. His nose was 
 straight, and very slightly tip-tilted, and his lips were as 
 delicately modelled as the petals of a rose. They were 
 always tremulous as he shrank under the vivid impres- 
 sions that poured in on him in bewildering profusion. 
 
 53
 
 54 MENDEL 
 
 He began to grow physically and spiritually, though not 
 at all mentally, and he lived in a state of bewilderment, 
 retaining shrewdness enough to cling to the necessary 
 plain fact that he was at the school to be a success, for 
 if he failed he would sink back into the already detest- 
 able world inhabited by Issy and Harry. 
 
 He created quite a stir at the school. Mr. Sivwright, 
 a Lancashire Scotsman, whose youthful revolt against 
 commerce and grime had carried him in the direction 
 of art only so far as the municipal school, said he was 
 an infant prodigy and made a show of him. To Mendel's 
 disgust Mr. Sivwright assured the other pupils that 
 he was a Pole. This was his first intimation that there 
 was, in the splendid free Christian world, a prejudice 
 against Jews. He was rather shocked and disgusted, 
 for never in his life had he found occasion to call any- 
 thing by other than its right name. It took him weeks 
 to conquer his shyness sufficiently to protest. 
 
 "I am a Jew," he said to Mr. Sivwright. "Why do 
 you call me a Pole?" 
 
 "Well," said Mr. Sivwright, "there's Chopin, you 
 know, and Paderewski, don't you know, and Kosciusko, 
 and the Jews don't stand for anything but money. And, 
 after all, you do come from Poland." 
 
 "But I am a Jew." 
 
 "You don't look it, and there's some swing about 
 being a Pole. There's no swing about being a Jew. 
 It stops dead, you know. I don't know why it is, but 
 it stops dead." 
 
 The words frightened Mendel. How awful it would 
 be if he were to stop dead, to reach the Polytechnic 
 and to go no further! 
 
 He was soon taken beyond the Polytechnic, for Mr. 
 Sivwright led him to the National Gallery and showed
 
 FIRST LOVE 55 
 
 him the treasures there. The boy was at once prostrate 
 before Greuze. Ah! there were softness, tenderness, 
 charm : all that he had lacked and longed for. It was in 
 vain that Mr. Sivwright took him to the Van Eycks and 
 the Teniers and the Franz Hals, striking an attitude and 
 saying: "Fine! Dramatic! That's the real stuff!" The 
 boy would return to his Greuze and pour out on the 
 pretty maidens all the longings for emotion with which 
 he was filled, and the yearning seemed to him to be 
 the irresistible torrent of art which carried those who 
 felt it to the pinnacles of fame. . . . Yet he knew that 
 Mr. Sivwright was a shoddy failure of a man, and he 
 knew that Mr. Sivwright' s ecstasies were forced and had 
 small connection with the pictures before him. He also 
 knew that he had not the least desire to paint like 
 Greuze, but he could not resist the fascination of the 
 pretty maidens and the gush of feeling he had in front 
 of them. The Italians he did not understand and Ve- 
 lasquez and El Greco repelled him. Also, the pictures as 
 a whole excited him so that they ran into each other 
 and he could not extricate them, and Greuze became his 
 stand-by. He felt safe with Greuze. 
 
 Every day he used to go home and tell his mother 
 of the day's doings, from the moment when he mounted 
 the bus in the morning to the time when he walked home 
 in the evening. He gave her minute accounts of all the 
 people in the class, of the cheap restaurant where he 
 had lunch, of the marvels of the streets : the old women 
 selling flowers at Oxford Circus; the gorgeous shop- 
 windows; the illuminated signs and advertisements, 
 green, red, and yellow; the theatres; the posters of the 
 comic men outside the music-halls ; the rich people in their 
 motor-cars; the marvellous ladies in their silks and their 
 furs; the poor men selling matches; the scarlet soldiers
 
 56 MENDEL 
 
 and blue sailors; the big policemen who stopped the 
 traffic with their white hands; the awful, endless deso- 
 lation of Portland Place, with trees actually trees 
 at the end of it; the whirl, the glitter, the roar, the 
 splendour of London. And he used to mimic for her 
 the strange people he saw, the mincing ladies and the 
 lordly shopwalkers, the tittering girls and the men work- 
 ing in the streets. The more excited he was the more 
 depressed was Golda. What was it all for? Why could 
 not people live a decent quiet life? Why was all this 
 whirligig revolving round the prison? . . . But she 
 smiled and laughed and applauded him, and believed 
 him when he said none of the Christians could draw as 
 well as he. 
 
 He began to win prizes. It became his whole object 
 to beat the Christians. What they told him to paint 
 he would paint better than any of them. And by sheer 
 will and concentration he succeeded. 
 
 Mr. Sivwright said there was no holding him, and 
 very soon declared he had nothing more to learn. 
 
 This was taken by Mendel and his family to mean 
 that he was now an artist. In all good faith he es- 
 tablished himself in a room below the workshop at home, 
 called it his studio, and set to work. For a few months 
 he painted apples, fish, oranges, portraits of his mother, 
 brothers, and sisters, and for a time was able to sell 
 them among his acquaintance. He had one or two com- 
 missions for portraits and could always make a few 
 shillings by painting from photographs. But apprecia- 
 tion of art among his own people was limited; he soon 
 came to an end of it, and there was that other world 
 calling to him. Art lay beyond that other world. He 
 j felt sure of that. It lay beyond Mr. Sivwright. If he 
 \ stayed among his own people he would stop dead; for
 
 FIRST LOVE 57 
 
 he knew now that it was true that the Jews stopped 
 dead. 
 
 And then to his horror he stopped. For no reason 
 at all his skill, his enthusiasm, his eagerness left him. 
 He forced himself to paint, transferred innumerable 
 idiotic faces from photographs to cigar-box lids, made 
 his mother neglect her work to sit to him, bribed Lotte 
 to be his model, but hated and loathed everything that 
 he did. He was listless, sometimes feverish, sometimes 
 leaden and cold. Often he thought he was going to 
 die to die before anything had happened, before any- 
 thing had emerged from the chaos of his painful vivid 
 impressions. 
 
 To make things worse, his father came home and said 
 that he would give him six months in which to make 
 his living, and at the end of that time, if he had failed, 
 he would have to go into the workshop. 
 
 He felt hopeless. He went to see Mr. Sivwright and 
 poured out his woes to him, who wrote a letter to Jacob 
 saying that his son was a genius and would be one of 
 the greatest of painters. Jacob said : "What is a genius ? 
 I do not know. I know what a man is, and a man works 
 for his living. In six months, if you can make fifteen 
 shillings a week I will believe in this painting. If not, 
 what is there to believe? What will you do when you 
 are to marry, heh ? Tell me that. Will your little tubes 
 of paint keep a wife, heh? Tell me that." 
 
 Mendel could say nothing. He could do nothing. He 
 gave up even trying to paint, for he might as well have 
 played with mud-pies. He borrowed money from his 
 brothers and prowled about the streets, and went to the 
 National Gallery. Greuze meant nothing to him now. 
 He began to feel, very faintly, the force of Michael 
 Angelo, but the rest only filled him with despair. He
 
 58 MENDEL 
 
 knew nothing nothing at all. He could not even be- 
 gin to see how the pictures were painted. They were 
 miraculous and detestable. ... He went home and com- 
 forted himself with a little picture of some apples on a 
 plate. He had painted it two years before in an ecstasy 
 a thrilling love for the form, the colour, the texture 
 of the fruit and the china. It was good. He knew it 
 was good, but he knew he could do nothing like it now 
 never again, perhaps. 
 
 And how disgusting the streets had become! Such 
 a litter, such a noise, such aimless, ugly people! He 
 could understand his mother's horror of them. Ah ! she 
 never failed him. To her his words were always music, 
 his presence was always light. Half-dead and miserable 
 as he was, she could know and love the aching 'heart 
 of him that lived so furiously behind all the death and 
 the misery and the ashes of young hopes that crusted 
 him. She was like the sky and the trees. She was like 
 the young grass springing and waving so delicately in 
 the wind. She was like the water and the rolling hills. 
 . . . He had discovered these things at Hampstead, 
 whither he had gone out of sheer aimlessness. He had 
 never been in the Tube, and one day, with a shilling bor- 
 rowed from Harry, it seemed appropriate to him to 
 plunge into the bowels of the earth. The oppression 
 of the air, the roar of the train, the flash of the sta- 
 tions as he moved through them, suited his mood, fan- 
 tastic and futile. He got out at Hampstead. 
 
 It was his first sight of the country. He could hardly 
 move at first for emotion. He found himself laughing, 
 and he stooped and touched the grass tenderly, almost 
 timidly, as though he were afraid of hurting it. He was 
 fearful at first of walking on it, but that seemed to him 
 childish, and he strode along with his quick, light-footed
 
 FIRST LOVE 59 
 
 stride and lost himself in the willow groves. He made 
 a posy of wild-flowers and took them back to his mother, 
 carrying them unashamedly in his hand, entirely oblivi- 
 ous of the smiles of the passers-by. He knew he could 
 not tell his mother of the happiness of that day, and 
 the flowers could say more than any words. 
 
 Yet the happiness only made his misery more acute. 
 He suffered terribly from the pious narrowness of his 
 home, the restricted, cramped life of his brothers and 
 sisters, who seemed to him to be stealing such life as 
 they had from the religious observances to which they 
 were bound by their father's rigid will. Prayers at 
 home, prayers in the synagogue : the dreadful monotony 
 of the home, of the talk, of the squabbles : human life 
 forced to be as dull as that of the God who no longer 
 interfered in human life. . . . There was a tragedy in 
 the street. There had been a scandal. A young Rabbi, 
 a gloriously handsome creature, who sang in the syna- 
 gogue, had fallen in love with a little girl of fourteen 
 who lived opposite the Kiihlers. Golda had watched the 
 intrigue from her windows, and she said it was the girl's 
 fault. The Rabbi used to go every day when her father 
 was out and she used to let him in. Jacob wrote to 
 the girl's father, and the Rabbi left his lodgings and 
 took a room over a little restaurant round the corner. 
 He had his dinner and went upstairs and sat up all 
 night singing, in his lovely tenor voice, love songs and 
 religious chants, so sweetly that the neighbours threw 
 their windows open and there was a little crowd of peo- 
 ple in the street listening. And in the morning they 
 found him with his throat cut. 
 
 "It was the girl's fault," said Golda, but Jacob said: 
 "A man should know better than to melt when a little 
 girl practises her eyes on him."
 
 60 MENDEL 
 
 This tragedy relaxed the nervous strain which had 
 been set up in Mendel by his troubles. New forces stirred 
 in him which often made him hectic and light-headed. 
 Women changed their character for him. They were 
 no longer soothing ministrants, but creatures charged 
 with a mysterious, a maddening charm. He trembled 
 at the rustle of their skirts and his eyes were held 
 riveted by their movements. He was suffocated by his 
 new curiosity about them. 
 
 Sometimes, in his despair over his painting and the 
 apparently complete disappearance of his talent, he would 
 fill in the day in his father's workshop, stretching rabbit- 
 skins on a board. Girls and men worked together, busily, 
 quietly, dexterously, for the most part in silence, for 
 they were paid by the piece and were unwilling to waste 
 time. There was a girl who had just been taken into 
 the workshop to learn the trade. She was small and 
 plump and swarthy, but her face was beautiful, the colour 
 of rich old ivory. Her eyes were black and golden 
 from a ruddy tinge in her eyelashes. Her lips were 
 full and pouting, and she had long blue-black hair, which 
 she was always tossing back over her shoulder. When 
 Mendel was there she rarely took her eyes off him, and 
 even when her head was bent he could feel that she was 
 watching him. 
 
 He waited for her one evening, and with his knees 
 almost knocking together he asked if she would come 
 to his studio and let him draw her. With a silly giggle 
 she said she would come, and she ran away before he 
 could get out another word. 
 
 The next evening he waited in his studio for her, but 
 she did not come. So again the next and the next, and 
 it was a whole week before she knocked at the door.
 
 FIRST LOVE 61 
 
 He pulled her in. Neither could speak a word. At last 
 he stammered out: 
 
 "I I haven't got my drawing things ready." 
 
 "I don't mind," she said, and she gave a little shiver. 
 
 "Are you cold?" he asked, and he touched her neck. 
 
 She threw up her head, seemed to fall towards him, 
 and their lips met. 
 
 Thrilling and sweet were the hours they spent, lost 
 in the miracle of desire, finding themselves again, laugh- 
 ing happily, weeping happily, breaking through into the 
 enchanted world, where the few words that either knew 
 had lost their meaning. They were hardly conscious 
 of each other. They knew nothing of each other, and 
 wished to know nothing except the lovely mystery they 
 shared. It was some time IDC fore he even knew her 
 name, or where she lived, or what her people were. 
 She existed for him only in the enchantment she brought 
 into his life, in the release from his burden, in the 
 marvellous free life of the body. Royal he felt, like 
 a king, like a master, and she was a willing slave. From 
 home she would steal good things to eat, and she would 
 sit with shining eyes watching him eat; and then she 
 would wait until he had need of her. . . . Strange, 
 silent, happy hours they spent, free together in the dark 
 little room, free as birds in their nest, happy in warm 
 contact, utterly quiescent, utterly oblivious. . . . 
 
 Soon their silence became oppressive to them, but 
 neither could break it, so far beyond their years and 
 their childish minds was the experience in which they 
 were joined. When the first ecstasy passed and they 
 became conscious and deliberate in their delight, they 
 had unhappy moments, to escape from which he began 
 to draw her. Into this work poured a strong cool pas- 
 sion altogether new to him, a joy so magnificent that
 
 62 MENDEL 
 
 he would forget her altogether. He was tyrannical, and 
 kept her so still that she would almost weep from fa- 
 tigue and boredom. But he was not satisfied until he 
 had drawn every line of her, and had translated her 
 from the world of the body to the world of vision and 
 the spirit. He knew nothing of that. He was only 
 concerned to draw her as he had drawn the ginger-beer 
 bottle at the Polytechnic. Certain parts of her body 
 her little budding breasts and her round arms especially 
 delighted him, and he drew them over and over again. 
 Her head he drew twenty times, and he found a shop in 
 the West End where he could sell every one. And each 
 time he bought her a little present. 
 
 She was not satisfied with that. She wanted to dis- 
 play him to her friends. She wanted him to take her 
 to music-halls and to join the parade of boys and girls. 
 He refused. That would be profanation. He and she 
 had nothing to do with the world. He and she were the 
 world. Outside it was only his drawing. He could not 
 see that she was unable to share it. Did he not draw 
 her? Did he dream of drawing anything but her? . . . 
 To go from that to restaurants, the lascivious pleasantries 
 of the streets, the garish music-halls, was to him un- 
 thinkable. 
 
 She said he cared more for his drawing than for 
 her, and indeed he would sometimes draw for a couple 
 of hours and then kiss her almost absent-mindedly, just 
 as she was going. He was so happy and satisfied and 
 could not imagine her being anything less, or that she 
 might wish to express in music-halls and "fun" what he 
 expressed in his work. 
 
 He felt gloriously confident, and naively told his 
 mother how happy he was. Everything had come back.
 
 FIRST LOVE 63 
 
 He could draw better than ever. He would be a great 
 artist. 
 
 Once more he took to painting in the kitchen. The 
 studio was dedicated to the girl, Sara, who came to 
 him in spite of her disappointment. He had spoiled 
 her for other boys. 
 
 He painted all day long in the kitchen, and his life 
 became ordered and regular. He went for a walk in 
 the morning, then worked all day long until the work- 
 people began to clatter downstairs, when he would pack 
 up his paint-box and run up to the studio to wait for 
 Sara to come tapping softly at his door. 
 
 Golda was overjoyed at his new happiness and the 
 budding manhood in him, but she knew that this spring- 
 time of his youth could not be without a cause. She 
 knew that he was in love and was fearful of conse- 
 quences, and dreaded his being fatally entangled. She 
 kept watch and saw Sara stealthily leave the house hours 
 after the other workpeople had gone. She told Jacob, 
 and Sara was dismissed and forbidden ever to come 
 near the house again.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 A TURNING-POINT 
 
 A T first Mendel hardly noticed the passing of Sara. 
 * ^- He waited anxiously for her to come, but when 
 she never appeared he went on working, only gradually 
 to discover that the first glorious impulse had faded 
 away. However, the habit of regular work was strong 
 with him, and he could go on like a carpenter or a 
 mason or any other good journeyman. But there was 
 no one to buy what he produced, and his father be- 
 gan to talk gloomily and ominously of the workshop. 
 
 "Never!" said Mendel. "If I am not a great artist 
 by the time I am twenty-three I will come and work. 
 If I have done nothing by the time I am twenty-three 
 I shall know that I am no good." 
 
 "I can see no reason," said Jacob, "why you should 
 not work like any other man and paint in your spare 
 time. Issy is a good dancer in his spare time, and 
 Harry is good at the boxing. Why should you not' 
 paint in your spare time and work like an honest man?" 
 
 Mendel turned on his father and rent him. 
 
 "You do not know what work is. You work with 
 your hands. Yes. But do you ever work till your head 
 swims, and your eyes ache because they can see more 
 inside than they can outside? If I cannot paint I shall 
 die. I shall be like a bird that cannot sing, like a 
 
 64
 
 A TURNING-POINT 65 
 
 woman that has no child, like a man that has no strength! 
 I tell you I shall die if I cannot paint." 
 
 "Yes, he will die," said Golda. "He will surely die." 
 
 "He will die of starvation if he goes on painting," 
 replied Jacob. 
 
 "And if you had not been able to sleep you would 
 have died of starvation for all that work ever did for 
 you," cried Golda, convinced that Mendel was speaking 
 the truth. 
 
 Shortly before this crisis Mendel had discovered a 
 further aspect of the Christian world. A good young 
 man from an Oxford settlement had heard of him and 
 had sought him out. This young man's name was Ed- 
 ward Tufnell. He was the son of a rich Northern manu- 
 facturer, and he believed that the cultured classes owed 
 something to the masses. He believed there must be 
 mute, inglorious Miltons in the slums, and that they 
 only needed fertilisation. When, therefore, he heard of 
 the poor boy who sat in his mother's kitchen painting 
 oranges and fish and onions, he was excited to bring the 
 prodigy within reach of culture. He made him attend 
 lectures on poetry and French classes. These duties gave 
 Mendel a good excuse for escaping from home in the 
 evenings, and he attended the classes, but hardly un- 
 derstood a word of what was said. He liked and 
 admired Edward Tufnell, who was very nearly what he 
 imagined a gentleman to be generous and kind, and 
 quick to appreciate the human quality of any fellow- 
 creature, no matter what his outward aspect might be. 
 Edward Tufnell treated Golda exactly as he would have 
 treated an elderly duchess. 
 
 To Edward Tufnell, therefore, Mendel bore his dif- 
 ficulty, and Edward took infinite pains and at last, 
 through his interest with the Bishop of Stepney, pro-
 
 66 MENDEL 
 
 cured him a situation in a stained-glass factory, where 
 he was set to trace cartoons of the Virgin Mary and 
 S. John the Baptist and other figures of whom he had 
 never heard. But, though he had never heard of them, 
 yet he understood that they were figures worthy of re- 
 spect, and it shocked him to hear the workmen say: 
 "Billy, chuck us down another Mary," or "Jack, heave 
 up that there J. C, . . ." He was acutely miserable. 
 To draw without impulse or delight was torture to him, 
 and he could not put pencil to paper without a thrill of 
 eagerness and desire, which was immediately baffled when 
 his pencil had to follow out the conventional lines of 
 the stained-glass windows. And the draughtsmen with 
 whom he worked were empty, foul-mouthed men, who 
 seemed to strive to give the impression that they lived 
 only for the mean pleasures of the flesh. They knew 
 nothing, nothing at all, and he hated them. 
 
 He was paid five shillings a week, and was told that 
 if he behaved himself, by the time he was twenty or 
 twenty-one he would be making thirty shillings a week. 
 Jacob was very pleased with this prospect, and told his 
 unhappy son that he would soon settle down to it, and 
 he even began to upbraid him for not painting in the 
 evenings. Mendel could not touch his brushes. He 
 tried hard to think of himself as an ordinary working 
 boy, and he endeavoured to pursue the pleasures of his 
 kind. He went with Harry to boxing matches and 
 joined him in the raffish pleasures of the streets, which, 
 however, left him weary and disgusted. He had known 
 something truer and finer, and he could not help a little 
 despising Harry, who pursued girls as game, and directly 
 they were kindled and moved towards him he lost interest 
 
 them, and, indeed, was rather horrified by them. 
 
 Strange in contrast was Mendel's relation with Ed-
 
 A TURNING-POINT 67 
 
 ward Tufnell, who was entirely innocent and could see 
 nothing in his protege but a touching sensitiveness to 
 beauty. The urchin with his complete and unoffended 
 knowledge of the life of the gutter was hidden from him. 
 Edward found, and was rejoiced to find, that the boy 
 was sensitive to intellectual beauty and to ideas. He 
 gave him poetry to read Keats and the odes of Milton 
 and was very happy to explain to him the outlines of 
 Christianity and the difference that the coming of Christ 
 had made to the world. He did not aim at making a 
 convert, but only at feeding the boy's appetite for tender- 
 ness and kindness and all fair things. Mendel was striv- 
 ing most loyally to be resigned to his horrible fate, and / 
 the teachings of Christ seemed to fortify his endeavour. 
 When, therefore, he asked if he might read the New 
 Testament, Edward lent it to him without misgiving. 
 
 The result was disastrous. Mendel pored over the 
 book and it seemed to let light into his darkness. He 
 read of the conversion of S. Paul and his own illumina- 
 tion was apparently no less complete. The notion of 
 holding out the other cheek appealed to him, for he felt 
 that the whole world was his enemy. It had insulted him 
 with five shillings a week, and if he were meek it would 
 presently add another five. . . . And then what a prospect 
 it opened up of a world where people loved each other 
 and treated each other kindly and lived without the rasp- 
 ing anger and suspicion and jealousy that filled his home. 
 
 He went to the National Gallery and began to un- 
 derstand the Italians. He would become a Christian and 
 paint Madonnas, mothers suckling their children, with 
 kindly saints like Edward Tufnell looking on. Yet the 
 new spirituality jarred with his life at home and was 
 not strong enough to combat it. That life contained' 
 a quality as essential to him as air. It stank in his
 
 68 MENDEL 
 
 nostrils, but it was the food of his spirit and he could 
 not, though his new enthusiasm bade him do it, senti- 
 mentalise his relation with his mother. Her relation with 
 his father forbade it, and his father cast a shadow over 
 the greater life illuminated by the figure of Christ. 
 Yet because of the pictures he could not abandon the 
 struggle, and he tried to find support by proselytising 
 Harry. That roisterer had begun to find his life very 
 unsatisfying, and he gulped down the new idea simply 
 because it was new. He got drunk on it, refused to 
 go to the synagogue, and performed a number of acts 
 that he thought Christian, as wasting his money on use- 
 less and hideous presents for his mother and sisters. 
 Also he took a delight in talking of the Messiah, and 
 ascribed all the misfortunes of the family to its adher- 
 ence to an exploded faith. 
 
 Jacob was furious. This soft Christian nonsense was 
 revolting to him. 
 
 "Say another word," he shouted, "say another word 
 and I turn you out of the house. Jeshua! I will tell 
 you. In America it has been proved, absolutely proved 
 in a court of law, that this Jeshua was nothing better 
 than a pimp. It was proved by a very learned Rabbi 
 before a Christian judge, and when the judge saw that 
 it was proved he broke down and wept like a woman." 
 
 "I've only your word for it," said Harry, already 
 rather dashed. 
 
 "I tell you I've seen it in print. If you like I will 
 send for the book to America." 
 
 Harry held his peace. That settled it for him, and 
 even Mendel was shaken by the storm his Christian in- 
 clinations had let loose. 
 
 "The Christians are liars," said Jacob. "Every one 
 of them is a liar, and they eat filth."
 
 A TURNING-POINT 69 
 
 There was a passion of belief in his father which 
 Mendel could not but honour, and that other faith, so 
 far as he knew, was held but mildly. It was charming 
 in its results, but its spirit was unsatisfying to him who 
 had been bred on stronger fare. All the same, his atti- 
 tude towards his father's authority was changed. His 
 simple acceptance was shaken, and he was in revolt 
 against the repression of his dearest desires enjoined by 
 it. His tongue was loosed and he began to talk enthusi- 
 astically to Edward Tufnell about his ambitions. 
 
 "I beat them all at the school," he used to say, "and 
 I would never let anybody beat me. I can see more 
 clearly than anybody. I can see colour where they 
 can see none, and shadows where they can see none. And 
 when I have painted them, then they can see them." 
 
 He was entirely unconscious in his egoism, and Ed- 
 ward was so generous a creature that he was not shocked 
 or offended by it. He was a Quaker and as simple in 
 his faith as a peasant, and he was young enough to know 
 how difficult it was for the boy to expose his thoughts. 
 After he had listened to his outpourings he would lead 
 the boy on to talk of his experiences at the stained-glass 
 factory. Mendel had a wonderful gift of vivid narra- 
 tion. Everything was so real to him, he had no reason 
 to respect anything in the outside world unless it com- 
 pelled the homage of his instinct, and in his broken 
 Cockney English he could give the most dramatic de- 
 scriptions of everything he saw and did. When he was 
 engaged upon such tales, helping them out with wonder- 
 ful mimicry, he had no shyness and laid bare his feel- 
 ings as though they were also a part of the external 
 scene. 
 
 Edward knew nothing at all about painting, but he 
 could respond to quality in a human being, and he
 
 70 MENDEL 
 
 recognised that here was no ordinary boy. His first 
 impulse was to rescue him from his surroundings, sup- 
 port him, send him to school. But what a Hell that 
 would be for the sensitive foreigner brought face to 
 face with the ruthless force of an ancient tradition! 
 Edward himself had suffered enough from being such 
 an oddity as a Quaker, but to send this Jew, who had 
 learned nothing and had none but his natural manners, 
 to a Public School would be an act of cruelty. Be- 
 sides, the boy would not hear of being parted from his 
 mother, whom he was never tired of praising. He told 
 Edward quite solemnly that his mother had said things 
 far more beautiful than anything in Keats or Milton 
 and that no book could ever have held anything more 
 moving than her descriptions of the life at home in 
 Austria, with the Jews in their gaberdines with their 
 long curls hanging by their ears, and the foolish peasants 
 in their bright clothes, and the splendid officers who 
 clapped children into prison if they splashed their great 
 shining boots with mud. ... As he listened Edward felt 
 more and more convinced that it was his duty not to 
 allow this rich nature to be swallowed up in the grey 
 squalor of the slums. He had begun his philanthropic 
 work believing that Oxford had much to give to the poor, 
 and he had come in time to realise that the world of 
 which Oxford was the romantic symbol stood sorely in 
 need of much that the poor had to give. Mendel con- 
 firmed and strengthened an impression which had for 
 some time been disturbing Edward's peace of mind. He 
 felt that if he could help the boy he would be translating 
 his perception into action. 
 
 He discussed the matter with his friends, who smiled 
 at his solemnity. "Dear old Edward" was always a 
 joke to them, so seriously did he take the problems with
 
 A TURNING-POINT 71 
 
 which he was faced. They said that, of course, if the 
 boy was a genius he would find his way out and would 
 be all the greater for the struggle. Edward protested 
 that young talent was easily snuffed out, but again they 
 laughed and said that if it were so then it was no great 
 loss. Edward then said that the boy had a fine nature 
 which might easily be crippled by evil circumstances. 
 That they refused to believe either, and Edward made 
 no progress until he told his tale to a rich young Jew 
 who had lately come to the settlement. This young man, 
 Maurice Birnbaum, was at once fired. His father was 
 a member of a committee for aiding young Jews of 
 talent. With Edward he swooped down on the Kuhlers 
 in his motor-car, and Golda showed him all her son's 
 work, from the watch he drew at the age of three to f 
 a study of Sara's breasts. Birnbaum knew no Yiddish, \J 
 and Golda scorned a Jew who could not speak the lan- 
 guage of his race. He was also extremely gauche and 
 talked to her rather in the manner of a parliamentary 
 candidate canvassing for votes. He patronised her and 
 told her that her son had talent, but that she must not 
 expect Fortune to wait on him immediately. "A Chris- 
 tian Jew!" said Golda scornfully when he had gone. 
 "He stinks of money and shell-fish. If you are going 
 to eat pork, eat till the grease runs down your chin." 
 And she had a sudden horror that Mendel might grow 
 like that, all flesh and withered, uneasy spirit. She felt 
 inclined to destroy all the pictures, and when Mendel 
 came in she told him of her visitor and of her alarm, 
 and he reassured her, saying: "What I am I will al- 
 ways be, for without you I am nothing. ..." It was 
 only from Mendel that Golda had such sayings. No 
 one else ever acknowledged in words her quality or her 
 power for sweetness in their lives, and she was terrified
 
 72 MENDEL 
 
 at the thought of his going. The big motor-car would 
 come and take him and all his pictures away, she im- 
 agined, and he would be swept up into glittering circles 
 of which alone he was worthy, though they were quite 
 unworthy of him. And some rich woman would be 
 enraptured with him, and she would take him to her 
 arms and her bed, and he would be lost for ever. Men- 
 del told her it meant nothing, that such people forgot 
 those who were poor and never really helped them, be- 
 cause they could never know what it was like to need 
 help: but he had a premonition that he had done with 
 the stained-glass factory. He took up his brushes again 
 and cleaned them, and chattered gaily of the things he 
 would do when the motor-car fetched him and he was 
 asked to paint the portraits of lords and millionaires. 
 
 Edward inquired further of Birnbaum, and he brought 
 Mendel a paper to fill up, stating his age, circumstances, 
 parentage, etc., etc. He was to send this, with a letter, 
 to Sir Julius Fleischmann, who was a famous financier 
 and connoisseur. Edward drafted a letter, but Mendel 
 found it servile, and wrote as follows: 
 
 DEAR SIR, 
 
 I send you my paper filled up. My father is a poor man 
 and I wish to be a painter. I have won prizes at a school, 
 but I cannot make my living by my art. I am not asking 
 for charity. I am only asking that my work shall be judged. 
 If it is good painting, then let me paint. Give me my oppor- 
 tunity, please. If it is bad painting, then it is no great mat- 
 ter, and I will go on until I can paint well, and then I will 
 show you my work again. If money is given me I will pay 
 every penny of it back when I am as successful as I shall 
 be. I am sending three drawings and two paintings. 
 
 Yours faithfully, 
 
 MENDEL KUHLER.
 
 A TURNING-POINT 73 
 
 This letter was sent enclosed in a parcel made up 
 with trembling hands. He knew that the great moment 
 had come, that at last he had attained the desired con- 
 tact with the outside world. He was wildly elated, and 
 had fantastic and absurd visions of Sir Julius himself 
 driving down at once in his motor-car, knocking at the 
 door and saying : "Does Mr. Mendel Kiihler live here ?" 
 Then he would enter and embrace him and cry: "You 
 are a great artist." And he would turn to Golda and 
 say: "You are the mother of a great artist. You shall 
 no longer live in poverty." And he would sit down and 
 write a cheque for a hundred pounds. The story swelled 
 and swelled like a balloon. It rose and soared aloft with 
 Mendel clinging desperately to it. But every now and- 
 then it came swooping down to earth again, and then 
 Mendel would imagine his drawings and pictures being 
 sent back without a word. Elated or despondent, he 
 passed through life in a dream, and was hardly conscious 
 of his surroundings either at the factory or at home. 
 
 This went on for weeks, during which he composed 
 letters of savage insult to Sir Julius, to Birnbaum, and 
 even to Edward Tufnell, telling them that he needed 
 no help, that he was a Jewish artist and would stay 
 among the Jews, the real Jews, those who kept them- 
 selves to themselves and to the faith of their fathers, and 
 had no truck with the light and frivolous world out- 
 side. But he tore all these letters up, for he knew 
 that the answer he desired would come. 
 
 At last one morning there was a note for him. The 
 secretary of the committee wrote asking him to take 
 more specimens of his work to Mr. Edgar Froitzheim, 
 the famous artist, at his studio in Hampstead. Mendel 
 had never heard of Froitzheim, but it seemed to him 
 an enormous step towards fame to be going to see a
 
 74 MENDEL 
 
 real artist in a real studio. He felt happier, too, at 
 having this intermediary appointed, for he knew that 
 artists always knew each other by instinct and helped 
 each other for the sake of the work they loved. 
 
 Golda made him put on his best clothes, and washed 
 him and brushed his hair. He packed up half a dozen 
 drawings and his picture of the apples, which had been 
 too precious to trust to the post or to Sir Julius, and 
 he set out for Hampstead. To cool his excitement he 
 walked across the Heath, remembering vividly the day 
 when he had first seen it, and again it seemed to him 
 a place of freedom and surpassing loveliness, the sweet, 
 comfortable quality of the grass only accentuated by the 
 bare patches of ground, which were here and there of an 
 amazing colour, purple and brown. A rain-cloud came 
 up on the gusty wind and shed its slanting shower, 
 and its shadow fell on the rounding slopes. He became 
 aware of the form of the Heath beneath its verdure and 
 colour. Between himself and the scene he felt an in- 
 timacy, as though he had known it always and would 
 always know it. It amused him and filled him with a 
 pleasant glee, which, when it passed, left him shy for 
 the encounter with the famous Froitzheim, the arbiter 
 of his immediate fortunes.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 EDGAR FROITZHEIM AND OTHERS 
 
 VERY bright was the brass on Mr. Froitzheim's front 
 door, very bright the face of the smiling maid who 
 opened it. Mendel blushed and stammered inaudibly. 
 
 "Will you come in?" said the maid, "and I will ask 
 Mr. Froitzheim." 
 
 She left Mendel in the hall and disappeared. This 
 was a very large house, marvellously clean and light 
 and airy. The wallpaper and the woodwork were white. 
 On the stairs was a brilliant blue carpet. Through the 
 window at the end of the passage were seen trees and 
 a vast panorama of London roofs, chimneys, steeples, 
 domes under a shifting pall of blue smoke. 
 
 The maid went into the studio and told Mr. Froitzheim 
 that a boy was waiting for him a boy who looked like 
 an Italian. She thought he might be selling images, and 
 he had a package under his arm. Mr. Froitzheim told 
 her to bring the visitor in. He was arranging draperies, 
 Persian and Indian coats, yellow and red and blue, and 
 he did not look up when Mendel was shown in. He was 
 a little dark Jew, neat and dapper in figure and very 
 sprucely dressed, but so Oriental that he looked out of 
 place in Western clothes. But that impression was soon 
 lost in Mendel's awe of the studio. Here was a place 
 where real pictures were painted. There were easels, a 
 
 75
 
 76 MENDEL 
 
 table full of paints, an etching plant, a model's throne, 
 a lay figure, pictures on the walls, stacks of pictures be- 
 hind the door, and the little man standing there, fingering 
 the silks, was a real artist. 
 
 "Hullo, boy!" said Mr. Froitzheim. 
 
 "M-Mendel Kiihler." 
 
 "Something to show me, eh?" 
 
 "Ye-yes. Pictures." 
 
 "What did you say your name was?" 
 
 "Kiihler. Mendel Kiihler." 
 
 "Oh yes. I remember. You know Maurice Birn- 
 baum?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Eh? . . . What do you think of these? Lovely, eh? 
 Bought them in India. You should go there. You don't 
 know what sunlight is until you've been there to the 
 East. Ah, the East ! Fills you with sunlight, opens your 
 eyes to colour. . . . Persian prints ! What do you think 
 of these?" 
 
 He showed Mendel a whole series of exquisite things 
 which moved him so profoundly that he forgot alto- 
 gether why he had come and began to stammer out his 
 rapture, a condition of delight to which Mr. Froitzheim 
 was so unaccustomed that he stepped back and stared at 
 his visitor. There was a glow in the boy's face which 
 gave it a seraphic expression. Mr. Froitzheim tiptoed 
 to the door and called, "Edith! Edith!" And his wife 
 came rustling in. She was a thin little woman with a 
 friendly smile and an air of being only too amiable for 
 a world that needed sadly little of the kindness with 
 which she was bursting. They stood by the door and 
 talked in whispers, and Mendel was brought back to 
 earth by hearing her say, "Poor child!" He knew she 
 meant himself, and his inclination was to fly from the
 
 EDGAR FROITZHEIM AND OTHERS 77 
 
 room, but they barred the door. She came undulat- 
 ing towards him, and she seemed to- him terrifyingly 
 beautiful, the most lovely lady he had ever seen. He 
 thought Mr. Froitzheim must be a very wonderful artist 
 to have such a studio, such a house, and such a woman 
 to live with him. 
 
 Mrs. Froitzheim made him sit down and drew his 
 attention to a bowl of flowers tulips and daffodils. 
 Mendel touched them with his ringers, lovingly caressed 
 the fleshy petals of a tulip. Mrs. Froitzheim went over 
 to her husband and whispered to him, who said : 
 
 "Yes. Yes. It is true. He responds to beauty like 
 a flower to the sun." 
 
 In the centre of the studio was a large picture nearly 
 finished of three children and a rocking-horse, cleverly 
 and realistically painted. Mendel looked at it envi- 
 ously, with a sinking in the pit of his stomach, partly 
 because he could not like it, and partly because he felt 
 how impossible it would be for him to cover so vast a 
 canvas. 
 
 "Like it?" said Mr. Froitzheim, wheeling it about to 
 catch the best light. 
 
 "Yes," said Mendel, horrified at his own insincerity 
 and unhappy at the vague notion possessing him that 
 the picture was too large for him, whose notion of art 
 was concentration upon an object until by some inexplica- 
 ble process it had yielded up its beauty in paint. Com- 
 posing and making pictures he could not understand. 
 
 "Well, well," said Mr. Froitzheim. "So you want to 
 be an artist? Art, as Michael Angelo said, is a music 
 and mystery that very few are privileged to understand. 
 I have been asked by the committee to give my opinion, 
 and I feel that it is a serious responsibility. It is no
 
 78 MENDEL 
 
 light thing to advise a young man to take up an artistic 
 career." 
 
 "Yes, Edgar, that is very true," said his wife, with 
 a wide reassuring smile at Mendel, whom she thought 
 a very charming, very touching little figure, standing 
 there drinking in the words as they fell from Edgar's 
 lips. 
 
 Mr. Froitzheim produced a pair of spectacles and bal- 
 anced them on his nose. 
 
 "It is a serious thing, not only for the sake of the 
 young man but also for Art's sake. The sense of beauty 
 is a dangerous possession. It is like a razor, safe enough 
 when it is sharp, injurious when it is blunted. Your fu- 
 ture, it seems, depends upon my word. I am to say 
 whether I think your work promising enough to justify 
 your being sent to a school. I asked you to bring more 
 of your work to confirm the impression made by what 
 I have already seen." 
 
 He spoke in an alert, sibilant voice so quickly that 
 his words whirled through Mendel's mind and conveyed 
 very little meaning. Only the words "a music and mys- 
 tery" lingered and grew. They were such lovely words, 
 and expressed for him something very living in his ex- 
 perience, something that lay, as he would have said, be- 
 low his heart. He loosened the string of his untidy par- 
 cel and took out the picture of the apples. There were 
 music and mystery in it, and he held it very lovingly 
 as he offered it to Mrs. Froitzheim, much as she had 
 just offered him the bowl of flowers. 
 
 "Very well painted indeed," said she, and Mendel 
 winced. He turned to the artist as to an equal, expecting 
 not so much praise as recognition. Mr. Froitzheim took 
 the picture from him and went near the window. He 
 became more solemn than ever.
 
 EDGAR FROITZHEIM AND OTHERS 79 
 
 "This is much better than the drawings. Have you 
 always painted still-life?" 
 
 "I painted what there was at home." 
 
 "Have you studied the still-life in the galleries? Do 
 you know Fantin-Latour's work?" 
 
 "No," said Mendel blankly. 
 
 "Of course, there is no doubt that you must go on." 
 
 Mendel had never had any doubt of it, and he began 
 to feel more at his ease. That was settled then. There 
 would be no more factory for him. He was to be an 
 artist, a great artist. He knew that Mr. Froitzheim was 
 more excited than he let himself appear. The apples 
 could no more be denied than the sun outside or the 
 flowers on the table. ... He looked with more interest 
 at Mr. Froitzheim's picture. It amused him, much as 
 the drawings in the illustrated papers amused him, and 
 he was pleased with the quality of the paint. He was 
 still alarmed by the hugeness of it. His eyes could not 
 focus it, nor could his mind grasp the conception. 
 
 Mrs. Froitzheim asked him to stay to tea and en- 
 couraged him to talk, and he told her in his vivid childish 
 way about Golda and Issy and Harry and Leah and 
 Lotte. She found him delightfully romantic and told 
 him that he must not be afraid to come again, and that 
 they would be only too glad to help him. Mr. Froitzheim 
 said : 
 
 "I will write to the committee. There is only one 
 school in London, the Detmold. You should begin there 
 next term, six weeks from now. Don't be afraid, work 
 hard, and we will make an artist of you. In time to 
 come we shall be proud of you. I will write to your 
 mother, and one of these days I will give myself the 
 pleasure of calling on her. ... You must come and 
 see me again, and I will take you to see pictures."
 
 8o MENDEL 
 
 Mendel was in too much of a whirl to remember to 
 say "Thank you." He had an enormous reverence for 
 Mr. Froitzheim as a real artist, but as a man he in- 
 stinctively distrusted him. It takes a Jew to catch a 
 Jew, and Mendel scented in Mr. Froitzheim the Jew 
 turned Englishman and prosperous gentleman. And in 
 his childish confidence he was aware of uneasiness in his 
 host, but of course Mr. Froitzheim could easily bear 
 down that impression, though he could not obliterate it. 
 He was an advanced artist and was just settling down 
 after an audacious youth. He had been one of a band 
 of pioneers who had defied the Royal Academy, and he 
 had reached the awkward age in a pioneer's life when he 
 is forced to realise that there are people younger than 
 himself. He believed in his "movement," and wished it 
 to continue on the lines laid down by himself and his 
 friends. To achieve this he deemed it his business to 
 be an influence among the young people and to see that 
 they were properly shepherded into the Detmold, there 
 to learn the gospel according to S. Ingres. He had suf- 
 fered so much from being a Jew, had been tortured with 
 doubts as to whether he were not a mere calculating 
 fantastic, and here in this boy's work he had found a 
 quality which took his mind back to his own early en- 
 thusiasm. That seemed so long ago that he was shocked 
 and unhappy, and hid his feelings behind the solemnity 
 which he had developed to overawe the easy, comfort- 
 able, and well-mannered Englishmen among whom he 
 worked for the cause of art. 
 
 He was the first self -deceiver Mendel had met, and 
 the encounter disturbed him greatly and depressed him 
 not a little, so that he was rather overawed than elated 
 by the prospect in front of him. He felt strangely flung 
 back upon himself, and that this help given to him was
 
 EDGAR FROITZHEIM AND OTHERS 81 
 
 not really help. He was still, as always, utterly alone- 
 with his obscure desperate purpose for sole companion. 
 Nobody knew about that purpose, since he could never 
 define it except in his work, and that to other people was 
 simply something to be looked at with pleasure or indif- 
 ference, as it happened. He used to try and explain 
 it to his mother, and she used to nod her head and say : 
 "Yes. Yes. I understand. That is God. He is behind 
 everybody, though it is given to few to know it. It 
 is given to you, and God has chosen you, as He chose- 
 Samuel. . . . Yes. Yes. God has chosen you." And 
 he found it a relief sometimes to think that God had 
 chosen him, though he was disturbed to find Golda much 
 less moved by that idea than by the letter which Mr. 
 Froitzheim wrote to her, in which he said that her son 
 had a very rare talent, a very beautiful nature, and that 
 a day would come when she would be proud of his fame. 
 
 Yet there were unhappy days of waiting. Jacob would 
 not hear of his leaving the factory until everything was 
 settled, and when Mendel told the foreman he was prob- 
 ably going to leave to be an artist, that worthy drew 
 the most horrible picture of the artist's life as a mixture 
 of debauchery and starvation, and told a story of a friend' 
 of his, a marvellous sculptor, who had come down to 
 carving urns for graves all through the drink and the 
 models ; much better, he said, to stick to a certain income 
 and the saints. 
 
 At last Maurice Birnbaum came in his motor-car. 
 Everything was settled. The fees at the Detmold would 
 be paid as long as the reports were satisfactory, and 
 Mendel would be allowed five shillings a week pocket- 
 money, but he must be well-behaved and clean, and he 
 must read good literature and learn to write good Eng- 
 lish. "I will see to that," said Maurice. "I am to takeb
 
 82 MENDEL 
 
 him now with some of his work to see Sir Julius. His 
 fortune is made, Mrs. Kiihler. Isn't it wonderful? He 
 is a genius. He has the world at his feet. Everything 
 is open to him. I have been to Oxford, Mrs. Kiihler, but 
 I shall never have anything like the opportunities that he 
 will have. It is marvellous to think of his drawing like 
 that in your kitchen." Maurice was really excited. His 
 heart was as full of kindness as a honeycomb of honey, 
 but he had no tact. His words fell on Golda and Men- 
 del like hailstones. They nipped and stung and chilled. 
 Golda looked at Mendel, he at her, and they stood 
 ashamed. "We must hurry," said Maurice. "Sir Julius 
 must not be kept waiting. He is a stickler for punc- 
 tuality." 
 
 As a matter of fact, Maurice only knew Sir Julius 
 officially. His family had never been admitted to the 
 society in which Sir Julius was a power and a light. The 
 entrance to the house of the millionaire was a far greater 
 event to him than it was to Mendel. 
 
 The splendid motor-car rolled through the wonderful 
 crowded streets, Maurice fussing and telling Mendel to 
 take care his parcel did not scratch the paint, and swung 
 up past the Polytechnic into the desolation of Portland 
 Place. At a corner house they stopped. The double door 
 was swung open by two powdered footmen, and by the 
 inner door stood a bald, rubicund butler. Maurice gave 
 his name, told Mendel to wait, and followed the butler up 
 a magnificent marble staircase with an ormolu balus- 
 trade. Mendel was left standing with his parcel, 
 while one of the footmen mounted guard over him. 
 He stood there for a long time, still ashamed, be- 
 wildered, smelling money, money, money, until he reeled. 
 It made him think of Mr. Kuit, who alone of his ac- 
 quaintance could have been at his ease in such splendour.
 
 EDGAR FROITZHEIM AND OTHERS 83 
 
 He felt beggarly, but he was stiffened in his pride. 
 The butler appeared presently and conducted him up- 
 stairs to a vast apartment all crystal and cloth of gold. 
 In the far corner sat a group of people, among whom, 
 in his confusion, Mendel could only distinguish Maurice 
 Birnbaum and a small, wrinkled, bald old man with a 
 beard, whose eyes were quick and black, peering out from 
 under the yellow skull, peering out and taking nothing in. 
 For the purposes of taking in his nose seemed more than 
 sufficient. It was like a beak, like an inverted scoop. 
 And yet his features were not so very different from 
 those of the old men at home whom Mendel reverenced. 
 There was a strange dignity in them, yet not a trace of 
 the fine quality of the old faces he loved that looked so 
 sorrowfully out on the world, and through their eyes and 
 through every line seemed to absorb from the world all 
 its suffering, all its vileness, and to transmute it into 
 strong human beauty. There were some women pres- 
 ent, but they made no impression whatever on Mendel, 
 who was entirely occupied with Sir Julius and with re- 
 sisting the feeling of helplessness with which he was in- 
 spired in his presence. He heard Maurice Birnbaum 
 talking about him, describing his life, his mother's 
 kitchen, the street where he lived, and then he was told 
 to exhibit his pictures. A footman appeared and put out 
 a chair for him, and on this, one after another, he placed 
 his drawings and pictures. Not a word was said. Even 
 the apples were received in silence. Sir Julius gave a 
 grunt and began to talk to one of the women. Maurice 
 gave Mendel to understand that the interview was over, 
 and the poor boy was conducted downstairs by the but- 
 ler. He had not a penny in his pocket and had to walk 
 all the way home with his parcel, which his arms were 
 hardly long enough to hold.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE DETMOLD 
 
 "CALLING into the art school, he was like a leggy colt 
 -* in a new field, very shy of it at first, of the trees 
 in the hedges, of the shadows cast by the trees. This 
 place was very different from the Polytechnic. There 
 were fewer old ladies, and more boys of his own age. 
 The teachers were Professors, and the pupils held them 
 in awe and respect. There were real models in the life- 
 class, male and female, and the students, male and fe- 
 male, worked together. No ginger-beer bottles here, 
 where art was a practical business. The school existed 
 for the purpose of teaching the craft of making pictures, 
 and its law was that the basis of the mystery was 
 drawing. 
 
 Mendel's first attitude towards the other students was 
 that he was there to beat them all. He would swell with 
 eagerness and enthusiasm, and tell himself that he had 
 something that they all lacked. He would watch their 
 movements, their heads bending over their work, their 
 hands scratching away at the paper, and he could see that 
 they had none of them the vigour that was in himself. 
 And by way of showing how much stronger he was he 
 would use his pencil almost as though it were a chisel and 
 his paper a block of stone out of which he was to carve 
 the likeness of the model. He was rudely taken down 
 
 84
 
 THE DETMOLD 85 
 
 when the Professor stood and stared with his melancholy 
 eyes at his production and said : 
 
 "Is that the best you can do?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Why do it?" 
 
 This was a stock phrase of the Professor's, but Mendel 
 did not know that, and he was ashamed and outraged 
 when the class tittered. 
 
 "No," said the Professor. "I don't know what that is. 
 It certainly isn't drawing." And with his pencil he made 
 a lovely easy sketch of the model, alongside Mendel's 
 black, forbidding scrawl. It was a masterly thing and it 
 baffled him, and humiliated him because the Professor 
 moved on to the next pupil without another word. Not 
 another line could Mendel draw that day. He sat staring 
 at the Professor's sketch and at his own drawing, which, 
 while he had been doing it, had meant so much to him, 
 and he still preferred his own. The Professor's drawing 
 had no meaning for him. He could not understand it, 
 except that it was accurate. That he could see, but then 
 his own was accurate too, and true to what he had seen. 
 The light gave the model a distorted shoulder, and he 
 had laboured to render that distortion, which the Pro- 
 fessor had either ignored or had corrected. 
 
 Mendel cut out the Professor's drawing and took it 
 home and copied it over and over again, but still he could 
 not understand it. He was in despair and told Golda he 
 would never learn. 
 
 "I shall never learn to draw, and the Christian kops 
 will all beat me," he said. 
 
 "But they sent you to the school because you can draw. 
 Didn't Mr. Froitzheim say that you could draw!" 
 
 "The Professor looks at me with his gloomy face, like 
 an undertaker asking for the body, and he says : 'I mean
 
 86 MENDEL 
 
 to say, that isn't drawing. It isn't impressionism. I 
 don't know what it is.' ' 
 
 "It can't be a very good school," said Golda. 
 
 "But it is. It is the only school. All the best painters 
 have been there, and Mr. Froitzheim sent his own brother 
 to it. The Professor says I shall never paint a picture if 
 I don't learn to draw, and I can't do it, I can't do it !" 
 
 To console himself he painted hard every evening and 
 regarded the Detmold entirely as a place to which his 
 duty condemned him >a place where he had to learn this 
 strange wizardry called drawing, which he did not under- 
 stand. He went there every day and never spoke to a 
 soul, because he realised that his speech was different 
 from that of the others, and he would not open his mouth 
 until he could speak without betraying himself. He lis- 
 tened carefully to their pronunciation and intonation, and 
 practised to himself in bed and as he walked through the 
 streets. 
 
 So woful were his attempts to emulate the Detmold 
 style of drawing, that at last the Professor asked him if 
 he was doing any work at home. To this Mendel replied 
 eagerly that he was painting a portrait of his mother. 
 
 "Hum," said the Professor. "May I see it?" 
 
 So Mendel brought the picture, and the Professor 
 said : 
 
 "I mean to say, young man, that it wouldn't be a bad 
 thing if you gave up work a little. I don't want to have 
 to send in a bad report, but what can I do? There's 
 something in you, plenty of grit and all that, but you're 
 young, and, I mean to say, you're here to learn what we 
 can teach you. When we've done with you, you can go 
 your own way and be hanged to you. If you want to 
 smudge about with paint and fake what you can't draw, 
 there's the Academy."
 
 THE DETiMOLD 87 
 
 At this awful suggestion Mendel shuddered. He was 
 imbued enough with the Detmold tradition to regard the 
 Academy as Limbo. 
 
 He gave up painting at home, and hurled himself des- 
 perately at the task of producing a drawing that should 
 satisfy the Professor. Towards the end of his first term 
 he succeeded, and had his reward in words of praise in 
 front of the class. 
 
 The Professor had meanwhile taken one of the pupils 
 aside and asked him not to leave the poor little devil so 
 utterly alone. "After all," he said, "the school doesn't 
 exist only for drawing. It has its social side as well, 
 and I don't like to see any one cold-shouldered unless he 
 deserves it. I mean to say, you other fellows have ad- 
 vantages which don't necessarily entitle you to mop up all 
 the good things and leave none for your fellow-crea- 
 tures." 
 
 Mitchell, the pupil, took his homily awkwardly enough, 
 but promised that he would do what he could. He seized 
 his opportunity one day when Mendel at lunch had hor- 
 rified the company by picking up a chicken bone and tear- 
 ing at it with his teeth. Mitchell took him aside and 
 said : 
 
 "I say, Kiihler, old man, you'll excuse my mention- 
 ing it, you know, but it isn't done. I mean, we eat our 
 food with forks." 
 
 Mendel knew what was meant, for at lunch he had 
 been conscious of horrified eyes staring at him and had 
 wished the floor would open and swallow him up. He 
 muttered incoherent words of thanks and wanted to rush 
 away, but Mitchell caught him by the arm and said : 
 
 "I say, we artists must hang together. There aren't 
 many of this crowd who will come to anything, and the
 
 88 MENDEL 
 
 Pro thinks no end of you. Won't you come along and 
 have tea with me and some of the other fellows?" 
 
 Mendel went with him, delighting in the young man's 
 easy, condescending Public School manner and pleas- 
 ant, crisp voice, in which he spoke with an exaggerated 
 emphasis. 
 
 "Gawd!" he said. "It makes me sick to see all the 
 fools and the women wasting their time there, scratching 
 away, while those of us who have any talent and could 
 learn anything are left to flounder along as best we may. 
 Do you smoke?" 
 
 Mendel had never smoked, but he did not like to re- 
 fuse. He took a cigarette, which very soon made him feel 
 sick and giddy. He lurched along with Mitchell until 
 they came to a tea-shop, where they found two other 
 young men whose faces were familiar. 
 
 "I've brought Kiihler," said Mitchell. "He's a genius. 
 This is Weldon, who is also a genius, and Kessler, who 
 can't paint for nuts, and I'm a blame fool, though it's 
 not my fault. My father's a great man. Gawd! what 
 can you do when your own father takes the shine out of 
 you at every turn?" 
 
 They began to talk of pictures and of one Calthrop, 
 who was apparently the greatest painter the world had 
 ever seen and a product of the Detmold. 
 
 "Sells everything he puts his name to," said Kessler. 
 
 "What a man !" said Weldon. "Goes his own way, 
 absolutely believing in his art. If they like it, well and 
 good. If they don't like it, let 'em lump it. He's as 
 often drunk as not, and as for women ... !" 
 
 Weldon and Kessler deserted pictures for women. 
 Mitchell grew more and more glum, while Mendel was 
 still feeling the effects of the cigarette too strongly to be 
 able to take in a word.
 
 THE DETMOLD 89 
 
 "Gawd !" said Mitchell. "There they go, talking away, 
 absolutely incapable of keeping anything clear of women. 
 I can't stand it." 
 
 He dragged Mendel away, leaving his friends to pay 
 the bill; and, as they walked, he explained that he was 
 in love, and could not stand all that bawdy rubbish, and 
 he elaborated a theory that an artist needed to be in love 
 to keep himself alive to the sanctity of the human body, 
 familiarity with which, was apt to breed contempt or an 
 excessive curiosity. Mendel said that he also had been 
 in love, and he gave a vivid account of his raptures with 
 Sara. 
 
 "My God!" cried Mitchell; "you don't mean to say 
 that she came to you a girl like that ?" 
 
 "Yes," said Mendel ; "I was never so happy." 
 
 "But, I say, weren't you afraid?" 
 
 "She was very beautiful." 
 
 Mitchell pondered this for a long time. He seemed 
 to be profoundly shaken. At last he said: 
 
 "But with a girl you loved?" 
 
 "I loved her when she was there." 
 
 "But when she wasn't there?" 
 
 "I was busy painting." 
 
 "I say, you are a corker! If it were Weldon or Kess- 
 ler I should say you were lying." 
 
 "I do not lie," replied Mendel with some heat. "It 
 may have been wrong, but it was good, and I was happier 
 after it. I think I should have gone mad without it, for 
 everything had disappeared everything everything ; 
 and without painting you do not understand how terrible 
 and empty life is to me. I have nothing, you see. I am 
 poor, and my father and mother will always be poor. 
 Their life is hard and beastly, but they do not complain,
 
 90 MENDEL 
 
 and I should not complain if I did not have this other 
 thing that I must do." 
 
 "Well, I'm jolly glad to know you," said Mitchell. 
 "I'm not much of a fellow, but I'd like you to know my 
 people. My father's a great man. He'll stir you up. 
 And you must come along with me and Weldon and 
 Kessler and see life while you're young. Good-bye." 
 
 He shook hands vigorously with Mendel and strode 
 off with his long, raking stride, while Mendel stood glow- 
 ing with the happiness of having found a friend, some 
 one to whom he could talk almost as he talked to Golda : 
 a fine young Englishman, pink and oozing robustious 
 health, ease, refinement, and comfort. He thought with a 
 devoted tenderness of Mitchell's rather absurd round 
 face, with its tip-tilted nose and blinking eyes, its little 
 rosebud of a mouth and plump round chin, on which there 
 was hardly a trace of a beard. . . . "My friend!" 
 thought Mendel, "my friend!" And he gave a leap of 
 joy. It meant for him the end of his loneliness. No 
 longer was he to be the poor, isolated Yiddisher, but 
 he was to move and have his being with these fine young 
 men who were the leading spirits of the school, the guard- 
 ians of the tradition bequeathed to it by the great Cal- 
 throp. . . . Oh! he would learn their way of drawing, 
 he would do it better than any of them. He would be 
 gay with them and wild and merry and young. And 
 all the while secretly he would be working and working, 
 following up that inner purpose until one day he appeared 
 with a picture so wonderful that the Professor would say, 
 , like Mr. Sivwright, that he had nothing more to learn. 
 And because of his wonderful work, everybody would 
 forget that he was a Jew, and he would move freely and 
 easily in that wonderful England which he had begun 
 to perceive behind the fresh young men like Mitchell and
 
 THE DETMOLD 91 
 
 the cool, pretty girls at the school. That England was 
 their inheritance and they seemed hardly aware of it. 
 He would win it by work and by dint of the power that 
 was in him. 
 
 Of the girls at the school he was afraid. He blushed 
 and trembled when any one of them spoke to him, and 
 he never noticed them enough to distinguish one from 
 another, so that they existed only as a vague nuisance and 
 a menace to his happiness. Before Mitchell he was 
 prostrate. He bewildered and confounded that young 
 man with his outpourings, both by word of mouth and 
 by letter. .He had absolutely no reserve, and poured 
 out his thoughts and feelings, his experiences, and 
 Mitchell at last took up a protective attitude towards him 
 and defended him from the detestation which he aroused 
 in the majority of his fellow-students. At the same time 
 Mitchell often felt that of the two he was the greater 
 child, and he would look back upon the years he had 
 spent at school in a rueful and puzzled state of mind, 
 half realising that he had been shoved aside while the 
 stream of life went on, and that now he had to fight his 
 way back into it. While Mendel had been wrestling and 
 struggling, he had been put away in cotton-wool, every 
 difficulty that had cropped up had been met, every deep 
 desire had found its outlet in convention. And now that 
 he had set out to be an artist, here was this Jew with 
 years of hard work behind him, and such a familiarity 
 with his medium that he could do more or less as he 
 liked without being held up by shyness or awkwardness. 
 And it was the same in life. Mendel was abashed by 
 nothing, was ashamed of nothing. Life had many faces. 
 He was prepared to regard them all, and to fit his conduct 
 to every one of them. He was critical, not because he 
 wished to reject anything, but because he must know
 
 92 MENDEL 
 
 the nature of everything before he accepted it. He 
 hated and loved simply and passionately, and if he felt 
 no emotion he never disguised the fact. Whereas 
 Mitchell and the others were so eager to feel the emo- 
 tions which their upbringing had denied that they leaped 
 before they looked and fabricated what they did not feel. 
 Mendel learned from them that life could be pleasant, 
 and they became aware that there were regions of life 
 beyond the fringes of pleasantness. They softened him 
 and he hardened them. They were always together, 
 Mendel, Mitchell, Weldon and Kessler, working steadily 
 enough, but out of working hours kicking up their heels 
 and stampeding through the pleasures of London. . . . 
 Calthrop was the divinity they served. He was a man of 
 genius and had made the Detmold famous. Those, there- 
 fore, who came after him at the school must support him 
 in everything. That was Mitchell's contention, who was 
 by now in full swing of revolt against his Public School 
 training, and in his adoration Mendel followed him, and 
 the others were dragged in their train. Calthrop dressed 
 extravagantly : so did the four. Calthrop smashed fur- 
 niture : so did the four. And as Calthrop drank, embraced 
 women, and sometimes painted outrageously, the four 
 did all these things. 
 
 To Mendel it was Life something new, rich, splendid, 
 and thrilling. He had lived so long cramped over his 
 work that it was almost agony to him to move in this 
 swift stream of incessant excitement. There was no 
 spirit of revolt in him. He could shed some of the out- 
 ward forms of his religion, as to Golda's great distress 
 he did, but against its spirit he could not rebel. That 
 he carried with him everywhere : the bare stubborn faith 
 in man, ground down by life and living in sorrow all his 
 days. Happy he was not, nor did he expect to be so.
 
 THE DETMOLD 93 
 
 He might be happy one day, but he would be miserable 
 the next. Life in him was not greatly concerned with 
 either, but only to have both happiness and misery in full 
 measure. His deepest feelings arose out of his work, the 
 first condition of his existence; they arose out of it and 
 sank back into it again. His work was the visible and tan- 
 gible form of his being, which he hated and loved as it ap- 
 proached or receded from the terrible power that was 
 both beautiful and ugly, and yet something transcending 
 either. . . . And away there in London was the Chris- / 
 tian world of shows. What he was seeking lay beyond V 
 that, and not in the dark Jewishness of his home. There 
 lay the spirit, but the outward and visible form was to 
 be sought yonder, where the lights flared and the women 
 smiled at themselves in mirrors. He hurled himself into 
 the shows of the Christian world in a blind desire to 
 break through them, but always he was flung back, 
 bruised, aching, and weary. 
 
 Day after day he would spend listlessly at home or 
 at the school until seven o'clock came and it was time 
 to go to the Paris Cafe, to sit among the painters and 
 listen to violent talk, talk, talk abuse of successful men, 
 derision of the great masters, mysterious and awful whis- 
 pers of what men were doing in Paris, terrible denuncia- 
 tions of dealers, critics, and the public. 
 
 The cafe was a kind of temple and had its ritual. It 
 was the aim of the painters to "put some life into dear 
 old London." Calthrop had given a lead. He had de- 
 termined that London should be awakened to art, as the 
 writing folk of a past generation had aroused the swollen 
 metropolis to literature and poetry. London should be 
 made aware of its painters as Paris was aware of the 
 Quartier Latin. Bohemia should no longer be the ter- 
 ritory of actresses, horsecopers, and betting touts. The
 
 94 MENDEL 
 
 Paris Cafe therefore became the shrine of Calthrop's 
 personality, and thither every night repaired the artists 
 and their parasites, who saw in the place an avenue to 
 liberty and fame. In the glitter and the excitement, the 
 brilliance, the colour, the women with their painted faces, 
 the white marble-topped tables, the mirrors along the 
 walls, the blue wreathing tobacco-smoke, Calthrop's per- 
 sonality was magnified and concentrated as in a theatre. 
 The cafe without him was Denmark without the Prince, 
 and Mendel found the hours before he came or the eve- 
 nings when he did not come almost insupportable. Yet 
 it was not the man's success or his fame or his notoriety 
 that fascinated the boy, whose instinct went straight to 
 the immense vitality which was the cause of all. Cal- 
 throp was a huge man, dark and glowering. To Mendel 
 he was like a figure out of the Bible like King of Saul, 
 in his black moods and the inarticulate fury that pos- 
 sessed him sometimes ; and when he picked up and hurled 
 a glass at some artist whose face or whose work had 
 offended him, he was very like King Saul hurling the 
 javelin. 
 
 There was always a thrill when he entered the cafe. 
 The buzz would die down. Where would he sit and 
 whom would he speak to? ... It was one of the great- 
 est moments in Mendel's life when one evening Calthrop 
 came sweeping in with his cloak flung round his shoulders 
 and sat opposite him and his three companions and raised 
 a finger and beckoned. 
 
 "He wants you," said Mitchell, pushing Mendel for- 
 ward. 
 
 "Come here, boy," growled Calthrop, stabbing with 
 his pipe-stem in the direction of the seat by his side. 
 "Come here and bring your friends. Bought a drawing 
 of yours this morning. Damn good."
 
 THE DETMOLD 95 
 
 Mitchell, Kessler, and Weldon came and sat at the 
 table, all too overawed to speak. 
 
 "What's your drink, heh?" 
 
 Drinks were ordered. 
 
 "Rotten trade, art," said Calthrop. "Dangerous trade. 
 Drink, women, flattery. Don't drink. Marry, settle 
 down, and your wife'll hate you because you're always 
 about the place. . . . God ! I wish I could be a Catholic. 
 I'd be a monk. . . . My boy, don't get into the habit of 
 doing drawings. They won't look at your pictures if you 
 do, and we want pictures my God, we do ! Everybody 
 paints pictures as though they were for a competition. 
 You've got life to draw from real, stinking life. That's 
 why I have' hopes of you." 
 
 Mendel was so fluttered and flattered that he could 
 only gulp down his drink and blink round the cafe, feel- 
 ing that all eyes were upon him ; and indeed he was at- 
 tracting such attention as had never before been be- 
 stowed on him. A girl at the next table ogled him and 
 smiled. She was with a young man whom the four de- 
 tested and despised. This young man reached over to 
 take a bowl of sugar from their table. To take anything 
 from the great man's table without so much as "By your 
 leave" was sacrilege and was very properly resented. 
 There was a scuffle, the sugar was scattered on the floor, 
 glasses fell crashing down, Mitchell and Weldon hurled 
 themselves on the young man, and the manager came 
 bustling up, crying : "If-a-you-pleess-a-gentlemen." But 
 there was no breaking the melee. A waiter was sent out 
 for the police, and three constables came filing in. One 
 of them seized Mitchell, and Mendel, half mad with drink 
 and excitement, seeing his beloved friend, as he thought, 
 being taken off to prison, leaped on the policeman's back 
 and brought him down. In the confusion Calthrop and
 
 96 MENDEL 
 
 the others slipped away and Mendel was arrested, still 
 fighting like a wild cat, and led off to the police-station, 
 the constable whispering kindly in his ear : "Steady, my 
 boy, steady. A youngster like you should keep clear of 
 the drink." 
 
 The inspector smiled at the extreme youthfulness of 
 the offender, but decided that a taste of the cells would 
 do no harm and that the boy had better be sober before 
 he was sent home. So Mendel had four hours on a hard 
 bench until a constable came in and asked him if he 
 wanted bail. He said "Yes," and, when asked for a 
 name, gave Calthrop's, who presently arrived and saw 
 him liberated, after being told to appear in court next 
 morning at ten o'clock. 
 
 When he reached home he found his mother waiting 
 up for him with wet cloths in case his head should be 
 bad. 
 
 "What now ? What now ?" she asked. 
 
 "I've been in prison." 
 
 "Prison!" Golda flung up her hands and sat down 
 heavily. For her all was lost. It was true then, that, 
 outside in the world, at the other end of it, was always 
 prison, for the just and for the unjust, for the old and 
 for the young, for the innocent and for the guilty. 
 
 He tried to make light of it. For him, too, it was a 
 serious matter. He saw himself figuring in the Sunday 
 papers: "Famous Artist in the Police Court," with his 
 portrait in profile as on a medallion. Birnbaum and Sir 
 Julius would read it. He would be taken away from the 
 Detmold and Edward Tufnell would never speak to him 
 again. He astonished, embarrassed, and delighted Golda 
 by flinging himself in her arms and sobbing out his 
 grief.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 HETTY FINCH 
 
 GOLDA was passing through a very difficult time. 
 Rosa was hotter on the pursuit of Issy than ever. 
 Harry had had a violent quarrel consequent on his reit- 
 erated demand for proof of the judicial destruction of 
 Christianity in America, and at last, like his father, he 
 went out and bought a clean collar and announced his 
 departure for Paris. He went away and not a word had 
 been heard from him. Lotte refused to look at any of the 
 young men brought by the match-makers, and Leah was 
 the only comfortable member of the family, and she made 
 no attempt to conceal her unhapiness with Moscowitsch. 
 She would come on Saturday evenings and go up to her 
 mother's room and fling herself on the bed and cry her 
 heart out, until late in the evening Moscowitsch came to 
 fetch her, when she would go meekly and apparently 
 happily enough. . . . And on the top of all these trou- 
 bles, here was Mendel going to the devil at a gallop. 
 
 Leah's trouble with Moscowitsch was that he would 
 never let her go out without him, and he could very 
 rarely be persuaded to go out at all. As for going away 
 in the summer, he could see no sense in it. He gave 
 his wife a fine house. What more did she want? She 
 had her children to look after. What greater pleasure 
 could she desire ? His life was entirely filled with his 
 
 97
 
 98 MENDEL 
 
 business and his home, and he would not look beyond 
 them. The neighbours went to the seaside? The neigh- 
 bours were fools who lived for ostentation and display. 
 They did not know when they were well off. . . . Mos- 
 cowitsch had a great admiration for his father-in-law as 
 a man who knew what life was and refused to dilute its 
 savour with folly, and he regarded Golda as a perfect 
 type of woman, one who left the management of life to 
 her husband and allowed herself to be absorbed in her 
 duties as a wife and mother. 
 
 But Leah longed to go to the seaside. It became an 
 obsession with her, and, because she could never talk of 
 it, she thought of nothing else. She was sick with envy 
 when she saw the neighbours going off with the children 
 carrying buckets and spades. Secretly she bought her 
 own children buckets and spades, though they were much 
 too small to use them. 
 
 At last, when her worries began to tell on Golda, Leah 
 declared that what she needed was sea air, and offered 
 to take her for a fortnight to Margate, and Golda, anx- 
 ious to escape from the horror of Mendel's coming home 
 night after night drawn and white with dissipation, and 
 from the dread of an explosion from Jacob, consented, 
 and asked if Issy might go, as that Rosa of his was mak- 
 ing him quite ill. 
 
 For Golda, Leah knew that Moscowitsch would do any- 
 thing in the world, and so she procured his consent on 
 condition that he was not expected to accompany them, 
 for he hated the sea, which had made him very ill when 
 he came to England, and he never wished to set eyes on 
 it again. 
 
 Leah already had the address of some lodgings recom- 
 mended to her by a neighbour. She engaged them, and
 
 HETTY FINCH 99= 
 
 on a fine July day went down to Margate by the express 
 with her children, Golda, and Issy. 
 
 The lodgings -were let by a handsome, florid woman 
 with masses of bleached golden hair, a ruddled complex- 
 ion, fat hands covered with cheap rings, plump wrists rat- 
 tling with bracelets, and a full bosom on which brooches 
 gleamed. Leah thought her a very fine woman, and was 
 so fascinated by her that she stayed indoors day after 
 day, helping with the housework and gossiping, so that 
 she never once saw the sea, except from the train as she 
 was leaving. Mrs. Finch was a lady, by birth, but she 
 had been u'nfortunate. She had an uncle in the Army 
 and a cousin in the War Office, and she had lived in Lon- 
 don, in the best part of the town, where, in her best days, 
 she had had her flat. Also she had travelled and had 
 been to Paris and Vienna. But she had been unfortunate 
 in her friends. Leah commiserated her, and, open- 
 mouthed, gulped down all her tales of the gentlemen she 
 had known, while Golda, eager for more information 
 of the glittering world which had swallowed up her Men- 
 del, listened too, fascinated and shuddering. And Leah, 
 to show that she also was a person of some consequence, 
 began to talk of her wonderful brother. She told of the 
 motor-car which had come and whirled him away, of his 
 visit to the millionaire's house, of the fine friends he- 
 was making, of the men and women he knew whose 
 names were in the papers. 
 
 "Every day," she said, "he is out to tea, and every eve- 
 ning he is out at theatres and music-halls and parties and 
 flats and hotels, and his friends are so rich that they pour 
 money into his pockets. He just makes a few lines on a 
 piece of paper and they give him twenty pounds, or he 
 makes up some paint to look like a face or a pineapple 
 and his pockets are full of money."
 
 ioo MENDEL 
 
 "Yes," said Golda uneasily. "He will be very rich." 
 
 "Then next time you come to Margate," said Mrs. 
 Finch, "it will be the Cliftonville, and you'll despise my 
 poor lodgings." 
 
 "Oh no," cried Leah, "for it is like staying with a 
 friend." 
 
 Every day Leah added something to the legend of 
 Mendel, Mrs. Finch urging her on with romances of her 
 own splendid days. But the most eager listener was 
 Hetty, the girl who did the rough work of the house and 
 was never properly dressed until the evening, because, 
 from the moment when she woke up in the morning until 
 after supper, she was kept running hither and thither 
 at Mrs. Finch's commands. She was sufficiently like 
 Mrs. Finch to justify Golda in her supposition that she 
 was that fine woman's daughter, but nothing was ever 
 said in the matter. Hetty did not have her meals with 
 them, and, indeed, there was no evidence that she had 
 any meals. In the evenings she was allowed to go out, 
 and she would come back at half -past ten or so with her 
 big eyes shining and a flush fading from her cheeks and 
 leaving them whiter than ever. Very big were her eyes, 
 very big and pathetic, and her face was a perfect oval. 
 She had rather full lips, always moist and red. During 
 the whole fortnight she never spoke a word except to 
 Issy. Indeed, she avoided Golda and Leah, and she 
 alarmed Issy by what he took to be her forwardness, 
 when she asked him to take her to the theatre. He com- 
 plied with her request, but he was much too frightened 
 of her to speak, and he could think of nothing to say ex- 
 cept to offer to buy her chocolates and cigarettes, which 
 she accepted as though it was the natural thing for him 
 to give her presents. She talked to him about Mendel,
 
 HETTY FINCH 101 
 
 and wanted to know if it was true that he knew lords 
 and had real gentlemen to tea with him in his studio. 
 
 "There's more goes on in his studio than I could tell 
 you," said Issy with a dry, uncomfortable laugh. "Art- 
 ists, you know!" 
 
 "Oh yes! Artists!" said Hetty with a dreamy, wist- 
 ful look in her eyes as she drew in her lower lip with a 
 a slight sucking noise. "I wish I lived in London, I do. 
 Ma used to live in London, but she's too old now to find 
 any one to take her back there. It's dull here. Does 
 your brother ever come to Margate?" 
 
 "No," said Issy. "He'd go to Brighton if he went 
 anywhere. I've got another brother who's gone to 
 Paris." 
 
 "O-oh! Paris! Is he rich too ?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 Issy shut up like an oyster. He could feel the girl 
 probing into him, and he was sorry he had brought her. 
 She was spoiling his fun, the adventures he had prom- 
 ised himself during his holiday from Rosa's indefatigable 
 attentions. Hetty was . too dangerous. He knew that 
 if she got hold of him she would not let go. 
 
 He took her home and never spoke another word to 
 her during the remainder of his visit, and he said to his 
 mother once : 
 
 "That's an awful girl." 
 
 "Worse than Rosa?" asked Golda. 
 
 "Rosa would stay. That girl would be off like a cat 
 on the tiles." 
 
 Golda retorted with a description of Rosa of the same 
 kind, but of a more offensive degree. 
 
 Declaring that they were better for the sea air, and 
 warmly enjoining Mrs. Finch to visit them if ever she 
 should come to London, the party left Margate with shells
 
 102 MENDEL 
 
 and toffee and painted china for their friends and rela- 
 tions, conspicuous among their luggage being the buckets 
 and spades which had never been used. 
 
 As Issy and his mother reached their front-door, he 
 saw Rosa at the corner of the street, and bolted after her, 
 leaving Golda to enter the house and give an account of 
 her doings. Mendel, for once in a way, was at home. 
 He was at work on a picture for a prize competition at 
 the Detmold, as also were Mitchell and Weldon, so that 
 they were living quietly for the time being. Golda gave a 
 glowing description of the beauties of Margate and of 
 Mrs. Finch and her jewellery. She began to talk of 
 Hetty, but for some reason unknown to herself, with a 
 glance at Mendel she stopped, and went off into a vague, 
 <lreamy rhapsody concerning Margate streets. 
 
 "The streets are so clean, so nice, and the air is so 
 strong, and the sky is so clear, with the clouds tumbling 
 across it, little clouds like cotton-wool and grey clouds 
 like blankets, almost as it was in Austria, and I was so 
 happy my heart was full of flowers, almost as it was in 
 Austria." 
 
 "What's the good of talking of Austria?" growled 
 Jacob. "There you had a corner. Here you have a 
 whole house." 
 
 "But I was happy there." 
 
 Issy came in on that and announced that he was going 
 to be married to Rosa. There was half a house vacant 
 in the next street, and he proposed to take it. 
 
 "You shall not," said Jacob. "I will not have that slut 
 in the house. What sort of children will she give you? 
 Squat-browed and bow-legged they will be. How will 
 she look after them? A woman that cannot contain her 
 love for her man will have none for the children. She is
 
 HETTY FINCH 103 
 
 a dirty girl, I tell you, and so is her mother and her 
 father's mother, and her father's father's mother." 
 
 "I don't know who we are, to hold up our heads so 
 high. You are my father, but in some things I cannot 
 obey you. The business is mine . . ." 
 
 "It is not. It is mine!" said Jacob. "It is in your 
 name, but it is mine. It is in your name, but your name 
 is my name, and you shall not give it to a woman like 
 that, who goes smelling about street corners like a dog. 
 Her father has no money, and he never goes to the 
 synagogue." 
 
 "I am not marrying her father. I shall go out of the 
 business, then, and I shall start for myself. Rosa will 
 kill herself if I do not marry her, and I must do it." 
 
 "It is true," said Golda quietly. "I think she will kill 
 herself." 
 
 Jacob stormed on and Issy blustered, until at last he 
 confessed that Rosa had caught him, and that he had to 
 marry her. Jacob threw up his hands and in a shrill 
 voice of icy contempt told Issy exactly what he thought 
 of such marriages; they were nothing but dirt. . . . 
 "Because you have a little dirt on you, must you roll in 
 the mud? You are like dirty dogs, all of you. You, 
 and Harry, and Mendel. I don't know what has come 
 to you in this London. God gave me one woman, and 
 1 have asked for nothing else." 
 
 "You would not let me marry Rosa when I was 
 young." 
 
 Words and feeling ran so high that Mendel, aghast, 
 fled away to his studio, where the sound of the storm 
 reached him. It raged for hours, and ended in Issy fling- 
 ing himself out of the house and slamming the door. 
 
 A week later Rosa was brought to see Golda, and she 
 fawned on her like a dog that has been whipped, sat
 
 104 MENDEL 
 
 gazing at her with her stupid brown eyes, and whim- 
 pered : "I should have killed myself. Yes, I should have 
 killed myself." 
 
 "You would not have been so wicked," said Golda. "It 
 is sinful to throw good fish after bad. Can you cook?'' 
 
 "Yes," said Rosa. "I can make cucumber soup. I 
 could do anything for Issy, he is so strong and hand- 
 some." 
 
 And Golda said to Mendel after the interview: "A 
 woman like that is like a steam bath for a man." 
 
 A few days later Issy and Rosa were married, with- 
 out ceremony, without carriages, or photographs, or 
 guests, or feast. It was a wedding to be ashamed of, but 
 Jacob would not, and Rosa's father could not, lay out a 
 penny on it. The couple took half the house in the next 
 street, and Issy discovered at once that he hated his 
 wife, and was at no pains to conceal it either from her 
 or from his family. 
 
 Mendel was profoundly depressed by this disturbance 
 and plunged downwards, for he still half expected his 
 family to rise with him. He was to make all their for- 
 tunes, but, with the rest of the family, he detested the 
 unhappy Rosa and regarded her as little short of a crim- 
 inal. He was depressed, too, because the summer holi- 
 days were approaching and he would be bereft of his 
 beloved Mitchell, who was going away for three months 
 to the country. He would be left with his family, in 
 whom there was no peace. Why could they not be like 
 the Mitchells and the Weldons, who could live together 
 without quarrels, and could take a happy, humorous in- 
 terest in each other's doings without these devastating 
 passions and cursings and denunciations ? And yet when 
 he thought of the Mitchells and the Weldons and the
 
 HETTY FINCH 105 
 
 Froitzheims, in their charming, comfortable houses, there 
 was something soft and foolish about them all some- 
 times savouring of idolatry, for instance, in the homage 
 Mitchell paid his father, in the assumption that Mrs. 
 Mitchell was a very remarkable woman, whose children 
 could not be expected to be ordinary. More and more 
 did Mendel value his mother, who was content to be just 
 a woman and to live without flattery of any kind, and to 
 accept every one whom she met and to value them as 
 human beings, without regard to their rank, station, pos- 
 sessions, or achievements. Himself she esteemed no 
 more because he was an artist, though he had tried hard 
 to make her give her tribute to that side of his nature. 
 She loved him simply, neither more for his attainments 
 nor less for his doings, that pained her deeply. And that 
 direct human contact he obtained nowhere else, and in 
 no one else could he find it existing so openly and frankly. 
 Yet he loved the follies and pretences of the outside 
 world. He adored theatricality, and among his polite 
 friends there was always some drama towards. It was \f 
 never drowned in incoherent passions, and he himself, 
 among the nice cultured folk, was always a startling 
 dramatic figure. Sometimes they seemed to him all sly- 
 ness and insincerity, and then he loathed them; but that 
 was generally when he had aimed at and failed in some 
 dramatic coup, or when they had encouraged him to talk 
 about himself until he bored them. On the whole, he 
 was successful with them, as he wished to be, easily and 
 without calculation. It was when they made calculation 
 necessary, by feigning an interest that they did not feel, 
 that he was shocked and angry. If anywhere the at- 
 mosphere was such that he could not be frank, then he 
 avoided that place and those people. 
 
 Now he was bored, bored to think of the hot stew-
 
 io6 MENDEL 
 
 ing months with no relief except such as he could find 
 in vagrom adventures from the harsh rigidity of life 
 among his own people. And he was in a strange condi- 
 tion of physical lassitude. Even his ambition was stag- 
 nant. In his work he had only the pleasure of dex- 
 terity. It had no meaning, and contained no delight. 
 When he painted apples or a dead bird or a woman, 
 the result was just apples or a dead bird or a woman. 
 The paint made no difference and the subject was still 
 better than his rendering of it. He was only concerned 
 with technical problems. Fascinated by a gradated sky 
 in a picture in the National Gallery, he practised gradated 
 skies until he could have done them in his sleep. 
 
 And he was tired, tired in body and in soul. Both 
 in his life and in his work he had had to conquer a 
 convention in order to keep his footing in the world of 
 his desire. Just as he had only learned the Detmold 
 style of drawing by a supreme effort of will, so also 
 by a tremendous effort he had learned the rudiments 
 of manners and polite conversation. He had had to 
 overcome his tendency to fall violently in love with 
 every charming person, male or female, he met, and 
 to regard with an aversion equally violent those in whom 
 he found no charm. Such charm must for him be genu- 
 ine and not a matter of tricks, and for this reason he 
 had regarded every person whom he thought of as old 
 with dislike. For him anybody above twenty-five was 
 "old." He still thought he would be made or marred 
 by the time he was twenty-three, but that age seemed 
 immeasurably far off. Long before then, like a thunder- 
 bolt, his full genius would descend upon him and all 
 the world would know his name. He was almost inno- 
 cent of conceit in this. Such, he believed, was the 
 history of genius, and so far nothing had happened to
 
 HETTY FINCH 107 
 
 deny his inward consciousness of his rarity. Relieve 
 the pressure of circumstance and he soared upwards. 
 . . . There was a queer, uncomfortable pleasure in such 
 thoughts and dreams and in imagining a fatality that 
 should drag him down and down to Issy's level and lower. 
 There was a sickening fascination in picturing to him- 
 self a descent as swift and irresistible as his upward 
 flight. Yet dreary were the hours of waiting for the 
 impetus that had once or twice so freely and so strongly 
 moved in him. Sick with waiting, he would work in 
 a fury to master trick after trick and difficulty after 
 difficulty in painting, so as to be ready when the time 
 came. All the cunning and wariness of his race welled 
 up in him as he prepared deliberately, slowly, patiently 
 for his opportunity. 
 
 One afternoon, as Golda was sleeping in her kitchen, 
 she was awakened by a knock at the door. Going to 
 open it, she found Hetty Finch waiting there, neatly clad 
 in a brown tailor-made coat and skirt, very smart, with 
 a trim little feathered hat on her head. Golda's thoughts 
 flew to Mendel, and her first inclination was to slam 
 the door in Hetty's face, but, remembering that the boy 
 was out, she admitted her. 
 
 Hetty followed Golda into the kitchen and stood 
 looking round it with obvious disappointment. She had 
 not imagined the Kiihlers to be so poor. 
 
 "I promised Ma I would call," she said, taking the 
 chair which Golda dusted for her. 
 
 "And how is your Ma?" asked Golda. 
 
 "She's given up the house and gone into a hotel 
 as manageress," replied Hetty, lying as usual, for her 
 mother had been sold up and had taken a place as 
 barmaid in a tavern. "And I've come to London to
 
 io8 MENDEL 
 
 earn my living. Ma gave me fourteen shillings, and 
 that was all she could do for me. Still, I'm off her 
 hands now." 
 
 Golda asked her what she was going to do, and she 
 said she thought of going into service until she had 
 had a look round. Where was she living? She had 
 taken a room with some friends, lodgers of Ma's, off 
 Stepney Green. 
 
 Conversation was lifeless and desultory until Issy 
 came into the room, when she brightened up, but he 
 was overcome with his old terror of the girl and soon 
 hurried away. Then she noticed the pictures on the 
 wall and asked if they were Mendel's. Golda refused 
 flatly to talk about them, but Hetty persisted and would 
 talk of nothing else. Jacob came in and she made him 
 talk about Mendel, and she made herself so charming 
 to him and flattered his simple vanity so grossly that 
 presently Golda was staggered by the sight of him mak- 
 ing tea with his own hands and pouring it out for the 
 visitor. 
 
 "Yes," said Jacob, "the boy did all those before he 
 was fourteen. He will get on, that boy. He is bound 
 to get on, but I shall not live to see him in his glory." 
 
 "I think they're lovely," said Hetty, sipping her tea. 
 And she went on chattering vivaciously until Jacob was 
 called away to the workshop, when once again con- 
 versation became lifeless and desultory. Golda made 
 one excuse after another to try to get rid of her, but 
 Hetty would not budge. At last there came the sound, 
 of Mendel's key in the door. Golda bustled out of the 
 room and whispered to him: 
 
 "You must not come in. I have visitors and there 
 are letters waiting for you upstairs." 
 
 But Mendel had seen a girl sitting in the kitchen and
 
 HETTY FINCH 109 
 
 he wanted to know whether she was pretty or not. She 
 turned and he saw that she was charmingly pretty. He 
 brushed by his mother. He felt at once that he had made 
 a good impression, and, indeed, all Hetty's dreams and 
 fancies were more than realised, though she was a little 
 affronted and disappointed by the poorness of his clothes. 
 
 "It is Hetty Finch," said Golda, "from Margate." 
 
 Mendel had had Issy's account of Hetty and he was 
 on his guard at once. 
 
 "Yes. I've come to live in London," said she. 
 
 "I've never lived out of it," he answered. 
 
 "I thought perhaps, as you know so many people, 
 you could help me to find some work. There must be 
 room somewhere in London for poor little me." 
 
 "I'll see about it," said Mendel, taking note of her 
 features and figure, and rather upset to find himself so 
 little excited by her. Issy had given him to imagine 
 a dashing, overwhelming woman. He only felt vaguely 
 sorry for Hetty and a desire to stroke her, though he 
 knew her at once for what she was, and how she was 
 drinking in the strongly developed male in him. For 
 the first time he felt cool and detached in the presence 
 of a woman : a deliciously grown-up sensation, and he 
 wanted more of it. 
 
 She soon said she must go^ and in Golda's hearing 
 he promised to write to her, but when he took her to 
 the door he asked her to come to his studio, and she 
 said she would come the next day.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE QUINTETTE 
 
 HE had more of the deliciously grown-up sensation 
 the next day, when Hetty came to see him. She 
 was something new. The girls of the streets he knew, 
 and unattainably above them were the girls at the school 
 and his friends' sisters, whom he called "top-knots," be- 
 cause of the way they did their hair. The "top-knots" 
 were hardly female at all to him, so remote were they, 
 so entirely unapproachable; utterly different from the 
 girls of the streets, who were so accessible that he had 
 but to hold out his arms to find one of them, as if 
 by magic, in his grasp. And now Hetty was different 
 again. 
 
 "You are cosy up here," she said, moving at once 
 to the only comfortable chair and curling up in it. "Your 
 sister told me about you." 
 
 "Leah? What lies did she tell you?" 
 
 "Well, I knew it wasn't all true, about the money 
 you were making, because you wouldn't live here if it 
 was true, would you? But I suppose some of your 
 friends make a lot of money." 
 
 "They're rich, some of them," replied Mendel, aghast 
 to find himself thinking coldly of his friends in terms 
 of money, his mind rushing swiftly between the two 
 
 no
 
 THE QUINTETTE ill 
 
 poles of his father and Sir Julius. "Yes. There's plenty 
 of money in London." 
 
 "That's what Ma said when she gave me the fourteen 
 shillings. She said a girl with eyes like mine had no 
 need to go short in London." Hetty raised her eyes 
 and looked full at him, who met her stare boldly and 
 yet with some alarm, finding himself acting a part. 
 
 Hetty was flattering him by regarding him as the 
 possessor of a key to the wealth of London, and in 
 spite of himself he could not help accepting the role. 
 She had touched an element of his character of which 
 till then he had been unconscious. The knave in him 
 sprang into being and thrust all his other qualities aside. 
 He began to boast of his success and to swagger about 
 the luxury and immorality of London life, though it was 
 not all braggadocio, but also a kindly desire to make 
 Hetty happy by talking to her of the things that interested 
 her. 
 
 He told her about Calthrop and the Paris Cafe, and 
 Maurice Birnbaum and his motor-car and richly fur- 
 nished flat in Westminster, and a Lord's son who was 
 at the Detmold, and Mitchell, whose father was a great 
 man. And all the time, as he talked, he was astonished 
 at the sound of his own voice, so different did it sound. 
 
 Hetty wriggled with pleasure in her chair and pouted 
 up her lips. Presently she said her hat made her head 
 ache, and she took it off and stretched out her arms 
 and said : 
 
 "No more pots and pans for me! I do think you're 
 lovely. It's just like a story. I call that real fun. Not 
 like Margate. . . . Do you think I could get work as 
 a model, or do you have to be slap-up?" 
 
 Mendel thought of the drabs who posed and he could 
 not help smiling.
 
 112 MENDEL 
 
 "I could only tell by your figure, though your face 
 is all right." 
 
 "Do you think I'm pretty?" she asked. 
 
 "Very." 
 
 "I'll show you my figure, if you like." 
 
 "All right, I'll light the gas-stove in the bedroom. 
 It's a little cold in here." 
 
 He showed her into the bedroom, and when she was 
 ready she called to him. 
 
 She was beautifully made, but she looked so foolish 
 with her anxiety to please him that he could take hardly 
 any interest in her, and he was distressed, too, because 
 the only background he could give her consisted of his 
 new knavish thoughts of the wealth of London. Yet 
 nothing could disturb it, for the background was suitable. 
 Her white body was her offering. 
 
 "How much would I be paid?" 
 
 "A shilling an hour." 
 
 "Do you pay that?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "If you could get me work I would sit to you for 
 nothing." 
 
 "I'd pay you," he said. His generous qualities strove 
 hard to reassert themselves, but there was something 
 about this girl that compelled just what he was giving 
 her hardness for hardness, value for value. Yet she 
 was certainly beautiful, and it was strange to him to 
 be unable to give her the warm homage that within 
 himself he could not help feeling. 
 
 She sat on the bed, making no move to cover herself, 
 and said : 
 
 "Artists are different. There was an artist once at 
 Margate. It was him put the idea into my head. But 
 he was very poor and not a gentleman."
 
 THE QUINTETTE 113 
 
 And now to Mendel she was an object of sheer as- 
 tonishment. He stood and warmed his legs by the gas 
 stove and gaped at her, sitting on his bed and chattering 
 in her clear, hard voice of her ambitions, her dreams, 
 the drudgery at home, while in everything she said was 
 a flattery which he could not resist. Worst of all, he 
 felt that he was one of a pair with her. His talent, her 
 body, were shining offerings with which they both 
 emerged from the depths of the despised. Entering into 
 her spirit, he too was rilled with a desire for revenge. 
 Yet in him this desire was charged with passion, which 
 made their present situation ridiculous. He thought of 
 the poverty and the obscure suffering downstairs, the 
 dragging penury to which, but for his talent, he would 
 have been condemned. Then he imagined her as Issy had 
 described her at Margate, lurking in the kitchen, listen- 
 ing behind the door as Leah spun her yarns. He could 
 sympathise with her, and she seemed to him almost gal- 
 lant. 
 
 He got out a piece of mill-board and began to draw 
 her, but to his annoyance could not get interested in 
 what he was doing. He wanted to know more about 
 her, could not rest content that a human being should 
 be so reduced to a cold purpose. Yet, though she talked 
 freely enough, nothing fell from her lips to meet his 
 desire. She had no people, no class, no tradition, but 
 still she was a person. He could not dismiss her as 
 he dismissed so many, as "nonsensical." 
 
 "I can't make much of you now," he said, almost wail- 
 ing. "I believe I'm tired." 
 
 And suddenly he hurled away his drawing and rushed 
 at her and kissed her. She clung to him and he yielded 
 to her will, seeing clearly that this was her purpose, this 
 her desire, this her ambition, her all.
 
 114 MENDEL 
 
 He knew that she was using him, was making cer- 
 tain of being able to use him. The newly discovered 
 knave in him insisted on having his existence, and 
 through it he enjoyed a certain defiant happiness. 
 
 Happiness! To be happy! That had seemed impos- 
 sible. His first year at the Detmold had been miserable. 
 He had been discouraged and almost listless. Often 
 he would go to his mother and say: "I shall never be 
 an artist." 
 
 "Not all at once," Golda would say. "Take a boy 
 who is apprenticed to a bootmaker. He cannot all at 
 once make good boots. He must spoil a deal of leather 
 first. Or a tailor-boy : he must spoil cloth. A trade 
 must be learned, and you can learn this, for you work 
 hard enough at it." 
 
 For a moment or two he would see through her clear 
 eyes and that was enough to set him working again, half 
 believing that he would soon master his craft. But there 
 had been the struggle to master what at the Detmold, 
 with such unquestionable authority, they called "draw- 
 ing." 
 
 This now, with Hetty, was in its way happiness, though 
 he detested it and her. It was an escape. It was easy. 
 It made no demands on him, save the small effort to 
 achieve self-forgetfulness, and in that she aided him, 
 for she seemed superior to himself and enviable in the 
 clearness of her purpose. She offered herself and made 
 no demands upon him except of what could cost him 
 nothing: just a few words to his friends, a start in her 
 chosen profession. 
 
 All the same, he was horrified at himself. Every 
 other crisis and sudden change in his life had been at- 
 tended with violent suffering, an eruption within him- 
 self, profound depression, almost a collapse. This had
 
 THE QUINTETTE 115 
 
 been as easy as walking through a door, a slipping from 
 one part of his being to another. . . . Here suddenly 
 was happiness, a queer detached, almost indifferent con- 
 dition, full of pleasure, and he rejoiced in the novelty 
 of it. He watched Hetty draw on her clothes again and 
 was sickened by the sensual languor of her movements. 
 She was drowsy, like a cat before a fire. 
 
 "No, I certainly shan't draw you to-day." 
 
 "What about to-morrow?" 
 
 "I shall be painting to-morrow." 
 
 "I do think you're a devil sometimes." 
 
 "I'll take you to the Paris Cafe, if you like." 
 
 "Will you?" 
 
 She perked up on that. She had not expected so 
 soon to gain her desire. 
 
 "Yes. If you've got to earn your living you should 
 meet people, and the sooner you get going the better." 
 
 Hetty sat with her chin in her hands, crouched in 
 elation. Everything had turned out as she had hoped 
 and planned, as she had willed that it should, and she 
 regarded him with some contempt because he had been 
 so easy and because he was so young. She was the 
 same age as he, but she thought him a little vain boy. 
 Yet when he looked at her she was afraid of him, for 
 he knew so much and guessed so much more. To 
 defend herself, her instinct drove through to his vanity 
 and flattered it to blind him. She feigned an anima- 
 tion she was incapable of feeling to make herself more 
 beautiful in his eyes, and he thought of his friends, 
 Mitchell and Weldon, and how they would be stirred 
 with her. He thought how she would please Calthrop, 
 and he was lured into believing that he would gain in 
 importance through her.
 
 ii6 MENDEL 
 
 "You've come at a very bad time," he said. "They'll 
 all be going away for the summer." 
 
 "Oh!" she looked dashed, hating to be caught out in 
 a mistake. "Do they go away for long?" 
 
 "Three months." 
 
 "Oh, well !" she drawled. "I can get a place if noth- 
 ing turns up. But something always does turn up. I'm 
 one of the lucky ones, you know." 
 
 "I don't believe in luck," said he, with a sudden irrup- 
 tion of the old self that seemed to have been left so far 
 behind. 
 
 "I must go now," she said. 
 
 They groped their way down the dark stairs, and 
 he went out with her, feeling that he could not face his 
 family, from whom he knew now that his face was 
 turned. In the street a mood of freedom and adventure 
 came over him, and for this mood she was a fitting 
 mate. He took her on the top of a bus to the West End, 
 among the promenading crowds, and she drank it all in 
 with a kind of exaltation, her big eyes glowing, her body 
 trembling with excitement. Into one cafe after another 
 he led her, completely absorbed as he was in her pur- 
 pose, and at last, when they mounted the eastward bus, 
 she leaned her head on his shoulder, and he could hear 
 her murmuring to herself : "London . . . London . . . 
 London." 
 
 He too was thrilled as he had never been before by 
 London. He had never so strongly realised it before. 
 The great city had thrilled him with its beauty and 
 had stirred him with its business, but never before had 
 its spirit crept into his blood to send it whirling and 
 singing through his veins. He hardly slept at all that 
 night, and the next morning it was a long time before 
 he could begin to work, which then seemed far re-
 
 THE QUINTETTE 117 
 
 moved from the effort and almost anguish it used to 
 cost him. The still-life with which he had been wrestling 
 became quite easy to do, and very soothing was the 
 handling of brushes and paint. Every touch was like 
 a caress upon his aching soul. 
 
 So began a period of real happiness. The pieces he 
 painted with such soothing ease were generally admired 
 and readily bought. The dealer to whom he took them 
 was also a colourman and gave him apparently unlim- 
 ited credit; and he laid in an immense stock of colours 
 and amused himself with experiments. It seemed that 
 his career was to be successful without a struggle. His 
 patrons were delighted to find him so soon making 
 money, and the Birnbaums and the Fleischmanns invited 
 him down into the country, but as he found that they 
 put him up in a servant's bedroom or a gardener's cot- 
 tage he refused to go more than once, or to any more 
 of their kind who were not prepared to forget his pov- 
 erty. 
 
 He would rather stay in London with Hetty, whom he 
 had begun to regard as a mascot. With her coming 
 everything had changed. She had made everything easy 
 and happy and delightful. He had no love for her, but 
 he could not help feeling grateful. She had turned 
 work into a pleasure, pleasure into a riot of ecstasy. 
 
 Alone with her in the evenings or with some chance 
 acquaintance, during the holidays he roamed through 
 London, basking in the summer evenings, discovering 
 unimagined splendours, the Parks, the river, the Zoo, 
 boating on the Serpentine, the promenade on the ro- 
 mantic Spaniard's Road at Hampstead. Nearly every 
 night he wrote to Mitchell in the country, describing his 
 new easy happiness in his work and his discovery of 
 the charm of nights in London. And once a week
 
 1 18 MENDEL 
 
 Mitchell would write to him and give him a delightful 
 account of English country life in a valley, shut in by 
 rolling hills between which wandered a slow, pleasant 
 stream. Here Mitchell was painting, boating, playing 
 tennis, making love. 
 
 "There's a Detmold girl lives near here with her peo- 
 ple Greta Morrison. You ma'y remember her glori- 
 ous chestnut hair, big blue eyes, but as shy as a little 
 mouse. I couldn't get a word out of her until I began 
 to talk about you, and there's no end to her appetite 
 for that. I don't mince matters. I tell her exactly what 
 you are, exactly what you come from, and what a wild 
 beast you are. She has seen you throw things about 
 at the Detmold, and she seems absolutely to like it. 
 Yet she is not a fool, and I like her enormously. She 
 makes me feel what a rotter I am, but I can't get on 
 with her unless I talk about you. I have heard that 
 her work is good, but she won't show me a thing." 
 
 Mendel was pleased that a "top-knot" should be in- 
 terested in him, but beyond the flicker of delight he 
 gave no thought to the idea of Greta Morrison. The 
 "top-knots" belonged to the world which he was going 
 to despoil with Hetty Finch. That world must dis- 
 gorge. It had condemned, and still condemned, his 
 father and mother to bitter poverty, and he remembered 
 how on their first coming to London the whole family 
 had slept in one room, and how he had sat up in the 
 middle of the night and looked at the recumbent bodies 
 and suffered under the indignity of it. And his brothers 
 had grown from ruddy, bronzed boys into pale-faced, 
 worn young men. And behind Hetty was the dirty 
 lodging-house and her Ma, of whom he had a very clear 
 idea. He used to wax violent, and his imagination would
 
 THE QUINTETTE 119 
 
 run riot with the fantastic visions of success he con- 
 jured up. 
 
 Who were the "top-knots" that they should have an 
 easy, pleasant time in the country while he was left to 
 stew in London? 
 
 Hetty began genuinely to admire him, and her flat- 
 tery was no longer empty. There was some sustenance 
 in it. 
 
 "O oh !" she used to say. "You'll get on. There's 
 no doubt about that. You'll have a big stoodio and 
 the nobs will come up in their motor-cars, and you'll be 
 able to paint what you like then." 
 
 "You're a liar," he would reply. "I shall always 
 paint what I like. I never do anything else, and never 
 will. Once paint for the fools and you have to do it 
 always, because you become a fool yourself." 
 
 Golda once met Hetty coming down the stairs. She 
 told her she was a dirty slut and was not to show her 
 face inside the house again. A few days later she 
 saw her open the front door and slip out. In her anger 
 she informed Jacob of the danger to Mendel, and Jacob 
 went up to the studio. 
 
 "I will not have that harlot in my house," he said. 
 
 "She is not a harlot," replied Mendel rather shakily, 
 for, though his father's power had dwindled, yet he was 
 still a figure of authority. 
 
 "She is a harlot and a daughter of a harlot, and I 
 will not have her in my house." 
 
 "She is a model, and I must have models, as I have 
 tried to explain to you again and again. I am al- 
 lowed money for models. I must have models, just as 
 you must have skins."
 
 120 MENDEL 
 
 "Then there are other models. I know this girl, what 
 she is after, and she will ruin you." 
 
 "Neither she nor any one else in the whole world 
 could ruin me," said Mendel, "for I am an artist, and 
 while I have my art I ask nothing outside it." 
 
 "Don't argue with me!" shouted Jacob. "I will not 
 have that drab in my house." 
 
 Mendel had a great respect and regard for his father. 
 He was silent, and Jacob went downstairs, satisfied that 
 he had asserted himself. 
 
 He said to Golda : 
 
 "They will blow the boy's head off his shoulders with 
 the fuss they make of him. I know how to take him 
 down a peg or two." 
 
 "Don't go too far," said Golda. "It would be a black 
 day for me if he went away and was ashamed of us." 
 
 "If I saw that he was ashamed of you," replied Ja- 
 cob, "I would thrash him within an inch of his life. 
 Ashamed of you, among all the dirt and trumped-up 
 people he goes among!" 
 
 However, Hetty still came to the studio and there 
 were frequent explosions, until at last Mendel, intent 
 on the new independence he had won, declared that he 
 could bear it no longer, and he arranged with Issy to 
 take the top floor of his house and to turn that into 
 a studio. This compromise was successful, and pleased 
 both parties: Golda was happy to be relieved from fur- 
 ther friction and Mendel was glad to be away, for he 
 knew that his doings must hurt her, and that he hated. 
 Yet he could see no way out of it. He was done for 
 ever with the old simplicity of his untutored painting 
 in her kitchen. Art was no longer a pure and hardly- 
 won joy. It was a trade, like any other, and, like 
 any other, it had its sordid aspect, and, to compensate
 
 THE QUINTETTE 121 
 
 for that, it was a career and could also be a triumph. 
 These things he did not expect his mother to understand. 
 He had Mitchell to talk to now, Mitchell to whom to 
 impart the burden upon his soul, and Mitchell and he 
 were to work together and to give to the world such 
 art as it had never seen since the primitives. 
 
 Mitchell and he! That friendship was the source of 
 his new confidence. Golda had been and still was much 
 to him, but when it came to painting she knew nothing 
 at all, and painting was the important thing. Through 
 painting lay not only satisfied ambitions and fame and 
 riches, but life itself, and of that what could Golda 
 know? 
 
 It was a great thing, therefore, to be established away 
 from home when Mitchell returned from the country. 
 And Mitchell approved. He had suffered from being 
 under his father's shadow, and with Weldon and Kessler 
 he had taken a studio near Fitzroy Square. He said : ' 
 
 "A time will come when you will have to leave the 
 East End." 
 
 "I shall never leave them," replied Mendel. "What ./ 
 I want to paint is there. They are my people, and all 
 that I have belongs to them." 
 
 "Rubbish. You'll soon be getting commissions, and 
 you can't ask people who can afford to pay for por- 
 traits to a hole like that." 
 
 "They will come to my studio," said Mendel, "or I 
 will not take their commissions." 
 
 Though Mitchell was rather shocked by his frank 
 conceit, he could not but admire and envy the way his 
 impulses came rushing to the surface and were never 
 deterred by considerations as to the impression he might 
 be making. Mendel trusted Mitchell absolutely and hid 
 nothing from him, neither the most scabrous of his deeds
 
 122 MENDEL 
 
 nor the most childish of his desires. He made no secret 
 of the new manly feeling that had come to him through 
 Hetty, the conviction that he could meet the West End 
 on its own terms. 
 
 When he showed Mitchell the work he had done dur- 
 ing the holidays, his friend said : 
 
 "Gawd! The difference is absolutely startling. 
 There's charm in every one of them, and they're not 
 fakes either." 
 
 With Hetty he was enraptured. 
 
 "Gawd!" he said; "I'll give ten years to painting her, 
 as Leonardo did to Monna Lisa, and then it would not 
 be finished. Came from a Margate lodging-house, did 
 she? Mark my words: she'll marry a successful artist 
 and queen it among the best." 
 
 With Mitchell, Hetty put forth all her cajolery when 
 she found that he knew what she thought good peo- 
 ple. She could look very pathetic and delicate, and 
 middle-aged artists were sorry for her, and thought 
 being a model a perilous profession for her. One of them 
 warned her of the dangers she must run, and especially 
 mentioned Mitchell and Kiihler as young men to be 
 avoided. They roared with laughter when she told them. 
 
 The Paris Cafe was Paradise to her, and she made 
 friends with all its habitues and attracted the attention 
 of Calthrop, who became Mendel's enemy for life when 
 she told him that the youngster had said of him that 
 he had been a good artist once, but was now only re- 
 peating himself. 
 
 Mith marvellous rapidity she picked up the jargon 
 of the place, and could quite easily have taken her 
 career in her own hands, but she would not surrender 
 Mendel, who could no more do without her than he 
 could without Mitchell. She clung to him and kept him
 
 THE QUINTETTE 123 
 
 a happy slave to his three friends, to whom she devoted 
 herself as though her existence depended on the solidarity 
 of the group. From morning to night she was with one 
 or other of them, and every evening with the four of 
 them at the Paris, or making a row at a music-hall and 
 getting themselves kicked out. 
 
 She was learning her trade as they were learning 
 theirs, and she was delighted with the ease with which 
 Mendel picked up what she called "sense"; that is to 
 say, he became much more like the others, affected their 
 speech, grew his hair long, wore corduroys, a black shirt, 
 and a red sash, and talked blatantly and with a slight 
 contempt of great painters. But even so, he was dis- 
 turbing, for he did all these things with passion, so 
 that they tinged his soul, and were not as a mere gar- 
 ment upon it. Even in falsehood he was sincere. 
 
 When. Hetty found Calthrop painting a self-portrait, 
 she set her four boys painting self-portraits, and when 
 she found the older men talking about the beauty of 
 roofs and chimneys, the four were soon ecstatic about 
 roofs and chimneys, and painting them without know- 
 ing how it had come about. She could feel what was 
 in the air, and had no difficulty in making them con- 
 form to it, so that they were successful even while they 
 were students, and were talked of and discussed and 
 approached by dealers as though they were persons of 
 consequence. Their life was one long intoxication : 
 money, praise, wine, and debauchery went to their heads, 
 and of all these excitants Mendel had the largest share, 
 and found himself the equal even of Kessler, whose 
 father was a millionaire soap-boiler. He attained an 
 extraordinary skill at doing what was expected of him, 
 and developed an instinct as sharp as Hetty's for the 
 success of the moment after next.
 
 124 MENDEL 
 
 He won scholarships at the Detmold and, carefully 
 adapting his style, an open prize at the Royal Academy. 
 His patrons were excited and delighted. He was in- 
 terviewed by the Yiddish papers and photographed, pa- 
 lette and brushes in hand, in a dashing attitude. He 
 said many foolish things to the reporters, but the printed 
 version made him blush. He was represented as saying 
 that art had been reborn during the last ten years, that 
 the Royal Academy was exploded and would soon close 
 its doors, that there was no art criticism in England, 
 that there had never been a great Jewish artist, and 
 that this deficiency in the most vital and enduring race 
 in the world would now be repaired. 
 
 He thanked his stars that his friends could not read 
 Yiddish. Two well-known Jewish painters wrote to the 
 paper to say that they existed and to trounce his "bump- 
 tious and ignorant dismissal of respected and respectable 
 art." And he heartily agreed with them. He was shaken 
 out of the hectic dreams of months, yet could not feel 
 or see clearly. His way was with Mitchell, and Mitchell 
 was generously rejoicing in it all as though it had hap- 
 pened to himself, while Hetty was going from studio 
 to studio spreading the news and declaring the arrival 
 of a genius. 
 
 He wanted to go and hide his face in his mother's 
 skirts, but she was so happy and elated with the con- 
 gratulations of the neighbours and visits from the Rabbis 
 of the synagogue that he could not but keep up his part 
 before her. For her and for all his family he bought 
 extravagant presents, and he went out and sought Artie 
 Beech, whom he had not seen for years, and gave him 
 a box of cigars. He had a melancholy idea that he 
 was doing them all an injury and that he must somehow 
 repair it. The exact nature of the injury he did not
 
 THE QUINTETTE 125 
 
 know, but his instinct was very sure that the whole 
 business was false. Yet it was so actual that he could 
 not help believing in it. He was hypnotised into ac- 
 cepting it. There seemed no reason why it should not 
 go on for ever. Here, apparently, was what he had 
 always striven for art and homage and the idea that 
 they could go on for ever was terrible and paralysing. 
 But there was not a soul in the world with whom he 
 could share his feeling. If he showed the least hesita- 
 tion they would accuse him of ingratitude. 
 
 He was filled with a smouldering rage against them 
 all which found no vent until Maurice Birnbaum came 
 in his motor-car and asked him to bring some of his 
 things to show Sir William Hunslet, R.A., who had 
 been much impressed with his prize picture. Once again 
 Mendel climbed into the motor-car, and once again he 
 was told not to let his parcel scratch the paint. 
 
 "Now," said Maurice, "you have the world at your 
 feet, and I feel proud to have had my share in bring- 
 ing it about. You can have everything you want, and 
 if you don't grow into something really big it won't be 
 our fault. Everything that money can do it shall do." 
 
 The car rolled through the streets which had been 
 the scene of Mendel's happy rambles, but being car- 
 ried through them in such magnificence made him feel 
 helpless, a victim to something stronger than his own 
 will and that he had always detested. He was being 
 taken away from his mother and from Mitchell, and 
 he knew whither motor-cars were driven. All roads 
 ended in Sir Julius, who could sit and look at pictures 
 without a word. Everything went spinning past him. 
 This was going too fast, too fast, and he would be ex- 
 hausted before he had really known his purpose. Maur- 
 ice Birnbaum's exciting, patronising tones, chattering on
 
 126 MENDEL 
 
 exasperatingly, infuriated him, until he felt like stab- 
 bing him in his already dropping stomach. What could 
 a fat man like that have to do with art? How could 
 so fat a man drive down to the wretched poverty in 
 Whitechapel and not feel ashamed? 
 
 But in spite of himself and his confused emotions 
 Mendel enjoyed the drive, which showed him more of 
 London than the narrowed area he frequented : more to 
 conquer, more to know; shops, strange ugly buildings, 
 polite, mincing people, women like dolls, men like mari- 
 onettes, wide streets and plane-trees, the gardens and 
 squares of the polite Southwest. Often there were Geor- 
 gian houses like that in which his family lived, but so 
 neat and trim and newly painted that they looked like 
 doll's-houses, proper places for the dolls and the mari- 
 onettes. . . . And it was exhilarating to be in the heart 
 of the roaring traffic, bearing down upon scarlet buses, 
 and swift darting taxi-cabs and motor-cars as rich as 
 Maurice Birnbaum's. Out of the traffic they turned sud- 
 denly into a quiet street of dead houses and vast gloomy 
 piles of flats. Outside a house more gloomy than the 
 rest they stopped. Maurice got out fussily, told Men- 
 del to be careful how he lifted his parcel out, fussed 
 his way into the house through a dark, luxuriously fur- 
 nished hall, and into a vast studio where there was a 
 group of fashionably dressed women taking tea with Sir 
 William and exclaiming about the beauties of a portrait 
 that stood on the easel. 
 
 Maurice stood awkwardly outside the circle and mut- 
 tered apologies, while Mendel felt utterly and crushingly 
 foreign to the atmosphere of the place. He knew how 
 these people would regard him. They would stare at 
 him with a cold interest not unmingled with horror, and 
 he would be conscious of bearing the marks of the place
 
 THE QUINTETTE 127 
 
 he came from, of smelling of the gutter. Against that 
 separation even art was powerless. And what had his 
 work to do with this huge, hard, brilliant portrait on 
 the easel? If they admired that they would never look 
 at his dark little pictures. 
 
 Sir William introduced Maurice to the ladies, but 
 did not so much as look at the boy, whom his mind had 
 at once ticked off as a "student," and therefore to be 
 kept in his place. Maurice explained spluttering : words 
 like "scholarship," "prize," "genius," "instinct," fell in 
 a shower from his lips, and one of the ladies put up 
 her lorgnette and stared at Mendel as though he were 
 a picture or a wax model. 
 
 At last he was told to untie his parcel, and one by 
 one he showed his pictures. Sir William blew out his 
 chest and his cheeks, and with a wave of his hand blurted 
 out one word : 
 
 "Italy." 
 
 "That's what I say," said Maurice. 
 
 Mendel scented danger. They seemed to him to be 
 conspiring together. 
 
 "Italy!" ejaculated Sir William. "Italy! Blue skies, 
 the sun, the light. Give him light and landscape with 
 form in it." 
 
 "Am I ill?" thought Mendel with some alarm, for 
 Sir William sounded to him more like a doctor than a 
 painter. And he decided that the Academician was 
 not a real artist because he showed no sign of the fellow- 
 feeling which had been so strong in Mr. Froitzheim. 
 
 Before the ladies he could say nothing. He put 
 his pictures back in the parcel and heard Maurice and 
 Sir William still conspiring together to send him to Italy. 
 He was tired of being swung from one idea to an- 
 other. At the Polytechnic they had told him that the
 
 128 MENDEL 
 
 essential thing in a picture was "tone," that he must 
 remember the existence of the atmosphere between him- 
 self and the object he was painting, and that there were 
 no bright colours in nature. At the Detmold little was 
 said about "tone," but he was told that the essence of 
 a picture was drawing, "the expression of form." . . . 
 What next? He had a foreboding that Italy was only 
 another name for another essence of a picture. Besides, 
 he wanted to live. Though he adored art, yet it did not 
 contain all that was precious to him liberty and gaiety, 
 friendship and affection. Always until the Detmold his 
 life had been weighed down with poverty and with ter- 
 rible obsessions like that of his dread of the fat, curly- 
 headed boy who, during the six long years of his school- 
 ing, had waited for him outside the school-gates every 
 day to give him a coward's blow and to challenge him 
 to fight and to jeer at him if he refused. There had 
 been furious, passionate loves to set him reeling, gusts 
 of inexplicable desires and ambitions which had often 
 made him weep with pain. And now, just as the world 
 was opening out before him and he was warm with the 
 friendship of an Englishman (for he was proud of 
 Mitchell's Public School training), they wished to take 
 him away and send him to a far country. 
 
 He had hac enough ol being a foreigner in England, 
 and he loathed the idea of travel. His .father had told 
 him that England was the best country in the world, 
 and, if he had suffered so much there, what would it be 
 in others? Italy? He wanted to paint what he had 
 always painted, fish and onions in a London kitchen. 
 How could Italy help him to do that? 
 
 He would not go. He would refuse to go. These 
 Birnbaums and Fleischmanns had had their way with 
 him for long enough.
 
 THE QUINTETTE 129 
 
 So lost was he in this growing revolt that he was 
 already some distance away from Sir William's studio 
 before he was aware of having left it. 
 
 "Our greatest painter," said Maurice. "The greatest 
 since Whistler." 
 
 "Yes," said Mendel, aghast at the supersession of 
 Calthrop and the idols of the Detmold. If Maurice 
 could be so ignorant there was nothing to be said and 
 argument was vain. 
 
 "He really appreciated your work," Maurice added. 
 
 "He never looked at it!" cried Mendel, enraged. "I 
 put them in front of him one by one, but he always 
 looked at the fat lady in blue." 
 
 "He could tell with one glance," protested Maurice, 
 who had been mightily impressed. 
 
 Mendel saw that it was useless to talk, and shut his 
 lips tight while Maurice chattered to him of his ex- 
 traordinary good fortune in being able to go to Italy, 
 to live among the orange groves and with the greatest 
 galleries of the world to roam in, the most beautiful 
 scenery and the most delightful food. 
 
 The mention of food made Mendel think of his 
 mother's unsavoury dishes and sluttish table, the most 
 distasteful feature of his existence, but he preferred even 
 that to the Italy of Maurice Birnbaum and Sir William. 
 Through such people, he knew, lay nothing that he could 
 ever desire. 
 
 As soon as he reached home he told his mother that 
 they wanted to send him abroad to study. He strode 
 about the kitchen and waved his arms, growling : 
 
 "Study ? Study ? I want to be an artist, not a student. 
 I am an artist. I know art students when I see them 
 the Academy, South Kensington, the Detmold they 
 are all the same. Let them go abroad and never come
 
 130 MENDEL 
 
 back. No one will miss them, not even their fathers 
 and mothers, if they have anything so natural. I will 
 not go I will not go!" 
 
 "But if the Maurice Birnbaum thinks you must go, 
 then you must," said Golda. "It is their money that 
 has been spent on you." 
 
 "They've spent enough," cried Mendel, "without that. 
 I don't want their money any more. They know that. 
 They want to keep me in their hands and to say that 
 they made me. They? People like that! God made 
 me, and they want to keep me all my life saying how 
 grateful I am to them. Grateful? I am not." 
 
 "But you could go for a little while." 
 
 "I will not go at all." 
 
 He sat down and wrote to Maurice Birnbaum saying 
 that he would not go to Italy, that he did not want any 
 more of his commissions, and that he would not be in- 
 terfered with any more. He would shortly repay every 
 penny he had had, and he asked only to be allowed to 
 know best what he wanted to do. 
 
 "Everything that I love is here in London, and I can 
 only learn from what I love. I am one kind of artist 
 and you want to turn me into another kind. You will 
 only waste your money, and I will not let you do it." 
 
 Maurice never answered this letter and his patronage 
 and that of his friends was withdrawn. 
 
 Mendel plunged more ardently than ever into his career 
 with Mitchell and the others, but found that they were 
 not prepared to share or to admit the new freedom 
 which he had begun to enjoy. The Birnbaum patronage 
 had always to a certain extent restrained him, but now 
 that it was shaken off he plunged madly and wildly into 
 every kind of extravagance. He was no longer content 
 to be the equal of the others. He wanted to lead them.
 
 THE QUINTETTE 131 
 
 He was the most successful of them all, and he wanted 
 them all to join him in forcing art upon London. Cal- 
 throp had shown them the way, but he had unaccount- 
 ably stopped short. He had many imitators, and there 
 were even women who looked like his type, but it all 
 ended in his personality. . . . Art was something else: 
 something outside that, an impersonal thing, which Lon- 
 don should be made to recognise. The pictures of Kuh- 
 ler, Mitchell, Weldon, and Kessler should be, as it were, 
 only forerunners of the mighty pictures that should be 
 painted. . . . 
 
 He was just as extreme and violent in his vices as 
 he was in his idealism, and even Mitchell was rather 
 upset by his pranks and caprices. It was one thing 
 to take a shy tame genius among your acquaintance, 
 quite another when the genius ran wild and dragged 
 you hither and thither and with breathless haste from 
 the vilest human company to the most dizzily soaring 
 ideas. Weldon, who was uncommonly shrewd, had 
 begun to see the danger of allowing Hetty Finch to ar- 
 range their affairs, and when on top of that Mendel, 
 drunk with freedom and success, began to take charge, 
 he thought it time to secure himself and began to with- 
 draw from their undertakings and adventures. 
 
 At last Kessler struck, and told Mendel that he might 
 be the greatest genius that was ever born, but should 
 sometimes try to remember that his friends were gen- 
 tlemen and could not always be making allowances for 
 his birth and upbringing. This happened in the Paris 
 Cafe. Mendel fell like a shot bird, like a stone. The 
 eager words froze on his lips, his face visibly contracted 
 and became haggard, his eyes blinked for a moment, then 
 stared glassily. He sat so for some minutes, then rose 
 from the table and walked quickly out of the cafe.
 
 132 MENDEL 
 
 He did not appear for a week, nor was anything heard 
 of him. He sat at home working furiously. Hetty 
 Finch went to see him, but he turned her out, telling 
 her that she was a hateful, cold-hearted woman and 
 that he would never see her again. 
 
 At last he wrote to Mitchell, a letter of agony, for 
 Mitchell, his friend, seemed to him the worst offender, 
 by not having warned him of what was in the air : 
 
 "You are my friend," he wrote, "my only friend. It 
 is no more to you what I am, where or how I was born, 
 than it is to me what you are. The soul of a man 
 chooses his friend, and I trusted you even in my folly. 
 You could have defended me and our friendship. You 
 have not done so and I must live miserably without 
 you. Good-bye. I shall not attempt again to enter a 
 life in which my work is not sufficient recommendation. 
 I was happy. I was not happy before. I am not happy 
 now. I have been foolish, but I was your friend." 
 
 Mitchell was irritated by this letter, but he was also 
 moved. He valued Mendel's sincerity, which had con- 
 tinually jolted him out of his natural indolence. And, as 
 he had a fine talent and a fairly strong desire to use 
 it to the full, the friendship had profited him. It had 
 also helped him to come to reasonable term's with that 
 great man, his father. 
 
 On the other hand he was in this difficulty, that he 
 too had been slipping out of the quintette through his 
 new friendship with Miss Greta Morrison and her friend, 
 Miss Edith Clowes. Knowing Mendel's contempt for the 
 "top-knots," he had said nothing of this matter, and 
 had found it sometimes difficult to account for the after- 
 noons and evenings given to the dilemma of discovering 
 whether Miss Morrison or Miss Clowes were the love
 
 THE QUINTETTE 133 
 
 of his life. Mendel was an exacting friend, and, as 
 he concealed nothing, expected no concealment. 
 
 Mitchell, like the true Englishman he was, deplored 
 the unpleasant complication, but left it to time, impulse, 
 or inspiration to unravel. Impulse, in due course, came 
 to his aid and he invented a plan. First of all he wrote 
 a manly note to Mendel, confessing his inability to un- 
 derstand why he should suffer for Kessler's caddishness, 
 and declaring that friendship could not be so lightly 
 broken. He received no reply to this, and proceeded by 
 taking Morrison and Clowes (as in the fashion of the 
 Detmold they were called) to see the docks at Rother- 
 hithe. While there he gazed from Morrison to Clowes 
 and from Clowes to Morrison, unable to decide which 
 he loved, for both gave him an equal contraction of the 
 heart, and then he told them that ships had never been 
 properly painted, never expressed in form and colour; 
 and then he added that it was clearly a man's job, and 
 then he informed them that only a short distance away 
 lived Mendel Kiihler. 
 
 "Would you like to go and see him?" he asked. "It 
 is the queerest thing to go and see him. A filthy street, 
 a dark house, a ramshackle staircase, and there you are 
 absolutely one of the finest painters the Detmold has 
 ever turned out." 
 
 "Do let us go and see him!" said Clowes, who had 
 decided in her own mind that she was the third of the 
 party and in the way. Morrison said nothing, and looked 
 very solemn, as though she regarded the visit as an 
 event something to be half dreaded. She had a very 
 charming air of diffidence, as though she were very happy 
 and knew this to be an unusual and peculiar condition. 
 Often she smiled to herself, and then seemed to shake 
 the smile away, feeling perhaps that she, a slip of a
 
 134 MENDEL 
 
 girl, had no right to be amused by a world so vast and 
 so varied. 
 
 She had enjoyed herself. The ships had stirred her 
 romantically, and she could not at all agree with Mitchell 
 about painting them, for were they not works of art 
 in themselves? They moved her in the same way, ar- 
 resting her eyes and delighting them, and touching her 
 emotions so that they began to creep and tickle their 
 way through her whole being. . . . O wonderful world 
 to contain so much delight ! And it pleased her that the 
 ships should start out of the squalor of the docks like 
 lilies out of a dark pond. 
 
 She smiled and shook the smile away when Mitchell 
 spoke of Mendel Kiihler. She remembered once meet- 
 ing Mendel on the stairs at the Detmold. She had often 
 noticed him strange-looking, white-faced, romantic, 
 with a look of suffering in his eyes that marked him 
 out from all the other young men. . . . After she had 
 passed him on the stairs she turned to look at him, 
 and at the same moment he turned and she trembled 
 and blushed, and her eyes shone as she hurried on her 
 way. 
 
 Mitchell had told her a great deal about him, and 
 she had heard other people say that he was detestable, 
 an ill-mannered egoist. She supposed he was so, for 
 she rarely questioned what other people said, but he 
 remained a clear figure for her, the romantic-looking 
 young man who had looked back on the stairs. 
 
 "We'll take him by surprise," said Mitchell, with a 
 sudden qualm lest they should break in upon Mendel 
 and Hetty Finch together. "If we told him he would 
 hide all his work away and put on a white shirt and 
 have flowers on the table, for he is terrified of ladies. 
 He says they don't look like women to him."
 
 THE QUINTETTE 135 
 
 "I'm sure," said Clowes, "I don't want to look like 
 a' woman to any man." 
 
 This was the most encouraging remark Mitchell had 
 had from either during the day, and he decided that 
 he was in love with Clowes. 
 
 A brisk walk through narrow dingy streets brought 
 them, with some help from the police, to the door of 
 Issy's house. Mitchell knocked and a grimy little Jewess 
 opened to them. 
 
 "Mr Mendel Kiihler?" said Mitchell. 
 
 "Upstairs to the top," replied the Jewess as she hur- 
 ried away. They climbed the shabbily carpeted stairs and 
 knocked at the door of the studio. Mendel opened it. 
 He stood with a brush in his hand, blinking. He stared 
 at Mitchell and then beyond him at Morrison. 
 
 "Come in," he said. "I'd just finished. I've been 
 working rather hard and haven't spoken to a soul for 
 three days. You must forgive me if I don't seem very 
 intelligent." 
 
 They went in and he made tea for them, hardly ever 
 taking his eyes off Morrison. He said pointedly to 
 Mitchell : 
 
 "So you came down to the East End to find me." 
 
 Clowes explained : 
 
 "I'm a stranger to London and had never seen the 
 docks, you know." 
 
 "I have never seen the docks either, though I live 
 so near," said he. Then, catching Morrison glancing in 
 the direction of his easel, he turned his work for her 
 to see, almost ignoring the others. Afterwards he pro- 
 duced drawings for her to see, and he seemed entirely 
 bent on pleasing her, which so embarrassed her that, 
 when she could escape his gaze, she looked imploringly 
 over at the others. They could not help her, and he
 
 136 MENDEL 
 
 went on until he had shown her every piece of work 
 in the studio. Whenever she spoke, shyly and diffidently, 
 as though she knew her opinion was of no value, he gave 
 a queer little grunt of triumph, and his eyes glittered as 
 he looked over at Mitchell, as though to say that he 
 too knew how to treat the "top-knots" and to please 
 them.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 MORRISON 
 
 A FEW days later he wired to Morrison at the Det- 
 mold to ask her to sit for him. She made no 
 reply and did not come. 
 
 Very well then : he would not budge. He would only 
 approach Mitchell again through the "top-knots," who 
 lived in a portion of Mitchell's world that had hitherto 
 been closed to him. It promised new adventure, and 
 he was so eager for it that he would not enter upon 
 any other outside his work. 
 
 The days went by and he began a portrait of his 
 mother, with which he intended to make his first appear- 
 ance at an important exhibition. Golda sat dressed in 
 her best on the throne, and tried vainly to soothe him 
 as he cursed and stamped and wept over his difficulties. 
 
 "I can't do it ! I can't do it !" he wailed. "I'm a fool, 
 a blockhead, a pig! If I could only do one little thing 
 more to it I could make it a great picture." 
 
 "You are always the same," said Golda. "In Aus- 
 tria, when you were a little boy, the soldiers made you 
 a uniform like their own. They used to call you the 
 Captain, and they saluted you in the street, only they 
 forgot to give you any boots, and when the soldiers 
 marched by, you stamped and roared because you were 
 
 J37
 
 138 MENDEL 
 
 not allowed to go with them, and I could not make you 
 understand that you were not a real captain." 
 
 "But I am a real artist," he growled. "You'll never 
 make me understand that I am not a real artist." 
 
 "Nothing good was ever done in a hurry," said she. 
 "If you run so fast you will break your head against a 
 wall." 
 
 "I shall paint many portraits of you, for I shall never 
 be satisfied. You may as well sit here with your hands 
 folded as over there in the kitchen. If I'm not careful 
 your hands will grow all over the picture. I have put 
 such a lot of work into them." 
 
 Then for a long time he was silent, and both were 
 lost in a dreamlike happiness to be together, alone 
 with his work, bound together in his delight as they 
 used to be when he was a child before the invasion of 
 their peace. 
 
 He went to the door in answer to a knock and found 
 Morrison standing there with some flowers in her hands. 
 
 "Oh!" he said awkwardly, holding the door. "Won't 
 you come in? Please. I am painting my mother." 
 
 Golda's eyes lighted with pleasure on the fresh-looking 
 girl and her flowers. 
 
 "She is like a flower herself," she thought, and in- 
 deed the girl looked as though she were fresh from 
 the country. 
 
 She held out her hand to Golda, who stood up on 
 the throne and bobbed to her, then folded her hands 
 on her stomach and waited patiently for the lady to 
 break the awkwardness that had sprung up between the 
 three of them. Mendel could do nothing. He looked 
 from one to the other and felt, with a little tremor of 
 horror, the gulf that separated the two. 
 
 At last Morrison said to Golda:
 
 MORRISON 139 
 
 "I am very glad to see you, though I feel I know 
 you quite well from the drawings he has done of you." 
 
 Golda broke into inarticulate expressions of the de- 
 light it was to her to see any of her son's friends, and 
 saying that she would have a special tea sent up, she 
 edged towards the door and slipped out. 
 
 "Why didn't you come before?" asked Mendel, when 
 he had heard the door bang. "I sent you a telegram. 
 I wanted to paint your portrait, and now I have begun 
 something else." 
 
 "I didn't want to come," replied she, "but something 
 Mitchell said made me want to come." 
 
 "What did he say?" 
 
 "He told me about Kessler, and I thought it was a 
 shame. I thought it was a horrible shame that you 
 should be treated like that, as if anything mattered but 
 your work." 
 
 Her voice rather irritated him. Her accent was rather 
 mincing and precise, and between her sentences she gave 
 a little gasp which he took for an affectation. 
 
 "Why did Mitchell tell you that?" 
 
 "He tells me a great deal about you, and he was really 
 upset by your letter." 
 
 "Was he? Was he?" 
 
 Mendel had no thought but for Mitchell. He longed 
 to go to him, to embrace him, to tell him that all was 
 different now. He blurted it all out to the girl. 
 
 "We were so happy, the four of us together. Every 
 evening we met and we were like kings. Everything 
 that we wanted to do we did. We had money and 
 success and all such foolish things, and we worked hard, 
 all of us. There were not in London four young men 
 like us, and I was free of the terrible people who wanted 
 to turn me into an ordinary successful painter a por-
 
 140 MENDEL 
 
 trait painter. I tell you, I have never had a commission 
 in my life that was not a failure. I only wanted to 
 be young and to work, for I had never been young be- 
 fore. And then suddenly, out of nothing, my friends 
 turned on me and told me I was a Jew and uneducated, 
 and ought to treat them with more respect. Why ? The 
 Jews are good people, and what do I want with edu- 
 cation? Can books teach me how to paint? I tell you 
 the Jews are good people." 
 
 Tea was brought up on a lacquer tray bread, jam, 
 and cake. They were both hungry and fell to with a 
 will, hardly speaking at all. 
 
 When they had finished they began to talk of pic- 
 tures and of the lives of the painters, and he told her 
 stories of Michael Angelo and Rembrandt : how Michael 
 Angelo never took his boots off, and was never in love 
 in his life; and how Rembrandt was practically starved 
 to death. Then he showed her reproductions of Cranach 
 and Diirer, whom at the time he adored, and they bent 
 over them, the chestnut head and the curly black to- 
 gether. Gradually she led him on to tell of his own 
 life, and he began at the beginning in Austria, holding 
 her spell-bound with his vivid, picturesque talk. 
 
 "It makes me feel very quiet and dull," she said. 
 "I don't think I ever regarded places outside England as 
 real, somehow. There was just home and London, and 
 London seemed to be the end of everything. All the 
 trains stop there, you know." 
 
 "Where is your home?" he asked. 
 
 "In Sussex. It is very beautiful country." 
 
 "How did you come to the Detmold?" 
 
 "A girl at home had been there, and at school they 
 said I was no good at anything but drawing. Indeed, 
 I was sent away from two schools, and at home I was
 
 MORRISON 141 
 
 such a trouble that mother decided I must do something 
 to earn my living. So I was sent up to the Detmold. I 
 had my hair down my back then." 
 
 "I remember," said he. "In a plait." 
 
 She smiled with pleasure at that. 
 
 "Yes," she said. "In a plait. I lived in a hostel, 
 where they bullied me because I was so untidy and was 
 always being late for meals. At home, you know, there 
 were only my brothers, and my mother could never keep 
 them in order, and I was always treated as if I was 
 a boy too. . . . And I think that's all." 
 
 She ended so lamely that his irritation got the better 
 of him, and he jumped to his feet. It seemed to him 
 that his view of the "top-knots" was confirmed. They 
 were simply negligible. He was baffled, and stood staring 
 down at her. Was she no more interested in herself 
 than that? Comparing the smooth monotony of her life 
 with his, he waxed impatient, and told himself he was 
 a fool to have invited her to come to him. 
 
 He began to study her face with a view to painting 
 it, and he was absorbed and fascinated by it. The lines 
 of her cheek and of her neck made him itch to draw 
 them. 
 
 "Yes," he said, "I must paint you. I can do something 
 good. I'm sure I can." 
 
 "I wanted to ask if you would mind my painting you," 
 she said. 
 
 He was aghast at her impudence. She, a slip of a 
 girl, a "top-knot," paint the great Kiihler! 
 
 She saw how horrified he was and added hastily: 
 
 "Of course, I won't insist if you don't like sitting." 
 
 She rose to go and he begged her to stay. 
 
 "Don't go yet," he said with sudden emotion. "I 
 don't want you to go. Somehow I feel as if you had
 
 142 MENDEL 
 
 been sitting there always and I don't want you to go. 
 If you don't want to talk you needn't, but you must stay. 
 I could see that my mother liked you at once, and she 
 always knows good people. You made her happy about 
 me. It was like sunshine to her when you came in, 
 and I shall be wretched if you go, for I don't know what 
 to think about you." 
 
 "I know what I think about you." 
 
 "What do you think?" 
 
 "You have made me feel that London isn't just a 
 place where the trains stop." 
 
 And she began to tell him about her home and the 
 river where she bathed with her brothers, the woods 
 where in spring there were primroses and daffodils, and 
 in summer bluebells. 
 
 "Opposite the house," she said, "is a hill which is a 
 common, all covered with gorse in the summer, and the 
 hot, nutty smell of it comes up and seems to burn your 
 face. There are snakes on the common vipers and 
 adders and grass-snakes. From the top you can see the 
 downs, and beyond them, you know, is the sea. On 
 moonlight nights it is glorious, and I nearly go mad 
 sometimes with running in and out of the shadows. I be- 
 lieve I did go mad once, for I sat up on the top of 
 the hill and sang and shouted and cried, all by myself, 
 and I felt that my heart would break if I did not kiss 
 something. The gorse was out, and I buried my face 
 in the dewy yellow flowers. ... I often think the woods 
 are like churches on Easter Day. . . . And then when 
 I get home and it is just a house and I am just a girl 
 living in it, you know, it all seems wrong somehow." 
 
 Mendel sat on the floor trying to puzzle out this mys- 
 terious rapture of hers. He had never heard of gorse 
 or of downs, but he could recognise her emotion. He
 
 MORRISON 143 
 
 had had something like it the first time he saw a may- 
 tree in blossom, and he had hardly been able to bear 
 it. He had rather resented it, for it had interfered with 
 his work for a day or two, and he could not help feeling 
 that there was something indecent about an emotion with 
 which he could do nothing. 
 
 "Yes," he said heavily; "it must be very pretty." 
 
 She shivered at the grotesqueness of his words as 
 she sank back into her normal mood of happy diffidence. 
 His face wore an expression of black anger as he 
 darted quick, furious glances at her. Here was some- 
 thing that he did not understand, something that defied 
 his mastery, and when she smiled he thought it was 
 at himself, and this strange power that had been be- 
 hind her appeared to him as a mocking, teasing spirit. 
 Let it mock, let it tease! He was strong enough to 
 defy it. Sweep through a green girl it might, but he 
 was not to be caught by it. He knew better. In him it 
 had tough simplicity to deal with and a will that had 
 broken the confinement of Fate, the limits of a meagre 
 religion, to bend before no authority but that of art. 
 . . . He was rather contemptuous, too. Nothing as yet 
 had resisted his genius, and he felt it within him stronger 
 than ever, a river with a thousand sources. Block one 
 channel and it would find another. Stop that and it 
 would find yet another. 
 
 Yet here he knew was no direct, no open menace, only 
 the intolerable suggestion that there were other streams, 
 other sources, and the suggestion had come from this 
 foolish, empty girl. 
 
 "I will not have it," he said half aloud. 
 
 "What did you say?" she asked. 
 
 "Nothing. I was thinking I was thinking that there 
 is nothing so good as London. They tried to send me
 
 144 MENDEL 
 
 4 
 
 to Italy, but I know that there is nothing so good as 
 London for life, and where life is, there is art. I don't 
 want your pretty places and your pretty feelings. I 
 want to go through the streets and to see the girls in the 
 evening leaving the shops, and the men in their bowler- 
 hats looking at the girls and wanting them, and the 
 fat men in their motor-cars, and the bookstalls on the 
 railway stations, and the public-houses with their rows 
 of bottles and the white handles of the beer machines, 
 and the plump barmaids, and the long, straight streets 
 going on for ever with the flat houses on either side of 
 them, and the markets and the timber-yards and the tall 
 chimneys. It all fills your mind and makes patterns 
 and whirling thoughts that take a spiral shape, going up 
 and up to mysterious heights. I want all that, and noth- 
 ing shall take it from me, do you hear?" 
 
 He turned on her ferociously, as though she were try- 
 ing to rob him. 
 
 "And inside it all is something solid," he went on. 
 "Do you know that my father never loved but one woman 
 in all his life? That's what Jews are. They know 
 what's solid. If they have to stay in the filth to keep 
 it, then they'll stay in the filth. And because I'm a Jew 
 I'm not to be caught with your pretty things and your 
 little fancies. I shall paint the things I understand, and 
 I'll leave the clouds and the rainbows and the roofs and 
 chimneys to fools like Mitchell." 
 
 Morrison sat very meekly while he talked. She hung 
 her head and twitched her ringers nervously. She was 
 elated by his passion, but she too had her dreams and 
 was not going to surrender them. His strength had 
 given her confidence in them and in herself, and she 
 was filled with a teasing spirit. 
 
 "Jews aren't the only people who are solid," she said.
 
 MORRISON 145 
 
 "You see men in buses and trains whom an earthquake 
 wouldn't move, and I'm sure, if an earthquake hap- 
 pened, my mother would be left where she was, reading 
 the Bible." 
 
 Mendel replied: 
 
 "In a thousand years my mother will be just as she 
 is now." 
 
 Morrison stared at him and began to wonder if he 
 was not a little mad. He added simply : 
 
 "I feel like that." 
 
 And she was relieved and thought he was the only 
 sane person she had ever met in her life. 
 
 "Will you let me come again?" she asked. 
 
 "I am going to paint you," he said; "I am going to 
 paint you as you are. You won't like it." 
 
 "I shall if you make me solid," she answered. "And 
 you need flowers in this dark room. You must let me 
 send you some."
 
 BOOK TWO: BOHEMIA
 
 BOOK TWO: BOHEMIA 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE POT-AU-FEU 
 
 AT the exhibition, the portrait of Golda created no 
 small stir. The critics, who, since Whistler, had 
 been chary of denouncing new-comers, had swung to 
 the opposite extravagance and were excessively eager 
 to discover new masters. The youth of this Kuhler 
 made him fair game, for it supplied them with a proviso. 
 They could hail his talent as that of a prodigy without 
 commiting themselves. 
 
 "The portrait of the artist's mother," wrote one of 
 them, "has all the essentials of great art, as the early 
 compositions of Mozart had all the essentials of great 
 music. Here is real achievement, a work of art instinct 
 with racial feeling, and therefore of true originality. No 
 trace here of Parisian experiments. This picture is in 
 the direct line from Holbein and Diirer." 
 
 Mendel took this to mean that he was as good as 
 Holbein and Diirer, and accepted it not as praise but as 
 a statement of fact. The picture was bought by a well- 
 known connoisseur, who wrote that he was proud to have 
 being redeemed by a virtuous girl until now." 
 
 149
 
 150 MENDEL 
 
 "Now," thought the proud painter, "my career has 
 really begun." 
 
 For once in a way he regarded his success with his 
 father's eyes and much as Moscowitsch would have re- 
 garded the successful coup in business for which he was 
 always vainly striving. The hectic gambling spirit in- 
 troduced by Hetty Finch had disappeared, and though he 
 still devoted his leisure to Mitchell, their adventurous- 
 ness was tempered by the tantalisation of the "top-knots," 
 Morrison and Clowes. To counteract the disturbing ef- 
 / feet of their coolness, Mendel became very Jewish and 
 / hugged his success, gloating over it rather like a cat over 
 a stolen piece of fish. 
 
 Morrison's indifference to the buzz about his name 
 was especially maddening, because he wished to prove 
 to her that in painting dwelt a joy beside which her 
 trumpery little ecstasy in woods and flowers was noth- 
 ing, nothing at all. He wished to convince himself 
 that he had not been really disturbed by her first visit 
 to his studio. Only the shock of novelty he had felt, 
 and by his success, by his triumphant work, he had 
 obliterated it. ... She was nothing, he told himself, 
 only a raw girl, smooth and polished by her easy life, 
 good for nothing except to be made love to by such as 
 Mitchell. 
 
 Love ? They called it love when a young man clasped 
 a maiden's hand, or when they kissed and rode together 
 on the tops of buses! These Christians were rather dis- 
 gusting with all their talk of love. He had heard more 
 talk of it in three years of contact with them than 
 in all his life before, and Weldon and others had talked 
 of love in connection with Hetty Finch. 
 
 Disgusting ! 
 
 And now here was Mitchell babbling of his love for
 
 THE POT-AU-FEU 151 
 
 Morrison. When Mendel wanted to talk of pictures and 
 art and the old painters who had worked simply with- 
 out reference to success, Mitchell kept dragging him back 
 to Morrison, her simplicity, her extraordinary childlike 
 innocence, her love of beauty, her generous trustfulness, 
 her queer sudden impulses. 
 
 "What has such a girl as that to do with art or with 
 artists?" said Mendel furiously. "An artist wants women 
 as he wants his food, when he has time for them." 
 
 "Gawd!" says Mitchell, trotting along by his side; 
 "you don't know what you are talking about. I tell 
 you I never believed all that trash about a young man y 
 being redeemed by a virtuous girl until now." 
 
 "It's nonsense !" shouted Mendel ; "nonsense, I tell you. 
 It must be nonsense, because it didn't matter to you 
 whether it was Clowes or Morrison, and for all I know, 
 it may be both." 
 
 "Clowes is a jolly nice girl too," replied Mitchell, "but 
 she's more ordinary. I never met any one like Morrison 
 before. I can't make her out, but she does make me 
 feel that I am an absolute rotter. It is her fresh en- 
 joyment of simple things that disturbs me and makes 
 me see what a mess I've made of my life. Once an 
 artist loses that, he is finished." 
 
 They had been reading Tolstoi on "What is Art?" 
 and their young conceit had been put out by it. Must 
 their extraordinary powers produce work accessible to 
 the smallest intelligence? Mendel had been greatly in- 
 fluenced by that theory in his portrait of his mother, 
 while Mitchell's energy had been paralysed so that he 
 could produce nothing at all. 
 
 "Yes," Mitchell went on, "I know now what Tolstoi 
 means. He means that love can speak direct to love, 
 and, by Jove! it is absolutely true. Brains are only a
 
 152 MENDEL 
 
 nuisance to an artist. Look at Calthrop ! He hasn't got 
 the brains of a louse. Of course, that is why painters 
 are such an ignorant lot. I must tell my father that 
 when he goes for me for not reading." 
 
 "But Tolstoi liked bad artists!" grumbled Mendel. 
 "And my mother does not like some of my best things. 
 As for my father, he wants a painted bread to look as 
 if he could eat it: never is he satisfied just to look at 
 it. His love and my love are not the same and cannot 
 speak to each other." 
 
 "You should see more of Morrison, and then you 
 would understand," rejoined Mitchell. 
 
 Mendel felt that Mitchell was slipping away from 
 him, and all this Christian talk of love was to him a 
 corrosion upon his imagination and his nervous energy, 
 blurring and distorting everything that he valued. There 
 were many things that he hated, and yet because he hated 
 them their interest for him was consuming. Issy's wife, 
 for instance, and her squalling children ; his father's bit- 
 ter tongue; and Mitchell's odd self-importance. 
 
 He repeated: 
 
 "Tolstoi liked bad artists." 
 
 "You can't settle a big man like Tolstoi just by re- 
 peating phrases about him." 
 
 "I can settle him by painting good pictures," retorted 
 Mendel. "I don't paint pictures to please people." 
 
 "Then why do you paint?" 
 
 "I don't know. To be an artist. Because there is a 
 thing called art which matters to me more than all the 
 love and all the women and all the little girls in the 
 world." 
 
 "Ah !" sighed Mitchell. "You'll soon think differently. 
 I shall never do another stroke of work without thinking
 
 THE POT-AU-FEU 153 
 
 of Greta standing on Kew Bridge and looking up the 
 river at the boats with their white sails." 
 
 "Will you be quiet?" cried Mendel; "will you be 
 quiet with your little girls and white sails?" 
 
 Mitchell seemed to be slipping away from him, and 
 he dreaded the thought of being left alone with his 
 success, which was blowing a bulb of glass round him, 
 so that he felt imprisoned in it, and wherever he looked' 
 could see nothing but reflections of himself, Mendel Kiih- 
 ler, painting his mother, and his father, and old Jews 
 and loaves and fishes for ever and ever. While he 
 clung to Mitchell he knew that he could not be so en- 
 cased, but Mitchell demanded that he should go out 
 with him into a world all glowing with love, with rivers 
 of milk and honey and meadows pied with buttercups 
 and daisies; to stand on airy bridges and gaze at inno- 
 cent little girls and white sails. The contemplation of 
 this world revolted him, and he stiffened himself against 
 it. Better the smells and the dirt than such fantastical 
 stuff. His gorge rose against it. 
 
 To wean Mitchell from his amorous fancies he pre- 
 tended that he was tired and wanted a holiday, and to- 
 gether they went down to a village on the South Coast 
 near Brighton. There it was almost as it had been in 
 the beginning. For a fortnight they were never out 
 of each other's company. They slept in one bed and 
 shared each other's clothes, paints, and money. They 
 sketched the same subjects, took tremendous walks, and 
 in the evening they talked as though there were no Lon- 
 don, no Paris Cafe, no exhibitions, no dealers, no critics, 
 nothing but themselves and their friendship and their ar- 
 tistic projects. Mendel was supremely happy. Never 
 had he known such intimacy since the days of Artie 
 Beech.
 
 154 MENDEL 
 
 But Mitchell was often depressed and moody. He 
 had letters every day, and every evening he wrote at 
 great length. 
 
 One morning he had a letter which he crumpled up 
 dramatically and thrust into his trousers pocket. 
 
 "Gawd !" he said. "That's put the lid on it. I'm done 
 for." 
 
 "What is it?" asked Mendel, aghast. 
 
 "I'll tell you when we get back to London. We must 
 go back this afternoon. Eight o'clock in the Pot-au- 
 Feu." 
 
 The Pot-au-Feu was a little restaurant in Soho which 
 Mitchell, Weldon, and some others had endeavoured to 
 render immortal by decorating it with panels. In a room 
 above it lived Hetty Finch. 
 
 Mendel's thoughts flew to her, a figure of ill omen. 
 He had not seen her for some time, and had imagined 
 that she had so successfully got all she wanted and was 
 so thoroughly established in her composite profession that 
 she had no time for the younger artists. He had heard 
 tales about her, and fancied she would succeed in hook- 
 ing one of the older men for a husband. 
 
 He said: 
 
 "Why do you want to go back to that beastly place? 
 Here it is good. I could stay here for six months." 
 
 "Gawd!" said Mitchell dismally. " Tis life. There's 
 absolutely no getting away from it. Everything is swal- 
 lowed up and nothing is left." 
 
 He became very solemn and added : 
 
 "If anything happens to me, Kiihler, I want you to 
 go to Greta Morrison and tell her that through every- 
 thing I never forgot my happiness with her." 
 
 "Happen!" cried Mendel. "What can happen?"
 
 THE POT-AU-FEU 155 
 
 "I'll tell you to-night," replied Mitchell gloomily, "at 
 the Pot-au-Feu." 
 
 And not another word did he say, neither during their 
 morning's work, nor during lunch, nor in the train, nor 
 in the taxi-cab that took them to Soho. 
 
 "You wait outside," said Mitchell mysteriously. 
 
 Mendel waited outside and paced up and down, op- 
 pressed with the idea that his friendship with Mitchell 
 was at an end. He was left helpless and exposed, for 
 all that had been built on the friendship had come top- 
 pling down, and with it came the extra personality he 
 had developed for dealing with the Detmold and the po- 
 lite world the Kiihler who had assiduously learned man- 
 ners and phrases, vices and enthusiasms, as a part to be 
 played at the Paris Cafe and in the drawing-rooms of 
 the languid ladies who were interested in art and art- 
 ists. Hetty Finch went with it, for she had been an 
 adjunct of that personality. . . . He was glad to be rid 
 of her, and shook her off, plucked her out of his mind 
 like a burr that was stuck upon it. 
 
 After a quarter of an hour or so Mitchell came out 
 more mysterious than ever, took his arm and led him into 
 the restaurant, which was hardly bigger than an ordi- 
 nary room. Full of vigour and health as he was, Mendel 
 felt an enormous size in it, as though he must knock over 
 the tables and thrust his elbows through the painted 
 panels. Madame Feydeau, the proprietress, greeted him 
 with a wide smile and said she had missed him lately. 
 At his table was the goggle-eyed man who dined there 
 every night with his newspaper open in front of him. 
 Weldon and a girl with short hair were sitting in un- 
 comfortable silence, both with the air of doing a secret 
 thing. Near the counter, with its 'dishes of fruit and
 
 156 MENDEL 
 
 coffee-glasses, was Hetty Finch, rather drawn and 
 pinched in the face and very dark under the eyes. 
 
 Mendel was filled with impatience. She had no busi- 
 ness to be sitting there, for he had disposed of her, and 
 she made everything seem fantastic and unreal. He 
 shook hands with her and sat at the table. Mitchell took 
 the chair next to Hetty and talked to her in an under- 
 tone, while her eyes turned on Mendel with a fright- 
 ened, inquiring expression. 
 
 "All right," he said, as though he had understood her 
 question. "I know when to hold my tongue." 
 
 Mitchell went on whispering, and every now and then 
 he bowed his head and clenched his fists, as though he 
 were racked with inexpressible emotions. He too had 
 become fantastic. Mendel knew that he was play-act- 
 ing, and with a sickening dread he went back over all he 
 knew of Mitchell, recognising this same play-acting in 
 much that he had accepted as genuine. Yet he would 
 not believe it, for Mitchell was his friend, and therefore 
 never to be criticised. 
 
 Would neither of them speak? Food was laid before 
 him, and he ate it without tasting it. Mitchell led Hetty 
 away to another table and talked to her impressively 
 there. Then he brought her back and went on with his 
 whispering. 
 
 Coffee was laid before Mendel, and he drank it with- 
 out tasting it. 
 
 At last Hetty said, in a loud voice that rang through 
 the room: 
 
 "No. I will take nothing from you. I ask nothing 
 from you, not a penny." 
 
 "By God," said Mitchell, hanging his head, "I deserve 
 it." 
 
 Hetty turned to Mendel and asked him sweetly to buy
 
 THE POT-AU-FEU 157 
 
 her a bottle of wine, as she needed something to pick 
 her up. 
 
 "You are a devil," she said, "sitting there as though 
 nothing had happened. But I always said you were a 
 devil and no good. I always said so, but I have my 
 friends and can be independent." 
 
 "Don't be a fool," said he roughly. "You'll have 
 a short run, and you'd better find something to fall back 
 on while you can." 
 
 "Get your hair cut !" she replied. "I know which side 
 my bread's buttered, and the old men aren't so sharp as 
 the young ones. You've got a fool's tongue in your 
 clever head, Kiihler, and a fool's tongue makes enemies." 
 
 "Shut up!" he said. "And you leave Mitchell alone. 
 He hasn't done you any harm." 
 
 "Ho! Hasn't he?" she cried. 
 
 Mitchell groaned, and, giving a withering glance at the 
 two of them, Hetty gathered up her vanity-bag and 
 gloves and walked out of the restaurant. 
 
 "She's a slut!" said Mendel. "She always was a slut 
 and always will be." 
 
 "Gawd !" cried Mitchell. "It was you let her loose on 
 the town, and I shall never hold up my head again. I 
 shall never be able to face my people. I shall just let 
 myself be swallowed up in London. . . . But I shan't 
 trouble any of my friends. When I'm a pimp I shan't 
 mind if you look the other way. After all, it isn't so 
 far to fall. There's not much difference between the or- 
 dinary artist and a pimp." 
 
 "Whaf has she done to you ?" cried Mendel furiously. 
 "Why do you let yourself be put down by a drab like 
 that?" 
 
 "She's not a drab," said Mitchell, in a curious thin 
 voice of protest. "She is the mother of my child."
 
 158 MENDEL 
 
 Mendel brought his fist down on the table with a 
 thump, so that the cups jumped from their saucers. 
 
 "She is what?" 
 
 "The mother of my child," said Mitchell, burying his 
 face in his hands. "I have offered to marry her, to make 
 an honest woman of her, but she refuses, and she will 
 take nothing from me. Gawd! How can I ever face 
 Morrison again? How can I face my mother?" 
 
 "Rubbish! Rubbish! Rubbish!" cried Mendel. "Why 
 you? Why not Weldon why not Calthrop?" He saw 
 the goggle-eyed man listening eagerly and lowered his 
 voice. "A drab like that deserves all she gets. She takes 
 her risks, and I'll say this for her, that she does not com- 
 plain. She's clever enough to know how to deal with 
 it. . . ." 
 
 He wanted to say a great deal more, but realised that 
 Mitchell, intent upon his own emotions, was not listen- 
 ing to him. Also, through the fantastic atmosphere, he 
 began to be aware of a reality powerful and horrible. 
 Against it Hetty seemed to be of no account, and 
 Mitchell's excitement was palpably false. 
 
 This reality had been called into being by no one's will, 
 and therefore it was horrible. 
 
 "I shall have to disappear," said Mitchell. 
 
 Mendel did not hear him speak. His own will was 
 aroused by the devastating reality. Because it was phys- 
 ical he exulted in it, and his will struggled to master it. 
 He could not endure his friend's helplessness and he 
 wanted above all to help him, to make him see that this 
 thing was at least powerful ; evil and ugly, perhaps, but 
 much too vital to be subdued or conquered by fantasy and 
 theatrical emotions. He found Mitchell bewildering. 
 Sentimentality always baffled him, for it seemed to him 
 so superficial as to be not worth bothering about and
 
 THE POT-AU-FEU 159 
 
 so complicated as to defy unravelling. He knew that 
 Mitchell was horrified and afraid, and that it was nat- 
 ural enough, but fear was not a thing to be encouraged. 
 
 He said : 
 
 "Hetty knows perfectly well that she can manage it 
 better without you." 
 
 "I know," replied Mitchell. "That's what makes me 
 feel such an awful worm." 
 
 Mendel lost all patience. If a man was going to take 
 pleasure in feeling a worm, there was nothing to be done 
 with him. He called the waiter, paid the bill, and 
 stumped out of the Pot-au-Feu leaving Mitchell staring 
 blankly at the goggle-eyed man. 
 
 A few days later he met Edgar Froitzheim leaving the 
 National Gallery as he entered it. 
 
 "Oh ! Kiihler," said Froitzheim. "The very man I 
 wanted to see. I am very proud about the picture 
 very proud. But I wanted to see you about young 
 Mitchell. He is a friend of yours, isn't he? He is be- 
 having very badly to a young model. Such a pretty girl. 
 Hetty Finch. You know her ? She is in trouble through 
 him, and he refused to do anything for her. I'm told 
 he has Nietzschean ideas. I sent for the girl. It is a 
 very sad story and I have raised a subscription for her: 
 fifty pounds to see her through. . . . Do try and bring 
 Mitchell to reason." 
 
 "I'll do what I can," replied Mendel, and he walked 
 on to pay his daily homage to Van Eyck and Chardin, 
 who were his heroes at the time. 
 
 That evening at the Paris Cafe he heard of another 
 subscription having been raised for Hetty, and Calthrop 
 growled and grumbled and said he had given her twenty 
 pounds.
 
 160 MENDEL 
 
 Mendel reckoned it up and he found that she was be- 
 ing paid for her delinquency more than he could hope to 
 receive for many months of painful work. 
 
 As he finished his calculation he was amazed to see 
 Mitchell come in with Morrison, whom he had declared 
 he could never face again, and when Mendel rose to go 
 over and join them she gave him only a curt little nod 
 which told him plainly that he was not wanted.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 LOGAN 
 
 NCE again Mendel decided that Mitchell, and with 
 him London life, had fallen away from him. The 
 Paris Cafe could never be the same again, and he plunged 
 into despair, and thought seriously of accepting a Jewish 
 girl with four hundred pounds whom a match-maker of- 
 fered to him. Four hundred pounds was not to be 
 sneezed at. It would keep him going for some years, so 
 that he need not think of selling his pictures, which 
 he always hated to part with. And the girl was just 
 bearable. 
 
 The figure delighted his father and mother, for it 
 showed them the high opinion of their wonder-son held 
 among their own people. 
 
 It was terrible to him to find that he had very little 
 pleasure in his work, which very often gave him excru- 
 ciating pain. He took it to mean that he was coming 
 to an end of his talent. Night after night he sat on his 
 bed feeling that he must make an end of his life, but al- 
 ways there was some piece of painting that he must do 
 in the morning, painful though it might be. 
 
 He had letters from Mitchell, but did not answer them, 
 and at last "the schoolboy," as Golda called him, turned 
 up, gay and smiling and rather elated. 
 
 161
 
 162 MENDEL 
 
 "I've discovered a great man," he said with the awk- 
 ward, jerky gesture he used in his more eloquent mo- 
 ments. "Absolutely a great man. Reminds me of Na- 
 poleon. Wonderful head, wonderful! His name is Lo- 
 gan James Logan and he wants to know you. He is a 
 painter, and absolutely independent. He comes from the 
 North Liverpool or one of those places. I haven't seen 
 his work, but I met him at the Pot-au-Feu the other 
 night. He asked me if I was not a friend of yours, as 
 he thought he had seen me with you. He said : 'Kiihler 
 is the only painter of genius we have.' I spent the eve- 
 ning with him. I never heard such talk. It made the old 
 Detmold seem like a girls' school. . . . Hallo! Still-life 
 again? What a rum old stick you are for never going 
 outside your four walls!" 
 
 "What I paint is inside me, not outside," said Mendel, 
 trembling with rage at Mitchell looking at his work be- 
 fore he had offered to show it. 
 
 "Will you come and see Logan?" 
 
 "No. I am sick of painters. I want to know decent 
 people." 
 
 "But I promised I would bring you, and he admires 
 your work. He is poor too, as poor as you are." 
 
 "Can't he sell?" 
 
 "It isn't that so much as that he doesn't try. He says 
 he had almost despaired of English painting until he saw 
 your work." 
 
 "How old is he?" 
 
 , "A good deal older than us. Twenty-six, I should 
 think." 
 
 "Why don't you just stick to me?" asked Mendel. 
 "What more do you want? Why must you always go 
 off on a new track? First it's Hetty Finch, then it's 
 Morrison, and now it's this new man. We were happy
 
 LOGAN 163 
 
 enough by ourselves. Why do you want anything more ? 
 I don't."' 
 
 "You're used to living on dry bread. I'm not. I want 
 butter with mine, and jam, if I can get it." 
 
 "Then get it and don't bother me to go chasing after 
 it. I want to work." 
 
 "Oh, rot ! All that stuff about artists starving in gar- 
 rets is out of date. It only happened because they couldn't 
 find patrons, but nowadays there are dealers and buyers. 
 . . . Just look at the money you are making." 
 
 "Then why is this Logan poor?" 
 
 "He isn't known yet. He doesn't know the artists 
 because he never went to a London school. He was doing 
 quite well in the North, but threw it all up because he 
 couldn't stand living in such a filthy town. He had a 
 teaching job somewhere in Hammersmith, but he threw 
 that up because he wanted his time to himself." 
 
 "That sounds as if painting means something to him." 
 
 "Do come and see him." 
 
 "Oh! very well." 
 
 "I'll send him a wire and we'll go to-night." 
 
 They dined at the Pot-au-Feu, and later made the ex- 
 pedition to Hammersmith, where they came to a block 
 of studios surrounded by a scrubby garden. These stu- 
 dios were large and well-kept and did not tally with the 
 description of Logan's poverty. Still less did the inside 
 give any sign of it. There was a huge red-brick fireplace, 
 surmounted by old brass and blue china, with great arm- 
 chairs on either side of it: there were Persian rugs on 
 the floor; two little windows were filled in with good 
 stained glass, which Mendel knew to be costly; there 
 were two or three large easels ; and the walls were hung 
 with tapestry. The whole effect was deliberately and 
 preciously rich.
 
 164 MENDEL 
 
 Logan, who had admitted them to this vast apartment, 
 rushed back at once to a very large easel on which he had 
 a very small canvas, and fell to work on it with a furious 
 energy, darting to and fro and stamping his right foot 
 rather like the big trumpet man in a German band. He 
 was a medium-sized, plumpish man, with a big, strongly 
 featured face, big chin, and compressed lips, and long 
 black hair brushed back from a round, well shaped brow. 
 He frowned and scowled at his work. A woman came 
 out of a door and crossed the studio behind him. He 
 hurled his palette into the air so that it sailed up and 
 fell with a crash among the brass pots, and barked : 
 
 "How can I work with these constant interruptions? 
 Damn it all, an artist must have peace!" 
 
 He flung his arms behind his back and paced moodily 
 to and fro, with his head down and his lips pursed up 
 a la Beethoven. He extended the sphere of his pacing 
 gradually so that he came nearer and nearer to Mendel, 
 yet without noticing him. Mendel was tremendously ex- 
 cited and impressed with the man's air of mystery and 
 force. It was like Calthrop, but without his awkward- 
 ness. Mitchell in comparison looked puny and absurdly 
 young. 
 
 Nearer and nearer came Logan, and at last he stopped 
 and fixed Mendel with a baleful stare, and swung his 
 head up and down three times. 
 
 "So you are Kiihler?" he said. 
 
 Mendel opened his lips, but to his astonishment no 
 sound came out of them. So desperately anxious was he 
 not to cut a poor figure before this remarkable man, and 
 not to seem, like Mitchell, pathetically young. 
 
 "Good !" said Logan. "Shake hands." And he crushed 
 Mendel's thin fingers together. "What I like about you,"
 
 LOGAN 165 
 
 he went on, "is your sense of form. Design is all very 
 well in its way, but quite worthless without form." 
 
 Mendel, whose work was still three parts instinctive, 
 could not attach any precise meaning to these expressions, 
 but he was well up in the jargon of his craft and could 
 make a good show. 
 
 "Art," said Logan, "is an exacting mistress. Shall we 
 go and have a drink ?" 
 
 He put on his hat and led the two marvelling young- 
 sters to a public-house, where he became a different man 
 altogether. The compression of his lips relaxed, his eyes 
 twinkled and his face shone with good humour, and he 
 made them and the barmaid and the two or three men 
 who were shyly taking their beer roar with laughter. 
 He had an extraordinary gift of mimicry, and told story 
 after story, many of them against himself, most of them 
 without point, but in the telling exceedingly comic. Men- 
 del sat up and bristled. It was to him half shocking, 
 half enviable, that a man, and an artist, should be able 
 to laugh at himself. 
 
 "If you'll give me free drinks for a month," said 
 Logan to the elderly barmaid, "I'll paint your portrait. 
 Are you married ? . . . No? I'll paint you such a beau- 
 tiful portrait that it will get you a husband inside a week." 
 
 "I'm not on the marrying lay," said the barmaid. 
 
 "Terrible thing, this revolt against marriage," replied 
 Logan, "and bad luck on us artists. I'm always getting 
 babies left on my doorstep." 
 
 "What do you do with them ?" said Mendel, believing 
 him, and astonished when the others roared with laughter. 
 
 "I keep the pretty ones and sell them to childless 
 mothers. Ah! Many's the time I've gone through the 
 snow, like the heroine in a melodrama taking her child 
 to the workhouse."
 
 166 MENDEL 
 
 "Oh! go on," tittered the barmaid. 
 
 "Certainly," said Logan. "Come along." 
 
 As they left the public-house he took Mendel's arm and 
 said : 
 
 "You have to talk to people in their own language, you 
 know." 
 
 "Yes," replied Mendel, though this was precisely what 
 he knew least of all. 
 
 "Why don't you go on the stage?" asked Mitchell. 
 
 "I have thought of it. I think I might do well on the 
 halls. There's a life for you! On at eight in Bethnal 
 Green : 
 
 My old woman's got a wart on her nose; 
 How she got it I will now disclose. 
 
 Off again in a motor-car to the Oxford: 
 
 My old woman's got a wart on her nose. 
 
 Off again to Hammersmith or Kensal Rise : 
 
 My old woman's got a wart on her nose. 
 
 My God! What a life! But I love the halls. They are 
 all that is left of old England !" 
 
 His parody of the low comedian was so apt and his 
 voice had such a delicious roll that Mendel could not help 
 laughing, and he began to feel very happy with the man. 
 
 Logan swung back to his serious mood and gripped 
 Mendel's arm tighter as he said : 
 
 "You have a big future before you. Only stick to it. 
 Don't listen to the fools who want you to paint the same 
 picture over and over again with a different subject.
 
 LOGAN 167 
 
 There's more stuff in that one little picture of yours than 
 in all the rest of the exhibition put together." 
 
 "Do you think so?" said Mendel, fluttering with excite- 
 ment. 
 
 "I was amazed when I heard you had been to the Det- 
 mold with its Calthrop and all the little Calthrops." 
 
 Both the youngsters were silent on that. They had 
 often abused the Detmold, but with a profound respect 
 in their hearts, and both had done their full share of imi- 
 tating Calthrop. 
 
 When they reached the studio Mitchell suggested go- 
 ing, but Logan would not hear of it. He dragged them 
 in and produced whisky and soda, and kept them talking 
 far into the small hours. His bouncing energy kept Men- 
 del awake and alert, but Mitchell was soon exhausted 
 and fell asleep. 
 
 ''Shall we put him out of the way?" said Logan sud- 
 denly. "No one would know, and the river is handy. 
 He is too clean, too soft, and there are too many like 
 him. They are in the way of real men like you and me." 
 
 Mendel was appalled to find that he could not defend 
 his friend. All the discontents of his waning friendship 
 came rushing up in him and he began to babble violently. 
 
 "He is a liar and a coward, and he will never be an 
 artist because he is too weak. He is not true. He is not 
 good. I have trusted him with my secrets and he tells. 
 He is always ashamed of me because of my clothes and 
 because I have not been to Public School, and he is jeal- 
 ous because when we meet women they like me. He is 
 soft and deceitful with them, but I am honest, and they 
 like that. I wanted him to be my friend, but it is im- 
 possible." 
 
 "He is an Englishman," said Logan sepulchrally, with 
 the air of a Grand Inquisitor.
 
 168 MENDEL 
 
 "Aren't you an Englishman?" 
 
 "No, Scotch and French. These Englishmen have no 
 passions, unless they are mad like Blake. . . . No, no. 
 We'll drop Mitchell overboard. We'll make him walk 
 the plank, and fishes in the caverns of the sea shall eat his 
 eyes." 
 
 Logan was beginning to assume enormous proportions 
 in Mendel's eyes. It seemed that there was nothing the 
 tremendous fellow did not know. He began to talk of 
 genius and the stirring of the creative impulse, and he 
 gave so powerful an account of Blake that Mendel began 
 to see visions of heaven and hell. Here was something 
 which he could acknowledge as larger than himself with- 
 out self-humiliation, and, indeed, the larger it loomed the 
 more swiftly did he himself seem to grow. It was such 
 a sensation as he had not known since the days before 
 his rapture with Sara. All that had intervened fell away. 
 That purity of passion returned to him and, choosing 
 Logan for its object, rushed upon him and endowed him 
 with its own power and beauty. Logan talking of Blake 
 was to Mendel's innocence as rare as Blake, and he 
 adored him. 
 
 "I had almost given up art," said Logan ; "I had almost 
 given it up as hopeless. How can there be art in a de- 
 spiritualised country like this, that lets all its traditions 
 rot away? I was just on the point of tossing up whether 
 I should go on the stage or take to spouting at the street 
 corners; for when a country is in such a condition that 
 its artists are stifled, then it is ripe for revolution. I 
 am instinctive, you know, like Napoleon. I feel that we 
 are on the threshold of something big, and that I am to 
 have my share in it. I used to think it would happen in 
 art, but I despaired of that. It seemed to me that art in 
 this country could go doddering on for generations, and
 
 LOGAN 169 
 
 then I thought it needed a political upheaval to push it 
 into its grave. But when I saw your work, I said to 
 myself : Here is the real thing, alive, personal, profound, 
 skilled. I began to hope again. And now that I have 
 met you I feel more hopeful still, and, let me tell you, 
 like most painters, I don't find it easy to like another 
 man's work." 
 
 Mendel was fired. Trembling in every limb, he said : 
 
 "It has been the dream of my life to find a friend 
 who would work with me, think with me, go with me, 
 share with me, not quarrelling with me because I am not 
 this, that, and the other, but accepting me as I am a 
 man who has no country, no home, no love but art." 
 
 "That," said Logan, with a portentous scowl and a 
 downward jab of his thumb, "is what I have been look- 
 ing for some one, like yourself, who was absolutely sin- 
 cere, absolutely single-minded and resolute. The spirit 
 of art has brought us together. We will serve it to- 
 gether." 
 
 They shook hands like young men on the stage, and 
 Logan fetched a deep sigh of relief. 
 
 Mitchell woke up, saying : ' 
 
 "Gawd ! I've been asleep. Have you two been talking? 
 Gawd! It's two o'clock." 
 
 "I'll walk home with you," said Logan. "We can keep 
 to the river nearly the whole way by going from side 
 to side." 
 
 So they walked while the tide came up, sucking and 
 lapping, while the red dragons' eyes of the barges came 
 swinging up on it, moving up and down in a slow, ir- 
 regular rhythm. It was very cold and the sky was 
 thickly powdered with stars, whose pin-prick lights were 
 reflected in the smooth water. 
 
 Upon the dome of the young artist's vision that had
 
 iyo MENDEL 
 
 before been black with infinite space, stars shone with 
 a tender light. He was in ecstasy, and seemed to be 
 skimming above the ground, hardly touching it with his 
 feet. This long walk was like an exquisite dance, while 
 Logan's rollings were like a pipe. . . . Often he sank 
 into a dream that he was upon a grassy hill in a moun- 
 tainy place, he and his friend, who played upon a pipe so 
 mournfully yet gaily while he danced, and from the trees 
 fell silvery dewdrops and the songs of birds, which turned 
 into pennies as they reached the ground and rolled away 
 down the hill. 
 
 Both he and Logan were relieved when Mitchell, who 
 had interrupted them with inappropriate remarks, turned 
 aside at Vauxhall and vanished into London. 
 
 "So much for Mitchell," said Logan. "You and I 
 need sterner stuff. You and I are sprung from those 
 among whom life is lived bravely and bitterly, and we 
 have no use for its parasites. You and I will only emerge 
 from the bitterness on condition that we can make of 
 life a spiritual thing, for we are of those who seek au- 
 thority. Life has none to offer us now, for all the forms 
 of life are broken. Neither above us nor below is there 
 authority, neither in heaven nor in hell. We must seek 
 authority within ourselves, in the marriage of heaven 
 and hell, in the consummation of good and evil, the two 
 poles of our nature. It is for us, the artists, to bring 
 them together, to liberate good and evil in ourselves, that 
 they may rush to the consummation. We are the priests 
 and the prophets, and we must in no wise be false to 
 our vision." 
 
 Mendel could not fit all this in with his mood and 
 his delicious dreams, and when it brought him back to his 
 sober senses, he could not see what it had to do with 
 painting. However, Logan put things right by saying :
 
 LOGAN 171 
 
 "You are a poet. You are like Heine. I can see you 
 with your little Josepha the pale, the executioner's daugh- ' 
 ter. God rot my soul! It is years since I had such in- 
 spiration as you have given me. I think there must be 
 Jewish blood in me, for I can certainly understand you 
 through and through, and you have waked something 
 in me that has always been asleep. Oh! we shall paint 
 bonny pictures bonny, bonny pictures." 
 
 "You must come to see me every day," said Mendel, 
 "and every night we will go out together, and I must in- 
 troduce you to my mother, for she too has good words." 
 
 Logan smacked his lips as they entered the grimy 
 streets near Spitalfields. 
 
 "Pah !" he said ; "that's life, that is, good dirty life. I 
 was littered in a farm-yard myself and I like a good 
 smell. . . . Can you put me up to-night? I don't mind 
 sleeping on the floor." 
 
 "You can have my bed," said Mendel, "and I will sleep 
 downstairs on my brother's sofa. Please please. Do 
 sleep in my bed." 
 
 Logan accepted the offer and asked Mendel to stay 
 with him while he undressed. He was unpleasantly fat, 
 but strong and well-built. 
 
 He stayed for a long time in front of the mirror. 
 
 "See that bulge on the side of my head?" he said as 
 he turned. 
 
 Mendel looked, and sure enough his head had a curi- 
 ous bulge on its right side. 
 
 "I had rickets when I was young," said Logan, "and 
 my skull must have got pushed over. I expect that's 
 what makes me what I am lopsided. I need you to bal- 
 ance me." 
 
 He got into bed, and Mendel, reluctant to leave him, 
 sat at his feet and devoured him with his eyes.
 
 172 MENDEL 
 
 "Surely, surely, now," he thought, "all is perfect now. 
 No more disturbances, no more Mitchells, no more 
 Hettys, and I shall do only what I really wish to do." 
 
 He stole out into his studio, which was faintly lit from 
 the street below, and it was as though it were filled with 
 some vast spiritual presence, and he imagined how he 
 would work, urged on by this new energy that came wel- 
 ling up through all that he could see, all that he could 
 know, all that he could remember.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 LOGAN SETS TO WORK 
 
 T N the morning he was awakened by his sister-in-law, 
 * Rosa, shaking him and saying : 
 
 "Mendel! Mendel! What are you doing on the sofa? 
 Wake up! Wake up! There is some one in your stu- 
 dio." 
 
 The house was ringing with Logan's voice chanting 
 the Magnificat. Mendel ran upstairs and found him in 
 bed with a box of cigarettes and the New Testament, 
 that fatal book, on his knees. 
 
 "Hello !" he said. "I hope I didn't wake you up. I 
 have been awake for a couple of hours looking at your 
 work. I hope you don't mind. There's a still-life there 
 that's a gem, as good as Chardin, and even better, for 
 there's always something sentimental about Chardin 
 always the suggestion of the old folks at home, the false 
 dramatic touch, the idea of the hard-working French 
 peasant coming in presently to eat the bread and drink 
 the wine, I think it's time you were written up in the 
 papers. It's absurd for a man like you to have to wait 
 for success. There's no artistic public in England, so 
 you can't be successful in your own way. The British 
 public must have its touch of melodrama. To accept a 
 man's work it must first have him shrouded in legend. 
 
 173
 
 174 MENDEL 
 
 He must be a myth. His work must seem to come from 
 some supernatural source." 
 
 "I'll just run over and tell my mother you are here," 
 said Mendel. "I always have breakfast there, and then 
 go for a walk while the studio is dusted." 
 
 "Right you are ! I'll be up in half a jiffy. Can I have 
 a bath?" 
 
 "No. There's no bath." 
 
 "Very well; I can do without for once." 
 
 Mendel ran round to Golda and told her of the won- 
 derful man who was in his studio, and he described the 
 adventure of the previous evening. Golda looked scared 
 and said : 
 
 "What next? What next? Good people sleep in their 
 own beds." 
 
 "But this man is an artist and he talks like a book." 
 
 "Talk is easy," said Golda. "But it takes years to 
 make a friend." 
 
 However, when Logan was brought to her she was 
 polite to him and rather shy. He told her that fame 
 was coming to her son faster than the wind. 
 
 "Too fast," said she. 
 
 "It can never come too fast," replied Logan. "The 
 thirst for fame is a curse to an artist. Let it be satis- 
 fied and he is free for his work. I know, for I was very 
 famous in my own town. I sickened of it and ran away. 
 ... I must congratulate you on letting your son follow 
 his bent. I had to quarrel with my own people to get my 
 way. I haven't seen them since I was fourteen." 
 
 "Not your mother?" said Golda, greatly upset. 
 
 Logan saw that he had made an awkward impres- 
 sion and hastened to put it right by saying lugubri- 
 ously : 
 
 "My mother is dead. She forgave me."
 
 LOGAN SETS TO WORK 175 
 
 He allowed that to sink in and was silent for a minute 
 or two. Then he chattered on gaily and asked Golda to 
 come and see him, and bragged about his studio and his 
 work and his friends, and of a commission he had to dec- 
 orate a large house in a West End square. He talked 
 so fast that Golda understood very little of what he 
 said, but she never took her eyes off him, and when he 
 said good-bye, Mendel noticed that she did not bob to 
 him as she did to Mitchell and Morrison and his other 
 polite friends. He took that to mean that she accepted 
 Logan as a person above these formalities. 
 
 For an hour they walked through the streets and 
 squares of the East End, Mendel proud to display the 
 vivid scenes he intended later on to make into pictures. 
 
 When they returned to the studio Logan insisted on 
 seeing all the pictures and drawings again. 
 
 "Are you in touch with any dealer?" he asked. 
 
 "Cluny has a few pictures and a dozen drawings. He 
 never does anything with them." 
 
 "Hum!" said Logan. "Dealers are mysterious people. 
 They can only sell things that sell themselves. By the 
 way, I am giving up my studio in Hammersmith. It 
 is too far away. I shall come nearer in. Har " "lith 
 was all very well while I needed isolation, but that is all 
 over now." 
 
 "Where shall you go to ?" 
 
 "Bloomsbury, I think. I like to be near the British 
 Museum. Do you go to the British Museum? I must 
 show you round. It is no good going there unless you 
 know what to look for. By the way, I came out without 
 any money last night. Can you lend me five pounds?" 
 
 Mendel wrote a cheque and handed it to him shame- 
 facedly.
 
 176 MENDEL 
 
 "I want to pay a bill on my way home," said Logan. 
 "I hate being in debt, especially for colours." 
 
 "I get my colours from Cluny," said Mendel, "and 
 he sets them against anything he may sell." 
 
 The irruption of money had depressed him, and he be- 
 gan to realise that he was very tired. The springs of 
 Rosa's sofa had bored into him and prevented his getting 
 any real sleep. 
 
 He was not sorry when Logan went, after making 
 him promise to meet him at the Pot-au-Feu for dinner. 
 
 He had a model coming at eleven, but when she arrived 
 he sent her away. He was sore and dissatisfied. The 
 studio seemed dark and dismal, and he could not get 
 enough light on to his work. He took it right up to the 
 window, but still there was not enough light, and his 
 picture looked dull and dingy. His nerves throbbed 
 and he was troubled in spirit, for now his old dreams of 
 painting quietly among his own people while fame gath- 
 ered about his name had suddenly become childish and 
 pathetic. He was ignorant, futile, conceited, a pigmy 
 by the side of the gigantic Logan, who would not wait 
 upon the world, but would compel its attention and shape 
 it to his will. What had he said artists were? Priests 
 and prophets? . . . How could a man prophesy with a 
 painting of a fish ? 
 
 Downstairs he heard Issy come in for his dinner, 
 and there was the usual snarling row because Rosa 
 cooked so vilely. Mendel compared Issy's life and his 
 own: Issy working day in, day out, earning just enough 
 to keep himself alive. Why did he go on with it? Why 
 did he keep himself alive? Why did he not clear out, 
 like Harry? There was no pleasure in his life, neither 
 the time nor the money for it. ... A wretched business.
 
 LOGAN SETS TO WORK 177 
 
 But was it less wretched than this business of paint- 
 ing? There was more money in painting, and that was 
 all anybody seemed to think of. People wanted the 
 same picture over and over again, and if he consented 
 to please them, his life would be just as poor a thing as 
 Issy's, except that he would have pleasure, and, through 
 his friends, an occasional taste of luxury. At best he 
 could be polite and gentlemanly, like Mitchell, bringing 
 no more to art and getting no more out of it than a 
 boyish excitement, as though art were a game and could 
 give no more than a sensation of cleanliness, like a hot 
 bath. 
 
 No, it would not do. It would not do. 
 
 It was a lie, too, to say that the Jews only cared about 
 money. When they were overfed, like Maurice Birn- 
 baum, they were like all the other overfed people, but 
 when they were simple and normal they were better than 
 the others, because they had always a sense of mystery 
 and did not waste themselves in foolish laughter. 
 
 That was where Logan was true. He could laugh, 
 because all the Christians laugh, but when it came to sol- 
 emn things he could talk about them as though he were 
 not half ashamed. Mitchell, for instance, always shied 
 away from the truth. Why was he afraid of it? The 
 truth, good or bad, was always somehow beautiful, in- 
 vigorating, and releasing. All the pleasant things that 
 Mitchell cared about Mendel found stifling. Nothing, he 
 knew, could make life altogether pleasant, and all the 
 falsehoods which were used in that attempt were con- 
 temptible. They strangled impulse and frankness, and 
 without these how could there be art? 
 
 In his unhappy dreams Logan appeared like a figure 
 of Blake, immense, looming prophetic, beckoning to
 
 178 MENDEL 
 
 achievement and away from the chatter and fuss of the 
 world of artists. 
 
 Yet behind Logan there was still the figure of Mitchell, 
 young and gay, and the idea of Mitchell led to the idea 
 of Morrison. 
 
 There were some withered flowers on his painting- 
 table, the last she had sent him. None had come since 
 that evening in the Paris Cafe when she had nodded 
 curtly to show him that he was not wanted. 
 
 He would not be thrust aside like that. He knew 
 himself to be worth a thousand Mitchells. Logan had 
 said that Mitchell was rubbish, and not even in the eyes 
 of a slip of a girl would Mendel have Mitchell set above 
 himself. Not for one moment was it tolerable. He 
 would keep Morrison to her promises and make her come 
 to have her portrait painted, and he would find out what 
 there was in her that made him remember her so dis- 
 tinctly and so clearly separate her from all other girls. 
 Somehow the thought of her cooled the intoxication in 
 which he had been left by Logan. She offered, perhaps, 
 another way out of his present state of congestion and 
 dissatisfaction. Very clearly she brought back to his 
 mind the thrilling delight with which he had worked 
 as a boy, and that was true, truer than anything else he 
 had ever known. . . . Ah! If he could only get back 
 to that, with all the tricks and cunning he had learned. 
 
 He would get back to it some day, but he must fight 
 for it; with Logan he would learn how to fight. Logan 
 would lay his immense store of knowledge before him, 
 and give him books to read, and teach him how to be so 
 easy and familiar with ideas, which at present only 
 frothed in his mind like waves thinning themselves out 
 on the sea-shore. 
 
 He wrote an impassioned and insolent letter to Morri-
 
 LOGAN SETS TO WORK 179 
 
 son commanding her presence at his studio and inform- 
 ing her that he was worth a thousand of her ordinary as- 
 sociates, and that she had hurt him, and that girls ought 
 not to hurt men of acknowledged talent. This letter cost 
 him a great deal of pain and time, because he was careful 
 not to make any slip in spelling or grammar. It was 
 more a manifesto than a letter, and he wished to do noth- 
 ing to impair its dignity. 
 
 And all the time he was puzzled to know why he 
 should care about her at all. He was prepared to throw 
 everything his success, the Detmold, his friends to the 
 winds to follow Logan, but Morrison he could not throw 
 away. 
 
 He decided at last not to send the letter but to go him- 
 self, and he went to the Detmold just as the light was 
 fading and he knew she would be leaving. 
 
 She had gone already, but he met Clowes, who, he 
 knew, lived with her. He pounced on her and said : 
 
 "You must come to tea with me." 
 
 "I'm afraid I ..." 
 
 "You must ! You must !" 
 
 She saw he was very excited and she had heard stories 
 of his bursting into tears when he was thwarted. In 
 some alarm she consented to go with him. 
 
 He led her to a teashop, a horrible place that smelt of 
 dishwater and melted butter, made her sit at a table, and 
 burst at once into a tirade : 
 
 "You are Morrison's friend. Will you tell me why she 
 has avoided me? She came to my studio once and she 
 said she would come again. She sent me flowers for 
 three weeks, but she has sent no more." 
 
 "She she is very forgetful," said Clowes, who was 
 longing for tea but did not dare to tell him to turn to the 
 waitress, who was hovering behind him.
 
 i8o MENDEL 
 
 "But she nodded to me as if she had hardly met me 
 before," said Mendel. 
 
 "She is very shy," said Clowes, framing the word 
 "Tea" with her lips and nodding brightly to the waitress. 
 She added kindly: 
 
 "I don't think sending flowers means much with her. 
 She gives flowers to heaps of people. She is a very odd 
 girl." 
 
 "Does she give flowers to Mitchell?" he asked furi- 
 ously, coming at last with great relief to the consuming 
 thought in his mind. 
 
 "Yes," said Clowes. "She is very unhappy about 
 Mitchell and that Hetty Finch affair." 
 
 "Has he told her then?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Why did he tell her?" 
 
 "I'm sure I don't know." 
 
 "I'll tell you," cried Mendel. "I'll tell you. To make 
 himself interesting to her, because he is not interesting. 
 He is nothing. And I will tell you something more. He 
 has been telling her things about me to excuse himself. 
 Now, hasn't he? ... I can see by your face that he 
 has." Clowes could not deny it, and she found it hard 
 to conceal her distress. She was unused to intimate af- 
 fairs being dragged out into the open like this, and her 
 modesty was shocked. She had a pretty, intelligent face, 
 and she looked for the moment like a startled hare, the 
 more so when she put her handkerchief up to her nose 
 with a gesture like that of a hare brushing its whiskers. 
 
 "Very well, then," Mendel continued ; "you can tell her 
 you have seen me, and you can tell her that I shall come 
 to explain myself. I hide nothing, for I am ashamed of 
 nothing that I do. I have no need to excuse myself. I 
 am not a gentleman one moment and a cad the next. And
 
 LOGAN SETS TO WORK 181 
 
 you can tell Morrison that if I see her with Mitchell 
 again I shall knock him down." 
 
 "Do please drink your tea," said Clowes. "It is getting 
 cold." 
 
 Mendel gulped down his tea and hastened to add: 
 
 "I am not boasting. He is bigger than I am, but I 
 know something about boxing. My brother was nearly a 
 prizefighter." 
 
 Clowes began to recover from her alarm, and his im- 
 mense seriousness struck her as very comic. 
 
 "Did you know that Greta has cut her hair short?" 
 
 "Her hair?" cried Mendel. "Her beautiful hair?" 
 
 "Yes. She looks so sweet, but the boys call after her 
 in the streets. All the girls are wild to do it." 
 
 "Her hair? Her beautiful hair? Why?" 
 
 "Oh ! she got sick of putting it up. She is like that. 
 She suddenly does something you don't expect." 
 
 "But she must look terrible!" 
 
 "Oh, no. She looks too sweet. And if all the boys 
 at the Detmold wear their hair long, I don't see why 
 the girls shouldn't wear theirs short." 
 
 "My mother had her head shaved when she married," 
 said he, "and she wore a wig." 
 
 "Why did she do that?" 
 
 "It is the custom. The woman shows that she belongs 
 wholly to her husband and makes herself unattractive 
 to all other men." 
 
 "What a horrible idea!" 
 
 "It is a beautiful idea. It is the idea of love independ- 
 ent of everything else. That is why I thought Morrison 
 must have some reason for cutting her hair." 
 
 "When you know Greta, you will know that she doesn't 
 wait for reasons." 
 
 "Why does she like Mitchell?"
 
 182 MENDEL 
 
 "She likes nearly everybody." 
 
 "But she writes to him." 
 
 "Of course she does," said Clowes, rather bored with 
 his persistence. 
 
 "But she doesn't write to me." 
 
 "You don't write to her. You can't expect her to fall 
 at your feet." 
 
 As she said this Clowes realised his extraordinary Ori- 
 entalism. She could see him holding up his finger and 
 expecting a woman to come at his bidding, and for a 
 moment she was repelled by him. But she was a kind- 
 hearted creature and felt very sorry for him, for he 
 seemed so utterly at sea and was obviously full of genu- 
 ine and painful emotion. 
 
 He detected her repulsion at once and perceived the 
 effort she made to conquer it, and was at once grateful 
 to her, for, as a rule, when that happened, people let it 
 swamp everything else. 
 
 She said : 
 
 "I'll tell Greta what you have said to me, and I am 
 sure she will be very sorry to have hurt you." 
 
 "I only want her to come and sit for her portrait. It 
 is very important to me, because I want to try new sub- 
 jects and there is some lovely drawing in her face." 
 
 "But you mustn't knock Mitchell down. He is quite 
 a nice boy, really, only a little wild." 
 
 "He is rotten," said Mendel dogmatically. 
 
 He felt better, and until dinner-time he prowled about 
 Tottenham Court Road and Soho, a region of London 
 that he particularly loved a vibrant, nondescript region 
 where innumerable streams of vitality met and fused, or 
 clashed together to make a froth and a spume. It was 
 like himself, chaotic and rawly alive, compounded of
 
 LOGAN SETS TO WORK 183 
 
 elements that knew no tradition or had escaped from it. 
 He felt at home in it, and elated because he was also con- 
 scious of being superior to it, yet without the dizzy sense 
 of superiority that assailed him among his own people, 
 while he was never shocked and humiliated, as he was 
 sometimes in sedate and prosperous London, by being 
 made suddenly to realise his external inferiority. He 
 loved the shop-girls hurrying excitedly from their work 
 to their pleasure, and he sometimes spoke to them in 
 their own slang, sometimes went home with them. . . . 
 They always liked him because he never wasted time 
 over silly flirtatious jokes or pretended to be in love with 
 them. His interest and curiosity, like theirs, were purely 
 physical, and his passion gave them a delicious sense of 
 danger. 
 
 Logan was waiting for him at the Pot-au-Feu. There 
 was no one else in the restaurant but the goggle-eyed 
 man in his corner. Logan was sitting Napoleonically 
 with his arms on the table and his chin sunk on his chest, 
 with his lips compressed. 
 
 He nodded, but did not get up. 
 
 "Sorry if I'm late," said Mendel. "I went for a walk. 
 I couldn't work to-day. My sister-in-law's sofa I feel 
 as if I had been beaten all over." 
 
 "That's the walk home," said Logan. "I'm used to 
 it. The hours I've spent walking about this infernal 
 London ! I've slept on the Embankment, you know." 
 
 "No?" 
 
 "Yes. I've been as far down as that, though I'm not 
 the sort of man who can be kept down. Did you know 
 that Napoleon was out-at-elbows for a whole year?" 
 
 "No ; I don't know much about Napoleon."
 
 184 MENDEL 
 
 "Ah! You should. I read every book about him I 
 can lay hands on. Gustave!" 
 
 The waiter came up and Logan ordered a very special 
 dinner with the air of knowing the very inmost secrets 
 of the establishment. He demanded orange bitters before 
 the meal and a special brand of cigarette. 
 
 "My day hasn't been wasted," he said. "I've been 
 to Cluny's and I asked to see your stuff. The little man 
 there looked astonished, but I told him people were talk- 
 ing of no one else but you, and quite rightly. I talked 
 to him from the dealer's point of view, and assured him 
 that there was a big boom in pictures coming, and that 
 he had better be prepared for it with a handful of 
 new men. I didn't let him know that I was a painter, 
 but I got him quite excited, and I did not leave him until 
 he had hung a picture and two drawings." 
 
 "Which picture?" 
 
 "The one of your mother's kitchen. It is one of your 
 best. To-morrow three men will walk into Cluny's and 
 they will admire your work. On the day after to-morrow 
 a real buyer will walk in." 
 
 Mendel's eyes grew larger and larger. Was Logan 
 a magician, that he could direct human beings into Clu- 
 ny's shop and conduct them straight to his work? 
 
 Logan laughed at his amazement. 
 
 "Lord love-a-duck !" he said, "you're not going to sit 
 still and wait for commercial fools to discover that you 
 know your job. At my first exhibition in Liverpool I put 
 on a false beard and went in and bought one of my own 
 pictures, just to encourage the dealer and the timid idiots 
 who were too shy to go and ask him the price of the 
 drawings. It worked, and this is going to work too. 
 When I've warmed Cluny up into selling you, then I'm 
 going to make him sell me. If you don't mind we'll have
 
 LOGAN SETS TO WORK 185 
 
 our names bracketed, Kiihler and Logan. People will 
 believe in two men when they won't in one. As for 
 three, you've only got to look at the Trinity to see what 
 they'll believe when they get three working together. 
 ... Oh! I forgot you were a Jew and brought up to 
 believe in One is One and all alone." 
 
 He laughed and gave a fat chuckle as he mimicked 
 the little man in Cluny's cocking his head on one side 
 and pretending to take in the beauties of Mendel's work 
 as they were pointed out to him. 
 
 "I have enjoyed myself," said Logan. "By God! I 
 wish there were a revolution. I'd have my finger in the 
 pie. Oh! what lovely legs there'd be to pull all the 
 world's and his wife's as well. But it won't come in my 
 time." 
 
 Under Logan's influence Mendel began to enjoy his 
 food, which he had always treated as a tiresome neces- 
 sity before. He sat back in his chair and sipped his wine 
 and crumbled up his bread exactly as Logan did ; and he 
 had a delicious sense of leisure and well-being, as though 
 nothing mattered very much. And, indeed, when he 
 came to think of it, nothing did matter. He had years 
 and years ahead of him, and here was good solid pleasure 
 in front of him, so that he had only to dip his hands in 
 it and take and take. . . . 
 
 After the dinner Logan ordered cigars, coffee, and 
 liqueurs, and Mendel felt very lordly. The restaurant 
 had filled up, and among the rest were Mitchell and Mor- 
 rison. 
 
 Mendell turned, gave them a curt nod, and could not 
 restrain a grin of satisfaction as he thought that score 
 was settled. He leaned forward and gave himself up to 
 the pleasure of Logan's talk. 
 
 "What I contend," said Logan, "is this and mind
 
 186 MENDEL 
 
 you, I let off my youthful gas years ago. I've been earn- 
 ing my living since I was fourteen, so I know a little of 
 what the world's like. I've been in offices and shops, and 
 on the land, in hotels, on the railway, on the road as a 
 bagman, from house to house as a tallyman, and I know 
 what I'm talking about. The artist is a free man, and 
 therefore an outlaw, because the world is full of timid 
 slaves who lie in the laps of women. If an artist is not 
 a free man, then he is not an artist. And I say that if the 
 artist is outlawed, then he must use any and every means 
 to get out of the world what it denies him. One must 
 live." 
 
 "That's true," said Mendel. 
 
 "You may take it from me that there is less room in 
 the world now for artists than ever there was. In the 
 old days you chose your patron and he provided for 
 you, as the Pope provided for Michael Angelo, and you 
 devoted your art to whatever your patron stood for, 
 spiritual power if he happened to be a pope, secular power 
 if he happened to be a duke or a king. But, nowadays, 
 suppose you had a patron say, Sir Julius Fleischmann 
 and he kept you alive, what on earth could you devote 
 your art to? You could paint his portrait, and his wife's 
 portrait, and all his daughters' portraits, but they'd mean 
 nothing; they'd just be vulgar men and women. No. 
 Art is a bigger thing than any power left on the earth. 
 Money has eaten up all the other powers, and only art 
 is left uncorrupted by it. Art cannot be patronised. 
 It cannot serve religion, because there is no religion vital 
 enough to contain the spirit of art. There is nothing left 
 in the world worthy of such noble service, and therefore 
 art must be independent and artists must be free, because 
 there is no honourable service open to them. They must 
 have their own values, and they must have the courage
 
 LOGAN SETS TO WORK 187 
 
 of them. The world's values are the values fit for the 
 service of Sir Julius Fleischmann, but they are not fit 
 for men whose blood is stirring with life, whose minds 
 are eager and active, men who will accept any outward 
 humiliation rather than the degradation of the loss of 
 their freedom." 
 
 "I met Sir Julius Fleischmann once," Mendel said. 
 "He subscribed for me when I went to my first School of 
 Art. They wanted to send me to Italy, but I refused, 
 because I knew my place was here in London. There's 
 more art for me in the Tottenham Court Road than in all 
 the blue skies in the world." 
 
 "Quite right, too!" cried Logan. "That shows how 
 sound an artist's instinct is. He knows what is good 
 for him because he is a free man. The others have to be 
 told what is good for them because they don't know 
 themselves and because, however unhappy they are, they 
 don't know the way out. When you and I are unhappy 
 we know that it is because we have lost touch with life, 
 or because we have lost touch with art; either the flesh 
 or the spirit is choked with thorns, and we set about 
 plucking them out. When it is a question of saving your 
 soul, what do morals matter?" 
 
 Mendel had heard people talk about morals, and he 
 knew that his own were supposed to be bad; but he 
 was not certain what they were. Rather timidly he 
 asked Logan, who gave his fat chuckle and replied : 
 
 "Morals, my son? No one knows. They change about 
 a hundred years after human practice. They are dif- 
 ferent in different times, places, and circumstances, and 
 Sir Julius Fleischmann, like you and me, has none, be- 
 cause he can afford to do without them. . . . Well, I've 
 done a good day's work and we've had a good dinner,
 
 188 MENDEL 
 
 and I must get back to my beautiful bed unless you'd 
 like to go to a music-hall." 
 
 Mendel was loath to let his friend go, and, weary 
 though he was, he said he would like the music-hall. 
 Logan bought more cigars and they walked round to the 
 Oxford and spent the evening in uneasy and flat con- 
 versation with two ladies of the town, one of whom said 
 she knew Logan, though he swore he had never seen her 
 before. When they were shaken off, he told Mendel mys- 
 teriously that she was a friend of a woman of whom 
 he went in terror, who had been pursuing him for a 
 couple of years. 
 
 "Terrible! Terrible!" he said. "Like a wild beast. 
 They're awful, these prostitutes, when they fall in love. 
 It eats them up, body and soul." 
 
 And he went on talking of women, and from what 
 he said it appeared that he was beset by them. He de- 
 scribed them lurking in the street for him, forcing their 
 way into the studio, clamouring for love, love, love. 
 
 "It makes me sick," he said. "I never yet met a 
 woman who knew how to love. If a man has an enthu- 
 siasm for anything outside themselves, they plot and 
 scheme with their damnable cunning to kill it. They want 
 the carcase of a man, not the lovely life in it. And if 
 they're decent they want babies, which is almost worse 
 if you're hard up. No, boy; for God's sake don't take 
 women seriously. If you can't do without them, hate 
 'em. They'll lick your boots for it. They feed on hatred, 
 and will take it out of your hand." 
 
 He talked in this strain until they reached the Tube 
 station in Piccadilly Circus. It was unusually empty, and 
 by the booking-office was standing a very pretty girl, big 
 and upstanding. She had a wide mouth and curious 
 slanting eyes, plump cheeks and a roguish tilt to her chin.
 
 LOGAN SETS TO WORK 
 
 She was well and neatly dressed, and Mendel judged 
 her to be a shop-girl. 
 
 "That's a fine lass," said Logan. "Good-night, boy. 
 I'll see you to-morrow and tell you about Cluny's." 
 
 "Good-night," said Mendel, still loath to see his friend 
 go, and he suffered a pang of jealousy as he saw Logan 
 go up to the girl, raise his hat, and speak to her. She 
 started, blushed, and smiled. They stopped and talked 
 together for a few moments, and then moved over to- 
 wards the lift. 
 
 Mendel waited and watched them, Logan talking gaily, 
 the girl smiling and watching him intently through her 
 smile. With her eyes she took possession of him, and 
 Mendel was filled with misgiving when he heard Logan's 
 fat chuckle and the rustle and clatter of the gate as the 
 lift descended. It reminded him oddly of the Demon 
 King and the Fairy Queen in a pantomime he had once 
 seen with Artie Beech, whose father used to get tickets 
 for the gallery because he had play-bills in his shop 
 window.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 BURNHAM BEECHES 
 
 FOR Greta Morrison as for Mendel, London life had 
 been opened up through Mitchell. He had been 
 friendly and kind to her when everybody else had been 
 harsh, fault-finding 1 , and indifferent. Her first year and 
 a half at the hostel had been a period of misery, for the 
 girls and women there regarded her as odd, vague, and 
 careless, and thought it their duty to impose on her the 
 discipline she seemed to need, for they knew nothing of 
 her suffering through her ambition and her work. 
 
 Like Mendel, she had been overwhelmed by her inabil- 
 ity to adapt herself easily to the Detmold standard of 
 drawing, for it was against her temperament and her 
 habit of mind to be precise, and drawing had always 
 been to her rather a trivial thing, though extremely pleas- 
 ant for the purposes of the caricatures in which her teas- 
 ing humour found an outlet. All her girlhood had been 
 thrillingly happy in the execution of large allegorical 
 designs, through which she sought to express her delight 
 in the earth the immense serene power of which she be- 
 came profoundly aware as she lay in the bracken at 
 home and gazed out over the rich valley or up into the 
 marvellous, quivering blue sky, through which she felt 
 that she was being borne without a sound, without a 
 tremor, irresistibly. Nothing could shake that loving 
 
 190
 
 BURNHAM BEECHES 191 
 
 knowledge in her, and it hurt her that her mother's cold, 
 self-centred religion, which made her demand a fussy, 
 sentimental attention from her children, forbade all ex- 
 pression of it in her daily life. Her brothers, revolting 
 against the sentimentality exacted of them, treated all 
 tenderness as ignoble rubbish, and in her rough-and-tum- 
 ble with them Greta was hardened and forcd into inde- 
 pendence. She had to play their games with them and 
 to suffer the same tortures of knuckle-drill, brush, dry- 
 shave, and wrist-screw. But all their swagger seemed to 
 her rather fraudulent; and because they laughed at her 
 allegorical designs she decided that men were inferior 
 beings. When they laughed at her designs it was to her 
 as though they laughed at the beauty she had tried to ex- 
 press in them, and the sacrilege enraged her more than 
 her mother's petulance, for they were young and strong 
 and full of life, and they should not have been blind. 
 It was against them that she first found relief in carica- 
 ture, and as they went through their Public Schools and 
 were more and more compressed into type, she pilloried 
 them, and, as a consequence, even when she was a young 
 woman, big and fine, with the tender, delicate bloom of 
 seventeen upon her, she had to submit to the indignity 
 of knuckle-drill, brush, dry-shave, and wrist-screw. 
 
 She was filled with a horror of men, and especially 
 Public School men, for they seemed to her entirely lack- 
 ing in decency, humility, and honesty. They pretended 
 to be so fine and ignored everything that was finer than 
 themselves. Her brothers' foolish love-affairs disgusted 
 her and made her suppress in herself every emotion that 
 tried to find its way to a good-looking boy or young man. 
 She was not shy of them or afraid of them, but she^would 
 not encourage in them what she so detested in her 
 brothers.
 
 192 MENDEL 
 
 During her first year in London she devoted herself 
 heart and soul to her work. There were two or three 
 families who were kind to her as her mother's daughter, 
 but their ways were her mother's, and she only visited 
 them as a duty, and to break the monotony of the school 
 and the hostel. 
 
 Her encounter with Mitchell took place at the time 
 when Mendel's influence on him had set him in revolt 
 against his Public School training. On the other hand, 
 the sight of the abyss of poverty into which Mendel de- 
 scended so easily had set him reeling. He was shrewd 
 enough to know that Hetty Finch was using him as a 
 ladder to get out of it, and that there was a real danger 
 of her kicking him down into it. In a state of horrible 
 confusion he plunged at the most obvious outlet, the 
 "pure girl" of the tradition of his upbringing. 
 
 He made no concealment of it, but turned to Morrison 
 with a childlike confidence that touched her. She was 
 feeling lonely, disappointed, and dissatisfied with herself 
 and was glad of his company. It was a change from the 
 woman-ridden atmosphere of the hostel. 
 
 By way of making their relationship seemly he intro- 
 duced her to his family, where as the pure young girl 
 who was to save their hope from wild courses she was a 
 great success. 
 
 "First sensible thing you've done, my boy," said Mr. 
 Mitchell, that great man, a journalist who had been a 
 correspondent in a dozen wars. "A pure friendship be- 
 tween a boy and a girl has a most ennobling influence 
 most ennobling." 
 
 "She is truly spiritual," sighed Mrs. Mitchell, "the 
 type who justifies the independence of the modern girl, 
 whatever the Prime Minister may say." 
 
 "That scoundrel!" cried Mr. Mitchell. "That infa-
 
 BURNHAM BEECHES 193 
 
 mous buffoon who has not a grain of Liberalism left in 
 his toadying mind!" 
 
 "My dear," said Mrs. Mitchell, "we were talking about 
 little Miss Morrison." 
 
 "Well," answered Mr. Mitchell, "we took our risk 
 when we let the boy be an artist and we can be thankful 
 it is no worse. Did I tell you, my love, that I am go- 
 ing off to the Cocos Islands to-morrow?" 
 
 "Indeed, my dear ? Then you will not be able to come 
 to my meeting." 
 
 "No. I hear it is worse than the Congo." 
 
 "Oh dear! oh dear! I don't know what the world 
 is coming to. The more civilised we get in one part of 
 the world, the worse things are in another part. I de- 
 clare such horrible things seem to me to make it quite 
 unimportant whether we get the vote or not." 
 
 "When you have a Tory Government calling itself 
 Liberal," said Mr. Mitchell very angrily, "it means that 
 neither reform at home nor justice abroad can receive 
 any attention. The country has gone to the dogs, and I 
 thank God I spend most of my time out of it." 
 
 "And poor Humphrey suffers. I'm sure I am a good 
 mother to him, but I cannot be a father as well. I'm 
 thankful to say he seems to be dropping that Jewish 
 friend of his. He is a genius, of course, and quite re- 
 markable, considering what he comes from; but with 
 Jews it can never be the same, can it?" 
 
 "No, my love," said Mr. Mitchell; "one would never 
 dream of drinking out of the same glass, would one? 
 Still, I must say, the Jews in England are much better 
 than they are anywhere else, which seems to show that 
 they can respond to decent treatment and thrive in the 
 air of liberty." 
 
 Both Mr. and Mrs. Mitchell had a platform manner of
 
 194 MENDEL 
 
 speaking, and as Morrison was not a subject that suited 
 it, she was soon dropped ; but in the end they came back 
 to her, and agreed that she was a nice, shy little girl, and 
 that she had no idea of marrying their only son, or 
 any one else, for that matter. 
 
 She was much impressed with them, for she had never 
 met important people before, and she was given to un- 
 derstand that they were very important. They seemed to 
 have their fingers on innumerable reforms which were 
 only suppressed by the stupidity of the Government. Di- 
 rectly the Government was removed, as of course such 
 idiots soon would be, Mr. and Mrs. Mitchell would raise 
 their fingers and, hey presto! women would have votes, 
 the slums would be pulled down, maternity would be 
 endowed, prostitutes would be saved, prisons would be 
 reformed, capital punishment abolished, the working 
 classes would be properly housed, every able-bodied man 
 who wished it should have his small holding, the railways 
 would be nationalised, site values would be taxed, divorce 
 would be made easy and free from social taint, and edu- 
 cation would be made scientific and thorough. In the 
 meantime, as the Government did not budge, Mr. Mitchell 
 went to the Cocos Islands and Constantinople to procure 
 evidence of horrors abroad and Mrs. Mitchell addressed 
 meetings on the subject of horrors at home. 
 
 Morrison was impressed. The contrast between these 
 people who thought of everything and everybody but 
 themselves and her own home, where nothing was 
 thought of but the family, the Church, and the Em- 
 pire, shocked her into thinking and gave her a sense of 
 liberation. It made human beings more interesting than 
 she had thought, and she began to see that they did not, 
 as she had heedlessly accepted that they did, fit infallibly 
 into their places, and that vast numbers had no places to
 
 BURNHAM BEECHES 195 
 
 fit into. She herself, she saw, did not fit into any place, 
 and that she had been squeezed, like paint out of a tube, 
 out of her home for no other reason than that she was a 
 woman, and there was only just enough money to estab- 
 lish the boys. However, she could not quite swallow 
 Mrs. Mitchell's view that men had deliberately, coldly, 
 and of set purpose ousted women from their rightful 
 share in the sweets of life. 
 
 She had a period of despair as these revelations sank 
 into her mind and she had to digest Mrs. Mitchell's awful 
 facts and statistics about the night-life of London. Life 
 seemed too terrible for her powers, but, as she soon be- 
 gan to see how comic Mrs. Mitchell was, she pulled her- 
 self together and found that she was strengthened by 
 the experience, and when Mitchell confessed the awful 
 doings of his past, she felt immeasurably older than he, 
 and was thankful she was a woman and did not expect 
 such things of herself. For she could never quite take 
 his word for all he said. She knew her brothers too 
 well to accept his plea of passionate necessity. 
 
 "Gawd!" he used to say. "When I think of my past 
 I feel that I must go on my knees and worship your 
 purity." 
 
 His absurdity made her blush, but she liked him. He 
 was clever and had read much under his father's guid- 
 ance, poetry and modern English fiction mostly, and 
 when she went to tea with him in his studio he used 
 to read aloud to her, Keats and Shelley and Matthew Ar- 
 nold. 
 
 "I think I only like poetry," she said once, "when 
 it makes pictures. When it doesn't do that it seems to 
 me just words, and it doesn't seem to matter how nice 
 they sound." 
 
 "Gawd !" he said. "That's like Kiihler. He says noth-
 
 196 MENDEL 
 
 ing makes such pictures as the Bible, and he is always 
 quoting that about: 'At her feet he bowed, he fell, he 
 lay down : where he fell, there he lay down.' And he 
 says it must be the words, because his own Hebrew Bible 
 never gave him anything like the same er vision of 
 it." 
 
 Once he had begun to talk of Mendel she would not let 
 him leave the subject. 
 
 "Do you think he's a genius?" she would ask. 
 
 "Gawd! I don't know. He says he is a genius, and 
 I suppose time will show whether it is true or not. But 
 why do you want to talk of him?" 
 
 "I don't know. I'm interested. Perhaps because he 
 is different," 
 
 "Well, you've had tea with him. That is about as 
 much as is good for you. If you were my sister I 
 wouldn't let you know him." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 "My dear girl, there are certain things in life that a 
 young girl ought never to know." 
 
 "What things? Is there anything worse than what 
 your mother talks about at her meetings? Girls know 
 all about that nowadays, and it is no good pretending 
 we don't." 
 
 "Talking about them is one thing, coming in contact 
 with them is another. Kiihler is a Jew, and he comes 
 from the East End, where they don't have any decent 
 pleasures. He's infernally good-looking in a hurdy- 
 gurdy sort of way. Gawd! Women look at him and 
 off they go." 
 
 "But he cares for poetry and the Bible and he loves 
 pictures. . . ." 
 
 "It doesn't seem to make any difference." 
 
 During this talk he had begun to find Morrison ex-
 
 BURNHAM BEECHES 197 
 
 traordinarily pretty and lovable, and he said tenderly: 
 
 "Won't you take off your hat and let me see your beau- 
 tiful hair?" 
 
 She refused, and asked him more about Mendel, and 
 in exasperation at the unintended snub he told her the 
 true story of Hetty Finch, not concealing his own share 
 in it, but implying that Mendel's terrible immorality had 
 corrupted him and led to his downfall. 
 
 The story was received in silence. 
 
 At last she said : 
 
 "And what is going to become of Hetty Finch?" 
 
 "That's the extraordinary part of it," said Mitchell. 
 "She has found some one to marry her." 
 
 He leaned against the mantelpiece and dropped his 
 head in his hands and groaned. 
 
 "Gawd!" he said. "If it weren't for you I don't know 
 what would become of me." And he was so moved by 
 his own thoughts that tears trickled down his nose and 
 made dark spots on the whitened hearth. 
 
 "I can't ask you to marry me," he said mournfully. 
 "I'm unworthy, but I want to be your friend." 
 
 She made no reply, and he was forced to ask rather 
 lamely : 
 
 "Will you be my friend?" 
 
 "Of course." 
 
 "Always?" 
 
 "How can I promise that?" she said. 
 
 It was then that he took her to the Paris Cafe, where, 
 all in a turmoil through her new knowledge of men and 
 women, she hardly knew what she was doing, and gave 
 Mendel the curt nod which had so disgruntled him. 
 
 Every summer the Detmold students went for a pic- 
 nic, either up the river, or to a Surrey common, or to one
 
 198 MENDEL 
 
 of the forests in the vicinity of London. This year 
 Burnham Beeches was chosen. Two charabancs met the 
 party at Slough, and though Mendel tried very hard to 
 sit next to Morrison, he was outmanoeuvred by Mitchell, 
 and had to put up with Clowes. 
 
 "I wish you wouldn't glare at Mitchell so. You make 
 me quite uncomfortable," said she. 
 
 "He is telling her lies about me," growled Mendel. 
 
 "Don't be absurd," protested Clowes. "He is not talk- 
 ing about you at all." She felt rather cross with him 
 because he was spoiling her pleasure, and because she had 
 wanted to sit next to some one else, and she added : 
 "People aren't always talking about you, and if anybody 
 does it's the models, and that's your own fault." 
 
 "How beastly !" he said. 
 
 "I don't blame them. They haven't any other in- 
 terest." 
 
 "I didn't mean that. I meant this country. It is so 
 flat and dull, regular railway scenery. What a place to 
 choose for a picnic!" 
 
 "Wait until you get to the woods ! We're going to a 
 place called Egypt. Don't you think that's romantic? 
 Though it reminds me more of Oberon and Titania than 
 of Anthony and Cleopatra." 
 
 He looked blank, and she explained: 
 
 "Shakespeare, you know." 
 
 "I've never read Shakespeare." 
 
 "Oh! you should." 
 
 "I've tried, but I can't understand him. I suppose it's 
 because I'm not English. It seems ridiculous to me, all 
 those plots and murders." 
 
 "But the fairies in the 'Midsummer Night's Dream' !" 
 
 "I haven't read it ; but what do you want with fairies ? 
 A wood's a wood, and there's quite enough mystery in
 
 BURNHAM BEECHES 199 
 
 it for me without pretending to see things that aren't 
 there." 
 
 "But it's nice to pretend," said Clowes rather lamely, 
 almost hating him because he seemed so wrong in the 
 country. She knew people like that, people she was quite 
 fond of in London, but in the country they were awful. 
 
 The charabancs swung through Farnham Royal and 
 they came in sight of the woods, brilliant under a vivid 
 blue sky patched with huge, heavy white clouds. Birds 
 hovered above the trees, and as they turned out of the 
 street of seaside bungalows and along the sandy lane 
 leading to Egypt, they put up rabbits and pheasants. 
 
 The art students looked bizarre and almost theatrical 
 in the woods, with the long-haired young men and the 
 short-haired girls, many of them wearing the brightest 
 colours. Mendel hated the lot of them, giggling girls 
 and bouncing boys, and he recognised how inappropriate 
 they all were and how he himself was the most inappro- 
 priate of them all. He felt ashamed, and wanted to go 
 away and hide, to crawl away to some hole and gaze with 
 his eyes at the beauty he could not feel. There were 
 too many trees, as there were too many people. . . . 
 What a poor thing is a man in a crowd which makes 
 it impossible to share his thoughts and emotions with 
 any one ! And how bitter it is when he is full of thoughts 
 and emotions ! It is all so bitter that the crowd must do 
 foolish, inappropriate things not to feel it, not to be 
 broken up by it. ... Yet the others seemed happy 
 enough. The old Professors were beaming and pretend- 
 ing to be young. Perhaps they enjoyed it more than 
 any one because they did not want to be alone, or to 
 steal away with a coveted maid, as some of the young 
 men were doing even now. . . . Had Mitchell stolen
 
 200 MENDEL 
 
 away with Morrison? Horrible idea! No. There he 
 was, putting up stumps for cricket. 
 
 Cricket ! How Mendel loathed that fatuous game, the 
 kind of inappropriate foolish thing the crowd always did! 
 How he dreaded the swift hard ball that would hurt his 
 hand or his shins! How humiliated he felt when he 
 was out : and how he raged against the frantic excitement 
 he could not help feeling when he hit the ball and made 
 a run. One run seemed to him a larger score than any 
 one else could possibly make, and when he made a run 
 and was on the winning side he always felt that he had 
 won the match. In the field, no matter where he was 
 placed, he went and stood by the umpire, because he had 
 noticed that the ball rarely went that way. 
 
 He had to field now, and he went and stood by the 
 umpire. Mitchell came swaggering in. He hit a lovely 
 four, a three, a two. The fielders changed at the over, 
 but Mendel stayed where he was. The ball came near 
 him. He picked it up and threw it as hard as he could at 
 Mitchell's head. Fortunately he missed, and there was 
 a roar of laughter. 
 
 "I say, I mean to say," said one of the Professors, 
 "we are not playing rounders or or baseball." 
 
 And there was more laughter. 
 
 Mitchell hit a three, a two, a lost ball (six), a four, 
 and then he skied one. The ball went soaring up. With 
 his keen sight Mendel could see it clearly shining red 
 against the hot sky. With an awful sinking in his stom- 
 ach he realised that it was coming down near him. It 
 was coming straight to him. It would fall on him, hurt 
 him, stun him. Then he thought that if he caught it 
 Mitchell would be out. He never lost sight of the ball 
 for a moment. If he caught it Mitchell would be out.
 
 BURNHAM BEECHES 201 
 
 He moved back two paces, opened his hands, and the ball 
 fell into them. 
 
 "Oh ! well caught, indeed ! Well caught !" 
 
 Mitchell walked away from the wicket swinging his 
 bat in a deprecating fashion. After all, one does not 
 expect miracles even in cricket. 
 
 "Beautiful, beautiful ball!" thought Mendel, fondling 
 it with his still tingling hands. "You came to me like 
 a lark to its nest, and you shone so red against the sky, 
 you shone so red, so red!" 
 
 His dissatisfaction vanished. The crowd was a nice 
 beast after all. It was at his feet. At no one else had 
 it shouted like that. . . . The woods were very beautiful, 
 with the bracken nodding under the trees, and the 
 branches swaying, and the soft winds murmuring through 
 the leaves, through which the trees seemed to breathe 
 and sigh and to envy the moving wind while they were 
 condemned to stay and grow old in one spot. Very, 
 very sweet were the green and yellow and blue lights hov- 
 ering and swinging through the woods, dappling the 
 trunks of the trees, weaving an ever-changing pattern on 
 the carpet of moss and dead leaves, and the tufted 
 bracken that sometimes almost looked like the sea, full 
 of a life of its own. Surely, surely there were fish 
 swimming in the bracken. 
 
 Starting out of his dreams, he saw Morrison at the 
 wicket, very intent, with a stern expression on her face. 
 He knew she was desperately anxious to score. 
 
 She was most palpably stumped with her second ball, 
 but the umpire gave her "not out," amid general ap- 
 plause, for she was a favourite. 
 
 She lashed out awkwardly at the next ball, which came 
 on the leg side. It came towards Mendel at an incredible 
 speed. He put his foot on it, picked it up, pretended it
 
 202 MENDEL 
 
 had passed him, and tore towards the trees in simulated 
 pursuit; and he remained looking for it in the bracken 
 while Morrison ran four, five, six, seven, eight, and just 
 as some one cried "Lost ball !" he stooped, pretended to 
 pick it up, and threw it back to the bowler. 
 
 He himself was bowled first ball, but, as it turned out, 
 Morrison's side won by three runs. 
 
 She was bubbling over with happiness, and after tea 
 she came over to him and said : 
 
 "I say, Kiihler, that was a good catch." 
 
 He folded his arms and cocked his chin and looked 
 down his nose as he said : 
 
 "Oh lyes. I can play cricket." 
 
 "You made a blob," she said with a grin. 
 
 "A catch like that," he answered, "is enough for one 
 day. I have seen many words written in the papers 
 about a catch like that. Even Calthrop does not have 
 so many words written about his pictures." 
 
 "I shall hate to go back to London after this," she 
 said. "I didn't know there was anything so beautiful 
 near London." 
 
 "There is Hampstead," he said. 
 
 "I've never been there," she replied. 
 
 "Will you let me take you to Hampstead ? It has lilies 
 and water." 
 
 "Oh yes," she said eagerly. "Do let us go into the 
 woods now before we start. I'm sure there must be 
 lovely places." 
 
 He followed her, first looking round to see what had 
 become of Mitchell, whom he saw standing with a scowl 
 on his face, a foolish figure. 
 
 "Don't talk!" said Morrison. "I'm sure it is lovely 
 through here." 
 
 She led the way through a grove of pines into a
 
 BURNHAM BEECHES 203 
 
 beech glade, at the end of which they found a dingle, 
 where they stood and gazed back. 
 
 "Oh, look!" she cried. "Look at the pine stems 
 through the sea-green of the beeches. Purple they are, 
 and don't they swing?" 
 
 "I like the wind in the trees," said Mendel. 
 
 He saw that there were tears in her eyes, and he 
 caught some of her ecstasy. But he could not under- 
 stand it at all and it hurt him horribly. She was won- 
 derful and beautiful to him, the very heart of all that 
 loveliness, the song of it, its music and its mystery. 
 
 "She is only a little girl," he said to himself very 
 clearly, stamping out the words in his mind so that it 
 was as though some one else had spoken to him. 
 
 The ecstasy grew in her, and with it the pain in him. 
 She swayed towards him and fell against his breast and 
 raised her lips to him. He stooped and almost in terror 
 just touched them with his. 
 
 He was a sorry prince for a sleeping beauty, for he 
 was afraid lest she should awake.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 HAPPY HAMPSTEAD 
 
 ON the morning of the day fixed for their expedi- 
 tion to Hampstead Heath she sent him roses yel- 
 low roses. He took them across to his mother and gave 
 them to her, saying : ' 
 
 "I do not need flowers. I am happy." 
 
 Golda laughed at him, and said : 
 
 "You are a big little man since you made the catch 
 at the cricket." 
 
 "I don't know what it is, but I am happy. It is no 
 longer surprising to me that there are happy people in 
 the world, and I think the Christians are not all sucK 
 fools to wish to be happy. I am only astonished that 
 they are happy with such little things." 
 
 "It is nothing," said Golda. "They are not truly 
 happy; they are only hiding away from themselves." 
 
 "But I am finding myself," cried Mendel. "I shall 
 no more paint fishes and onions. I shall paint only what 
 I feel, and it will be beautiful. I am so clever I can 
 paint anything I choose." 
 
 "Go to your work now," said Golda. "You can boast 
 as much as you please when the King has sent for you 
 and told you you are the greatest artist in England. 
 Go to your work." 
 
 He went back to his studio and there found a letter 
 
 204
 
 HAPPY HAMPSTEAD 
 
 205 
 
 from Logan, giving his new address in Camden Town, 
 and another from Mitchell, asking him why he was so 
 unfriendly. This he answered at once: 
 
 "You are no longer my friend. You have despised 
 and injured me. Superior as I am to you, you have 
 thought it your part as a gentleman to try to keep me 
 in my place. You have treated me as a kind of animal. 
 You cannot see that as an artist I am the equal of all 
 men, the highest and the lowest. My own poor people 
 I do not expect to know this, but of an educated man I 
 do expect it. You cannot see this, and I count you lower 
 than the lowest, and as such I am prepared to know you, 
 and not otherwise. I have changed completely. I no 
 longer believe in the Detmold or in Calthrop or in any 
 of the things I reverenced as a student. I prefer the 
 Academy, for it does not pretend to be advanced, and 
 is honest though asleep. I am no longer a student. I 
 am an artist. You will always be an art student, and 
 so I say good-bye to you, as one says good-bye to friends 
 on a station-platform. The train moves and all their 
 affectionate memories and longings cannot stop it. The 
 train moves and I am in it, and I say good-bye to you 
 without even looking out of the window." 
 
 This done, he sat down to work at a portrait of his 
 father and mother, with which he was designing to eclipse 
 his first exhibiting success. It seemed to him important 
 that it should be finished. Hearing Issy come in, he 
 shouted to him to come and sit -instead of his father, 
 who had given out that he was unwell and was indulging 
 in a sleeping bout. 
 
 Issy came shambling in, pale, tired, and unhappy. He 
 sat as he was told, and said: 
 
 "I wish Harry would come back ; the business is being 
 too much for me."
 
 206 MENDEL 
 
 "Oh! I shall soon be rich and then I'll help you." 
 
 "There's not much help for me," said Issy. "I'm like 
 father. There's always something against me to keep 
 me down. It seems funny to me that people will give 
 you so much money for something they don't really 
 want." 
 
 "Come and look at it," said Mendel. 
 
 Issy obeyed. 
 
 "I don't think it's really like them. Why should any- 
 body buy them who doesn't know them?" 
 
 He spoke so heavily and dully that Mendel found it 
 hard to conceal his irritation. When Issy had gone back 
 to his chair, he asked: 
 
 "What do you live for, Issy?" 
 
 "Live?" said Issy, mystified. 
 
 "Yes. What do you like best in the world?" 
 
 "Playing cards. Playing cards. Every day there's 
 work and every night there's Rosa, and on Saturday 
 I play cards. Yes. I play cards; and, of course, you 
 are always something to think about." 
 
 "What do you think about me?" 
 
 "Oh! You will be rich and famous, and you will 
 be able to choose among all the girls with money. It 
 is like having a play always going on in the family. But 
 I would rather play cards, and Rosa is not so bad as 
 you all say she is. I am not a good husband to her, 
 for I have moods and I cannot talk to her, for I cannot 
 talk to any one. What is there to say? She has her 
 children, and she only wants more because she is a fool. 
 It is not her fault." 
 
 "That'll do, Issy. I've got all I want. I can't get 
 any more from you. Some day I'll teach you how to 
 be happy." 
 
 "Oh!" said Issy, with a sly leer. "I know how to
 
 HAPPY HAMPSTEAD 
 
 207 
 
 be happy. I can't see why any one should want to 
 have father and mother hanging on their walls." 
 
 He slunk away. 
 
 How depressing he was! Poor old Issy! as much a 
 part of the street as the doors and windows of the 
 houses. He might move a hundred yards to another ex- 
 actly similar street, but he would always be the same. 
 It was not his fault. Mendel knew the depths of de- 
 votion of which his brother was capable. It was de- 
 votion to his mother that kept him living round the 
 corner, devotion to his father that tied him to the un- 
 profitable business. The name of Kiihler had attained 
 the dignity of a brass-plate on the front door, and he 
 would die rather than see it removed, at any rate in his 
 father's lifetime. 
 
 For the first time Mendel faced his circumstances 
 squarely. With something of a shock he thought of the 
 family arriving at Liverpool Street and never in all 
 these years moving more than half a mile away from it, 
 and that in this amazing London, with its trains and 
 buses to take you from end to end of it in a little over 
 an hour. His mother had never been west of the Bank. 
 She did not even know where Piccadilly Circus was, or 
 the Detmold, or the National Gallery, or the Paris Cafe, 
 or Calthrop's studio, or any other important centre of 
 life. Liverpool Street she knew, and outside Liverpool 
 Street were the sea and Austria. . . . When there were 
 no little happenings at home she would always fall back 
 on Austria and the troubled days at the inn, and the sol- 
 diers who used to come in and ask to see the beautiful 
 baby before they thought of ordering drinks, and her 
 rich uncle who used to supply the barracks with potatoes 
 and was so mean that he refused to give her any when 
 she had not a penny in the world, and the neighbours
 
 208 MENDEL 
 
 who used to bring food so that the beautiful baby should 
 not starve. . . . They stayed where they were, stormily 
 passionate, yet with no sense of confinement, while he 
 was drawn off into the swiftly moving whirligig of Lon- 
 don, going from house to house, studio to studio, cafe 
 to cafe, atmosphere to atmosphere, and all his passionate 
 storms were spent upon nothing, were absorbed in the 
 general movement, leaving him, tottering and dazed, in 
 it, yet alien to it, discovering no soul in it all and losing 
 the clear knowledge of his own. 
 
 Surely now that was ended. She had sent him the 
 yellow roses, and he had given them to his mother to 
 join the two whom he loved. They must have touched 
 her face before they came to him, and Golda had buried 
 her face in them. 
 
 Impatiently he awaited the time for him to go to 
 the Detmold. He put on a clean collar and a black 
 coat, but then he remembered how the old Jews whom 
 he asked to sit for him always put on clean clothes 
 and clipped their beards, under the impression that he 
 wanted to photograph them. In his clean collar and 
 black coat he felt as though he were going to the pho- 
 tographer's or to a wedding, and remembering how he 
 had been dressed when he saw her for the first time on 
 the stairs, he took out an old black shirt, a corduroy 
 coat and trousers, and a red sash. 
 
 He could not bring himself to wear the red sash. It 
 reminded him of Mitchell, who had been with him when 
 he bought it. 
 
 It had been very hot. The walls and the pavements 
 gave out a dry, stifling heat. The smell of the street 
 outside came up in waves a smell of women and babies, 
 leather and kosher meat. He must wait for the cool
 
 HAPPY HAMPSTEAD 209 
 
 weather, he thought, before he asked her to the studio 
 again. 
 
 "She is only a little girl," he said to himself. "She 
 is pretty, but she is only a little girl. I will tell her 
 that she must not see Mitchell again, because he is not 
 true. I will paint her portrait, and then I will not see 
 her again, because she is only a little girl." 
 
 He sat in the window with the clock in front of him, 
 and directly it said half -past four he clapped his hat 
 on his head, seized the silver-knobbed stick which at 
 that time was an indispensable part of an artist's apparel, 
 and bolted as though he were late for a train. 
 
 She was waiting for him. He took off his hat, but 
 in his nervousness he could not speak, and as he could 
 not remember which side of a lady he ought to walk, 
 he bewildered her by dodging from one side to the 
 other with a quick, catlike tread, so that she did not 
 hear him, and whenever she turned to speak to him he 
 was not there. 
 
 "Wasn't it a good picnic!" she said enthusiastically. 
 "It's the best picnic I've ever been to." 
 
 "They are usually pretty good," he said lamely. "I 
 think we'd better go by bus." 
 
 They mounted a bus and sat silently side by side. 
 
 When they stopped by the Cobden statue he said :- 
 
 "A friend of mine has just taken a studio in Camden 
 Town. His name is Logan." 
 
 "Was he at the Detmold?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 That settled Logan for her. She began to feel anxiou 
 Was the afternoon going to be a failure ? Why could she 
 never, never get the better of her shyness? She wanted 
 to make him happy because, on the whole, people had
 
 210 MENDEL 
 
 been beastly to him and said such horrid things about 
 him. She wanted him to feel for himself, and not only 
 through her, that the world was a very wonderful place, 
 a place in which to be happy. He was so stiff and dif- 
 ferent, so taut and tightly strung up, that lounging, loose- 
 limbed Mitchell seemed graceful compared with him. 
 Yet there was something unforgettable about him, and 
 he had always had for her the vivid romantic reality 
 of the beautiful young men on the stage, who were 
 creatures of a delicious, absurd world which she would 
 never enter and never wished to enter: a world where 
 young men opened their arms and young women sank 
 into them and were provided with happiness for ever 
 and ever. Her vigour rejected this world, for she knew 
 and lived in a better, but all the same it had its charm 
 and its curious reality. . . . 
 
 She was not shy because she had kissed him. That 
 had passed with the shifting light through the trees 
 and the clouds in the sky. It had been vivid and true 
 for that moment, but it had perished and fallen away 
 like a drop of water, like a rainbow. 
 
 He remembered it. As he sat by her side and could 
 feel the warm life in her, it became terribly actual to 
 him, the cool contact of her lips, and he was glad when 
 the bus reached the yard with the painted swing-boats 
 and he need no longer sit by her side. He had begun 
 to feel subservient to her, and he would not have that. 
 What Rosa was to Issy, what Gplda was to his father, 
 that should a woman be to him, for it was good and 
 decent so. ... He was almost sorry he had come. He 
 was painfully shy, and knew that she was suffering 
 under it. 
 
 He walked so fast that she was hard put to keep up 
 with him, but she swung out and would not be beaten,
 
 HAPPY HAMPSTEAD 211 
 
 and managed his pace without losing her breath. Over to 
 the wooded side of the Heath he took her, and stopped 
 under a chestnut-tree. 
 
 "Shall we sit down?" he said. "Or would you like 
 to go on walking?" 
 
 "I'd like to sit down," she answered. "I love walk- 
 ing, but I can't talk at the same time." 
 
 He sat down at once, without waiting for her to choose 
 a spot. 
 
 "This grass is nice and cool," he said. 
 
 It was wet, but he had no thought for her thin cotton 
 frock. 
 
 She sat a couple of yards away from him on the short 
 turf and plunged her arm into the long, cool grass. 
 Then she lay on her stomach and plucked a blade of 
 grass and chewed it. 
 
 "Thank you for sending me the roses. I gave them 
 to my mother." 
 
 "I liked your mother." 
 
 "She liked you. She said: That is a good girl.' She 
 is very quick at guessing what people are like." 
 
 "I'm glad she liked me." 
 
 Once again conversation died away, but she seemed 
 content to lie there with her arms in the cool grass. 
 Their round slenderness fascinated him. Her short 
 hair hung over her face, so that he could only see the 
 tip of her chin. 
 
 Suddenly he asked her: 
 
 "Do you send flowers to Mitchell?" 
 
 "Yes," she said, and her head was lowered so that 
 the tip of her chin was hidden by her hair. 
 
 He said nothing, but he too lay on the grass, flat on 
 his stomach, with his head on his arms. His heart began 
 to thump, and, though he tried to control it, it would
 
 212 MENDEL 
 
 not be still. Without raising his head he said, in a 
 choking voice that astonished him : 
 
 "My father fainted for love of my mother. When 
 he heard her name he fainted away." 
 
 She said nothing, only in the long grass her fingers 
 were still. Her white hands in the grass fascinated him, 
 held his eyes transfixed, the green blades coming up 
 through the white fingers that were so still. He stared 
 at them as though they were some strange flower, and 
 for him they had nothing to do with her at all. He drew 
 himself near to them, never taking his eyes off them ' 
 white and green, white and green and pink at the finger- 
 tips. He must touch them. They were cool, soft, and 
 firm, soft as the petals of a rose. 
 
 He grasped them like a child seizing a pretty toy, but 
 when they were in his grasp he was no longer like a 
 child. A single impulse thrilled through all his body 
 and made it strong even as a giant. With one easy swing 
 of his arm he pulled her to him, held -her with a vast 
 tenderness, and held her so, gazing into her face. Her 
 lips parted, and he kissed them. . . . 
 
 It was she who first found words: 
 
 "Oh Mendel! I do love you." 
 
 He was amazed at his own strength, at his own tender- 
 ness. ... So that was a kiss! And this, this, this was 
 love! It was incredible! How sweet and easy were his 
 emotions. He was as free and light as the wind in the 
 leaves. 
 
 She had slipped from his arms, but she was sing- 
 ing through all his veins, she and no other, she and 
 nothing else in the world. And he was in her, per- 
 fectly, beautifully aware of her body and of the ecstasy 
 in it, of the tree above them, of the dove-coloured clouds, 
 of the cool green grass, of the yellow earth crumbling
 
 HAPPY HAMPSTEAD 213 
 
 out of the mound yonder, and of the ecstasy in them all. 
 
 So for many moments they lay in silence, until as sud- 
 denly as it had come his strength left him, and he broke 
 into a passionate babble of words: 
 
 "You must not send flowers to Mitchell, because he 
 cannot love you and I can. He knows nothing, and I 
 know a great deal. I know women and the ways of 
 women, for many have loved me, but I have loved none 
 but you. No woman has been my friend except my 
 mother. I did not look for any woman to be like my 
 mother. I am not an Englishman who can love with 
 pretty words. I love, and it is like that tree, growing 
 silently until it dies. It has stolen on me as softly as 
 the night, and I sink into it as I sink into the night, to 
 sleep. It is as though the dark night were suddenly filled 
 with stars and all the stars had become flowers and 
 poured their honey into my thoughts. When your white 
 hands were in the grass they were like flowers and they 
 seemed to belong to me, as all beautiful things belong 
 to me because I can love them." 
 
 She came nearer to him and laid her hand on his, 
 and she said : 
 
 "I am very, very happy." 
 
 And she laughed and added: 
 
 "I was glad when you made that catch." 
 
 He was beyond laughter. For him laughter was for 
 trivial things. She had stopped the flow of his thoughts, 
 the rush of his emotions up into his creative conscious- 
 ness. Wave upon wave of passion surged through him, 
 racked him, tortured him, tossing his soul this way and 
 that, threatening to hurl it down and smash it on the 
 hardness of his nature. He set his teeth and would not 
 wince. If she could laugh she could know nothing of 
 that. She was shallow, she was young. . . . Was it
 
 214 MENDEL 
 
 because he was a Jew that he seemed so old compared 
 with her? . . . What was it she lacked that she could 
 laugh and leave him to the torment she had provoked ? 
 
 But she was aware of the curious blankness that had 
 come over his end of their twilight silence, and she suf- 
 fered from it, thinking : "Am I an awful woman? Can 
 I give nothing?" And she turned to him to give, and 
 give all the rare treasures of her soul, of her heart, to 
 lay them before him for his delight. But what she had 
 already given had let loose a storm in him that blotted 
 out all the beauty of the scene, all the loveliness of their 
 love, the gift and the taking of it, and left him with 
 only the dim light of her purity. 
 
 Soon the storm passed and they had nothing but an 
 easy delight in each other's company, each turning to 
 each as to a warm fire by which to laugh and talk and 
 make merry. 
 
 He told her stories of his childhood, of his brothers 
 and his father, and Mr. Kuit, the thief, who had bought 
 him his first suit; of his childish joy in painting, and 
 there he stopped short. Of his misery he was unable 
 to speak. 
 
 "You do believe in yourself," she said. 
 
 "Why not?" he replied; "I am a man. When I hold 
 my hands before my eyes they are real. They are flesh 
 and blood. I must believe in them. And I am all flesh 
 and blood. I must believe." 
 
 "And everything else is real to you." 
 
 "Everything that I love is real. And what I do not 
 love I hate, so that is real too." 
 
 They wandered about the Heath until night came and 
 the stars shone, and then they plunged into the glitter of 
 London, where all people and things were deliciously fan- 
 tastic and comic, flat and kinematographic, as though,
 
 HAPPY HAMPSTEAD 215 
 
 if you walked round to the other side, you would dis- 
 cover that they were painted on one side only. It gave 
 them the glorious illusion of being the only two living 
 people in the world, for they and only they had loved 
 since the world began, and all the other lovers were 
 only people in a story, living happily ever after or com- 
 ing to an end of their love, neither of which could happen 
 to them because they were, always had been, and always 
 would be in love. 
 
 They dined at the Pot-au-Feu, where they encountered 
 Mitchell, who had the effrontery to come and speak to 
 them. He was very friendly and spoke as though noth- 
 ing had happened. They told him they had been to 
 Hampstead and recommended him to try it when he 
 found London too stuffy. 
 
 When he had gone away, Morrison said: 
 
 "I am going away soon." 
 
 "Going away? But you mustn't go away." 
 
 "I have to go next week. My mother has fits of 
 anxiety about my being in London every now and then, 
 and she drags me off home. She has got one of them 
 now. She can't see that if any harm were going to 
 happen to me it would have happened during my first 
 year, when I didn't know anything and was very lonely. 
 I don't think I'm very real to her, somehow." 
 
 She gave a little shiver of distaste at the thought of 
 going home. 
 
 "But you mustn't go away," said Mendel. "I want 
 you, always." 
 
 "And I want to be with you, but if I refused to go 
 home now, I should have to go for always, for I should 
 have no money." 
 
 He was plunged into a dejected silence, and with 
 hardly a word more he took her home.
 
 216 MENDEL 
 
 They had a whole week of this warm happiness. He 
 abandoned every other thought, every other pursuit, 
 every other friend. He put aside his work to paint her 
 portrait, and she came every day to his studio. At night 
 he hardly slept at all for his longing for the next day 
 to come and bring her to his studio, that now seemed 
 immense, airy, ample even for such a giant as he felt. 
 . . . He adored her even when she laughed, even when 
 she teased him. He even learned occasionally to laugh 
 at himself. It was worth it to see the amazing happi- 
 ness he gave her. 
 
 One morning as he was painting her, he said : 
 
 "I can't believe you are going away." 
 
 "It is true, more's the pity." 
 
 "But you are not going, for I will marry you." 
 
 He said this in a matter-of-fact tone as he went on 
 with his painting. The picture was coming on well and 
 he was pleased with it. He stepped back and looked 
 at it from different angles. It seemed a long time before 
 she made the expected matter-of-fact reply, and he 
 looked up at her. She was hanging her head and pluck- 
 ing at her skirt nervously. She heard him stop in his 
 work, and she replied: 
 
 "I don't . . . think ... I want to marry you, Men- 
 del. I don't . . . think ... I want to marry any- 
 body." 
 
 "I'm making plenty of money and I can get com- 
 missions for portraits. I could make it up with Birn- 
 baum. We could go to Italy together." 
 
 "Don't make it harder for both of us, Mendel. . . . 
 I don't want ... to marry." 
 
 "You will go back home, then?" 
 
 "Please . . . please . . ." she implored him. 
 
 A fury began to rise in him. He stamped his foot
 
 HAPPY HAMPSTEAD 217 
 
 on the ground and struck his brush across the picture. 
 He made a tremendous effort to recover himself, but 
 before he could say another word she had slipped through 
 the door and was gone. He darted after her, and reached 
 the front-door just in time to see her running as hard as 
 she could down the street and round the corner. 
 
 Just as he was, in his shirt-sleeves, hatless and col- 
 larless, he went in to see his mother. He was white-hot 
 with rage, and he walked up to her and looked her up 
 and down as though he were trying to persuade himself 
 that she was to blame. 
 
 "What do you think the news is now?" 
 
 Golda put her hand to her heart and looked at him 
 fearfully as she shook her head. 
 
 "I've been refused," he said, "refused by the Christian 
 girl." 
 
 "Refused !" cried Golda, who had never heard of such 
 a thing as a girl refusing to marry a rich young man. 
 
 "Yes. I proposed to her and she refused." 
 
 "The Christians are all alike," said Golda. "They 
 keep themselves to themselves, and you must do the 
 same." 
 
 She took a smoked herring from the cupboard and 
 cut it into portions. 
 
 "And when your time for marrying comes you must 
 look among the Jews, for the Jews are good people. No 
 Jewish girl would serve you a trick like that. Jewish 
 girls know that they must marry and they are good. 
 But she is young, and you are young, and you will both 
 forget."
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 CAMDEN TOWN 
 
 FROM the magnificent studio in Hammersmith to two 
 rooms in Camden Town Mr. James Logan removed 
 his worldly goods, a paint-box, half-a-dozen canvases, 
 two pairs of trousers, three shirts, a "Life of Napoleon" 
 in two volumes, and a number of photographs of famous 
 pictures. The magnificent studio had been lent to him 
 by the mistress of its owner, who had returned unex- 
 pectedly from abroad, and Mr. James Logan's departure 
 from it was hurried, but unperturbed. 
 
 "In my time," he said, "I have kept Fortune busy, 
 but her tricks leave me unmoved. She will get tired 
 of it some day and leave me alone." 
 
 All the same he did not relish the change. He was 
 nearly thirty and had tasted sufficient comfort to relish 
 it and to prize it. Also he could not forget the ambitions 
 with which he had come to London five years before. In 
 the North he had won success by storm, and he could 
 not understand any other tactics. He was an extraordi- 
 nary man and expected immediate recognition of the 
 fact. Upon his own mind his personality had so 
 powerful an effect that he was blind to the fact that it 
 did not have a similar effect upon the minds of others. 
 Women and young men he could always stir into admira- 
 
 218
 
 CAMDEN TOWN 219 
 
 tion, but men older than himself were only affronted. 
 He knew it and used to curse them: 
 
 "These clods, these hods, these glue-faced ticks have 
 no more sap in them than a withered tree. They hate 
 me as a mule hates a stallion, and for the same reason. 
 May God and Mary have mercy on what little is left 
 of their souls by the time they come to judgment!" 
 
 He cursed them now as he laid his trousers on the 
 vast new double-bed he had bought and went into his 
 front room to arrange his easel and canvas for work. 
 Whatever happened to him he would go on painting, 
 because he saw himself like that, standing as firm as 
 a rock before his easel, painting, while the world, for 
 all he cared, went to rack and ruin. What else could 
 happen to a world that refused to recognise its artists? 
 
 Painting was truly a joy to him. He loved the actual 
 dabbling with the colours, laying them out on his palette, 
 mixing them, evolving rare shades; he loved the fiery 
 concentration and absorption in the making of a pic- 
 ture; the renewed power of sight when he turned from 
 a picture to the world ; the glorious nervous energy that 
 came thrilling through his fingers in moments of concen- 
 tration; the feeling of the superiority of this power to 
 all others in the world. And so, whatever happened, he 
 turned to his easel and painted. Love, debt, passion, 
 quarrels, all the disturbances of life came and went, but 
 painting remained, inexhaustible. So he had been happy, 
 free, unfettered, gay, avoiding all responsibility because 
 it was his formula that the artist's only responsibility 
 is to his art. 
 
 He was doubly happy now because he knew he had 
 made an impression on a young man whose sincerity 
 and vigour of purpose he could not but respect. He was 
 himself singularly impressionable, and like a sponge for
 
 220 MENDEL 
 
 sucking up the colour of any strong personality. And 
 Mendel had the further attraction for him that he was 
 pure London, of the shifting, motley London that Logan, 
 as a provincial, adored. This London he had touched at 
 many points, but never through a strong living soul 
 that had, and most loyally acknowledged, London as its 
 home. 
 
 Logan's visit to Mendel in the East End had been one 
 of the great events of his life. Through it he had found 
 his feet where he had been floundering, though, of course, 
 happily and excitedly enough. 
 
 He told himself that now he was going to settle down 
 to work, to the great productive period of his life, such 
 as was vouchsafed to every real artist who was tough 
 enough to pay for it in suffering. He would rescue 
 Mendel's genius from the Detmold and the ossified ad- 
 vanced painters, and together they would smash the 
 English habit of following French art a generation late, 
 and they would lay the foundations of a genuine Eng- 
 lish art, a metropolitan art, an art that grew naturally 
 out of the life of the central city of the world. 
 
 Logan always worked by programme, but hitherto he 
 had changed his programme once a week. Now he was 
 sure that this was the programme of his life. It would 
 be amended, of course, by inspiration, but its groundwork 
 was permanent. He was enthusiastic over it. . . .Of 
 course, this was what he had always been seeking, and 
 hitherto he had been fighting the London which absorbed 
 the talents of the country, masticated them, digested 
 them, and evacuated them in the shape of successful 
 painters for whom neither life nor art had any meaning, 
 or in the shape of vicious wrecks who crawled from pub- 
 lic-house to public-house and died in hospitals. 
 
 It was time that was stopped. It was time for Lon-
 
 CAMDEN TOWN 221 
 
 don to be made to recognise that it had a soul, and 
 this generation must begin the task, for never before 
 had a generation been so faced with the blank impossi- 
 bility of accepting the work, thought, and faith of its 
 predecessor. Never had it been so easy to slip out of 
 the stream of tradition, for never had tradition so com- 
 pletely disappeared underground. 
 
 ' 'He that hath eyes to see, let him see,' " quoth Logan, 
 and he hurled himself into his work, dancing to and fro, 
 squaring his shoulders at it as though the picture were 
 an adversary in a boxing-match. 
 
 At half-past four he laid down his brushes and be- 
 gan to arrange the room, pinning photographs on the 
 walls, and unpacking certain articles of furniture, as a 
 rug, a great chair, and mattresses to make a divan, which 
 he had bought that morning. Every now and then he 
 ran to the window, threw up the sash, and looked up and 
 down the street. 
 
 At last with a tremor of excitement he leaned out 
 and waved his hand, shut the window, and ran down- 
 stairs. In a moment or two he returned with the girl of 
 the Tube station. She was wearing the same clothes, 
 with the addition of a cheap fur boa, and she panted a 
 little from the run upstairs with him. 
 
 "I'm glad you came," he said. "I was afraid you 
 wouldn't." 
 
 "Oh ! It's not far from where I live," she said. "But 
 you are in a mess." 
 
 "I've only just got in. I would have asked you to my 
 old place, but I had to leave." 
 
 "So you're a nartist," she said. "I thought you were 
 something funny." 
 
 "Funny!" snorted Logan. "I call a shop-walker
 
 222 MENDEL 
 
 funny; or a banker, for that matter, or a millionaire. 
 An artist is the most natural thing to be in the world. 
 . . . Take your hat and gloves off and give me a hand, 
 and then we'll have tea." 
 
 "Oh! I love my tea." 
 
 "I know all about tea. I get it from a friend of mine 
 in the City. I know how to make it, too." 
 
 They worked together, arranging, dusting, keeping de- 
 liberately apart and eyeing each other surreptitiously. He 
 liked her slow, heavy, indolent movements, and she exag- 
 gerated them for him. She liked his quick, firm, decisive 
 actions, and he accentuated them for her; and she liked 
 his thick, black hair and his strong hands. 
 
 He picked up the great chair and held it at arm's length. 
 
 "Oo! You are strong," she said. 
 
 "I could hold you up like that." 
 
 "I'd like to see you try," and she gave a little giggle 
 of protest. 
 
 "I will if I don't like you," said he, "and I'll let you 
 drop and break your leg." 
 
 She went off into peals of laughter, and he laughed 
 too. 
 
 "It's such a jolly day," he said. "It only needed you 
 to come to make everything perfect." 
 
 "What made you speak to me the other night?" she 
 asked. 
 
 "I liked the look of you." 
 
 "But I'm not that sort, you know." 
 
 "It isn't a question of being that sort. I wanted to 
 speak to you, and that was enough for me. Sit down 
 and have some tea." 
 
 The kettle was boiling, and he had already warmed 
 the pot. He measured out the tea carefully, poured the 
 water onto it, and gave her a blue china cup. He pro-
 
 CAMDEN TOWN 223 
 
 duced an old biscuit-tin containing some French pastry, 
 and then sat on the floor while she consumed the lot. 
 
 It gave him great pleasure to see her eat, and he liked 
 her healthy, childish greed. She had the face of a spoiled 
 child, a very soft skin, and plump, yielding flesh. He 
 liked that. It soothed and comforted him to look at her. 
 while at the same time he was irritated by her inward 
 plumpness and easiness. 
 
 "You've always had a good time," he said. 
 
 "Oh yes ! I've seen to that." 
 
 "You're not a London girl." 
 
 "No; Yorkshire." 
 
 "I'm from Lancashire." 
 
 "Eeh! lad," she said, her whole voice altering and 
 deepening into an astonishingly full note, "are ye fra' 
 Lancashire ? Eeh ! a'm fair clemmed wi' London. Eeh ! 
 I am glad ye coom fra' Lancashire." 
 
 "What are you doing in London?" 
 
 "I'm working in Oxford Street, though not one of 
 the big shops." 
 
 "Like it?" 
 
 "M'm! Well enough." 
 
 "Of course you don't, handing out laces and ri1> 
 bons " 
 
 " 'Tisn't laces and ribbons. It's corsets." 
 
 "Corsets, then, to women who haven't a tenth of your 
 looks or your vitality." 
 
 "It can't be helped if they have the money and I 
 haven't, can it?" 
 
 "Money doesn't matter. What's money to you, with 
 all the rich life in you? Money cannot buy that, nor 
 can it buy what will satisfy you." 
 
 "And what's that?" 
 
 "Love and freedom."
 
 224 MENDEL 
 
 "Ooh! you are a talker." 
 
 "I'm not flirting with you. I haven't got time for 
 that." 
 
 He laid his hand on her foot, which was covered with 
 a thin cotton stocking. She did not move it. 
 
 "You needn't stare at me like that," she said, with 
 a curious thickness in her voice. 
 
 "I can't help staring," ,he answered, "when I mean 
 what I say." He pressed his lips together and scowled, 
 and shook her foot playfully. There was an exhilarating 
 pleasure in startling and mastering her by directness. 
 It was like peeling the bark off a stick. The thin layers 
 of affectation came off easily and cleanly, leaving bare 
 the white sappy smoothness of her innocent sensuality. 
 
 "I do mean what I say," he added. "Why should 
 we beat about the bush ? I asked you to come to-day be- 
 cause I wanted you. You came because you knew I 
 wanted you." 
 
 "You asked me to tea." 
 
 "All right. And you'll stay to dinner. People have 
 made love to you before." 
 
 "Well, no ... yes. ... Not like . . ." 
 
 "Don't tell lies," he said. "You saw me at the sta- 
 tion long before I saw you, and you wanted me to see 
 you. That was why you stayed at the booking-office." 
 
 "You were with such a pretty boy," she said. 
 
 "Boy! You're not old enough to care for pretty 
 boys." 
 
 "But he was pretty." 
 
 "Be quiet !" he said, kneeling by her side. "You may 
 want me to take weeks over making all sorts of foolish 
 advances to you, but I'm not going to waste time. I've 
 wasted too much time over that sort of rubbish. We
 
 CAMDEN TOWN 225 
 
 both know what we want and you are going to stay 
 with me." 
 
 "No." 
 
 "I say yes." 
 
 "No." And she sprang to her feet and walked to the 
 door. There she turned. He had picked up her gloves. 
 
 "Will you give me my gloves, please ?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Will you give me my gloves?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Then I shall go without them." 
 
 "Very well. Good-bye." 
 
 "If I stay, will you promise not to talk like that?" 
 
 "I don't want you to stay under those circumstances." 
 
 "You're an insulting beast." 
 
 "Not at all. I honour your womanhood by not pre- 
 tending that it isn't there." 
 
 "Will you give me my gloves?" 
 
 She ran across and tried to snatch them out of his 
 hand. He gripped and held her, and she gave a wild 
 laugh as he kissed her. 
 
 She clung to him as he let her sink back into the great 
 chair. She lay with her eyes closed and her lips parted 
 while he sat and poured himself out another cup of 
 tea. His hand was shaking so that he spilled some tea 
 on his new rug. 
 
 "That's all right," he sa ; d. "I'll give you a week to 
 get used to me, and if at the end of that time you don't 
 like me, you can go." 
 
 "I haven't any friends," she said in a low voice, "and 
 you get sick of girls and the shop. You get sick of go- 
 ing out in the evening up and down the streets and into 
 the cinemas, and rinding some damn fool to take you to 
 a music-hall. Such a lot of people and nobody to know. '
 
 226 MENDEL 
 
 "There's a lot of fun in living with an artist," he said. 
 "You meet queer people and amusing women, and you 
 wouldn't find me dull to live with." 
 
 "I felt queer as I came near the house," she said, "as 
 though I knew something was going to happen. I feel 
 very queer now." 
 
 "That's love," said Logan grimly. "Love isn't what 
 you thought it was." 
 
 "You must let me go now." 
 
 "When will you come again ?" 
 
 "Never." 
 
 "Oh yes, you will." 
 
 "Stop it!" she cried. "Stop it! I'm not going to be 
 flummoxed by the like of you." 
 
 "But you are," he said. "You poor darling!" 
 
 He took her hand and stroked it tenderly. 
 
 "Don't you see that you are flummoxed by something 
 that is stronger than both of us? I'm shaken by it, 
 and I'm whipcord. We're poor starving people, God help 
 us ! and we can save each other. We knew we could do 
 it at once, when we met. ... If I said all the pretty 
 things in the world it wouldn't help. We're too far gone 
 for that. When you're starving you don't want choco- 
 lates. . . . I'm only saying what I know. It is true of 
 myself. If I have made a mistake about you, I am sorry. 
 You can go. . . . Have I made a mistake?" 
 
 For answer she turned towards him, gazed at him with 
 glazing eyes, raised her arms, and drew him into them. 
 
 A week later Nelly Oliver dined with Logan and Men- 
 del at the Pot-au-Feu. They had a special dinner and 
 drank champagne, for it was what Logan called the 
 "nuptial feast." 
 
 Oliver, as they called her, was flushed with excitement,
 
 CAMDEN TOWN 227 
 
 and kept on telling Mendel that he was the prettiest boy 
 she had ever seen. She called Logan "Pip" "Pip 
 darling/' "Pip dearest," "Pipkin" and "Pipsy" because 
 she said he was like an orange-pip, bitter and hard in the 
 midst of sweetness. 
 
 "Pip says you're a genius," she said to Mendel. "What 
 does he mean ?" 
 
 Mendel disliked her, though he tried hard to persuade 
 himself that she was charming. He was baffled by the 
 solemnity with which Logan was taking her, for she 
 seemed to him the type made for occasional solace and 
 not for companionship. Exploring her with his mind 
 and instinct, she seemed to him soft and pulpy, not unlike 
 an orange, and if she and Logan were to set up a com- 
 mon life, then he would be like a pip indeed. . . . How 
 could he explain to her the nature of genius? Can you 
 explain the night to an insect that lives but an hour in 
 the morning? 
 
 "I don't know," he said brusquely. 
 
 Logan was dimly aware that his friend and his girl 
 were not pleasing each other, and he set himself to keep 
 them amused. He succeeded fairly well, but his humour 
 was forced, for he was under the spell of the girl and 
 the thought of the adventure to which she had consented. 
 She knew it, and was loud and shrill and triumphant, 
 continually setting Mendel's teeth on edge, for the purity 
 of his instinct was disgusted by the blurring and swamp- 
 ing of life by any emotion, and the quality of hers was 
 not such as to win indulgence. 
 
 "Logan will tell you what genius is," he said. 
 
 "She'll find that out soon enough if she lives with me," 
 growled Logan a little pompously. 
 
 Oliver put her head on one side and looked languish- 
 ingly at Mendel as she drawled :
 
 228 MENDEL 
 
 "It's a pity you haven't got a nice girl. Then there 
 would be four of us." 
 
 "Don't be a fool!" snapped Logan. "What does he 
 want with girls at his age?" 
 
 Oliver's lips trembled and she pouted in protest. 
 
 "I only thought it would be nice to round off the party. 
 When you're in love you can't help wanting everybody 
 else to have some too." 
 
 Mendel was torn between dislike of her and admira- 
 tion of Logan's masterful handling of the problem of 
 desire. . . . No nonsense about getting married or fall- 
 ing in love. He saw the woman he wanted and took 
 her and made her his property, and the woman could 
 not but acquiesce, as Oliver had done. In a dozen differ- 
 ent ways she acknowledged Logan's lordship, even in 
 her deliberate efforts to exasperate him. Their relation- 
 ship seemed to Mendel simple and .excellent, and he en- 
 vied them. How easy his life would become if he could 
 do the same! What freedom there would be in having 
 a woman to throw in her lot with his! It would settle 
 all his difficulties, absolve him from his dependence on 
 his family, and deliver him from the attentions of un- 
 worthy women. 
 
 "How shall we dress her?" asked Logan. 
 
 Mendel took out his sketch-book and drew a rough 
 portrait of Oliver in a gown tight-fitting above the waist 
 and full in the skirt. 
 
 "I should look a guy in that," she said. "It's nothing 
 like the fashion." 
 
 ^You've done with fashion," said Logan. "You've 
 done with the world of shops and snobs and bored, idiotic 
 women. You're above all that now. In the first place 
 there won't be any money for fashion, and in the second 
 place there's no room in our kind of life for rubbish.
 
 CAMDEN TOWN 229 
 
 You're a free woman now, and don't you forget it, or 
 I'll knock your head off." 
 
 "But it's a horrible, ugly dress," said Oliver, almost in 
 tears. 
 
 "It's what you're going to wear. I'll buy the stuff 
 to-morrow and make it myself. What colour would you 
 like?" 
 
 "I won't wear it." 
 
 "Then you can go back to your shop." 
 
 "You know I can't. I've said good-bye to all the girls." 
 
 "Then you'll wear the dress." 
 
 "I shan't" 
 
 "For God's sake don't quarrel," said Mendel. "One 
 would think you had been married for ten years. Let 
 her wear what she likes until she wants some new 
 clothes." 
 
 "Highty Tighty ! Little Boy !" sang Oliver. "You talk 
 as though I were a little girl." 
 
 "You behave like one," snapped Mendel, and her face 
 was overcast with a cloud of malignant sulkiness. 
 
 They went on to a music-hall, where Logan and she 
 sat with their arms locked and their shoulders pressed 
 together, whispering and babbling to each other. 
 
 Mendel sat bolt upright with his arms folded staring 
 at the stage but seeing nothing, so lost was he in the con- 
 templation of the strange turn of affairs by which the 
 adventure which had promised to lead him straight to 
 art had deposited him in a muddy little pool of life. 
 He would not submit to it. He would not surrender Lo- 
 gan and all the hopes he had aroused. Prepared as he 
 had been to follow Logan through fire, he would not 
 shrink when the way led through the morass. Friendship 
 was to him no fair-weather luxury, and nothing but false-
 
 230 MENDEL 
 
 hood or faithlessness in his friend could make him re- 
 linquish it. 
 
 He told himself that Logan would soon tire of it, that 
 Oliver would go the way of her kind. She was, after 
 all, better than Hetty Finch, since she had a capacity for 
 childish enjoyment. 
 
 She revelled in the sentimental ditties and the sugges- 
 tive humours of the comedians, pressed closer and closer 
 to Logan, and grew elated and strangely exalted as the 
 evening wore on. And as they left the music-hall she 
 gripped Mendel's arm and brought her face close to his 
 and whispered: 
 
 "Do wish me luck, Kiihler. Give me a kiss for luck." 
 
 He kissed her and mumbled : "Good luck !" 
 
 "Come and see us to-morrow," she said. "We shall be 
 all right to-morrow." 
 
 "Oh, come along!" cried Logan, dragging her away; 
 and Mendel stood in the glaring light of the portico 
 and watched them as, arm in arm, they were swallowed 
 up in the crowd hurrying and jostling its way home to 
 the dark outer regions of London. 
 
 He had an appalling sense of being left out of it. 
 Everything passed and he remained. He lived in a circle 
 of light into which, like moths, came timid, blinking, lov- 
 able figures, and he loved them; but they passed on and 
 were lost in the tumultuous, heaving darkness of life, 
 into which alone he could not enter. . . . Did he desire to 
 enter it? He did not know, but he was hungry for 
 something that lay in it, or, perhaps, beyond it
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 MR. TILNEY TYSOE 
 
 LOGAN with Oliver was more startling and exhila- 
 rating than before. He was filled with a ferocious 
 energy, and his programme was distended with it. 
 
 He said to Mendel : 
 
 "She's an inspiration. I have found what I was seek- 
 ing. You have given me the inspiration of art. Through 
 you I shall reach the heights of the spirit. She has given 
 me the inspiration of life, and through her I shall plumb 
 the very depths of humanity. She is marvellous. All the 
 exasperation of modern life is in her, all the impatient 
 brooding on the threshold of new marvels. You think 
 she is stupid, I know, but that is only because she has 
 in herself such an immense wealth of instinctive knowl- 
 edge of life that she does not need to judge it by pass- 
 ing outward appearances. I am amazed at her, almost 
 afraid of her. Something tremendous will come out of 
 her. ... By God! It makes me sick to think of all 
 the dabbling in paint that goes on, not to speak of all the 
 dabbling in love. Love ? The word has become foolish 
 and empty. I don't wish to hear it uttered ever again. 
 ... I swear that if it doesn't come out in paint I shall 
 write poetry. Oh ! I can feel the marrow in my bones 
 again, and my veins are full of sap. . . . But I want 
 to talk business." 
 
 231
 
 232 MENDEL 
 
 "Business?" said Mendel, who had been upset and be- 
 wildered by this outburst. 
 
 "Yes. I want you to approve my programme, for you 
 must have a programme. It is all very well to work by 
 the light of inspiration. That can work quite well as 
 far as you yourself are concerned, but what about the 
 public? What about the other artists? damn them! 
 We're going to burst out of the groove, but we 
 must have a good reason for doing so." 
 
 "Surely it is reason enough that one can't work in 
 it." 
 
 "Not enough for them. They must be mystified and 
 impressed. They must be unable to place us. They must 
 feel that we are up to something, but they must be unable 
 to say what it is." 
 
 "I don't care what they say," said Mendel. 
 
 "But you must care. When we have carried out the 
 programme, then you can do as you like, but till then 
 we must pull together. We must do it for the sake of 
 art. We must make a stand, not to found a school or 
 to say that this and no other style of drawing is right, but 
 to assert the sacred duty of the artist to paint accord- 
 ing to his vision and his creative instinct." 
 
 This was coming very near to Mendel's own feeling, 
 and he remembered the torture he had been through 
 to learn the Detmold style of drawing, and how some 
 virtue had gone out of his work in the effort. 
 
 "It is the artist's business," said Logan, "to create 
 out of the life around him an expression of it in form." 
 
 "I agree," said Mendel. 
 
 "Accurate imitation is not necessarily an expression, 
 is it? You know it isn't. A picture must be a created 
 thing. It must have a life of its own, and to have that 
 it must grow through the artist's passion out of the life
 
 MR. TILNEY TYSOE 
 
 2 33 
 
 around him. It is all rubbish to look back, to talk of go- 
 ing back to the Primitives or the Byzantines or Egypt. 
 You can learn a great deal from those old people about 
 pictures, but you cannot learn how to paint your own pic- 
 tures from them, because you can only live in your own 
 life and your own time, and if you are a good artist 
 your work will transcend both. . . . Now, tell me, 
 where is the work that is expressing the glorious, many- 
 coloured life of London, where is the work that does 
 not give you a shock as you come to it out of the street, 
 the thrilling, vibrant street, making you feel that you 
 are stepping back ten, twenty, fifty years ? . . . Why has 
 life outstripped art?" 
 
 "I don't know," said Mendel, whose head had begun 
 to ache. 
 
 "It has not only outstripped it," continued Logan. 
 "It has begun to despise it." 
 
 The postman knocked, and Mendel ran downstairs in 
 feverish expectation of a letter from Morrison, to whom 
 he had written imploring her to come again, or, if not, 
 at least to let him have her address in the country. There 
 was no letter for him, and as soon as he returned with 
 a blank, disappointed face, Logan went on : 
 
 "People collect pictures as they collect postage-stamps, 
 to keep themselves from being bored. Naturally they 
 despise pictures, and they despise us for accepting those 
 conditions. They are intolerable, and we must make an 
 end of them. We are in a tight corner, and we should 
 leave no trick and twist and turn untried to get out of it. 
 If we do not do so then there will be no art, as there is no 
 drama, no music, and no literature, and there will be no 
 authority among men, and humanity will go to hell. ^ It 
 is on the road to it, and the artists have got to stop it." 
 
 Mendel had not heard a word. He sat with his head
 
 234 MENDEL 
 
 in his hands thinking of Morrison, and hating her for the 
 blank misery in which she had plunged him. 
 
 "Humanity," said Logan cheerfully, "is fast going to 
 hell. It likes it; and, as the democratic idea is that it 
 should have what it likes, not a finger, not a voice is 
 raised to stop it. Everything that stands in the way 
 ideals, decency, responsibility, passion, love everything 
 is smashed. Nothing can stop it unless their eyes are 
 opened and their poor frozen hearts are thawed." 
 
 "What did you say?" asked Mendel, having half- 
 caught that last phrase. 
 
 "We must try to stop it," said Logan. "We may be 
 smashed and swept aside, but we must try to stop it. 
 . . . I've been to see Cluny to-day. He has sold all 
 your things except one drawing." 
 
 "I know," replied Mendel, who had received an amaz- 
 ing account which showed about two-thirds of his earn- 
 ings swallowed up in colours, brushes, frames, and pho- 
 tographs. He knew, but he was not interested. He was 
 unhappy and restless and felt completely empty. 
 
 "We passionate natures," said Logan, striding up and 
 down like Napoleon on the quarter-deck of the Bellero- 
 phon "we passionate natures must take control. We 
 must be the nucleus of true fiery stuff to resist the uni- 
 versal corruption. We must be dedicated to the wars 
 of the spirit." 
 
 "I've got a splitting headache," said Mendel. "Do 
 you mind not talking so much ? The important thing for 
 a painter is painting. What happens outside that doesn't 
 matter." 
 
 "You think so now," said Logan, "but you wait. 
 You'll find that painting won't satisfy you. You will 
 want to know what it is all for, and one of these days 
 you will be thankful to me for telling you. . . . Cluny
 
 MR. TILNEY TYSOE 235 
 
 has taken on some of my things, and he has agreed to 
 our having an exhibition together. What do you say to 
 that?" 
 
 "So long as I sell I don't care where I exhibit. Ex- 
 hibitions are always horrible. They always make pictures 
 look mean and insignificant." 
 
 "You are in a mood to-day." 
 
 "I tell you," cried Mendel in a fury "I tell you I know 
 what art is better than anybody. It touches life at one 
 point, and one point only, and there it gives a great light. 
 If life is too mean and beastly to reach that point, so 
 much the worse for life. It does not affect art, which 
 is another world, where everything is beautiful and true. 
 I know it ; I have always known it. I have lived in that 
 world. I live in it, and I detest everything that drags 
 me away from it and makes me live in the world of filth 
 and thieves and scoundrels. Yes, I detest even love, even 
 passion, for they make a fool and a beast of a man." 
 
 "Young!" said Logan. "Very young! You'll learn. 
 . . . But do be sensible and control your beast of a 
 temper. Never mind my programme if it doesn't inter- 
 est you. Will you accept Cluny's offer? It is worth it, 
 for it will make you independent." 
 
 "How much does he want?" 
 
 "A dozen exhibits each." 
 
 "Oh! very well." 
 
 "And will you come and dine to-night with my fool of 
 a patron, Mr. Tilney Tysoe?" 
 
 "I don't want to know fools. I know quite enough 
 already." 
 
 "But I've promised to take you. ... He adores Bo- 
 hemians, as he calls us, and he buys pictures." 
 
 "Does he give you good food?" 
 
 "Some of the best in London."
 
 236 MENDEL 
 
 "All right." 
 
 "Meet us at the Paris Cafe at seven-thirty. Don't dress. 
 Tysoe would be dreadfully disappointed if you didn't 
 turn up reeking of paint. It would be almost better not 
 to wash." 
 
 "Is Oliver going?" 
 
 "Yes. Do you mind?" 
 
 "No. . . . No." 
 
 It was an enormous relief to Mendel when Logan 
 went. His enthusiasm was too exhausting, and it was 
 maddening to have him talking of success and the triumph 
 of art and the wars of the spirit when life had appar- 
 ently reached up and extinguished the light of art alto- 
 gether. For a brief moment, for a day or two, it had 
 almost seemed to him that life and art were one, that 
 everything was solved and simple, that he would hence- 
 forth only have to paint and pictures would flow from 
 his brush as easily as song from a bird. This illusion 
 had survived even the blow of Morrison's departure. He 
 believed that it was enough for him to have had that 
 hour of illumination, and that, if go she must, he could 
 do without her. The flash of light had been the same, 
 magnified a thousand times, as the inspiration that set 
 him at work on a picture and then left him to wrestle 
 with the task of translating it into terms of paint. She 
 had appeared to him exactly in the same visionary way, 
 an image shining in truth and beauty, an emanation from 
 that other world, and he had thought he would at worst 
 be left with the terrible ordeal of translating the vision 
 into paint. . . . But when he looked at his pictures they 
 oppressed him with their lifelessness and dark dullness, 
 and the idea of painting disgusted him. It was even an 
 acute pain, almost like a wound upon his heart, to handle
 
 MR. TILNEY TYSOE 237 
 
 a brush. He could not finish the portrait of his father 
 and mother, and, at best, he could only force himself to 
 paint flower-pieces. 
 
 He was incapable of deceiving himself. He had never 
 heard of devout lovers sighing in vain, and he had no 
 sources of comfort within himself. Never had he shrunk 
 from any torment, and this was so cruel as to be almost 
 a glory, except that it meant such a deathly stillness 
 and emptiness. He could not understand it, and he knew 
 that it was past the comprehension of all whom he knew, 
 even his mother. But he set his teeth and vowed that he 
 would understand it if it took years. ... A little girl, 
 a little Christian girl! How was it possible? 
 
 There was some relief in the thought of her, but very 
 little. She was still too visionary, and when he tried 
 to think of her in life, by his side, it was impossibly pain- 
 ful. 
 
 Where was she ? Why did she not write ? Her silence 
 was like ice upon his heart. . . . What kind of place 
 did she live in? Among what people? How was he tc 
 imagine her? ... To think of her among the trees or 
 under the chestnut-tree was to be torn with impulses that 
 could find no outlet ; desires for creation that made paint- 
 ing seem a sham and a mockery. 
 
 So keen, and fierce, and deep was his suffering that 
 death seemed a little thing in comparison. When he tried 
 to think of death he knew that it was not worth thinking 
 of, and he was ashamed that the thought should have been 
 in his mind. 
 
 He knew that he must understand or perish. To say 
 that he was in love was hopelessly inadequate. He knew 
 how people were when they were in love. They were like 
 Rosa, like animals, stupid and thick-sighted, with a thick- 
 ening in their blood. But he was possessed with a clair-
 
 238 MENDEL 
 
 voyance that made everything round him seem transpar- 
 ent and flimsy, while thought crept stealthily, like a cat 
 on a wall, and emotion was confounded. 
 
 For days he had hardly left his studio, and it was only 
 with the greatest effort that he could bring himself to 
 join Logan at the Paris Cafe. He felt weak, and the 
 streets looked very strange, clear and bright, as they do 
 to a convalescent. As he entered the cafe it seemed years 
 since he had been there, ages since he had sat there trem- 
 bling with excitement as he waited for the great Calthrop 
 to come in. He remembered that excitement so vividly 
 that something like it came rushing up in him, and he 
 clutched at it for relief. . . . Calthrop was there with his 
 little court of models and students. Mendel found him- 
 self laughing nervously as he stood and waited for the 
 great man to recognise him. Calthrop looked up and 
 nodded to him. He was wildly, absurdly delighted. He 
 rushed over to Logan and Oliver and shook them enthu- 
 siastically by the hand. 
 
 "Isn't it a splendid place?" he cried. 
 
 "Have something to drink," said Logan. "You've 
 been overworking." 
 
 "You must say it's a splendid place," insisted Mendel, 
 "or I shall go home. Just by that table where Calthrop 
 is sitting is where I was arrested." 
 
 "Oh, which is Calthrop?" asked Oliver eagerly 
 
 "The big man over there," said Mendel. "I was ar- 
 rested just there, and I had to go on my knees to the 
 manager to make him allow me to come here again. I 
 had to apologise to him. At the time it was the greatest 
 tragedy of my life." 
 
 He had forgotten his dislike for Oliver in his elation 
 at finding himself gay again, and he chattered on of the
 
 MR. TILNEY TYSOE 239 
 
 days when the cafe had seemed to him a heaven full of 
 heroes. Oliver listened to him like a child. She loved 
 stories, and she leaned forward and drank in his words, 
 and she appeared to him as a very beautiful woman, de- 
 sirable, intoxicating. Yet because Logan was his friend 
 he would not envy him, but rejoiced in his possession of 
 this rare treasure, a woman who could deliver up to him 
 all the warm secrets of life. And he could not help say- 
 ing so, and telling them how happy it made him to be 
 with them. 
 
 Logan and Oliver glanced at each other, and their 
 hands met in a fierce grip under the table. Mendel could 
 not see more than their glance, but the meeting of their 
 eyes sent a flame like a white-hot sword darting at his 
 heart. The sharp pain released him, and sent him shoot- 
 ing up into a wilder gaiety. 
 
 He felt a hand on his shoulder, and, turning with a 
 start, he saw Mr. Sivwright, his first master, standing 
 above him. He rose and shook hands. 
 
 "I am glad to see you," said Mr. Sivwright. "I've 
 been meaning to write to you, but I've been away, out 
 of London." 
 
 Mendel introduced him to his friends and asked him 
 to sit down. 
 
 ''I can't stop a moment," said Mr. Sivwright, "I'm very 
 busy. I have just started a club for artists opens at 
 eleven. These absurd closing hours, you know. I hope 
 you'll join. It has been open a week. Great fun, and I 
 want some frescoes painted. ... I'm very proud of your 
 success, Kiihler. I feel I had my hand in it." 
 
 He produced a prospectus and laid it on the table, 
 bowed awkwardly to Oliver, and with a self-conscious 
 swagger, as though he felt the eyes of all in the cafe upon 
 him, made his way out.
 
 240 MENDEL 
 
 "Who's that broken-down tick ?" asked Logan. 
 
 "Sivwright," answered Mendel. "He taught me when 
 I was a boy. He's a very bad artist, and he thinks art 
 ended with Corot. I learned to paint like Corot. Really ! 
 I used to go with him to the Park and weep over the 
 trees in the twilight: I never thought I should see him 
 again." 
 
 "Oh ! people bob up," said Logan. "We go on getting 
 longer in the tooth, but people recur, like decimals." 
 
 "Would you like to go to his club?" asked Mendel. 
 "It says 'Dancing.' I feel like dancing." 
 
 "Oh! I love dancing," said she. 
 
 Logan assumed his air of mysterious importance and 
 said it was time to go to Tysoe's. 
 
 "We're twenty minutes late," he said; "Tysoe would 
 be dreadfully put out if we were punctual." 
 
 As Mendel had plenty of money they took a taxi-cab. 
 
 Mr. Tilney Tysoe was an idealist, and he had no other 
 profession. He was a very tall man with a long ca- 
 daverous face, great bulging, watery eyes, and extraor- 
 dinarily long hands, which hung limply from his wrist, 
 except when he was excited, when they shot up with ex- 
 treme violence, and carried his arms with them into a ges- 
 ture so awkward that he had to find relief from it in a 
 shrug. He was devoted to the arts, had a stall at the 
 opera, a study full of books, and several rooms full of 
 pictures. An artist was to him a great artist, a book that 
 pleased him was a great book, and his constant lament 
 was over the dearth of great men in public life. It gave 
 him the keenest delight to see Logan, unkempt, wild- 
 haired, shaggy, violent and brusque, enter his daintily 
 furnished drawing-room, and his eyes passed eagerly to
 
 MR. TILNEY TYSOE 241 
 
 Oliver, looking just as she ought to have done, the mis- 
 tress of a Bohemian. 
 
 "Delighted ! Delighted !" he said as he coiled his long 
 white hand round Mendel's workmanlike paw. "My 
 wife, I regret to say, is away. She will be so sorry to 
 have missed you. Like me, she is tired of the shallow, 
 artificial people we live among. We both adore sincere, 
 real people. I adore sincerity. Sincerity is genius." 
 
 "That is true," said Logan in a sepulchral voice that 
 made Mendel jump. "At least, where you find sin- 
 cerity, you may be sure that genius is not far behind." 
 
 "I bought a picture of yours the other day, Mr. 
 Kiihler," said Tysoe. "I am ashamed to think how little 
 I gave for it, but works of art are priceless, are they 
 not?" 
 
 "Mine are," said Mendel, overcoming his disgust and 
 beginning to enjoy the game. 
 
 "You think so," rejoined Tysoe with an undulation of 
 his long body. "And why shouldn't you say so? You 
 are sincere and strong. You must force your talent upon 
 an ungrateful world." 
 
 A man-servant announced dinner, and Tysoe gave his 
 arm to Oliver and led her downstairs, while Logan put 
 his hand on Mendel's shoulder and said with a chuckle : 
 
 "Be sincere." 
 
 Mendel began at once with the soup, as though he 
 had been wound up. 
 
 "I have won every possible prize for painting and 
 drawing, and the first picture I exhibited was the sensa- 
 tion of the year in art circles." 
 
 "I remember it," said Tysoe. 
 
 "Like my friend Logan, I am profoundly dissatisfied 
 with the state of art in England, and though I am not 
 an Englishman I have sufficient love for the country to
 
 242 MENDEL 
 
 wish to do my share in redeeming it. The first essential 
 is a new technique, the second essential is a new spirit, 
 and the third essential is sincerity." 
 
 "Wonderfully true !" cried Tysoe. "Have some sherry. 
 Wonderfully true! Now, take the ordinary man. He 
 might feel all that, but would he dare to say it? No. 
 That is why I, as an idealist, delight in the society of ar- 
 tists. You know where you are with them. Facts are 
 facts with them." 
 
 "I do like this sherry wine," said Oliver, beginning 
 to feel very comfortable in the warm luxury of the din- 
 ing-room. 
 
 Logan kicked her under the table. 
 
 Feeling that more was expected of him, Mendel wound 
 himself up again and went on: 
 
 "Logan and I are going to hold an exhibition together. 
 It will make a great stir, that is, if London is not alto- 
 gether dead to sincerity. We think it is time that inde- 
 pendence among artists was encouraged. Art must not 
 be allowed to stop short at Calthrop " 
 
 He stopped dead as he realised that the wall opposite 
 him held half a dozen drawings by Calthrop. Logan 
 rushed in : 
 
 "Among real artists there is no rivalry. Art is not a 
 competition. It is a constellation, like the Milky Way." 
 
 "Ah! La Voie Lactee!" cried Tysoe, dropping into 
 French, as he sometimes did when he was moved. "Quite 
 so! La Voie Lactee !" 
 
 "At home in Yorkshire," said Oliver, "there are some- 
 times two big stars hanging just over the top of the 
 moors, and they say it means love or death if you see it 
 at half-past nine." 
 
 Logan took charge of the conversation, frowning at 
 Mendel and Oliver as though they were naughty chil-
 
 MR. TILNEY TYSOE 243 
 
 dren. He described the masterpiece he was painting, 
 and Tysoe said : 
 
 "I'm sure I shall like that. It sounds big and force- 
 ful, like yourself. Do let me have a look at it before 
 any one else sees it." 
 
 Then he added: 
 
 "I saw a charming still-life of yours once. A melon, 
 I think it was. What has become of it?" 
 
 "It was sold, I fancy," replied Mendel, who had never 
 painted a melon in his life. 
 
 "Ah ! A pity. I wanted some little thing for a wed- 
 ding-present. No one I care about very much, so it 
 must be a little thing." 
 
 "He has two or three little things just now," said Lo- 
 gan. "If you sent a messenger-boy round to his studio 
 he would let you see them." 
 
 And suddenly Mendel could keep the game up no 
 longer. He began to feel choked by the stuffy, empty 
 luxury of the room, with its excess of plate and glass and 
 flowers and furniture and pictures. His head seemed 
 to be on the point of bursting. He must get out out 
 and away. He wanted to laugh, to scream with laughter, 
 to shout, to die of laughter, anything to shake off the op- 
 pressive folly of his host. And he began to laugh, to 
 shake and heave with it. He suppressed it, but at last he 
 burst out with a roar and rushed from the room. 
 
 "Overworked," said Logan imperturbably. "That's 
 what it is. The poor devil hasn't learned sense yet. 
 It's work, work, work with him, all the time. He thinks 
 of nothing but his art, you know. Never has, ever since 
 he was a boy. . . . He'll be a very great genius, and 
 shall be left far behind." 
 
 "Not you," said Tysoe, "not you. I know no man n 
 whom I have greater faith than you."
 
 244 MENDEL 
 
 "Do you think him as good as all that?" said Oliver 
 eagerly. "I'm always telling him Kiihler's not a patch 
 on him." 
 
 Meanwhile Mendel had taken refuge in the lavatory, 
 where he shouted and shook and cried with laughter. 
 When he had recovered himself he crawled back to the 
 dining-room muttering inaudible apologies. 
 
 "I'm sorry," he said. "I've not been myself lately." 
 
 "You mustn't overdo it," said Tysoe kindly. "You 
 have plenty of time. You need be in no hurry to over- 
 take Logan. He is entering upon maturity. Your time 
 will come." 
 
 Mendel felt disturbed. He had not thought of Logan 
 seriously as a painter, certainly not as a rival or a col- 
 league. Logan was his friend. That Logan painted was 
 incidental. It irritated him to have to sit and listen to 
 him holding forth about painting. He had always liked 
 Logan's talk, but had never really connected it with his 
 work. It was just talk, like reading, or going to the 
 cinema a sop, a drug, soothing and pleasant when he 
 was in the mood for it, maddening when he was not. 
 
 It was as though a spring had been touched, releasing 
 his intelligence, which had always been kept apart from 
 his work. For the first time he felt, though never so 
 little, detached from it, while at the same moment the 
 awful inward pressure of his emotional crisis was re- 
 laxed. He was happier, and less wildly gay, and he be- 
 gan to realise that he had astonishingly good food in 
 front of him, good wine in plenty, delicious fruits to 
 come, and fragrant coffee brewing there on the side- 
 board among bright-hued liqueur bottles. . . . There was 
 no need to listen to Logan. There was pleasure enough 
 in eating and drinking and watching Oliver, and think- 
 ing how good it would be to dance with her, and perhaps
 
 MR. TILNEY TYSOE 245 
 
 with others little women whom he would hold in his 
 arms and feel them yield to every movement that he 
 made. . . . 
 
 He was left alone with Oliver after dinner, while Lo- 
 gan and Tysoe retired to the study. 
 
 "You've made him very happy," he said rather un- 
 steadily. 
 
 "Oh, yes!" said she. "It was like a Fate, wasn't it? 
 I always had a feeling that I wasn't like other girls. I 
 always thought something out of the way would happen 
 to me, though I never thought of anything like this." 
 
 "You mustn't tell me about him," said Mendel. 
 
 "I must tell some one or I shall die. He's so extraor- 
 dinary. He says its something deeper than love, and I 
 think it must be." 
 
 "You must not talk about it," he said. 
 
 "It makes all the stuff he talks about seem silly. I 
 don't understand it, do you?" 
 
 She lay back in her chair and swung her foot, with 
 her eyes fixed on the door waiting for Logan to return. 
 
 Mendel's dislike of her sprang up in him again, and he 
 was a little afraid of her : of her big, fleshy body, so full 
 now of little trickling streams of pleasure; of her eyes, 
 watching, watching, with the strange, glassy steadiness 
 of the eyes of a bird of prey. ... He decided that he 
 would not dance with her. He would dance with the oth- 
 ers the little, harmless, pretty fools. 
 
 To reassure himself he told himself that Logan was 
 happy, and strong enough to resist the growing will in 
 this woman.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 THE MERLIN'S CAVE 
 
 OGAN had cajoled twenty pounds out of Mr. Tysoe, 
 -*-^ who stood on his doorstep, dangling his long hands, 
 while his admired guests crept into a taxi-cab. He swung 
 from side to side : 
 
 "I have had a most delightful evening most charm- 
 ing, most inspiring." 
 
 Inside the cab Logan waved the cheque triumphantly 
 and Oliver tried to snatch it from him. They had an 
 excited scuffle, which ended in a kiss. 
 
 "What's the matter with the man ?" asked Mendel. 
 
 "He's just a fool," replied Logan, "a padded fool. His 
 only virtue is that he does really think me a wonderful 
 fellow, and he is kind. But how I hate such kindness, 
 the last virtue, the last refuge of the decrepit! It is a 
 perfume, a herb with which they are embalmed." 
 
 "I thought he was a very nice old gentleman," said 
 Oliver. 
 
 "He seemed to me," said Mendel, "the kind of man 
 who thinks of nothing but women all day long." 
 
 "Hit it in once!" cried Logan. "A parrot will not do 
 more for an almond than he will for a commodious drab. 
 He could take a nun and by force of living with her 
 and surrounding her with every luxury turn her into a 
 whore, because she would in time become only another 
 
 246
 
 THE MERLIN'S CAVE 247 
 
 luxury. That is what men grow into if they lose the 
 spirit of freedom. . . . Where are we going to?" 
 
 "I told the man to go to Sivwright's club. It is called 
 The Merlin's Cave." 
 
 The club proved to be a cellar filled with little tables. 
 There was a commissionaire at the door and a book had 
 to be signed. The rack of the cloakroom contained sev- 
 eral silk-lined overcoats and opera-hats. 
 
 "It's going to be damned expensive," said Logan. 
 
 "I'll pay," replied Mendel. "It's my fault." 
 
 Two tall young men in immaculate evening dress had 
 entered just after them. They gave out an air of wealth 
 and cleanliness and made Logan and Oliver look common 
 and shabby. Mendel hated the two young men. What 
 had they done to look so well-fed and unruffled? Obvi- 
 ously they had only to hold out their hands to have every- 
 thing they wanted put into them. . . . They looked 
 slightly self-conscious and ashamed of themselves, and 
 wore a look of alarmed expectancy as they went down- 
 stairs. 
 
 Why did they come there if they were ashamed? and 
 why did they expect an Asmodean lewdness of an artists' 
 club, they for whom the flesh-markets of the music-hall 
 promenades existed? 
 
 "Real swells, aren't they?" said Oliver, overawed. 
 
 The strains of a small orchestra came floating up the 
 
 "Come on," said Mendel, "I want to dance." And he 
 caught her by the wrist and dragged her downstairs. 
 
 A girl was standing on a table singing an idiotic song 
 with a syncopated chorus which a few people took up in 
 a half-hearted fashion. The sound of it was thin and 
 depressing.
 
 248 MENDEL 
 
 "The same old game," said Logan. "Playing at being 
 wicked. Why can't they stick to their commercial beast- 
 liness? I should be ashamed to bring any woman into 
 this. I am ashamed." He half rose from his chair. 
 
 "Oh! don't go," pleaded Oliver, who was entranced 
 with her first sight of what she called a gay life. It was 
 to her like a stage spectacle. "Oh! there's that Calthrop; 
 I suppose all those odd women with him are models." 
 
 Calthrop was surrounded by admiring students, among 
 them Morrison, sitting prim and astonished and obviously 
 amazed to find herself where she was. Mendel began to 
 tremble, and his heart beat violently, as he stared at her 
 stared and stared. 
 
 She had lied to him then! She had not had to go 
 home! She could strike him down and then come to 
 amuse herself at such a place as this! 
 
 Was she with Mitchell ? No, Mitchell was not among 
 the satellites. 
 
 How strange she looked ! a wild violet in a hot-house. 
 He waited for her to glance in his direction, but she 
 seemed to be absorbed in the singer and in the song, and 
 every now and then she smiled, though obviously not at 
 the song at something that amused her or pleased her 
 in her thoughts. She could smile then and be happy, and 
 all his wild emotions had made no invasion into her life. 
 . . . No; she would not look in his direction. Perhaps 
 she had seen him come in and refused to see him. 
 
 Would the dancing never begin? The dancing took 
 place on a slightly raised floor. If he danced there she 
 would have to see him. 
 
 He found a warm hand placed on his leg, and turning 
 he saw Jessie Petrie, a model, with whom he had danced 
 at the studios and at the Detmold.
 
 THE MERLIN'S CAVE 249 
 
 "I thought I was never going to see you again," she 
 said, "and Mitchell said you had gone mad." 
 
 "Do I look it?" he asked. 
 
 "No. You look bonnier than ever. I'm on my own 
 again now. Thompson has gone to Paris. He says 
 the only painters are there. I think he's going mad, be- 
 cause he paints nothing but stripes and triangles. And 
 he was such a dear. . . . I'm feeling awfully lonely be- 
 cause Tilly has gone to Canada. Samuelson gave her the 
 chuck and she went out to her cousin in Canada, who 
 had always been wanting to marry her. . . . Are you still 
 down in Whitechapel ? I do hate going to see you there. 
 Why don't you move up to the West End ? I could come 
 and live with you then, for I do hate being at a loose 
 end." 
 
 She was adorably pretty, dark, with eyes like damsons, 
 lovely red lips, touched up with carmine, and a soft white 
 neck that trembled as she spoke like the breast of a sing- 
 ing bird. 
 
 "Oh ! who do you think I saw the other day ? Hetty 
 Finch ! She has a flat and a motor-car, but I don't believe 
 she is married." She looked suddenly solemn as she 
 added: "The baby's dead." Then she rattled on: 
 "Isn't she lucky? But she's an awful snob. Would 
 hardly speak to me !" 
 
 "She's a beast of a woman." 
 
 "What do you think of this place? I suppose ^if the 
 swells come it'll be a success, but they do spoil it." 
 
 "Yes," said Mendel. "They spoil everything. 'When 
 do they begin to dance?" 
 
 "They've nearly finished the programme. They have 
 to have a programme to make people eat and drink." 
 
 "Let's have some champagne." 
 
 He called the waiter and ordered a bottle.
 
 250 MENDEL 
 
 "Been selling lately?" 
 
 "No," he said; "but I want to dance. Do you hear? 
 I want to dance." 
 
 "Dancing," Logan threw in, "is the beginning of art. 
 It is too primitive for me, or I'm too old." 
 
 A thin-faced long-haired poet mounted the table and 
 read some verses, which the popping of corks and the 
 clatter of knives and forks rendered inaudible. The poet 
 went on interminably, and at last some one began drum- 
 ming on the table and shouting "Dance ! Dance ! Dance !" 
 The poet stuck to it. Bread was thrown at him and the 
 shouting became general. 
 
 At last the orchestra struck up through the poet's 
 reedy chanting, couples made their way to the stage, and 
 the dancing began. Morrison still sat prim and preoc- 
 cupied. Mendel put his arm round Jessie's waist, his 
 fingers sank into her young, supple body, and he lifted 
 her to her feet and rushed with her over to the stage. 
 The whole place was humming with life, beating to the 
 chopped rhythm of the vacant American tune. 
 
 "I do love dancing with you," said Jessie, as he swung 
 her into the moving throng of brilliantly dressed women 
 and black-coated men, so locked together that they were 
 like one creature, a strange, grotesque quadruped. And 
 Jessie so melted into him, so became a part of him, that 
 he too became another creature, an organism in the whirl- 
 ing circle supported and spun round by the music. It 
 was glorious to feel his will relaxing, to feel the lithe, 
 soft woman in his arms yield to every impulse, every 
 movement. He danced with a terrific concentration, with 
 a wiry collected force that made Jessie feel as light as a 
 feather. 
 
 "Oo! That was lovely," she said when the music 
 stopped. "You do dance lovely."
 
 THE MERLIN'S CAVE 251 
 
 "It was pretty good," said Mendel. "But wait until 
 they play a waltz." 
 
 "I want to dance with you," cried Oliver. "You said 
 I should dance with you." 
 
 And she had the next dance with him ; but there was no 
 lightness in her, only a greedy fumbling after sensa- 
 tion. 
 
 "This is awful !" thought Mendel, never for a moment 
 losing himself, and all the while conscious of Morrison 
 sitting there unmoved : of Morrison, whom he was try- 
 ing to forget. Oliver seemed to envelop him, to swallow 
 him up. He was conscious of holding an enormous 
 woman in his arms and her contact was distasteful. The 
 dance seemed endless. Would the music never stop? . . . 
 One, two, three. . . . One, two, three. ... It was like a 
 dancing class with the fat Jewesses at home. . . . And 
 all the time he was conscious of Morrison's big blue eyes 
 staring at him. Would she never stop her damnable 
 smiling? 
 
 He returned Oliver to Logan shamefacedly, as though 
 he were paying a long-standing debt. 
 
 Jessie returned from her other partner to him. 
 
 "Oh ! It isn't anything like the same," she said ; "and 
 that is such a lovely tune to dance to." 
 
 Now that the dancers were warmed up they refused 
 to allow any intervals. They had their partners and 
 were unwilling to stop. The orchestra was worked up 
 into a kind of frenzy, and Mendel and Jessie were whirled 
 into an ecstasy. They abandoned the conventional steps 
 and improvised, gliding, whirling, swooping suddenly 
 through the dancers. Sometimes he picked her up and 
 whirled her round, sometimes his hands were locked on 
 her waist and she bent backwards back, back, until he
 
 252 MENDEL 
 
 pulled her up and she fell upon his breast, happy, pant- 
 ing, deliriously happy. 
 
 Morrison sat watching. She was trembling and felt 
 very miserable. She had been brought there by Clowes, 
 who had been unable to resist the flattery of Calthrop's 
 invitation. All these people seemed to her to be pretend- 
 ing to be happy, and she was oppressed with it all. She 
 had not seen Mendel until he mounted the stage, and 
 then her heart ached. She remembered the etched phrases 
 of his letter to her. She had written to him, but nothing 
 she could express on paper conveyed her feeling, her 
 sense of being in the wrong, and her deep, instinctive con- 
 viction of the injustice of that wrong. . . . He had 
 placed her in the wrong by talking of marriage so pre- 
 maturely. As she looked round the room she was op- 
 pressed by all the men : great, hulking creatures, clumsy, 
 cocksure, insensible, spinning their vain thoughts and 
 vainer emotions round the women as a spider spins its 
 threads round a caught fly. . . . She had often watched 
 spiders dealing with the booty in their webs, and Cal- 
 throp reminded her of a spider when he looked at Clowes 
 and laid his hand on her shoulder or fingered her arm. 
 And Clowes lay still like a caught fly and suffered it. 
 . . . Morrison was in revolt against it all. She was full 
 of sweet life, and would not have it so treated. Her 
 prudery was not shocked, for she had no prudery. The 
 men might have their women so, if the women liked it, 
 but never, never would she be so treated. 
 
 It was because she had been able to sweep aside the 
 sticky threads of vanity with Mendel that the ecstasy 
 of the woods and the Heath had been possible. 
 
 As she watched him now, she knew that he was differ- 
 ent from all the others. He had brought an exaltation
 
 THE MERLIN'S CAVE 253 
 
 into the face of the common little girl who was his part- 
 ner. He was giving her life, not taking it from her. 
 
 Yet to see him made her unhappy. The music was 
 vulgar, the people were vulgar, and he had no true place 
 among them. But how he enjoyed it all! 
 
 She shook with impatience at herself. It was hateful 
 to be outside it, looking on, looking on. A young student 
 had pestered her to dance with him. She turned to him 
 and said : 
 
 "I want to dance, please." 
 
 Delighted, he sprang to his feet, gave her his arm, and 
 whirled her into the dance. 
 
 Slowing down to take breath, Mendel looked in her 
 direction. She was gone! A black despair seized him, 
 a groan escaped him ; he hugged Jessie tight against his 
 body and plunged madly into the dance. 
 
 The musicians had been given champagne. The violin- 
 ist began to embroider upon the tune and the 'cellist fol- 
 lowed with voluptuous thrumming chords. 
 
 Jessie gave little cries of happiness to feel the grow- 
 ing strength in Mendel's arms, the waxing power of his 
 smooth movements. She gave little cries like the call of 
 a quail, and he laughed gleefully every time she cried. 
 He could feel the force rising in him. It would surely 
 burst out of him and break into molten streams of laugh- 
 ter, leaving him deliciously light, as light and absurd as 
 dear little Jessie, who was swinging on the music like a 
 dewdrop on a gossamer. ... If only the music would 
 last long enough ! He would be as tremulous and light 
 as she, and while that lightness lasted he could love her 
 and taste life at its highest point for her. ... She was 
 aware of his desire, and swung to it. It was like a wind 
 swaying her, thistledown as she was ; like a wind blowing
 
 254 MENDEL 
 
 her through the air on a summer's day. O that it might 
 never end, that the sky might never be overcast, that the 
 rain might never come and the night might never fall. 
 . . . Terrible things had happened to Jessie in the night, 
 and she was happy in the sun. 
 
 Mendel was past all dizziness. The room had spun 
 round until it could spin no more, and then it had un- 
 wound itself, making him feel weak and giddy. He was 
 very nearly clear-headed, and every now and then he 
 caught a glimpse of Logan sketching and of Oliver, sit- 
 ting with a sulky pout on her lips and tears in her eyes 
 because she wanted to dance and knew she had made a 
 failure of it. 
 
 "Lovely! lovely! lovely!" sighed Jessie. 
 
 "You are like the white kernel of a nut," said Men- 
 del, "when the shell is broken." 
 
 "Do let me come and sit for you," she said. "I won't 
 want anything except my dinner." 
 
 "Better keep to the dancing," he answered, as he spun 
 her round to stop her talking. 
 
 She began to stroke his neck and to press her face 
 against his breast. At the same moment he saw Morrison 
 among the dancers. He slowed down and then stopped 
 dead. The music rose to an exultant riot of sound. 
 
 "Please, please!" cried Jessie, clinging to him; but he 
 had forgotten her. 
 
 Morrison and her partner swept past him, and he 
 watched them go the full circle. She saw him standing, 
 and as she approached broke away from her partner. 
 
 "Why aren't you dancing with me?" he said, shaking 
 with eagerness to hear her speak. 
 
 "I'm no good at dancing," she said. "I don't enjoy it." 
 
 "Who brought you here ? Calthrop ?"
 
 THE MERLIN'S CAVE 255 
 
 "He brought Clowes and me. . . . You mustn't stop 
 dancing. Your partner. . . ." 
 
 "Please, please!" cried Jessie, stamping her foot; "the 
 music is going to stop." 
 
 "Wait a moment," he said, turning to Morrison. "Arc 
 you going home?" 
 
 "The day after to-morrow." 
 
 "I must see you." 
 
 Before she could reply her partner, who had lost his 
 temper, seized her and made her finish the dance, and 
 when it was over he marched her back to Calthrop's 
 party, and he never left her side again. 
 
 Mendel returned to Logan and Oliver, to find them 
 impatient to go. The end of an evening always found 
 them in this impatient mood. 
 
 "It all bears out what I say," said Logan. "All this 
 night-club business. People have to go mad in London 
 before they can taste life at all." 
 
 "Do you mind if I come home and sleep on your 
 sofa?" asked Mendel. "I can't face my studio to-night." 
 
 "Why don't you take Jessie home with you?" said 
 Logan; "I'm sure she'd like to." 
 
 Mendel winced, and Jessie's lips began to tremble. She 
 was still suffering from the sudden end to her happiness. 
 She looked at him, almost hoping that he was going to 
 make reparation to her. 
 
 "You know I can't," he said; "I live in my brother's 
 house and he is a respectable married man." 
 
 He knew he was in for a terrible night of reaction and 
 desperate blind emotion ; at the same time he did not wish 
 to hurt Jessie more than he had done. 
 
 "I'll take you home in a cab," he said. "But I won't 
 stay, if you don't mind. I'm done up. If you and Oliver
 
 256 MENDEL 
 
 walk half way, Logan, we ought to be there about the 
 same time." 
 
 Jessie was appeased. A little kindness went a long way 
 with her, and she hated to be a nuisance to a man. 
 
 When the cab stopped outside the door of her lodgings 
 she flung her arms round Mendel's neck ana kissed him, 
 saying : 
 
 "You are a darling, and I would do anything in the 
 world for you." 
 
 "You shall come and sit for me," he replied. "Good- 
 night!" 
 
 "Good-night!" 
 
 Good-night! A night of tossing to and fro, of hear- 
 ing terrifying noises in the darkness, of hearing Logan 
 and Oliver in the next room, of shutting his ears to what 
 he heard, of fancying he heard some one calling him . . . 
 her voice ! Surely she had called him, and the ache and 
 the torment in his flesh was the measure of her need of 
 him. . . . Strange, blurred thoughts; gusts of defiance 
 and revolt; glimpses of pictures, subjects for pictures, 
 colours and shapes. . . . His mother's hands clutching a 
 fish and bringing a knife down on to it. There was a 
 blue light on the knife. It would be very hard to get 
 that and to keep it subordinate to the blue in the fish's 
 scales. . . . His father and mother, eternally together, 
 in an affection that never found any expression, harsh 
 and bitter, but strongly savoured, like everything else in 
 their lives. . . . Issy and Rosa, much the same as Logan 
 and Oliver, and to them also he had to shut his ears. . . . 
 The goggle-eyed man at the Pot-au-Feu. . . . London, 
 London, the roaring fiery furnace of London in which 
 he was burning alive, while flames of madness shot up 
 above him. . Music. , . There was a music in his
 
 THE MERLIN'S CAVE 257 
 
 soul, a music and mystery that could rise with an easy 
 power above all the flames. . . . What did it matter that 
 his body was burned, if his soul could rise like that up 
 to the stars and beyond the stars to the point where art 
 touched life and gave out its iridescent beneficent light? 
 . . . Life, flames, body, stars, all might perish and fade 
 away, but the soul had its knowledge of eternity and could 
 not be quenched. . . . Eternal art, divine art, the world 
 of form, shaped in the knowledge of eternity, wherein 
 life and death are but a day and a night. . . . Sickening 
 doubt of himself, sinking down, down into eternity to 
 be a part of it, never to know it, never to see the light 
 of art, lost to eternity in eternity. ... He sat up in the 
 middle of the night and imagined himself back in the one 
 room in Gun Street, looking at the recumbent bodies 
 of his family, lost in sleep, huddled together in degrada- 
 tion. ... It would have been better to have gone home 
 with Jessie. She would have given him rest and sleep. 
 ... No, no, no ! ... She was going away the day after 
 to-morrow. He must see her before she went, with her 
 big blue eyes and short chestnut hair. She had stopped 
 in the middle of the dance. She had broken away from 
 her partner, and on Hampstead Heath she had said "I 
 love you."
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 GOOD-BYE 
 
 T OGAN came in early in the morning to make tea. He 
 ' shut the door carefully and came and sat on Men- 
 del's sofa. 
 
 "She says you hate her," he said. 
 
 "I?" answered Mendel. "No. I. ... What can 
 make her say that? Because I didn't dance with her? I 
 had Jessie. You ought to have danced with her." 
 
 "I'm glad she didn't dance. It might make her break 
 out. Women are very queer things. You never know 
 where they will break out. . . . You make love to them, 
 touch a spring in them, and God knows where it may 
 lead you. . . . You're not in love with that mop-haired 
 girl, are you ?" 
 
 "What if I am?" 
 
 "She's just a doll-faced miss. You're taken with the 
 type because you're unused to it. For God's sake don't 
 take it seriously. You're much too good to waste your- 
 self on women. She'll drive you mad with purity and 
 chivalrous devotion and all the other schoolgirl twaddle. 
 Leave all that to the schoolboy English. It's all they're 
 good for. They've bred it on purpose to be the mother 
 of more schoolboys. It is the basis of the British Em- 
 pire. But what is the British Empire to you or any ar- 
 tist? Nothing." 
 
 258
 
 "GOOD-BYE" 259 
 
 "I don't want to talk about it," said Mendel. 
 
 "She won't marry you," said Logan. "She won't live 
 with you. She'll give you nothing. She'll madden you 
 with her conceited stupidity and wreck your work. . . . 
 What you want is what every decent man wants to take 
 a woman and keep her in her place, so that she can't in- 
 terfere with him. That's what I've done, and it's made 
 a man of me, but I'm not going to let her know it. She'd 
 be crowing like an old hen that has laid an egg. . . . No 
 farmyard life for me, thanks." 
 
 Oliver bawled for her tea and Logan hastened to 
 make it, and disappeared into the bedroom. 
 
 Mendel got up and dressed, feeling eager for the day. 
 The sun shone in through the window and filled the 
 room with a dusty glow, making even the shabby bareness 
 of the place seem charming. 
 
 "It is a good day," he said to himself. "I shall work 
 to-day." And he was annoyed at not having his canvas 
 at hand. 
 
 On an easel stood the picture which Logan had de- 
 scribed to Tysoe, a London street scene with a group of 
 people gazing into a shop window. It was a clever 
 piece of work, very adroit in the handling of the paint 
 and pleasing in colour, but Mendel had an odd uncom- 
 fortable feeling of having seen it before, and yet he 
 knew that the technique was novel. Yet it was precisely 
 the technique that seemed familiar. Certain liberties had 
 been taken with the perspective which, though they were 
 new to him, did not surprise him. 
 
 Logan came in dressed and said that Oliver would 
 not be a minute. She appeared in a dressing-gown. 
 
 "Well?" she said; "none the worse for last night?" 
 
 "No, thanks," said Mendel. "Why should I be? I 
 enjoyed it."
 
 260 MENDEL 
 
 "Did Logan tell you we were going to Paris?" 
 
 "No. He said nothing about it." 
 
 "I'm dying to go to Paris. He says they understand 
 the kind of thing we had last night in Paris." 
 
 "You're not going for good, are you?" asked Mendel. 
 
 "No. Just a trip. I want you to come too. We'll 
 see some pictures and have a good time. I can't speak 
 a word of French, but they say English is good enough 
 anywhere." 
 
 "Yes, I'd like to go," said Mendel. "I want a change, 
 before I settle down to working for the exhibition. Is 
 that picture going to be in it ?" 
 
 "Yes. Do you like it?" 
 
 "I like it. It seems to me new. Stronger than most 
 things. All these people going in for thin, flat colour 
 and greens and mauves make me long for something 
 solid." 
 
 "I'm going to show that and a portrait of Oliver." 
 
 "I want my breakfast," said she. 
 
 "Oh! shut up. We're talking. . . . I've just begun the 
 portrait. No psychological nonsense about it. It's just 
 the head of a woman in paint. I don't want any damn 
 fool writing about my picture : she is wiser than the chair 
 on which she sits and the secrets of the antimacassar are 
 hers. A picture's a picture and a book's a book." 
 
 "I do want my breakfast," sang Oliver. 
 
 Logan went livid with fury. 
 
 "Be silent, woman," he said. 
 
 "I shan't, so there. I want my breakfast." 
 
 "Why the hell don't you get the breakfast then?" 
 
 "Because you said you would." 
 
 Logan began to prepare the breakfast rashers of ba- 
 con and eggs. 
 
 "You don't mind eating pork?" he asked Mendel.
 
 "GOOD-BYE" 261 
 
 "No. I like it, but I never get it at home." 
 
 "Fancy Jews being still as strict as that !" said Oliver. 
 "Just like they were in Shakespeare's time." 
 
 "Just as they were in the time of Moses and Aaron," 
 said Mendel. "They don't alter except that they haven't 
 got a country to fight for." 
 
 "Thank God!" said Logan, "or there'd be a bloody 
 mess every other week. Fancy a Jewish Empire, with 
 you sent out, like David, to hit the Czar of Russia or 
 Chaliapine in the eye with a stone from a sling. Think 
 of your sister-in-law luring the Kaiser into a tent and 
 knocking a nail through his head. I wish she could, upon 
 my soul I do !" 
 
 "I think we should only be led into captivity again," 
 said Mendel. "Our fighting days are over, and some one 
 told me the other day that many of the most advanced 
 artists in Paris are Jews." 
 
 "If they were all like you," said Logan, "I shouldn't 
 mind. But I'm afraid they're not. The Jews have got 
 all the money and they keep the other people fighting 
 for it, and charge them a hell of a lot for guns and uni- 
 forms to do it with. Oh ! there are Christians in it too, 
 but they have to be nice to the Jews to be allowed to share 
 the spoils. I don't wonder the Jews left the Promised 
 Land when they found the world was inhabited by fools 
 who would let them plunder it." 
 
 "There's not much plunder in my family," said Mendel. 
 
 After breakfast he declared that he must go, and 
 Logan announced that he would walk with him to en- 
 joy the lovely sunny day. Oliver wanted to come too, 
 but he told her to stay where she was, and he left her 
 in tears. 
 
 "She's got a bad habit of crying," he said, "and she
 
 262 MENDEL 
 
 must be broken of it. She cries if I don't speak to 
 her for an hour. She cries if I go out without telling 
 her where I am going. She cries if I curse and swear 
 over my work, and if I am pleased with it she cries be- 
 cause I am never so happy with her. ... I feel like 
 hitting her sometimes, but it isn't her fault. She hasn't 
 settled down to it yet. She says I don't love her when 
 she knows she never expected to be loved so much. And 
 she can't get used to it." 
 
 "Why don't you paint her crying?" asked Mendel 
 maliciously. 
 
 "By Jove! I will," cried Logan. "Damned interest- 
 ing drawing, with her eyes all puckered up. ... But it's 
 a shame on a day like this to be out of temper with 
 anything. Lord! How women do spoil the universe, 
 to be sure! Do they give us anything to justify the 
 mess they make of it? ... Women and shopkeepers. 
 I don't see why one should have any mercy on either of 
 them. I have no compunction in stealing anything I 
 want. Shopkeepers steal from the public all the little 
 halfpennies and farthings of extra profit they exact." 
 
 He led Mendel into a picture shop and asked for a 
 reproduction of a picture by Van Tromp, and when 
 the girl retired upstairs to ask about that non-existent 
 artist, he turned over the albums and helped himself 
 to half a dozen reproductions, rolled them up, and put 
 them in his pocket. When the girl came down and 
 said they were out of Van Tromps, he said : 
 
 "I'm sorry. Very sorry to trouble you." 
 
 When they were out of the shop he chuckled, and 
 was as elated over his success as Mr. Kuit had been 
 over his exploits. 
 
 "Oh! I should be an artist in anything I did," he 
 said. "I don't wonder thieves can't go straight once
 
 "GOOD-BYE" 263 
 
 they get on the lay. If I weren't a painter I should be 
 a criminal." 
 
 He walked with Mendel as far as Gray's Inn, and 
 there left him, saying he had another picture-buying 
 flat to go and see, and after that he must pay a visit 
 to Uncle Cluny and keep him up to the mark. He was in 
 fine fettle, and went off singing at the top of his voice. 
 
 Mendel bought some flowers on the way home be- 
 cause he wished always to have flowers, even if she were 
 to send no more. 
 
 He was sure of himself to-day. He was in love and 
 glad to be in love. Surely it could have no worse suf- 
 fering than that through which he had passed, and 
 if it did, well, so much the worse for him. ... He was 
 glad it had happened. His father would not be able to 
 sneer at him any more, as he was always sneering at Issy 
 and Harry Harry, who had deserted his father and 
 mother for the sweetbreads of Paris. (Jacob always 
 called sweetmeats sweetbreads. ) He had a bitter, biting 
 tongue, had Jacob, and the habit of using it was growing 
 on him. Mendel knew that he had deserved many of 
 his sneers, but now they could touch him no longer. 
 His life, like his art, now contained a passion as strong 
 as any Jacob had known in his life, and stronger, be- 
 cause it was wedded to beauty, to which Jacob was a 
 stranger. 
 
 He was able to work again at his picture of his father 
 and mother. He could make something of it now, he 
 knew, because he could understand his father and ap- 
 preciate the strength in him which had kept his passion 
 alive through poverty and a life of constant storms and 
 upheavals. He remembered his father knocking down 
 the schoolmaster, and the soldier in the inn with the
 
 264 MENDEL 
 
 heavy glass. Oh yes ! Jacob was a strong man, and he 
 had nearly died of love for Golda, the beautiful. 
 
 He worked away with an extraordinary zest, and he 
 knew that it was good. As he grew tired during the 
 afternoon he was overcome with a great longing for 
 her to see it, just to see it and to say she liked it. It 
 would not matter much if she did not understand it, so 
 long as she saw it and liked it. 
 
 He turned to the roughly sketched portrait of her 
 to ask her if she liked it, and as he did so the door opened 
 and she came in. Her arms were full of flowers, so 
 that her face was resting in them, her dear face, the 
 sweetest of all flowers. 
 
 "You said . . . you must see me, so I brought you 
 these to say good-bye." 
 
 "Do come in and see my picture. It is nearly finished." 
 
 "Oh! It is good," she said shyly. 
 
 "I thought you'd like it. I wanted you to like it. Do 
 stay a little and talk." 
 
 She sat down and looked about the studio, puckering 
 up her eyebrows nervously and making her eyes very 
 round and large. 
 
 "You never told me how old you are," he said 
 nervously. 
 
 "I'm nineteen." 
 
 "I'm twenty. Just twenty. How long are you going 
 away for?" 
 
 "I don't know. Until the winter, I expect." 
 
 "What will you do there in the country? It is im- 
 portant that you should tell me, because I must know 
 how to think of you. What shall you do? Is it a big 
 house? Are you are you rich?" 
 
 "No. It is not a very big house. My mother is 
 fairly well off, but I have four brothers, and they all
 
 "GOOD-BYE" 265 
 
 have to go to Oxford and Cambridge. . . . There's 
 a good garden, and I shall spend a lot of time in that, 
 digging and looking after the flowers. And I shall try 
 and do some work. There's a big barn I can have for a 
 studio." 
 
 "A big barn. Yes. Are your brothers nice men?" 
 
 "Two of them." 
 
 "And there's a river and a common. May I write 
 to you?" 
 
 She was silent for a long time, and then she said: 
 
 "No. Please don't." 
 
 His happiness vanished. It was as though a hole 
 had opened in the floor and swallowed it up. 
 
 "Why not?" he asked. "Why not?" 
 
 She shrank into herself for a moment, but shook off 
 her cowardice and answered: 
 
 "I don't want to hurt you." 
 
 "You said you loved me. You can do what you like 
 with me!" 
 
 "You're so different," she said. "Too different/' 
 
 "From what? From whom? Go on, go on!" 
 
 She loved his violence and gained courage from it. 
 
 "You mustn't think it mean of me. I don't care 
 a bit what people say, but I don't want to hurt you in 
 your work, I mean. It isn't all that I think and mean, 
 but it is a part of it, a little part of it. People are 
 furious at our being seen together. It began at the 
 picnic. We were seen walking over the Heath. Clowes 
 told me. She can't bear it. She's a good friend. . . . 
 It hurt me when she told me, and I knew that I must 
 tell you. It isn't only old women. It is all the important 
 people, who can hurt your work." 
 
 "Nobody can hurt my work." 
 
 "But they can. They are saying your work is bad,
 
 266 MENDEL 
 
 all the people who said it was so good only last year, 
 all the people who believed in you. And it's all through 
 me. It's my fault." 
 
 She began to weep silently. He was unmoved by 
 the sight of it, so appalled was he by the sudden devasta- 
 tion of his life. Suffering within himself he knew, 
 but hostility from without he had not had to face. . . . 
 Many little slights were explained men who had given 
 him an indifferent nod, men who had apparently not 
 seen him in the street. In the surprise of it he was blind 
 even to her. It was like a sandstorm covering him up, 
 rilling with grit every little chink and crevice of his 
 being. He snorted with fury and contempt. 
 
 He shook himself free of the oppression of it. This 
 was nothing to do with her; it was not what he wanted 
 from her the gossip and tittle-tattle, the sweepings of 
 the studios. The models sickened him of that. ... So 
 it was his turn now. Well, other men had survived it. 
 
 "That isn't why you want to say good-bye." 
 
 "No. I'm not pleading- to you to let me off, or any- 
 thing like that. I believe in you more than in anybody 
 else, more than I do in myself. ... I don't believe in 
 myself much." 
 
 It had all seemed clear to her before she had come. 
 He would understand how wrong and twisted the whole 
 thing had become. They would suffer together and 
 they would see how useless such suffering was in a world 
 of beauty and charm and youth, and they would part 
 because they had to part. He would understand, even 
 if she could not rightly understand, for he was strong 
 and simple and direct, and free of the soft vanity of 
 youth. 
 
 But he did not understand. He was angry and domi- 
 neering.
 
 "GOOD-BYE" 267 
 
 "Why do you say all this ?" he said heavily, flounder- 
 ing for words. "What does it mean? Nothing at all. 
 You belong to me. You gave up Mitchell because I 
 said you must. Have you given up Mitchell?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Very well then. Nothing else matters. If I want 
 a thing I will break through a Chinese wall to get it. 
 Nothing can stop me, because when I want a thing it is 
 mine already. I want it because it is mine already." 
 
 He was making it impossible for her impossible to 
 go, impossible to stay, impossible to say anything. 
 
 Outside in the street the heavy drays went clattering 
 by on the stone setts. When they had passed there 
 came up the shrill cries of children playing in the street, 
 the drone of a Rabbi taking a class of boys in Hebrew. 
 On the hot air came the smell of the street a smell of 
 women and babies and leather and kosher meat. 
 
 "I know the way of women," he said. "My mother 
 has been my friend always. But I do not know your 
 ways. I only know that I love you. You are mine 
 as that picture is mine, and you cannot take yourself 
 from me." 
 
 "I don't want to take myself from you," she said, 
 half angry, half in tears. "I want to make you under- 
 stand me." 
 
 "What is there to understand? Do I understand my 
 pictures?" he cried. "Do you want no mystery? How 
 can there be life without mystery? I don't expect you 
 to understand. I only want you to be honest and true 
 to me. ... I conceal nothing. I am a Jew. I live 
 in this horrible place. My life is as horrible as this 
 place. You know all that, all there is to know, and you 
 love me. You cannot alter me. You cannot change my 
 nature. ,
 
 268 MENDEL 
 
 "Don't say any more," she said. "It only becomes 
 worse with talking." 
 
 "What becomes worse?" 
 
 She could not answer him. She could not say what 
 she felt. The woods, the Heath, and this; the rattle 
 and smell of the street, the dinginess of the studio, the 
 dinginess of his soul the dinginess and yet the fire of 
 it. On the Heath he had been like a faun, prick-eared 
 and shaggy, but wild and free as her spirit was wild 
 and free. Here he was rough, coarse, harsh, and tyran- 
 nical. She could feel him battering at her with his mind, 
 searching her out, probing into her, and she resented 
 it with all the passion of her modesty. She gathered 
 up all her forces to resist him. 
 
 "You are terrible! Terrible!" she cried. "Don't you 
 see that it must be good-bye?" 
 
 "I say it must not," he shouted. "I say it is non- 
 sense to talk of good-bye, when we have just met, when 
 the kiss is yet warm on our lips. For a kiss is a holy 
 thing, and I do not kiss unless it is holy. I say it is 
 not good-bye." 
 
 "I say it is and must be," she said. "You are terrible. 
 You hurt me beyond endurance." 
 
 "And why should you not be hurt? Am I to have 
 all the pain? I want to share even that with you." 
 
 "It is impossible," she said dully, unable to share, or 
 deal with, or appreciate the violence of his passion, and 
 falling back on the mulishness which had been developed 
 in her through her tussles with her brothers. Through 
 her mind shot the horrible thought : 
 
 "We are quarrelling already quarrelling." 
 
 To her he seemed to be dragging her down, defiling 
 her. His eyes were glaring at her with a passion that 
 she took for sensuality, because it came out of the dingi-
 
 'GOOD-BYE" 269 
 
 ness of his soul. And he was stiffening- into an iron col- 
 umn of egoism, on which she knew she could make no 
 impression. She knew, too, that her presence was ag- 
 gravating the stiffening process. . . . She felt caught, 
 trapped, and she want'ed to get away. Love must be 
 free free as the wind on the heath, as the blossom 
 of the wild cherry. Love must have its blossoming 
 time, and he was demanding the full heat of the sum- 
 mer. . . . She must get away. 
 
 "Good-bye," she said, holding out her hand. 
 
 He took her hand and pulled her to him. 
 
 "No! No! No!" she cried. "No! Good-bye! Good- 
 bye!" 
 
 She turned away and was gone. 
 
 Unable to contain his agony, he flung himself on his 
 bed and sobbed out his grief. 
 
 "She is mine!" he moaned. "She is mine, and she 
 cannot take herself from me." 
 
 And when his tears were shed he began to think of 
 the other women who had come to him without love, 
 so easily, so gratefully, some of them, and this little 
 girl who loved him could tear herself away at a fearful 
 cost. He knew that. But if she could tear herself 
 away, if she could say good-bye, what could she know 
 of love?
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 PARIS 
 
 MENDEL was able to finish his portrait of Jacob 
 and Golda, but only at the cost of painful and 
 bitter labour. He was torn two ways : longing to finish 
 it, yet dreading the end of it, for he could not see be- 
 yond it. Every picture he had painted had brought with 
 it the certain knowledge that it would lead to a better, 
 that he was advancing further on the road to art. But 
 there was a finality about this picture. It was an end 
 in itself. It was not like most of his work, one of a 
 possible dozen or more. A certain stream of his feeling 
 ended in it and then disappeared, leaving him without 
 guide or direction. 
 
 Therefore, when the picture was ended he found him- 
 self besottedly and uncontrollably in love and in a mad- 
 deningly sensitive condition, so that any sudden glimpse 
 of beauty the stars in the night sky, a girl's face in 
 the train, flowers in a window-box could set him reel- 
 ing. More than once he found himself clinging to 
 the wall or a railing, emerging with happy laughter from 
 a momentary lack of consciousness. In the street near 
 his home he found a lovely little girl, of the same type 
 as Sara, but more beautiful. Graceful and lively she 
 was, fully aware of her vitality and charm, and she used 
 to smile at him when he went to meet her as she came 
 
 270
 
 PARIS 2?1 
 
 out of school, or stood and watched her playing in the 
 street. 
 
 At last he asked her shyly if she would come to his 
 studio that he might draw her. She consented and came 
 often. She would chatter away, and, studying her, he 
 was astonished at her womanishness, and he was over- 
 whelmed when she said one day: 
 
 "You don't want to draw me. You only want to 
 look at me." 
 
 He was thrust back into the thoughts he had been 
 avoiding. If this child knew already so frankly why 
 he was attracted to her, why could not that other ? Why 
 did she seem to insist that he should regard her with 
 the emotions with which he approached a work of art? 
 A work of art could yield up its secret to the emotions, 
 but she could only deliver hers to love dwelling not in 
 any abstract region, but here on earth, in the life of the 
 body. . . . He often thought of her with active dislike, 
 because she seemed to him to be lacking in frankness. 
 If she were going to cause so much suffering, as she 
 must have known she would with her good-bye, then she 
 must have her reasons for it. What did she mean with 
 her neither yes nor no? With women there should be 
 either yes or no. A refusal is unpleasant, but it could 
 be swallowed down with other ills ; and there were others. 
 But this girl, this short-haired Christian, blocked his way, 
 and there were no others except as there were cabs on 
 the street and meals on the table. 
 
 For a time he avoided Logan and Oliver. He knew 
 that Logan would despise him for his weakness in set- 
 ting his heart on a girl who ran away from him, for 
 he knew and admired the tremendous force with which 
 his friend had hurled himself into his life with the girl 
 ,of the station, constantly wooing and winning her afresh
 
 272 MENDEL 
 
 and urging her to share his own recklessness. He ad- 
 mired, too, Logan's insistence on an absolute separation 
 of his art and his life with Oliver, who was never for 
 one moment admitted to his mind. Rather to his dismay, 
 but at the same time with a wild rush of almost lyrical 
 impulse, Mendel, finding himself with no other emotion 
 than that of being in love, set himself to paint love. He 
 worked with an amazing ease, painting one picture one 
 day and covering it with another the next, feeling elatedly 
 convinced that everything he did was beautiful, yet know- 
 ing within himself that he was in a bad way. 
 
 He avoided Logan, but Logan needed him, and came 
 to tell him so. 
 
 "It is all very well for you to shut yourself up," he 
 said, "but I can't live without you. You know what 
 Oliver is to me, but it is not enough. The more satis- 
 fying she is on one plane, the more I need on the other 
 the satisfaction that she cannot give me. Women can't 
 do it. They simply can't, and it is no good trying. If 
 you try, it means making a mess of both love and art. 
 She is jealous? Very well. Let her be jealous. She en- 
 joys it, and it helps her to understand a man's passion." 
 
 "I can't stand it when you talk in that cold-blooded 
 way about women." 
 
 "I'm not cold-blooded," said Logan, astonished at the 
 adjective. 
 
 "I sometimes think you are, but I am apt to think 
 that of all English people," replied Mendel, wondering 
 within himself if that did not explain Morrison. "Yes. 
 I often wonder what you would be like if you were in 
 an office, wearing a bowler hat, and going to and fro 
 by the morning and evening train." 
 
 "Why think about the impossible?" laughed Logan. 
 "Anyhow, I'm not going to let you shut yourself up.
 
 PARIS 
 
 273 
 
 I want to go to Paris, and I can't face three weeks 
 alone with Oliver. Twenty-one days, sixty-three meals. 
 No. It can't be done." 
 
 "Yes, I'll go to Paris," thought Mendel. "I will go 
 to Paris and I will forget." 
 
 "You must come," urged Logan. "Madame at the 
 Pot-au-Feu has given me the name of a hotel kept by 
 her sister-in-law. Very cheap. Bed and breakfast, and, 
 of course, you feed in restaurants. . . . You want dig- 
 ging out of your hole. I don't know why, but you seem 
 to have insisted more on being Jewish lately. It is much 
 more important for you to be an artist and a man. I 
 regard you as a sacred trust. I do really. You are the 
 only man in England for whom I have any respect, and 
 I need you to keep me decent." He added : "I need you 
 to keep me alive, for, without you, Oliver would gobble 
 me up in a month." 
 
 He seemed to be joking, but Mendel could not help 
 feeling that he was at heart serious, and he had the 
 unpleasant sinking of disgust which sometimes seized 
 him when he thought of Logan and Oliver together. 
 He could not account for it, and the sensation gave him 
 a sickly pleasure which made him weaker with Logan 
 than with anybody else. Besides, Logan often bewildered 
 him, and he could not tolerate his inability to &rasp 
 ideas except through a mad rush of feeling, and he 
 hated the fact that while Logan's mind seemed to move 
 steadily on, his own crumbled to pieces just at the mo- 
 ment when it was on the point of absorbing an idea. 
 
 For these reasons he consented to go to Paris. The 
 three weeks should consolidate or destroy a friendship 
 which had remained for him distressingly inchoate. Deep 
 in his heart he hoped that it would become definite enough 
 and strong enough to drive out his indeterminate love.
 
 274 MENDEL 
 
 To be in love without enjoying love was in his eyes a 
 fatuous condition, undignified, vague, a kind of 
 cuckoldry. 
 
 Oliver was aflame with excitement over the trip to 
 Paris. She spoke of it with an almost religious exalta- 
 tion. As usual, her emotion was entirely uncontrolled, 
 became a physical tremulation, and she reminded Men- 
 del of a wobbling blanc-mange. 
 
 The plan was to have a fortnight in Paris and a week 
 at Boulogne, for bathing and gambling at the Casino. 
 
 No sooner had he left London than Mendel felt his 
 cares and anxieties fall away from him, and he began 
 to wish he had brought Jessie Petrie. He proposed 
 to wire for her from Folkestone, but Logan pointed out 
 that Oliver could not stand women and was jealous of 
 them. 
 
 "She'd say Jessie was making eyes at me," he said. 
 "And if she made eyes at you she'd be almost as bad." 
 
 In that Mendel could sympathise with Oliver. He 
 was himself often suddenly, unreasonably, and violently 
 jealous of other men over women for whom he did 
 not care a fig. 
 
 He set himself to be nice to Oliver, and she in her 
 holiday mood responded, so that on the boat and in 
 the Paris train Logan was sunk in a gloomy silence, 
 and in the hotel at night, in the next room, Mendel could 
 hear him storming at her, refusing to have anything to 
 do with her, threatening to go home next day unless 
 she promised to keep her claws, as he said, off Kiihler. 
 She promised, and they embarked further upon their 
 perilous voyage in search of an unattainable land of 
 satiety.
 
 PARIS 275 
 
 Their hotel was near the Montparnasse station, and 
 they discovered a cafe in the Boulevard Raspail which 
 was frequented by artists and models, one or two of 
 whom Mendel recognised as former habitues of the 
 Paris Cafe. They were soon drawn into the artist world, 
 and except that he went to the Louvre instead of to the 
 National Gallery for peace and refreshment, Mendel 
 often thought he might just as well be in London. There 
 was the same feverish talk, the same abuse of successful 
 artists, the same depreciation of old masters, but there 
 was more body to the talk, and sometimes a Frenchman, 
 finding 1 speech useless with this shy, good-looking Jew, 
 would make himself clear with what English he could 
 muster and a rapid, skilful drawing. For the most part, 
 however, he had to rely on Logan's paraphrase, until 
 one day in the Boulevard St. Germain he ran into 
 that Thompson, lamented by Jessie Petrie, the painter 
 of stripes and triangles. 
 
 Thompson was a little senior to Mendel at the Det- 
 mold, had hardly spoken to him in the old days, but 
 was now delighted to meet a familiar London face. 
 
 "I am glad !" he said. "Come and see my place. How 
 are they all in London poor old Calthrop and poor 
 old Froitzheim? I should have killed myself if I'd 
 stayed in London; nothing but talk and women, with 
 work left to find its way in where it can. Here work 
 comes first. I suppose they haven't even heard of Van 
 Gogh in London?" 
 
 Mendel had to confess that he had never heard of 
 Van Gogh. 
 
 "A Dutchman," explained Thompson, "and he cut 
 off his ear and sent it to Gauguin. Ever heard of Gau- 
 guin?"
 
 276 MENDEL 
 
 "No. But a man doesn't make himself a great artist 
 by cutting off his ear." 
 
 "Van Gogh was a great artist before that. He killed 
 himself: shot himself in his bed, and the doctor found 
 him in bed smoking a pipe. He was quite happy, for 
 he had done all he could." 
 
 That sounded more like it to Mendel, more like the 
 deed of a warrior of the spirit. 
 
 "I'll show you," said Thompson, and they went round 
 the galleries. 
 
 Mendel's head was nearly bursting when he came out. 
 The riotous colour, the apparent neglect of drawing 
 and abuse of form, the entire absence of tone and at- 
 mosphere, shocked him. He resented the wrench given 
 to all his training, and he took Thompson to the Louvre 
 to go back to Cranach and the early Italians. Thomp- 
 son would not hear of them, and insisted on his spend- 
 ing over an hour with Poussin. 
 
 "I can see nothing in them. Good painting, good 
 drawing, but dull, so dull ! The flat, papery figures mean 
 nothing." 
 
 "They mean everything to the picture," said Thomp- 
 son, "and you have no right to go outside the picture. 
 Poussin kept to his picture, and so must you if you are 
 to understand him." 
 
 "I can see all that," said Mendel, "but he is dull. I 
 can't help it, he bores me." 
 
 "It is pure art." 
 
 "Then I like it impure." 
 
 "You don't really. But you are all like that when 
 you first come from London. You think that because 
 a thing is different it must be wrong. Have you come 
 over alone?" 
 
 "No. I'm with a man called Logan and his girl.
 
 PARIS 
 
 277 
 
 He is a great painter, or he will be one. Anyhow, he 
 is alive and has ideas." 
 
 "Does he know about Van Gogh?" 
 
 "No; but he says the next great painter must come 
 from England." 
 
 "Pooh ! Whistler !" said Thompson in a tone of vast 
 superiority. "Nous sommes bien loin de c.a." 
 
 "Please don't talk French," said Mendel. "I don't 
 understand a word." 
 
 "Whistler had good ideas," continued Thompson. "It 
 is a pity he was not a better artist." 
 
 Mendel was beginning to feel bored. He did not un- 
 derstand this new painting for painting's sake, and did 
 not want to understand it. To change the subject he 
 said : 
 
 "I nearly brought Jessie Petrie with me." 
 
 "I wish you had. She is a dear little girl, and I nearly 
 sent for her the other day, but I've no use for the model 
 now. It is perfectly futile trying to cram a living figure 
 into a modern picture." 
 
 "I don't see why, if you can paint it." 
 
 "Really," said Thompson, "I don't see what you have 
 come to Paris for, if you haven't come to learn some- 
 thing about painting. One wouldn't expect you to un- 
 derstand Picasso straight off, but any one who^has 
 handled paint ought to be able to grasp Van Gogh. ' 
 
 "He is trying for the impossible," grunted Mende 
 "The important thing in art is art. I've come to Pans 
 to have a good time." 
 
 "Oh! very well," said Thompson. ^ "Why didn t yot 
 say so before? I'll show you round." 
 
 Mendel took Thompson round to his hotel and up to 
 Logan's room, where, entering without knocking, they
 
 278 MENDEL 
 
 found Logan kneeling on the floor with Oliver in a 
 swoon in his arms. He had opened her blouse at the 
 neck and unlaced her corsage. 
 
 Mendel thought Oliver looked as though she was going 
 to die, and his first idea was to run for the doctor. 
 
 "She'll come round," said Logan. "It's my fault. 
 I was brutal to her. . . ." He nodded to Thompson. 
 "How do you do?" and he covered up Oliver's large 
 bosom. 
 
 She came to in a few moments, opened her eyes slowly, 
 rolled them round, and came back to Logan, on whom 
 she fixed a gaze of devouring love. She put up her 
 arms and drew his head down and kissed his lips. 
 
 Mendel drew Thompson out into the corridor. 
 
 "She was shamming," he said. 
 
 "I don't think so," replied Thompson. "What has 
 happened ? Does he knock her about ?" 
 
 "Not that I know of. They've not been together very- 
 long. They can't settle down." 
 
 "She's a fine woman," said Thompson. 
 
 They were called in again and found Oliver sitting 
 up on the bed eating chocolates. She greeted Thomp- 
 son with a queenly gesture, and clapped her hands when 
 Mendel told her they were going out to see the sights. 
 
 "I'm sick of artists," she said. "I have quite enough 
 of them in London. I wish to God you weren't an artist, 
 Logan. You'd be quite a nice man if you worked for 
 your living." 
 
 "Don't talk rubbish," mumbled Logan, who was sub- 
 dued and curiously ashamed of himself. "If I were 
 like that I should have a little dried-up wife and an 
 enormous family, and you wouldn't have a look in." 
 
 "And a good job too!" cried Oliver, in her most pro-
 
 PARIS 
 
 279 
 
 yoking tone. "A good job too ! I'd find some one who 
 had a respect for me." 
 
 "D'you find Paris a good place to work in?" Logan 
 turned to Thompson. 
 
 "I never knew the meaning of work till I came here. 
 Ever heard of Rousseau?" 
 
 "Oh, yes," said Logan. 
 
 "I don't mean the writer, I mean . . ." 
 
 "I know, I know," said Logan nonchalantly. He could 
 never admit ignorance of anything. 
 
 "A great painter," cried Thompson eagerly. "A very 
 great painter. I tell you he brought Impressionism up 
 sharp. They had overshot the mark, you know. Manet, 
 Monet: they had overshot the mark." 
 
 Oliver began to scream at the top of her voice. 
 
 "Shut up!" said Logan. "You'll have us turned out." 
 
 "I don't care," she replied. "I don't care. I can't 
 stand all this talk about painting." 
 
 "What do you want us to talk about?" said Mendel, 
 tingling with exasperation. "Love? Three men and 
 one woman can't talk about love." 
 
 "Well, I didn't come to Paris to sit in a dirty bed- 
 room talking about pictures. I want to go out to see 
 the streets and the shops and the funny people." 
 
 "For God's sake take us somewhere," said Logan. 
 
 Thompson, having ascertained that they had plenty 
 of money, took them to Enghien by the river. Oliver was 
 happy at once. She wanted to be amused and to be 
 looked at, and as she was bouncing and rowdy she had 
 her desire. 
 
 She made Logan play for her at the little horses, 
 but, as she did not win, she was soon bored with it. 
 Logan was bitten and could not tear himself away.
 
 280 MENDEL 
 
 Mendel stayed with him and she disappeared with 
 Thompson. 
 
 "I'm bound to win if I go on," said Logan. "There's 
 a law of chances, you know, and I've always been lucky 
 at these things. ... It is so exciting, too." 
 
 He changed note after note into five-franc pieces, 
 lost them all, and at last began to win a little; won, 
 lost, won. 
 
 Mendel dragged him away from the table, pro- 
 testing : 
 
 "Come along. I have had enough. Do come along. 
 We haven't had a chance to talk for days, and I hate 
 these rooms with all the flashy, noisy people. . . . We 
 can come back here and find the others. Let us go 
 and find some fun that we can share, for this is deadly 
 dull for me. Besides, we don't want to be stranded with- 
 out money." 
 
 "But I'm winning. My luck is in." 
 
 He rushed back to the tables and lost twice, upon 
 which he allowed himself to be persuaded, and they 
 went out into the air and sat on a terrace by the lake. 
 Mendel produced cigarettes and they smoked in silence 
 for some time. Logan looked pale and worn and was 
 obviously smouldering with excitement. 
 
 "How amazingly different everything looks here," he 
 said. "In London I always feel as though I had a thumb 
 pressing into my brain. Everybody seems indifferent and 
 hostile and everything I do is incongruous. I feel 
 almost happy here. I should like to stay here. I told 
 her so and she began to cry. I knocked her down. I 
 couldn't stand her crying any more. I knocked her 
 down and she fainted." 
 
 "She was shamming," thought Mendel, seeing vividly
 
 PARIS 281 
 
 the scene in the bedroom. "He did not hurt her. She 
 was shamming." 
 
 "I feel a brute," said Logan, "and yet I'm glad. I'm 
 tremendously glad. I want to sing. I want to get 
 drunk. I'm tremendously glad. It has settled some- 
 thing. I'm her master. She was getting on my nerves. 
 She won't do that any more. Ha ! Ha !" 
 
 "Why don't you get rid of her?" asked Mendel. 
 "Leave her here. Come back with me to-morrow." 
 
 "Don't be a silly child," said Logan patronisingly. 
 "I love her. I couldn't live without her now, not for 
 a single day. I could no more do without her than I 
 could do without the clothes on my back. I tell you 
 she's an inspiration. If she left me I should lay down 
 my brush for ever. She's a religion all the religion 
 I've got." 
 
 "I can't imagine stopping my work for any woman," 
 said Mendel. 
 
 "Ah! that's because you don't know what a woman 
 can mean. You can't know while you are young." 
 
 Mendel's nerves had been throbbing in sympathy with 
 his friend, but suddenly all that place was filled with a 
 soft, clear light and a bright music, the colour and the 
 scent of flowers, the soft murmur of flowing water, the 
 whisper of the wind in leafy trees, and his heart ached 
 and grew big and seemed to burst into a thousand, thou- 
 sand rivulets of love, searching out every corner of his 
 senses, cleansing his eyes, sharpening his hearing, refining 
 every sense, so that the scene before him the white ta- 
 bles, the white-aproned waiters, the green trees, the soft 
 evening sky, the softer reflection of it in the water was 
 exquisite and magical and full of a mysterious power 
 that permeated even Logan's brutal revelation and made 
 it worthy of beauty. . . . And this mysterious power he
 
 282 MENDEL 
 
 knew was love, and she, the girl for whom it had arisen 
 from the depths, was far away in England, thinking 
 of him, perhaps, regretting him, perhaps, but knowing 
 nothing of the beauty she had denied. . . . 
 
 Mendel was astonished to find tears in his eyes, trem- 
 bling on his lashes, trickling down his cheeks. 
 
 "What a baby you are !" said Logan. "You can't have 
 me all to yourself." 
 
 His divination was true. Lacking its true object, Men- 
 del's love had concentrated upon his friend, with whom 
 he longed to walk freely in the enchanted world of art, 
 to be as David and Jonathan. Indeed, Logan's state of 
 torment was to him as a wound got in battle, over which 
 he gave himself up to lamentation, so single and deep 
 and pure that it obscured even the impulse of his love. 
 He longed to rid his friend of this devouring passion 
 that was consuming him and thrusting in upon his en- 
 ergy, but because his friend called it love, he respected 
 it and bore with it. 
 
 "How good it is, this life out of doors!" exclaimed 
 Logan, lolling back in his chair. 
 
 "I don't know," replied Mendel. "I think it is too 
 deliberate, too organised. I prefer London streets. 
 There is nothing in the world to me to compare with 
 London streets. Nature is too beautiful. A tree in blos- 
 som, a garden full of flowers, a round hill with the 
 shadow of the clouds over them, move me too much. 
 Left alone with them I should go mad. I must have 
 human nature if I am to live and work. I only want na- 
 ture, just as I only want God, through human nature." 
 
 "By Jove ! you hit the nail on the head sometimes, my 
 boy. That is true for all of us. It is what I meant when 
 I said that Oliver was a religion to me." 
 
 "I don't mean women or individuals," protested Men-
 
 PARIS 283 
 
 del. "I mean human nature in the lump. It may be 
 very poor stuff, stupid and foolish and vulgar, but it is 
 all we've got, and one lives in it and through it." 
 
 "That is all very well while you are young," said Lo- 
 gan, "but you have to individualise it when you are older. 
 One person becomes a point of contact. You can't just 
 float through humanity like an apparition." 
 
 Mendel had lost the thread of his argument, though 
 not his confidence in its truth. 
 
 "That is not what I meant," he said, "and I don't 
 see how a person could be just a point of contact." 
 
 "All I know is that Oliver is such a point of contact 
 to me, and I know that unless art is inspired with some 
 such feeling as you have described, all the technical skill 
 and all the deft trickery in the world won't make it 
 more than a sop for fools or an interesting survival of 
 medievalism. That is why I think you are going to 
 be so valuable. You have so little to unlearn. You have 
 only to shake off the most antiquated religion in the world 
 and you can look at life and human nature without preju- 
 dice, while I have constantly to be uprooting all sorts 
 of prejudices in favour of certain ways of living, morally 
 and socially." 
 
 Mendel was beginning to feel comfortable and easy, 
 for while his mind worked furiously he could rarely -ex- 
 press what he thought, and Logan in his talk often came 
 near enough to it to afford him some relief and to urge 
 him on to renewed digging in the recesses of his mind. 
 It was a vast comfort to him to find that there were other 
 vital thoughts besides that of Morrison, and that for 
 ecstasy he was not entirely dependent upon her. Warmed 
 up by his confidence in Logan, he resolved to tell him 
 about the girl and the vast change she had wrought in 
 his life.
 
 284 MENDEL 
 
 "I used to think," he said, "that if I stayed among 
 / my own people I could work my way through the pov- 
 erty and the dirt and the Jewishness of it all to art. 
 When she came I knew that it was impossible. She had 
 something that I needed, something that the Jews do not 
 know, or never have known. It is not my poverty that 
 denies it to me, for if the poor Jews do not know a good 
 thing, the rich Jews certainly do not, for the rich Jews 
 are rubbish who stroke the Christians with one hand 
 and rob them with the other. It is something that she 
 knows almost without knowing it herself." 
 
 Logan smiled. 
 
 "I am not a fool about her," cried Mendel. "She is 
 not particularly beautiful to me. There is only one 
 line in her face that I think beautiful, from the cheek- 
 bone to the jaw. I am not a fool about her, but I had 
 almost given the Christian world up in despair. It 
 seemed to me so bad, so inhuman, so hollow, so full of 
 plump, respectable thieves. The simple thieves and bul- 
 lies of my boyhood seemed to me infinitely preferable. 
 And I had met some of the most important people in the 
 Christian world: all empty and callous and lascivious. 
 And the unimportant people were good enough, but dull, 
 so dull. . . . Then comes this little girl. She is like 
 Cranach's Eve among monkeys. She becomes at once to 
 me what Cranach's wife must have been to him. He 
 painted her as child, girl, and woman. The chattering 
 apes matter to me no more. The Christian world is no 
 longer empty. It is still lascivious and greedy, soft and 
 ill-conditioned, puffy and stale, but it is suddenly full of 
 meaning, of beauty, of a joy which, because I am a Jew, 
 I cannot understand." 
 
 "Give it up," growled Logan; "give it up. Paint her 
 portrait and let her go. You are a born painter. To a
 
 PARIS 285 
 
 painter women are either paintable or nothing 1 . For 
 God's sake don't go losing yourself in philosophy." 
 
 "It is not philosophy !" cried Mendel indignantly. "It 
 is what I feel." 
 
 "It will probably end in a damned good picture," re- 
 torted Logan. "Why not be content with that?" 
 
 "Because it will not answer what I want to know, and , / 
 because I feel that there is something in the Jews, the real 
 Jews, that she does not understand either. And she is 
 not a fool. She has a mind. She has a deep character. 
 She is strong, and she can get the better of me. She 
 is secret and she is cruel." 
 
 Logan gave his fat chuckle. 
 
 "She is just an English girl with all the raw feeling 
 bred out of her. She is true to type : impulsive without 
 being sensual, kind without being affectionate; and she 
 would let you or any man go to hell rather than give up 
 anything she has been brought up to believe in or admit 
 to her life anything that was strange, unfamiliar, and not 
 good form, like yourself. . . . Give it up, give it up. 
 You are only taking it seriously because you have been 
 irresistible so far and it is the first setback you have 
 received." 
 
 "I will not give it up," said Mendel, setting his teeth. 
 Then he laughed because the lights had gone up and the 
 scene was gay and amusing, and he wanted to plunge 
 into the merry crowd of Parisians and pleasure-seekers, 
 to move among them and to come in contact with the 
 women, to watch the men strutting to please them, to de- 
 light in the procession of excited faces, to taste the fla- 
 vour of humanity which is always and everywhere the 
 same, rich, astonishing, comforting, satisfying in its va- 
 riety. 
 
 Oliver and Thompson returned with their hands full
 
 286 MENDEL 
 
 of trinkets, toys, and pretty paper decorations which 
 they had bought or won at games of chance and skill. 
 She sat on Logan's knee and insisted on wreathing him 
 with paper streamers, which he removed as fast as she 
 placed them on his head. 
 
 "Do! do!" she cried. "Do let go for once and let us 
 all be gay. Oh ! I do love this place, with the band play- 
 ing, and the lights in the water, and the wonderful deep 
 blue sky. Why don't we have a sky like that in Lon- 
 don? Do let us come here every year for the summer. 
 Thompson says painters have to come to Paris if they 
 want to be any good." 
 
 "I've been telling her about Van Gogh," said Thomp- 
 son. 
 
 "So that's what's gone to your head!" growled Logan, 
 patting her cheek. "He's been talking to you about paint- 
 ing, has he?" 
 
 "Yes. He's a nice man, and doesn't treat me as if I 
 was a perfect fool." 
 
 She darted a mischievous glance at Mendel, who 
 started under it as though he had been stung. He was 
 horrified at the depth of his dislike of her, and he re- 
 membered with disgust her full, coarse bosom exposed as 
 she lay in her calculated swoon. . . . How good it had 
 been while she was gone with that fool Thompson, who 
 suited her so perfectly, that chattering ape, with his talk 
 of Van Gogh and Gauguin and "abstract art," who stood 
 now coveting her with shining eyes and fatuously smiling 
 lips. 
 
 "I'm not good enough for some people," she said. 
 "When I come into the room there is silence." 
 
 "Oh, shut up!" said Logan. "Let's go and have din- 
 ner and get back to Paris. I'm sick of this cardboard 
 place, where there is nothing but pleasure."
 
 PARIS 
 
 287 
 
 They had an excellent dinner, during which Oliver 
 never stopped chattering and Mendel never once opened 
 his lips. His thoughts were away in England, in his 
 studio with his work, and in the country with Morrison, 
 and he struggled to bring them together in his mind. 
 How could Logan love Oliver and keep her apart from 
 his work? Two such passions must infallibly seek each 
 other out and come to grips. They must come together 
 or be flung violently apart. . . . Passions were to him 
 as real as persons ; they had individualities, needs, desires ; 
 they were entities insisting upon their right to existence ; 
 they must express themselves, must make their impres- 
 sion upon the circumambient world. 
 
 He became critical of Logan, though he hated to be so. 
 Logan stood to him for adventure and freedom, inde- 
 pendence and courage. It was incomprehensible to him 
 that Logan should take Oliver seriously. She was the 
 woman for a holiday, for a wild outburst of lawlessness, 
 not for the morning and the evening and the day be- 
 tween. 
 
 "Oh, do cheer up, Kiihler! You are like a death's- 
 head at a feast." 
 
 He looked at her with a piercing glance which silenced 
 her. No: she was no holiday woman. She was the 
 woman for a drab, drudging life, with no other colour or 
 joy in it than her own animal warmth. She was like 
 Rosa, made for just such a dreary, simple, devoted fool 
 as Issy. What could she do with a strong passion? 
 She could only absorb it like a sponge, and nothing could 
 kindle her. Just a drab ; just a sponge. 
 
 Thinking so, his dislike of her grew into a hatred so 
 passionate that he desired to know more of her, to watch 
 her, to beget a clear idea of her. He went and sat by
 
 288 MENDEL 
 
 her side and teased her, while she teased him and told 
 him he was the prettiest boy she had ever seen. 
 
 "That night in the Tube I thought you were the pret- 
 tiest boy I ever saw, and I was quite disappointed when 
 Logan came to speak to me instead of you." 
 
 "I would never have taken you from the shop," he 
 said. "I would have taken you to my studio, and perhaps 
 I would have painted you, but I would have sent you back 
 to the shop." 
 
 "I wouldn't have gone, so there!" she said. "What 
 would you have done then?" 
 
 "I should have turned you out." 
 
 "Oh ! Would you ? Filthy brute ! If I'm good enough 
 for one thing I'm good enough for another. Do you 
 hear that, Logan? He would have turned me out!" 
 
 "You leave Kiihler alone," said Logan. "You'll never 
 understand him, if you try for a thousand years." 
 
 "Turned me out?" muttered Oliver. "Heuh! I like 
 that. He'd turn me out and get another girl in ! I'll not 
 have any of those tricks from you, Logan." 
 
 "You can talk about them when I begin them," he re- 
 plied. 
 
 She turned from Mendel to Thompson and soon had 
 him soft in her snares. 
 
 "She would like to do that with me," thought Mendel, 
 "and she hates me because she knows she cannot." 
 
 They returned to Paris by bus all sleepy and a little 
 drunk. Oliver leaned her head on Logan's shoulder and 
 dozed, smiling to herself, while Thompson, sitting by her 
 side, fingered her sleeve. 
 
 They were carried far beyond the point where they 
 should have descended, and finding themselves on the
 
 PARIS 289 
 
 boulevards, they woke up to the liveliness of the Pa- 
 risian night, and Oliver refused to go home. 
 
 Thompson suggested the cabarets, and they went from 
 one dreary vicious hole to another until they came on 
 one where a party of Americans were doing in Paris as 
 the Parisians do. They had brought on a number of* 
 cocottes from the Bal Tabarin, and were drinking, shout- 
 ing, dancing. Thompson led Oliver into the melee, and 
 soon she was drinking, shouting, dancing with the rest. 
 
 Mendel was horrified and disgusted. There was no 
 zest in the riot. It was a piece of deliberate, cold-blooded 
 bestialisation. He trembled with rage, and turned to 
 Logan, who was sitting with a sickly smile on his face : 
 
 "You ought not to let her," he cried almost moaned. 
 "If she were my woman I would not let her. I would 
 kill any man who laid hands on her like that. She is not 
 a prostitute. I would not let my woman be a prostitute." 
 
 But Logan did not move. He sat with his sickly smile 
 on his face. He was drunk and could not move. 
 
 Unable to bear the scene any longer, Mendel rushed 
 away, jumped into a taxi, and drove back to the hotel, 
 swearing that he would go back to London the next day. 
 He would write and tell Logan that he must get rid of 
 Oliver or no longer be his friend. She was a poisonous 
 drab. She would be the ruin of his friend. 
 
 An hour or two later Logan came back. He was very 
 white, and his hair was dank, and there was a cold sweat 
 on his face. 
 
 "My God!" he said, "Kuhler! Are you awake? I 
 don't know where she is. I went to sleep. I was so 
 tired, and there was such a row with those blasted 
 Americans. I went to sleep and awoke to find a nigger 
 shaking me and the place empty. . . . Where does 
 Thompson live? Do you know?"
 
 290 MENDEL 
 
 "Off the Boulevard Raspail. I went there to look at 
 his rubbishy pictures. I think I could find the way. Are 
 you going to kill him?" 
 
 "I want to find her," said Logan. "I must find her. 
 It is killing me to think of her lost in Paris. I must find 
 her. I can't sleep without her. I must find her." 
 
 He hardly seemed to know what he was saying. 
 
 "Come along then," said Mendel. "I think I can find 
 where Thompson lives." 
 
 It was not far. They walked along the deserted boule- 
 vard under the new white, florid buildings, and turned 
 into an impasse. 
 
 "That's it," said Mendel. "Impasse. I remember that. 
 A tall, thin house with a big yellow door. Here it is." 
 
 They knocked until the yellow door swung mysteri- 
 ously open and then ran upstairs to the top floor. 
 
 Thompson came blinking into the passage. 
 
 "Where's Oliver? Where's Logan's girl?" 
 
 Mendel put up his fist to hit him in the eye. 
 
 "I put her into a taxi and sent her home. The Ameri- 
 cans took us on to another place. They were a jolly lot. 
 A terrific place they took us to. There were negresses 
 dancing and a South Seas girl who said Gauguin brought 
 her back. . . . Oliver's all right. I put her in a taxi and 
 sent her back." 
 
 "You're a liar !" shouted Logan. "She's in there." 
 
 He rushed in, while Mendel put his arms round 
 Thompson and laid him neatly on the floor. In a mo- 
 ment Logan was out again. 
 
 "You're a shocking bad painter," he said to Thompson, 
 "but she isn't there." 
 
 They left the house and walked slowly back to the ho- 
 tel. Logan clung to Mendel's arm, saying : 
 
 "It's my fault. She said if ever I knocked her about
 
 PARIS 
 
 291 
 
 she'd clear out. Do you mind walking about with me? 
 I couldn't go to bed. I couldn't sleep." 
 
 All night they walked about; going back to the hotel 
 every half hour to see if she was there, talking of any- 
 thing and everything, even politics, to keep Logan's mind 
 from the fixed horrible idea that had taken possession 
 of it. They saw the sun come out, and the workers hur- 
 rying along the streets, and the waiters in the cafes push 
 up the heavy iron shutters that had only been pulled down 
 an hour or two before, and the market women with their 
 baskets, and the tramcars glide and jolt along, the shops 
 open and the girls go chattering to their work through 
 the long, leisurely Parisian day. 
 
 They returned at eight and had breakfast. At half- 
 past nine Oliver appeared, smiling and serene. 
 
 "We did have fun last night ! You missed something, 
 I tell you." 
 
 "Where have you been?" cried Logan. "I've been 
 looking for you all night." 
 
 "What a fool you are! I can look after myself." 
 
 "Where have you been?" 
 
 She faced him with a bold stare and said : 
 
 "I got home about half-past two, and I took another 
 room, partly because I didn't want to disturb you, and 
 partly you know why." 
 
 "What number was your room?" 
 
 "Forty-four." 
 
 From where they sat Mendel could see the keyboard 
 in the concierge's lodge. There were only forty rooms 
 in the hotel. 
 
 "Have you had breakfast?" asked Logan, forcing hm 
 
 self to believe her. 
 
 "Hours ago. In bed," she replied. "I paid for it and 
 
 the bed."
 
 292 MENDEL 
 
 "Why did you do that?" he snapped. 
 
 She caught Mendel's eyes fixed on her, eager to see her 
 trapped, and she smiled insolently as she replied: 
 
 "I thought it would be a good joke if I let you think 
 I had been out all night. But you look such a wreck 
 that I don't think you could see a joke. . . . What are 
 we going to do to-day ?" 
 
 "We are going home," said Logan.
 
 BOOK THREE: THE PASSING 
 OF YOUTH
 
 BOOK THREE: THE PASSING OF YOUTH 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 EDWARD TUFNELL 
 
 A WRETCHED journey home, a miserable journey. 
 There had been a high wind, leaving a heavy swell, 
 and Mendell shared the feelings of his brother-in-law, 
 Moscowitsch, concerning the sea. It made him ill, and 
 he never wished to see it again. 
 
 Oliver sat with her eyes closed while Logan held her 
 hand and whispered to her. The boat was crowded, for 
 it was the first to make the crossing for two days. De- 
 testable people, detestable sea, detestable evil-smelling 
 boat ! . . . How lightly they had undertaken the trip to 
 Paris! Only seven hours! But what hours! 
 
 Mendel's disgust endured until they reached London. 
 This was home to him, and never, never again would he 
 travel. The discomfort of it was too odious, the shock to 
 his habits too great. In London he did at least know 
 what to avoid, while in Paris there was no knowing when 
 he might be plunged into a dreary, glittering place full 
 of prostitutes and Americans. 
 
 He was glad to part with Logan and Oliver. They 
 had so much to settle with each other that he felt he 
 
 295
 
 296 MENDEL 
 
 was an unnecessary third. Paris had done violence to 
 their relationship. They had gone there light of heart ; 
 they had returned oppressed and entangled. . . . And 
 in London it was raining; but that was good, because 
 familiar. It was good to go out into the friendly streets 
 and to see them shining like black rivers, and to see the 
 people hurrying under their dripping umbrellas and the 
 women with their skirts up to their knees. 
 
 He seemed to have been away a very long time, and 
 yet Paris seemed very far off too, an unreal memory, 
 like a place of which he had read or seen in photographs. 
 He was glad when he mounted a bus and knew that it 
 was bearing him towards his own people. 
 
 Golda was very excited. She had had a letter from 
 Harry, who had seen his brother in Paris, but had 
 been too shy to speak to him because of his friends. 
 
 "You should have gone to see your brother," she said. 
 
 "How could I?" asked Mendel. "I did not know 
 where he was." 
 
 "You speak Yiddish. You could have found him. He 
 has done very well, but he is coming home to us. He 
 does not like to live away from his people, and he says 
 England is best." 
 
 And Mendel thought that England was indeed best. 
 For him, then, England meant his mother's kitchen, with 
 its odd decorations from Tottenham Court Road, its 
 dresser crammed with gilded china and fringed with cut 
 green paper, its collection of his early pictures, almost 
 all hanging crooked, and the hard wooden chair in which 
 Golda sat all day long with her hands on her stomach, 
 dreaming and brooding of her life, which through all her 
 hardships had been sweet because of her beautiful child 
 whom everybody loved and spoiled, as she herself loved 
 and spoiled him because he was not like other children.
 
 EDWARD TUFNELL 297 
 
 England was best because it could contain that peace and 
 that beauty, and there was nothing in England to harm it 
 or in envy to destfoy it. 
 
 Mendel could understand his brother wanting to come 
 back to it ; for he, too, from all his adventures, returned 
 to its simplicity for strength and comfort. 
 
 Moscowitsch came in with a Jewish paper. He was in 
 a terrible state of anger and hatred. His eyes flashed 
 and his nostrils quivered as he read out how a Jew in 
 Russia had been accused of killing a Christian boy for 
 his blood, and how over a thousand Jews had been mas- 
 sacred on the instigation of the police. 
 
 "It grows worse and worse," he said. "The Jews do 
 not kill. It is the Christians who lust for blood. It is 
 the Christians who are so wicked and dishonest that, 
 when they must be found out, they say it is the Jews, 
 or that the Jews are more wicked than they. It is im- 
 possible. But England is good to the Jews. England 
 must send soldiers to Russia or the Jews will be all mur- 
 dered." 
 
 "Yes, it is bad in Russia," said Golda, nodding her 
 head. "But life is bad everywhere for good people. 
 Only in England one is left alone." 
 
 "Well, Mr. Artist!" said Moscowitsch genially. "Made 
 your fortune yet?" 
 
 "No," replied Mendel ; "but I have been to Paris for 
 my holidays and I stayed in a hotel. Three of us spent 
 twenty pounds." 
 
 "So ?" said Moscowitsch, impressed. "Have you made 
 it up with the Birnbaum, then?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "That is not the way to get on, to quarrel with money. 
 
 "If he wants money," said Golda, "he can always get
 
 298 MENDEL 
 
 it. What more do you want? There are some letters 
 for you, Mendel." 
 
 He opened his letters, and had the satisfaction of tell- 
 ing Moscowitsch that he was asked to paint a portrait 
 for thirty pounds. 
 
 "Who is it?" asked Moscowitsch. "A lord?" He had 
 an idea that only lords had their portraits painted by 
 hand. 
 
 "That's better," he said. "That's better than painting 
 those pictures that nobody wants. You paint what they 
 ask you and you'll soon make your fortune, and be able 
 to give your mother dresses covered with beads and 
 tickets for the theatre and china ornaments. And you 
 can be thankful you don't live in Russia. They wouldn't 
 let you be an artist there. If you became a student they 
 would send you off to Siberia and you would die in the 
 snow." 
 
 It was the first time Moscowitsch had spoken to him 
 since the breach with Birnbaum, and Mendel was at his 
 ease with him again, and glad to be with his people. He 
 knew that Moscowitsch was greatly attached to Golda, 
 and had more than once urged his being taken away from 
 his painting and put to some useful trade. 
 
 "Oh! I shall very soon succeed," he said boastfully. 
 "This is only a beginning. You keep an eye on that pa- 
 per of yours. You will find something else to read be- 
 sides what Russia does to the Jews. You will see what 
 England does for a Jew when he has talent and honesty." 
 
 "They made Disraeli a lord," said Moscowitsch. 
 
 "I shall be something much better than a lord." 
 
 "They only make painters R. A." 
 
 "I shall be much better than that," said Mendel. 
 
 "It is like old times," laughed Golda, "to hear him 
 boasting."
 
 EDWARD TUFNELL 
 
 299 
 
 Mendel opened another letter. It was an invitation to 
 become a member of an exhibiting club which considered 
 itself exclusive. 
 
 "I have been invited to become a member of a club." 
 That settled Moscowitsch. A club to him was proof 
 of success and social distinction. He and his wife had 
 made the acquaintance of a member of the music-hall 
 profession who had two clubs, and they counted him a 
 feather in their caps. To have a member of a club in 
 the family was almost overwhelming, and he forgot the 
 sorrows of the Jews in Russia. 
 
 The portrait commission was from Edward Tufnell, 
 who had lately married and had been adopted as a can- 
 didate for Parliament for a northern constituency. 
 Good earnest soul that he was, he regarded himself as 
 responsible for launching Mendel upon the world, and 
 once he had assumed a responsibility he never forgot it. 
 Nothing made any difference to him. He had heard tales 
 of the boy's wildness, but he accepted responsibility for 
 that too, read up the histories of men of genius for prece- 
 dent, and acknowledged the inevitability of the flying of 
 sparks from the collision of a strong individuality and 
 the habits of the world. 
 
 He had always intended to give his protege a lift, and 
 had tried in vain to badger his father and his uncle, part- 
 ners in a huge woollen manufactory, into having their 
 portraits painted. They preferred to sink their money 
 in men with reputations. He did not see how Mendel 
 could acquire a reputation except by giving him work to 
 do. On the other hand, he shrank from what he con- 
 sidered the vanity of having his own portrait painted, 
 but his charmingly pretty wife gave him the opportunity 
 he desired.
 
 300 MENDEL 
 
 Therefore he invited Mendel to his house in the dales 
 to stay until the picture was finished. 
 
 A day or two later and Mendel was in the train, being 
 whirled North through the dull, rolling Midlands and 
 the black, smirched valleys of the West Riding. The 
 gloomy sky filled him with terror. At first he thought 
 there was going to be a storm, but there seemed to be 
 no life in the sky, and its strangeness oppressed him. The 
 people in the train spoke a language which seemed almost 
 as foreign as French, and when the train darted through 
 forests of smoking chimney-stacks and he looked down 
 into the grimy, trough-like streets, he was dismayed to 
 think that here were depths of misery compared with 
 which the East End was as a holiday ground. This, too, 
 was England, and he had said that England was best. 
 He remembered Jews in the East End who had fled from 
 the North and said they would rather go back to Russia 
 than return to the tailoring shops and the boot factories. 
 So this vile, busy blackness was the North ! 
 
 For some mysterious reason it made him think of Lo- 
 gan and Oliver, and the thought of them filled him with 
 an added uneasiness. He had not thought of them once 
 since the trip to Paris, and now he felt bound to them, 
 and that they were a weight upon him. They stood out 
 vividly against the murky, lifeless sky. He could see 
 them standing hand in hand, smiling a little foolishly, 
 and a physical tremor shot through him as he thought of 
 the contact of their two hands, thrilling together, press- 
 ing together, to tell of their terrible need of each other. 
 .... This man and this woman. Mendel was haunted 
 by the images of all the couples he knew, and they passed 
 before him like a shadowy procession of the damned, all 
 hand in hand, across the lifeless sky, all shadowy except 
 Logan and Oliver, and then two others, his father and
 
 EDWARD TUFNELL 301 
 
 his mother ; but they were not hand in hand. They were 
 seated side by side, like two statues, and behind them 
 the lifeless sky broke and opened to show the infinite 
 blue space beyond the clouds. 
 
 He had changed at the darkest of the chimneyed towns, 
 and the shabby local train went grinding and puffing 
 through a tunnel into a vast green valley. At the first 
 station he saw Edward Tufnell on the platform. He had 
 changed a good deal, and was no longer the lanky, ear- 
 nest youth of the Settlement, but his eyes still had their 
 steady, serene expression and their sunny, beautiful smile. 
 
 He flung up his hand as he saw Mendel, smiled, and 
 came fussily, as though he were meeting the Prime Min- 
 ister himself. He insisted on carrying Mendel's bag and 
 canvases and made him feel small and young again, as 
 he used to when he went trotting along by Edward's side 
 on his way to the French class. 
 
 "It's a long journey," said Edward. "You must be 
 tired." 
 
 "Oh no ! I don't mind any journey as long as I don't 
 have to cross the sea." 
 
 "It is only two miles now." 
 
 They climbed into a dogcart and drove, for the most 
 part at a walk, up a long, winding road that crept like 
 a worm along the flanks of a huge hill. 
 
 "Glorious country!" said Edward. "I love it. The 
 South doesn't seem to me to be country at all just a 
 huge park. One is afraid to walk on the grass. But 
 here there is room and freedom. One understands why 
 the North is Liberal." 
 
 "It is too big for me," replied Mendel. 'But then I 
 can't get used to the country. I'm not myself in it. 
 feel in it as though I were on the edge of the world and 
 in danger of falling off. Yes. The country seems dan-
 
 302 MENDEL 
 
 gerous to me, and I could never walk along a road at 
 night." 
 
 "How odd that is!" laughed Edward. "If I am ever 
 afraid it is in the town. The vast masses of people do 
 really terrify me sometimes, when I think of governing 
 them all." 
 
 "They can look after themselves," said Mendel simply. 
 
 Over the shoulder of the hill they came on a grey 
 stone house with a walled garden. Edward turned in 
 at the gate, flicked his horse into a trot up the steep 
 drive, and drew up by the front door, in which was 
 standing a dainty little lady in a mauve cotton gown and 
 a wide Leghorn straw hat. 
 
 "Here he is, my dear!" said Edward. "My wife, 
 Kuhler." 
 
 "I'm so glad you could come," said the little lady. 
 "My husband has told me so much about you." 
 
 "Not half what he could tell if he only knew," thought 
 Mendel. 
 
 "I'm afraid it is a very long way for you to come," 
 she said, leading him into the house while Edward drove 
 round to the stables. "It is very good of you. We are 
 very quiet here, but you can do just as you like, and I 
 shall always be ready for you when you want me." 
 
 She had a very charming voice that seemed to bubble 
 with happiness, and she had the air of being surprised 
 at herself for being so happy. The house was per- 
 vaded with her atmosphere, fragrant and good, and every 
 corner seemed to be full of surprise, every piece of fur- 
 niture looked astonished at finding itself in its place 
 so perfectly in its place. This fragrant perfection was 
 the more amazing as the outside of the house was more 
 than a little grim, and the hill behind it was dark and
 
 EDWARD TUFNELL 303 
 
 ominous, while several of the trees were blasted and 
 chapped with the wind. 
 
 Mendel had never seen such a house, and when Edward 
 took him up to his room he almost wept with delight at 
 the comfort and sweetness of it all. There was a fire 
 burning in the grate, by the side of which was a huge 
 easy chair. Flowered chintz curtains were drawn across 
 the windows, and the same gay chintz covered the bed. 
 On the wash-hand-stand was a shining brass can of hot 
 water. There were books by the bedside, the carpet was 
 of a thick pile, and the furniture was old and exquisite. 
 . . . He was filled with delight and gratitude. 
 
 "Yes," he thought, "England is best! Comfortable 
 England." 
 
 And when Edward showed him the big tiled bathroom 
 he had a shiver of dismay, and thought what a dirty, un- 
 couth fellow he was to come among these exquisite 
 people. 
 
 Mary Tufnell put him at his ease at once and en- 
 couraged him to talk about himself. He was frank and 
 gay and amusing, and told her about his adventures and 
 many of his troubles, and even ventured once or twice 
 upon scabrous details. 
 
 "He is a darling," she said to Edward. "But how he 
 must have suffered. He is such a boy, but sometimes he 
 seems to me the oldest person I have ever met." 
 
 "You must remember that he is a Jew," said Edward. 
 
 "He doesn't let you forget it," replied she. 
 
 The portrait was begun the next day. Mendel took a 
 business-like view of his visit. He was there to paint 
 and to make thirty pounds. Every moment that his hos- 
 tess could spare he seized upon. He painted her in her
 
 304 MENDEL 
 
 mauve cotton and Leghorn hat and would not talk while 
 he worked. 
 
 When the light was gone he was ready for any enter- 
 tainment they might propose. He did not find either of 
 them particularly interesting, and their unfailing kindness 
 wearied him not a little. They were so invariably good 
 in every thought, word, and deed. It seemed impossible 
 for them to fail. There was no combination of circum- 
 stances which they could not surmount with their smil- 
 ing patience. . . . He thought of them as two people 
 walking along on either side of a road, smiling across it 
 at each other. Nothing joined them. They had never 
 met. There had been no collision. He had overtaken her 
 on the road and had taken her step, her pace. . . . They 
 had just that air. Dear Edward had fallen in with her 
 by the wayside, and she had smiled at him and he was 
 content and held for life. To their mutual grave aston- 
 ishment she would have children, and her smile would 
 become a little sad, and with the children she would be 
 an ideal to Edward, like the little Italian Madonnas of 
 whom he had so many photographs all over the house. 
 And between them on the road would march the brave 
 procession of life kings and beggars, priests and pros- 
 titutes, artists and peasants, chariots, and strange engines 
 of peace and war; but they would see nothing of it: 
 they would see only each other, and they would smile 
 and go smiling to the grave. 
 
 Mendel was at his ease with them and very happy, but 
 suddenly out of nowhere there would arise, as it were, 
 a great stench that pricked his nostrils and set him long- 
 ing for London. And he would think of Logan and 
 Oliver and ache to be with them, so that he knew that 
 he was bound to them in the flesh. They were embarked 
 upon a great adventure in which he must be with them to
 
 EDWARD TUFNELL 305 
 
 the end, for Logan was his friend, with whom he 
 must share even the deepest bitterness. With Edward he 
 could share nothing at all, for Edward was absurdly, in- 
 credibly innocent, content to smile by the wayside. 
 
 He wrote to Logan and Oliver and told them how he 
 was longing to be with them, and how the country filled 
 him with childish fears, and how Paris seemed a thou- 
 sand miles away and its adventures a thousand years ago. 
 And he was hurt because they did not at once reply. 
 
 He received two letters one morning. Logan wrote 
 telling him he ought not to waste his time over portraits, 
 and that he must come back to London soon, because the 
 autumn was to see their triumph : nothing about himself, 
 nothing about Oliver. Mendel was disappointed : nobody 
 ever really answered his letters, into which he flung all 
 his feeling. 
 
 His other letter was from Morrison. His first letter 
 from her. He knew her hand, though he had never seen 
 it before round, big, simple. He kept her letter until 
 his day's work was done, and then he went into the gar- 
 den to read it. There was an arbour at the end of a 
 mossy walk which led to a crag above a little waterfall. 
 Out of the crag grew a mountain ash, brilliant in berry. 
 This was the most beautiful spot in the garden, and so 
 he chose it for reading the letter. 
 
 "I want you to forgive me for being so foolish. I 
 want to try again. I hate being beaten, and I think it 
 was only my stupidity that beat me. I have been thinking 
 of you all the time, and I have been troubled about you. 
 What people said had nothing at all to do with it. I 
 admire you more than I can say, and I have been very 
 foolish. 
 
 "It has been a lovely summer. I have been working 
 hard and feel hopeless about it. Please don't ask to see
 
 306 MENDEL 
 
 my work. While I am at it I am wondering all the time 
 what you are doing. 
 
 "I am to be allowed to come back to London in Oc- 
 tober. There is no reason why you should not write to 
 me." 
 
 She was there with him, by his side, under the glowing 
 rowan-tree, gazing down at the little white waterfall 
 dashing so merrily down into the pebbled beck. She 
 was there with him, and his blood sang in his veins and 
 his mind began to work, pounding along as it had not 
 done these many weeks. . . . Weeks? Years more 
 than a lifetime. 
 
 He went back to his picture and thought it very, very 
 bad. Edward and his wife came in and looked at it 
 dubiously. 
 
 "Of course," said Edward, "it is a very jolly picture, 
 but I don't think you have caught all her charm." 
 
 "But the painting of the hat is wonderful," said Mary. 
 
 "What do I care ?" thought Mendel. "It is you you 
 as you are, smiling, eternally smiling over your little 
 clean, comfortable happiness, three parts of which you 
 have bought, with your servants and your flowers and 
 your bathroom." 
 
 In a day or two he was being whirled back to London, 
 shouting every now and then from sheer exuberance 
 thirty pounds in his pocket, October to look forward to : 
 October, when London shook off its summer listlessness ; 
 October, when She would return; and until October he 
 would run with his eyes on the trail of the burning, creep- 
 ing passion that bound him to Logan and Oliver.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE CAMPAIGN OPENS 
 
 HE reached London in the afternoon, and as soon as 
 it was evening went to Camden Town to find Lo- 
 gan. Only Oliver was in. She was sitting in the window 
 smoking. There had been a tea-party, and the floor was 
 littered with cups, plates of bread and butter and cakes, 
 fragments of biscuit, some of which had been trodden on. 
 
 Mendel surveyed this litter ruefully, and he said : 
 
 "Why don't you wash up?" 
 
 "Logan said he would. I washed up after breakfast. 
 I'm not a servant, and he keeps on promising to have 
 some one in to help." 
 
 "Will you wash up if I help you?" 
 
 "No, thanks. Logan's got to do it." 
 
 "Who has been to tea?" 
 
 "Oh ! A funny lot. Some of Logan's fools who think 
 he is a great man." 
 
 "He is a great man," said Mendel. 
 
 "Heuh ! You try living with him. What's the good 
 of being a great man if you don't make any money ? It's 
 all very well for Calthrop to live like a pig. He makes 
 money and can do what he likes." 
 
 "If you don't like it you can always clear out." 
 
 "Where to ? Eh ? To go the round of the studios and 
 oblige people like you? Not much! It isn't as if I was 
 
 307
 
 308 MENDEL 
 
 married to him. I can't make him keep me. Besides, he 
 wouldn't let me go. If I went he would run after me. 
 I suppose you hadn't thought of that, Mr. Kiihler. You 
 don't know what it is to care for anybody. I'd like to see 
 some one play you and play you, and then turn you down. 
 That would teach you a lesson, that would." 
 
 "What's the matter with you?" 
 
 "I'm not going to stand it any longer," she said. "I'm 
 not going to be put on one side like dirt while you go on 
 with your conceited talk. You're both so conceited you 
 don't know how to hold yourselves. I'm a woman, and 
 I stand for something in the world. A woman is more 
 important than the biggest picture that was ever painted." 
 
 "It depends upon the woman." 
 
 "All right, then. I'm more important. You talk about 
 Logan keeping me. He can consider himself damned 
 lucky I stay with him." 
 
 "Oh! you're both in luck," snapped Mendel, and he 
 sat down and refused to say another word. 
 
 Oliver began to whistle and then to hum. She fidgeted 
 in her chair. She thought she had come off rather well 
 in the sparring match. She had been dreading Mendel's 
 return, for since the Paris adventure she had been assert- 
 ing herself, as she called it, beating Logan down, bewil- 
 dering him with her extraordinary sweetness and cajolery 
 and sudden outbursts of fury. Both had agreed to bury 
 the memory of the last night in Paris, but the thoughts of 
 both were centred upon it. She rejoiced that she had 
 served him out, but she had been stirred to a degree that 
 alarmed her. Her former condition of lazy sensual se- 
 curity had been broken, and she dreaded Logan's jeal- 
 ousy. She knew that she was not his equal in force, but 
 she set herself to overcome him with cunning. His force 
 would spend itself. She knew that. She must then bind
 
 THE CAMPAIGN OPENS 309 
 
 him fast with tricks and lures, rouse the curiosity of his 
 senses and keep it unsatisfied. 
 
 She had succeeded wonderfully. Logan crumbled and 
 turned soft and sugary under her arts, and only one im- 
 pulse in him resisted her his love for Mendel; and 
 through that love his passion for art. Therefore she 
 dreaded and hated Mendel's return. 
 
 Presently she ceased to hum. She thought suddenly 
 that perhaps it had been a mistake to meet Mendel with 
 hostility. 
 
 "I say, Kiihler, do give us one of your cigarettes. 
 These are awful muck." 
 
 He threw his cigarette-case over to her. 
 
 "Did you have a good time up North?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "I come from there, you know. Logan was furious 
 with you for going. He is really very fond of you, you 
 know." 
 
 "I don't need you to tell me that." 
 
 "He's very excited just now. He keeps talking about 
 the artistic revolution and the twentieth century, and all 
 that, you know. He has been reading a book called 'John 
 Christopher,' and keeps on reading it aloud until I'm sick 
 of it. I believe he thinks he is like Christopher, though 
 I'm sure he's not, because Christopher could never see a 
 joke. It is all about women, one after another, just left 
 anyhow. It doesn't sound like a story to me at all." 
 
 "It sounds true," said Mendel, not paying much atten- 
 tion to what she said. 
 
 To his intense relief Logan came in with a frame under 
 his arm. 
 
 "Hullo!" he said. "Got back? How did you like the 
 swells?" 
 
 "They were good people," replied Mendel, "and won-
 
 310 MENDEL 
 
 derfully peaceful. I don't think I appreciated it enough 
 while I was there, but it seems very clear and beautiful 
 to me now." 
 
 "Portrait any good ?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 Logan put down his frame and without a word to 
 Oliver proceeded to wash up the tea-things. She stayed 
 in her chair in the window and hummed. 
 
 To Mendel his friend seemed altered. He had lost his 
 good-humour and something of his happy recklessness, 
 and he was more concentrated and full of a wary self- 
 consciousness. 
 
 He came out of the bedroom when the washing up was 
 done and flung himself on the divan, stretched himself 
 out, and said: 
 
 "I'm tired ; done up. Lord ! What fools there are in 
 the world ! No more portraits for you, my boy ; at least, 
 not this side of thirty. Ten years' good solid work 
 ahead of you." 
 
 He laughed. 
 
 "I told Cluny he must hurry up or you would slide off 
 into portrait-painting. Dealers hate the mere sound of 
 the word. He is going to hurry up. I've played you for 
 all I am worth, and Cluny is in my pocket. Oh! I'm a 
 man of destiny, I am." 
 
 A snort and a giggle came from Oliver. Logan sat up. 
 
 "Leave the room !" he said. 
 
 "Shan't." 
 
 "Leave the room. I want to talk to Kiihler." 
 
 "Talk away then. I shan't listen." 
 
 Logan walked over to her, seized her by the arms, and 
 pushed her into the bedroom and locked the door. II was 
 done very quickly and dexterously, as though it were a 
 practised manoeuvre.
 
 THE CAMPAIGN OPENS 
 
 "I'm finding out how to treat her," he said. "Quiet 
 firmness does the trick." 
 
 He met Mendel's eyes fixed on him in horrified inquiry 
 and turned sharply away. 
 
 "It isn't as bad as it looks," he said. "The fact is, 
 women aren't fit for liberty and an artist ought to have 
 nothing to do with them. But what can a man do ? ... 
 What were we talking about ?" 
 
 "Cluny." 
 
 "Oh yes ! He wants the exhibition to be the first fort- 
 night in November. Can you be ready by then ? It must 
 be a turning-point in art, the beginning of big things. 
 I know myself enough to realise that it is doubtful if I 
 shall ever be a great creative artist, but I shall be the Na- 
 poleon of the new movement the soldier and the or- 
 ganiser of the revolution in art. And it won't be con- 
 fined to art ; it will spread through everything. Art will 
 be the central international republic from which the com- 
 monwealths which will take the place of the present vul- 
 gar capitalistic nations will be inspired. What do you 
 think of that for an idea?" 
 
 . "Stick to art," said Mendel. "I know nothing about 
 the rest." 
 
 "Do you remember my saying that the music-hall was 
 all that was left of old England? I did not know how 
 true it was. England has become one vast music-hall, 
 with everybody with any talent or brains scrambling to 
 top the bill. It runs through everything art, politics, 
 the press, literature, social reform, women's suffrage, lo- 
 cal government ; and the people who top the bill can't be 
 dislodged, just like the poor old crocks on the halls, who 
 come on and give the same show they were giving twenty 
 years ago, and get applause instead of rotten eggs be- 
 cause the British public is so rotten with sentiment and
 
 312 MENDEL 
 
 so stupid that it can't tell when a man has lost his talent. 
 Please one generation in England and its grandchildren 
 will applaud you, though everything about you is changed 
 except your name. The result is, of course, that no talent 
 is ever properly developed. A man reaches the point 
 where he can please enough people to make a living, and 
 he sticks there. Now, I ask you, is that a state of things 
 which a self-respecting artist can accept?" 
 
 "No," said Mendel. "No." 
 
 "Well. It has to be altered. And who is to alter it if 
 not the painters, who are less in contact with the general 
 public than any other artists? Painters had a comfort- 
 able time last century, living on the North-country mu- 
 nicipal councils, but that is all over and we are reduced to 
 poops like Tysoe. There are any number of them, if one 
 only took the trouble to dig them up, but they're no 
 good. I've lived on them for the last ten years, and 
 they're no good. You might as well squeeze your paints 
 into the sink and turn on the tap for all the flicker of 
 appreciation you get out of them. Then there are the 
 snobs, the semi-demimondaines of the political set; but 
 they are a seedy lot, with the minds and the interests of 
 chorus-girls. You might whip up a little excitement at 
 Oxford and Cambridge, but it would only vanish as soon 
 as the young idiots came in contact with London and fell 
 in love. . . . No. Behind the scenes of the music-hall is 
 no good. We must make a direct onslaught on the gen- 
 eral public. They must be taught that there is such a 
 thing as art and that there are men devoted to the disin- 
 terested development of their talents men who have no 
 desire to top the bill or to make five hundred a week; 
 men who recognise that art is European, universal, the in- 
 visible fabric in which human life is contained, and are 
 content, like simple workmen, to keep it in repair."
 
 THE CAMPAIGN OPENS 313 
 
 "I don't know," said Mendel, "if my brother-in-law 
 Moscowitsch is typical, but he regards art which does 
 not make money as a waste of time." 
 
 "Oh! He is a Jew and uneducated. That's where 
 Tolstoi went so wrong. He confused the simplicity of 
 art with the simplicity of the peasant, the dignity of the 
 unsophisticated with the dignity that is achieved through 
 sophistication. It may seem absurd to talk of bringing 
 about anything so big through little Cluny, but it is not 
 only possible, it is inevitable. The staleness of London 
 cannot go on, and Paris seemed just the same to me. 
 Stagnation is intolerable. There must come a movement 
 towards freedom and a grander gesture, and the only free 
 people are the painters. They are the only people whose 
 work has not become servile and vulgarised. Through 
 them lies the natural outlet. . . . Oh ! I have been think- 
 ing and thinking, and I thank God we met before you had 
 been spoiled by success or I had been ruined by my rotten 
 swindling life though that has had its advantages too, 
 and I can meet the dealers on their own ground, and if 
 necessary advertise as impudently as any of the music- 
 hall artists." 
 
 Oliver began to hammer on the door. He went and 
 unlocked it and let her in. 
 
 "You can talk as much as you like now," he said. "I've 
 said my say." 
 
 "I heard you," she replied, "talking to Kiihler as if he 
 was a crowd in Hyde Park." 
 
 Mendel was lost in thought. He was baffled by this 
 association of art with things like politics and music-halls, 
 which he had always accepted as part of the world's con- 
 stitution but essentially unimportant. He had no organ- 
 ised mental life. His ideas came direct from his instincts 
 to his mind, and were either used for immediate purposes
 
 314 MENDEL 
 
 or dropped back again to return when wanted. However, 
 he recognised the passionate nervous energy that made 
 Logan's words full and round, and he was glad to have 
 him so accessible and so eager and purposeful. On the 
 whole, it did not matter to him why Logan thought his 
 work, so important. No one else thought it so, and cer- 
 tainly no one else had taken so much trouble to help it 
 to find recognition. Logan seemed to promise him public 
 fame, and that would delight and reassure his father 
 and mother more than anything else. They treasured 
 every mention of his name in the newspapers, pasted the 
 cuttings in a book, and produced it for every visitor to 
 the house. 
 
 Struggling for ideas with which to match Logan's, he 
 became instinctively aware that his friend's enthusiasm 
 was deliberate, not in itself faked, but artificially heated. 
 Behind it lay a deeper passion, from which he was en- 
 deavouring to divert the energy it claimed. 
 
 Sitting between Logan and Oliver, Mendel could al- 
 most intercept the current of feeling that ran between 
 them. It offended him as an indecency that they should 
 have so little control over themselves as to reveal their 
 condition of mutual obsession. ... It reminded him of 
 his impression of the police-court, where the secret sores 
 of society were exposed nakedly, and queer, helpless, 
 shameless, unrestrained creatures were dealt with almost 
 like parcels in a shop. And again he had the sensation 
 of being bound to them, of being confined with them in 
 that little room, of a dead pressure being upon him, until 
 he must scream or go mad. 
 
 He looked at them. Did they not feel it too ? Logan 
 was lying back with his hands beneath his head and his 
 lips pressed together and a scowl on his face, looking as 
 though his thoughts and his destiny were almost, but, of
 
 THE CAMPAIGN OPENS 315 
 
 course, not quite too much for him. Oliver was looking 
 out of the window with her hands on her hips, humming. 
 She laughed and said : 
 
 "I'd sooner live with an undertaker than an artist. 
 He would be up to a bit of fun sometimes, and he'd do 
 his work without making such a fuss about it." 
 
 "There's an undertaker at the corner of the next street. 
 You'd better ask him to take you on." 
 
 "As a corpse?" asked Mendel, exploding and splutter- 
 ing at what seemed to him a very good joke. The others 
 turned and looked at him solemnly, but neither of them 
 laughed, and gradually his amusement subsided and he 
 said lamely: 
 
 "I thought it was very funny." 
 
 "Oh! for goodness' sake let's go and have something 
 to eat," said Oliver. "You're turning the place into a 
 tomb with your silence. One'd think you were going to 
 be crowned King of England instead of just holding a 
 potty little exhibition." 
 
 "He is going to be crowned King of Artists," said 
 Mendel, making another attempt at a joke. 
 
 "By God!" said Logan, "they'd kill me if they knew 
 what I was like inside. Do you ever feel like that, Kiihler, 
 that all the birds in the cage would peck you to death for 
 having got outside it? I do. I never see a policeman 
 without feeling he is going to arrest me." 
 
 "I used to feel like that sometimes," replied Mendel, 
 "until I was arrested and realised that policemen are 
 just people like anybody else. The man who arrested me 
 was a very nice man." 
 
 "Oh! I'm sick of your feelings," cried Oliver, "and 
 
 I want my dinner." 
 
 "All right," said Logan, reaching for his hat; "we'll go 
 to the Pot-au-Feu and afterwards to the Paris Cafe and
 
 316 MENDEL 
 
 fish for critics. I shall nobble one or two swells through 
 Tysoe. We'll pick up the more crapulous and lecherous 
 at the cafe, and Oliver shall be the bait. So look your 
 prettiest, my dear. . . . Let's have a look at you." 
 
 He lit the gas and made her stand beneath it. 
 
 "You'll do," he said, patting her cheek. "Come along." 
 
 He put his arm through hers. She gave a wriggle of 
 pleasure and pressed close to him. 
 
 Mendel followed them downstairs with an omen at his 
 heart. He felt sure that something violent would happen. 
 
 But nothing violent did happen. The evening was ex- 
 traordinarily light-hearted and pleasant. Logan was his 
 old self again, cracking jokes, mimicking people almost 
 to their faces, giving absurd descriptions of his inter- 
 views with dealers and buyers, and concocting a burlesque 
 history of his life. Mendel had never laughed so much 
 since he was at the Detmold. His sides ached, and he 
 was hard put to it to keep his countenance when at the 
 cafe Logan caught two critics and told them that they 
 must make no mistake this time: their reputations were 
 at stake, nay, the reputation of art criticism was at the 
 cross-roads, and art was on the threshold of its greatest 
 period, and criticism should be its herald, not its camp- 
 follower. 
 
 "You fellows," said Logan, "use your brains, you are 
 articulate. We are apt to get lost in paint, in coloured 
 dreams of to-morrow and the spaces of the night. We 
 lose touch with the world, with life. We are dependent 
 on you even the greatest genius is dependent on you. 
 You are the real patrons of art. The herd follows you. 
 Criticism must not shirk its duty. The kind of thing 
 that happened with Manet, with Whistler, ought not to 
 happen again."
 
 THE CAMPAIGN OPENS 317 
 
 The two critics were unused to such treatment from 
 painters. Oliver used her eyes upon them, detached one 
 of them into a flirtation and left the other to Logan's 
 mercies. Logan's blood was up. Here was a game he 
 dearly loved, talking, bullying, hypnotizing another man 
 out of his individuality. He invented monstrously, out- 
 rageously concocted a whole new technique of paint- 
 ing, the discovery of which he ascribed to Mendel's 
 genius, and ended up by saying that painting should be 
 to England what music had been to Germany, a national 
 and at the same time a universal art. 
 
 The critic had drunk enough to take it all seriously, 
 and he promised to call and see the work of both painters. 
 His colleague, on the other hand, made arrangements to 
 take Oliver out to tea and won her promise to come and 
 see him at his flat. 
 
 "That's all right," said Logan, as they left the cafe 
 at closing time. 'They will remember our names. They 
 will forget how they came to know them and they will 
 write about us."
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 SUCCESS 
 
 T T was all very well for Logan to talk about modern 
 ^ England being a music-hall, but his methods were 
 almost identical with those of the publicists whom he de- 
 cried. The greater part of his energy went to find a mar- 
 ket for his wares, leaving very little for the production 
 of the wares themselves. Because he was excited and 
 busy and full of enthusiasm, he took it for granted that 
 he was in a vigorous condition and that his vision of the 
 future of art would be expressed in art. He talked 
 volubly of what he was doing and what he intended to 
 do, even while he worked, and his nerves were so over- 
 wrought that he contracted a horror of being alone. 
 Though Oliver jeered at him as he worked he would 
 not let her go out, and when once or twice she insisted, 
 he could not work, and went round to see Mendel and 
 prevented his working either. 
 
 Mendel knew nothing of markets and dealers and the 
 relation of art to the world and its habits and institu- 
 tions. He was carried off his feet by his friend's tor- 
 rential energy, believed what he said, wore his thoughts 
 as he would have worn his hat, and lived entirely for the 
 exhibition which was to do such wonders for him. 
 Twelve exhibits were required of him. He would have 
 had forty-eight ready if he had been asked for them. 
 
 318
 
 SUCCESS 3 ! 9 
 
 When he missed the delight and the pure joy he had had 
 in working, he told himself that these emotions were 
 childish and unworthy of a man, and a nuisance, because 
 they would have prevented him from knowing clearly 
 what he wanted to do. He dashed at his canvas with a 
 fair imitation of Logan's manner, slung the paint on to it 
 with bold strokes, saying to himself: "There! That 
 will astonish them ! That will make them see what paint- 
 ing is!" 
 
 And every now and then he would remember that he 
 was in love. He must paint love as it had never been 
 painted before. 
 
 For his subject he chose Ruth in the cornfield, but very 
 soon tired of painting ears of corn, so he left it looking 
 like a square yellow block, and painted it up until it re- 
 sembled a slice of Dutch cheese. Only when he came to 
 Ruth's face and tried to make it express all the love with 
 which his heart was overflowing did he paint with the 
 old fastidious care, but even that could not keep him for 
 long, and he returned to his corn, the shape of which 
 had begun to fascinate him, and he wanted somehow to 
 get it into relation with the hill on which it was set. But 
 he could do nothing with it, and had to go back to Ruth 
 and love. 
 
 The effect was certainly startling and novel, and Lo- 
 gan was enthusiastic. 
 
 "That's it," he said. "The nearest approach to mod- 
 ern art is the poster, which is not art, of course, because 
 it is not designed by artists. But it does convey some- 
 thing to the modern mind, it does jog it out of its rou- 
 tine and habitual rut. Now, your picture wouldn't do for 
 a poster. It is too good, but it has the same kind of ef- 
 fect. Stop! Look! Listen! Wake up, and see that 
 there are beautiful women in the world and blue skies,
 
 320 MENDEL 
 
 and love radiant over all! This woman has nothing to 
 do with what you felt for your wife when you proposed 
 to her, or with what the parson said when the baby died : 
 she is the woman the dream of whom lives always in your 
 heart, although you have long forgotten it. She is the 
 beauty you have passed by for the sake of peace and 
 quiet and a balance at your bank." 
 
 "Do you think it is a good picture?" asked Mendel. 
 
 "I think it is a good beginning. Two or three more 
 like that and there will be a sensation. There will have 
 to be policemen to regulate the crowd." 
 
 Mendel caught his mood of driving excitement and 
 really was convinced that he had broken through to a 
 style of his own, and to the beginning of something that 
 might be called modern art. 
 
 He was a little dashed when, after Logan had gone, 
 he fetched his mother over to see it, and all she could 
 find to say was: 
 
 "You used not to paint like that." 
 
 "No, of course not," he said impatiently. "The old 
 way was limited, too limited. It was all very well for 
 painting the life down here, just what I saw in front of 
 me. This picture is for an exhibition, all by myself with 
 one other man." 
 
 "Logan ?" asked Golda dubiously. 
 
 "Yes. It is a great honour to give a private exhibi- 
 tion like that at my age. It is most unusual. This is the 
 beginning of a new style. I'm beginning a new life." 
 
 "You are not going away?" said Golda in a sudden 
 panic that he was to be snatched away from her. 
 
 "I should never go away until you gave your permis- 
 sion," he said. "I am not so very different from Harry 
 that I want to go away and leave my people."
 
 SUCCESS 321 
 
 "I never know what will come of that painting of 
 yours." 
 
 "Success !" he said jestingly. "And fame and money, 
 and beautiful ladies in furs and diamonds, and carriages 
 and motor-cars, and fine clothes and rings on everybody's 
 fingers." 
 
 "I would rather have you seated quietly in my kitchen 
 than all the gold of King Solomon and the Queen of 
 Sheba," said Golda. 
 
 "Then please like my picture." 
 
 "I don't like it." 
 
 "Then say you like it." 
 
 "I don't like it." 
 
 "I shall wipe it out then." 
 
 "Your new friends will like it" 
 
 "/ like it," he said. "I don't think it is a very good 
 picture, but it means something to me." 
 
 And he longed for Morrison to come and see it, for it 
 was the first picture that had directly to do with her. 
 The portrait of her was hardly more than a drawing. 
 What he called an "art student" might have done it, but 
 this Ruth, he felt, was the beginning of his work as an 
 artist, and he thought fantastically that when Morrison 
 saw it she would see that he was to be treated with respect 
 and would fall in by his side, and they would live hap- 
 pily, or at least solidly, ever after. 
 
 "Solid" was his great word, and he used it in many 
 senses. It conveyed to his mind the quality of which he 
 could most thoroughly approve. If a thing, or a person, 
 or an action, or an emotion were what he called "solid," 
 then it was a matter of indifference to him whether it was 
 in the ordinary sense good or bad. He was perfectly 
 convinced that if Morrison could only be brought to rea-
 
 322 MENDEL 
 
 son, then his life would solidify and he would be able 
 to go on working in peace. 
 
 Meanwhile he was anything but solid. His work, his 
 life, his ideas, his ambition had all melted under Logan's 
 warm touch and were pouring towards the crucial exhibi- 
 tion. Mendel looked forward to it feverishly, because 
 it was to put an end to his present condition, in which 
 he was like a wax candle, luminous, but fast sinking into 
 nothingness. If only he could reach the exhibition in 
 time, the wind of fame would blow out the flame that 
 was reducing him and he would be able to start afresh 
 . . . But all the time as he worked words of Logan's 
 rolled in his mind, and had no meaning whatever, except 
 that they made him think of music-halls and motor-buses 
 and women's legs in tights and newspapers and electric 
 sky-signs spelling out words letter by letter. Out of this 
 hotch-potch pictures, works of art, were to emerge. They 
 were to take their place in it and, according to Logan, 
 reduce it to order. But how was it possible? ... In 
 the quiet, ordered, patriarchal world of the Jews a rare 
 nature might arise, but in that extraordinary confusion 
 nothing rare could survive. Beauty could never compete 
 on equal terms with women's legs in tights and electric 
 sky-signs; it could never produce an impression on minds 
 obsessed and crammed to overflowing with the multitudi- 
 nous excitements of the metropolis. 
 
 Mendel was convinced that Logan was right, that 
 beauty must emerge to establish authority, and he thought 
 of himself as engaged in a combat with a huge, terrible 
 monster. Every stroke of his brush was a wound upon 
 its flanks and an abomination the less. Yet he loved all 
 the things against which he was fighting, because they 
 made the world gay and stimulating and wonderful. He 
 could see no reason why he should change the world.
 
 SUCCESS 
 
 323 
 
 It was full enough of change already. Why, in his own 
 time, the electric railways and the motor-buses had 
 brought an amazing transformation in the life of the East 
 End. No one now worked for such little wages as his 
 father had done at the stick-making, and the life of the 
 streets had lost its terrors and dangers. The young men 
 had better things to do than to fight each other or to pelt 
 old Jews with mud, and there was no reason to sup- 
 pose that such changes would stop where they were. 
 
 However, he had Logan's word for it, and Logan had 
 given art a new importance in his eyes. He could not 
 think it out himself without getting hopelessly confused, 
 and there was nothing for it but to go on with his work. 
 
 Other relief he had none. He had written three ar- 
 dent letters to Morrison, telling her, absolutely without 
 restraint, of his love and his need for her, and she had 
 not replied. He was too much hurt to write again, and 
 as he worked he began to hate love, being in love, and 
 the idea of it. He persuaded himself that it was a weak- 
 ness, and he had ample reason for thinking so, when he 
 compared his loose condition with his old clear singleness 
 of purpose. What chiefly exasperated him in this in- 
 definite unsuccessful love of his was that it exposed him 
 to the passion, every day growing more furious, between 
 Logan and Oliver. It made his own emotions seem fan- 
 tastic, with the most vital current of his being pouring 
 out in a direction far removed from the rest of his life, 
 apparently ignoring the solid virtues of his Jewish sur- 
 roundings and the elated vigour of his career among 
 the artists. 
 
 "It will not do!" he told himself. "I will not have i 
 What is this love? Just nonsense invented by people who 
 are afraid of their passions. A lady indeed? /Jshe? A
 
 324 MENDEL 
 
 lady is only a woman dressed up. She must learn that 
 she is a woman, or 1 will have nothing to do with her." 
 
 And sometimes he could persuade himself that he had 
 driven Morrison from his thoughts. He finished the por- 
 trait of her from memory and was convinced that it was 
 the end of her. It was a good picture and pretty enough 
 to find a buyer, and there it ended. He had got what 
 he wanted of her and could pluck her out of his thoughts. 
 
 Logan said it was a very fine picture, a real piece of 
 creation. 
 
 "And if that doesn't make them see how damned awful 
 their Public School system is in its effect on women, I'll 
 eat my hat. You've had your revenge, my boy. You 
 have shown her up. Why don't you call it The Foolish 
 Virgin? Of all the mischievous twaddle that is talked 
 in this mischievous twaddling country the notion of love 
 is the worst. You can't love a woman unless you live 
 with her, and a woman is incapable of loving a man un- 
 less he lives with her. By Jove! We'll hang it and my 
 portrait of Oliver side by side in the exhibition, and I'll 
 call mine The Woman who Did." 
 
 "I won't have them side by side," said Mendel. "I 
 want our pictures kept separate. I don't want it said 
 that we are working together." 
 
 "But we arc working together." 
 
 "Yes. But along our own lines. We're only together 
 really in our independence. You said yourself that we 
 didn't want to found a school." 
 
 "That's true," replied Logan, "but I don't see why we 
 shouldn't have our little joke." 
 
 "I don't joke with art," said Mendel grimly, and that 
 settled the matter. 
 
 It was the first time he had set his will against his 
 friend's, and he was surprised to find how soft Logan
 
 SUCCESS 325 
 
 was. Surely, then, it was he who was the leader, he who 
 was blazing the new trail for art. . . . He had to bow to 
 the fact that Logan had a programme while he had none. 
 However, having once asserted his will, he became crit- 
 ical, and was not again the docile little disciple he had 
 been. 
 
 Logan wanted to draw up a manifesto for the cata- 
 logue, to enunciate the first principles of modern art, 
 namely, that a picture must have (a) not merely a sub- 
 ject, but a conception based on but not bounded by its 
 subject; (b) form, meaning the form dictated by the logic 
 of the conception, which must of necessity be different 
 from the logic dictated by the subject, which would lead 
 either to the preconceptions and prejudices of the schools 
 or to irrelevant and non-pictorial considerations. All this 
 was set out at some length, and appended were a number 
 of maxims, such as: 
 
 "In art the important thing is art. 
 
 "Abstraction precedes selection. 
 
 "Art exists to keep in circulation those spiritual forces, 
 such as aesthetic emotion, which are denied in ordinary 
 human communications. 
 
 "Photography has released art from its ancient burden 
 of representation," etc., etc. 
 
 With the spirit of this manifesto Mendel was in agree- 
 ment, though he could make but little of its letter. He 
 refused to agree to it because so much talk seemed to 
 him unnecessary. 
 
 "If we can say what we mean to say in paint, then 
 we need not talk. If we cannot say it in paint, then we 
 have no right to talk." 
 
 "You'd soon bring the world to a standstill," said 
 Logan, "if you limited talk to the people who have a 
 right to it. It is just those people who never open their
 
 326 MENDEL 
 
 mouths. I think it is criminal of them, just out of shy- 
 ness and disgust, to give the buffoons and knaves an open 
 field." 
 
 "All the same," grunted Mendel, "I am not going to 
 agree to the manifesto. People will read it and laugh at 
 it, and never look at the pictures. You seem to think 
 of everything but them. I wonder you don't set up as a 
 dealer." 
 
 "You're overworking," said Logan, "that's what you 
 are doing. And directly the exhibition is open I shall 
 pack you off to Brighton." 
 
 Already a week before the opening they began to feel 
 that the eyes of London were upon them. They crept 
 about the streets half -shamefacedly, like conspirators, re- 
 laxed and wary, waiting for the moment when their tri- 
 umph should send their shoulders back and their heads up, 
 and they would march together through a London which 
 owed its salvation to them. Not since his portrait had 
 appeared in the Yiddish paper had Mendel been so de- 
 fiant and so morosely arrogant. 
 
 He was ill with excitement and could not do a stroke 
 of work. Every minute of the day he spent with Logan 
 and Oliver, to whom Tysoe was often added. He dined 
 with them at the Pot-au-Feu, took them all out to lunch 
 and tea at places like Richmond and Kew, had them to 
 his house, and was squeezed by the approaching success 
 to buy Logan's two largest pictures before the public 
 could have access to them. 
 
 "They are masterpieces!" he cried, swinging his long 
 hands, "absolute masterpieces! You don't know how 
 much good it does me to be with you two. Absolutely 
 sincere, you are! That's what I like about you. Sin- 
 cere! One looks for sincerity in vain everywhere else.
 
 SUCCESS 
 
 3 2 7 
 
 Sincerity has vanished from the theatre, the novel, music, 
 poetry. I suppose it is democracy letting the public in 
 behind the scenes, so that they see through all the tricks." 
 
 "An artist isn't a conjurer!" said Mendel. 
 
 "That is just what artists^ have been," cried Logan, 
 "and they can't bluff it out any more." 
 
 "Exactly !" gurgled Tysoe, who when he was roused 
 from his habitual weak lethargy lost control of his voice, 
 so that it wobbled between a shrill treble and a husky 
 bass. "Exactly ! That's what I like about you two. No 
 bluff, no tricks. You do what you want to do and damn 
 the consequences. Ha! ha!" 
 
 So ill was Mendel just before the exhibition that Lo- 
 gan refused to allow him anywhere near it, and insisted 
 that they should both go to Brighton, leaving Oliver to 
 go to the private view and spy out the land. 
 
 Oliver protested. She wanted to go to Brighton. 
 
 "You shall have a new dress and a new hat," said 
 Logan. "You must go to the private view like a real 
 lady. Cluny doesn't know you, and 'you must go up to 
 him every now and then and ask him in a loud voice what 
 the prices are. You might even pretend to be a little deaf 
 and make him speak clearly and distinctly." 
 
 The idea tickled Mendel so that he began to laugh, 
 could not stop himself, and was soon almost hysterical. 
 
 "What's the matter with you ?" asked Oliver, shaking 
 him. 
 
 He gasped : 
 
 "I I was laughing at the idea of your being a real 
 
 lady. Ha! ha! ha!" 
 
 She gave him a clout over the head that sobered him. 
 Logan pounced on her like a tiger. 
 
 "You devil !" he said. "You she-devil ! Don't you see 
 the poor boy's ill?"
 
 328 MENDEL 
 
 "What's that to me?" she screamed, with her head 
 wobbling backwards and forwards horribly as he shook 
 her. "It's n-nothing t-to m-me!" 
 
 She caught Logan by the wrist and sent him spinning, 
 for she was nearly as strong as he. 
 
 "Go to Brighton !" she shouted. "I don't care. I'll be 
 glad to be rid of you both. You won't find me here when 
 you come back, that's all, you and your little hurdy- 
 gurdy boy! You only need a monkey and an organ to 
 make you complete. Why don't you try it? You'd do 
 better at that than out of pictures." 
 
 Logan could not contain himself. His rage burst out 
 of him in a howl like that of a wind in a chimney, a dis- 
 mal, empty moan. He stood up, and the veins on his neck 
 swelled and his mouth opened and shut foolishly, for he 
 could find nothing to say. 
 
 "You slut, you squeezed-out dishclout, you sponge !" he 
 roared at last. "Clear out, you drab ! Clear out into the 
 streets, you trull! Draggle your skirts in the mud, you 
 filth, you octopus ! Sell the carcase that you don't know 
 how to give, you marble !" 
 
 She flung up her hands and sank on to her knees, and 
 let down her hair, and moaned : 
 
 "OGod! OGod! O God!" 
 
 Logan's fury snapped. 
 
 "For God's sake! For God's sake!" he said. "What 
 has come over us ? Oh, God help us ! What are we do- 
 ing? What are we coming to? Nell! Nell! I didn't 
 know what I was saying!" 
 
 He went down on his knees beside her, and Mendel, 
 who had been numbed but inwardly elated by the storm, 
 could not endure the craven surrender, the cowardly rec- 
 onciliation, and he left them. 
 
 Out in the street he stood tottering on the curb, and
 
 SUCCESS 329 
 
 spat into the gutter, with extreme precision, between the 
 bars of a grating. 
 
 At Brighton, whither they went next day, Logan ex- 
 plained himself. 
 
 "It is extraordinary how near love is to hate, and how 
 rotten love becomes if hate is suppressed stale and taste- 
 less and vapid." 
 
 "Are you talking about yourself and Oliver?" asked 
 Mendel. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Then please don't. I don't mind what happens be- 
 tween you and her so long as it doesn't happen in front 
 of me." 
 
 "I'm sorry," said Logan ; "but it can't always be pre- 
 vented. I don't see the use of pretence." 
 
 "Neither do I. But some things are your own affair, 
 and it is indecent to let other people see them." 
 
 "Oh, a row's a row!" said Logan cheerfully. "And 
 one is all the better for it." 
 
 "But if a woman treated me like that I should never 
 speak to her again." 
 
 "Love's too deep for that. You can't stand on your 
 dignity in love." 
 
 "I should make her understand once and for all that I 
 would not have it." 
 
 "Then she would deceive you. If you played the ty- 
 rant over a girl like Oliver she would deceive you." 
 
 Mendel stared and his jaw dropped. Had Logan for- 
 gotten the night in Paris? Was he such a fool as to pre- 
 tend he did not know, could not see that the whole lib- 
 eration of frenzy in Oliver dated from that night? . . . 
 Oh, well ! It was no affair of his. 
 
 To change the subject he said :
 
 330 MENDEL 
 
 "We ought to get the press-cuttings to-morrow. I 
 wonder if we shall sell the lot? It's a good beginning, 
 having tickets on your two." 
 
 "I bet we sell the lot in a week. Oliver has two of 
 the critics in her pocket. What do you say to giving a 
 party in honour of the event? We can afford to for- 
 give our enemies now, and there's a social side to the 
 movement which we ought not to neglect." 
 
 Mendel made no reply. They were sitting on the 
 front. The smooth, glassy sea, reflecting the stars and 
 the lights of the pier, soothed and comforted him. 
 Brighton was to him like a part of London, and he sank 
 drowsily into the happy fantasy that he was being thrust 
 out of the streets towards the stars and the vast power 
 that lay beyond them. He was weary of the streets and 
 the clamour, and he wanted peace and serenity, rest from 
 his own turbulence, the peace which has no dwelling upon 
 earth and lives only in eternity. 
 
 "How good it would be," he said suddenly, "if one 
 could just paint without a thought of what became of 
 one's pictures." 
 
 "That's no good," replied Logan. "One must live." 
 
 The first batch of cuttings arrived in the morning. 
 They were brief, for the most part, quite respectful and 
 appreciative. Mendel learned, to his astonishment, that 
 he was influenced by Logan, and one critic lamented that 
 a promising young painter, who could so simply render 
 the life of his race, should have been infected with mod- 
 ern heresies. There was no uproar, neither of them was 
 hailed as a master, and Logan in more than one instance 
 was dismissed as an imitator of Calthrop. 
 
 "Calthrop !" said Logan, gulping down his disappoint- 
 ment and disgust. "Calthrop! Oh well, it is good
 
 SUCCESS 331 
 
 enough for a beginning. It would have been very dif- 
 ferent if you had let me print the manifesto. The 
 swine need to be told, you know. They want a lead. 
 . . . We'll wait for the Sunday papers." 
 
 London was curiously unchanged when they returned. 
 Mendel was half afraid he would be recognised as they 
 came out of Charing Cross Station, but no one looked 
 at him. The convulsion through which he had lived had 
 left people going about their business, and he supposed 
 that if an earthquake happened in Trafalgar Square peo- 
 ple would still be going about their business in the Strand. 
 
 They were eager for Oliver's account of the private 
 view, and took a taxi-cab to Camden Town. She was 
 wearing her new dress and was quite the lady: shook 
 hands with Mendel and asked him haughtily in a mincing 
 tone how he was. From all these signs he judged that 
 the exhibition had been a success. 
 
 "Quite a lot of people came," she said. "Real swells. 
 There were two motor-cars outside." 
 
 "Yes," said Logan. "Tysoe agreed to leave his car 
 outside for a couple of hours to encourage people to 
 go in." 
 
 "Kuhler's picture of the girl with short hair sold at 
 once," she said. 
 
 His pleasure in this news was swallowed up in his 
 dislike of hearing Morrison spoken of by her. 
 
 "All your drawings but one are gone, Logan. I listened 
 to what people said. They wanted to know who you 
 were, and Cluny said you had a great reputation in the 
 North. People laughed out loud at Kuhler's Ruth, and I 
 heard one man say it was only to be expected. He said 
 the Jews can never produce art. They can only produce 
 infant prodigies."
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 REACTION 
 
 T OGAN made nearly two hundred pounds out of the 
 * ' exhibition and Mendel over a hundred. His fam- 
 ily rejoiced in his triumph. A hundred pounds was 
 a good year's income to them. They rejoiced, but it 
 was an oppression to him to go back to them and to 
 talk in Yiddish, in which there were no words for all 
 that he cared for most. Impossible to explain to them 
 about art, for they had neither words nor mental con- 
 ceptions. Art was to them only a wonderful way of 
 making money, a kind of magic that went on in the 
 West End, where, once a man was established, he had 
 only to open his pockets for money to fall into them. 
 
 Up to a point he could share their elation, for in 
 his bitter moments he too was predatory. If the Chris- 
 tian world would not admit him on equal terms he had 
 no compunction about despoiling it. 
 
 The words "infant prodigy" stuck in his throat, and 
 with his family it seemed indeed impossible that the 
 Jews could produce art. How could they, when they had 
 no care for it? And how had he managed to find his 
 way to it? ... Going back over his career step by step 
 it seemed miraculous, and as though there were a special 
 providence governing his life Mr. Kuit, the Scotch trav- 
 eller, Mitchell, Logan, all were as though they had been 
 
 332
 
 REACTION 
 
 333 
 
 pushed forward at the critical moment. And for what? 
 Merely to exploit an infant prodigy with a skilful trick? 
 . . . He could not, he would not believe it. The pres- 
 sure that had driven him along, the pressure within him- 
 self, had been too great for that, just to squeeze him 
 out into the open and to fill his pockets with money. 
 There was more meaning in it all than that, more shape, 
 more design. 
 
 Yet when he considered his work he was lacerated 
 with doubt. It ended so palpably in the portrait of his 
 father and mother, and he knew that he could never 
 go back to that again. An art that was limited to Jewry 
 was no art. Among the Jews no light could live. They 
 would not have it. They would snuff it out, for it was 
 their will to dwell in dark places and to wait upon the 
 illumination that never came, as of course it never would 
 until they looked within themselves. 
 
 Within himself he knew there was a most vivid light 
 glowing, a spark which only needed a breath of air upon 
 it to burst into flame. He was increasingly conscious 
 of it, and it made him feel transparent, as though noth- 
 ing could be hidden from those who looked his way. 
 What was there to hide? If there was evil, it lived but 
 a little while and was soon spent, while that which was 
 of worth endured and grew under recognition. 
 
 Thence came his devotion to Logan, who simply ig- 
 nored everything that apparently gave offence to others 
 and saluted the rare, rich activity. It was nothing to 
 Logan that he was a Jew and poor and uneducated : he 
 was educated in art, and what more did he want ? Logan 
 was a friend indeed, and had proved it over and over 
 again. He would take his doubts to Logan and they 
 would be healed, but first he must go to the exhibition, 
 the thought of which made him unhappy and uneasy.
 
 334 MENDEL 
 
 Cluny received him with open arms : 
 
 "A most successful exhibition. A great success. I 
 hope you will let me have some of your work by me. A 
 most charming exhibition. There was only one mistake, 
 if I may say so: the Ruth." 
 
 Mendel walked miserably through the rooms. All Lo- 
 gan's pictures were in the best light: his own were half 
 in shadow. 
 
 "Mr. Logan has the making of a great reputation," 
 said Cluny, "a very great reputation." 
 
 "Oh, very clever!" said Mendel, suddenly exasperated 
 more by Logan's pictures than by the dealer. 
 
 Indeed, "very clever" was the right description for 
 Logan's work. It attracted and charmed and tickled, 
 but it did not satisfy. The pictures gave Mendel the 
 same odd sense of familiarity as the picture in Camden 
 Town had done, and turning suddenly, his eye fell on 
 his own unhappy Ruth. The figure was shockingly bad. 
 He acknowledged the simpering sentimentality of the 
 face. And he had been trying to paint love! But in 
 spite of the figure, the picture held him. It was to 
 him the matrix of the whole exhibition. Wiping out 
 of consideration his own early drawings, it explained 
 and accounted for every other piece of work. The least 
 dexterous of them all, it had freshness and vitality and 
 a certain thrust of simplification which everything else 
 lacked. It was "solid," and worth all Logan's pictures 
 put together. 
 
 "Very good prices," said the dealer. "Very good 
 indeed." 
 
 Mendel paid no attention to him. He wanted to study 
 his Ruth, to find out its precise meaning for him, and, 
 if possible, in what mysterious part of his talent it had 
 originated.
 
 REACTION 335 
 
 It had made him feel happy again and had restored 
 his confidence. He was serenely sure of himself, without 
 arrogance. He was almost humble, yet tantalised be- 
 cause he could not think of a whole picture in the terms 
 of that one piece of paint. He remembered the strange 
 excitement in which he had conceived it, the almost 
 nonchalance with which he had executed it. And to 
 think that not a soul had seen it! The fools! The 
 fools ! 
 
 He was ashamed to be seen looking so intently at his 
 own work. The next day he was back again and told 
 Cluny that it was not for sale. 
 
 "I don't think it's a seller, Mr. Kiihler," said Cluny. 
 
 "It's not for sale," repeated Mendel. 
 
 He went every day and had no other thought. He 
 wandered about in a dream, not seeing people in the 
 streets, not hearing when he was spoken to. 
 
 On the fifth day as he entered Cluny's he began to 
 tremble, and he fell against a man who was coming 
 out. The blood rushed to his heart and beat at his tem- 
 ples. He knew why it was. The air seemed full of an 
 enchantment that settled upon him and drew him towards 
 the gallery. He knew he was going to see her, and 
 she was there with Clowes, standing in front of his 
 Ruth. Clowes was laughing at it, but Morrison, with 
 brows knit, obviously angry, was trying to explain it. 
 
 "I'm trying to explain the cornfield to Clowes," she 
 said. "Do come and help me." 
 
 "I can't explain it myself," he said, marvelling at the 
 ease of the meeting. At once he and she were together 
 and Clowes was out of it, like a dweller in another 
 world. , 
 
 "I don't think you ought to do things you can t ex- 
 plain," said Clowes.
 
 336 MENDEL 
 
 "Then you are wiping out Michael Angelo, and El 
 Greco, and Blake, and Piero." 
 
 "Yes," said Mendel. "You are wiping out inspiration 
 altogether." 
 
 "Oh ! if you think you are inspired I have nothing more 
 to say," replied Clowes rather tartly. She had felt 
 instinctively that Mendel and Morrison would meet at 
 the gallery, and was annoyed all the same that it had 
 happened. She knew how they were regarded, and she 
 herself did not approve. Morrison knew how impossi- 
 ble it was, and Clowes thought she ought not to allow 
 it to go on. 
 
 Clowes also recognised how completely she was out 
 of it, and she made excuses and left them. 
 
 "You are the only one who likes it," he said. 
 
 "I don't like it, but I know that it isn't bad. It isn't 
 good either, but it is real and it is you." 
 
 "I want no more than that," he said, "from you." 
 
 In his mind he had prepared all sorts of reproaches 
 for his meeting with her, but they fell away from his 
 lips. He could only accept that it was good and sweet 
 and natural to be with her. 
 
 He told her quite simply how he had come to paint 
 the picture, and how he had tried to paint his love for 
 her. She smiled and shook away her smile. 
 
 "I'm glad it isn't anything like that really," she said. 
 
 "I tried to tell you what it was like when I wrote 
 to you." 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 That was all she could say. She had been very un- 
 happy, often desperately wretched, because her instinct 
 fought so furiously against the idea of love with him 
 whom she loved. 
 
 "The picture has made me very happy," she added.
 
 REACTION 
 
 337 
 
 "It means that what I have been wanting to happen to 
 you has happened. You are different, you know. I can 
 talk to you so much more easily." 
 
 He suggested that they should walk in the Park and 
 spend the day together, and she consented, glad that 
 all the reproaches and storms she had dreaded should 
 be so lightly brushed away. 
 
 Happy, happy lovers, for whom nothing can defile 
 the. heavenly beauty of this earth; happy, from whom 
 Time streams away, bearing with it all the foolish, rest- 
 less activity of men; happy, for whom the pomps and 
 vanities of the world are as though they had never been! 
 Thrice happy two, who in your united spirit bear so 
 easily all the beauty, all the suffering, all the sorrow in 
 the world, and bring it forth in joy, the flower of life 
 that cometh up as a vision, fades, and sheds its seed 
 upon the rich, warm soil of humanity. Emblem of im- 
 mortality for ever shining in the union of spirits, in the 
 enchantment of two who are together and in love. 
 
 So happy were they that they wandered for the most 
 part in silence through the avenues and over the grassy 
 spaces of the Park. 
 
 Of the two, she had the better brain, and, indeed, the 
 stronger character. She had been toughened in the strug- 
 gle to break out of the web of hypocrisy and meaningless 
 tradition of gentility in which her family was enmeshed, 
 and the freedom she had won was very precious to her. 
 She kept it as a touchstone by which to measure her 
 acquaintance and her experience, and, using it now, she 
 realised that there were two distinct delights in being 
 with Mendel on this tender autumn day; one tempted 
 her with its promise of furious joys and wild, baffling
 
 338 MENDEL 
 
 emotions. It seduced her with its suggestion that this 
 way lay kindness, the gift to him of his desire, peace, 
 and satisfaction. But behind the suggestion of kindness 
 lay a menace to her freedom, which, being so much more 
 precious than herself, she longed for him to share, as 
 in the keen happiness of that day he had done. That 
 was the other delight, more serene and more rare, in- 
 finitely more powerful, and she would not have it sac- 
 rificed to the less. The gift of herself to which she 
 was tempted must mean the blending of her freedom 
 with his, for without that there would be no true gift, 
 only a surrender. 
 
 She could not think it out or make it clear to herself, 
 but she knew that it was surrender he was asking, and 
 she knew that if she surrendered she would be no more 
 to him in a little while than the other women of pas- 
 sage with whom his life was darkened. 
 
 Ought she not then to tell him, to keep him from 
 living in false hopes? She persuaded herself that she 
 ought, but she did not wish to spoil this delicious day. 
 It was such torture to her when he blazed out at her and 
 he became ugly with egoism. 
 
 "Of course," he said, "the Ruth makes all the differ- 
 ence. I can't let you go now, because you are the only 
 one who has really understood my work. I am almost 
 frightened of it myself, and it makes me feel desperately 
 lonely when I think of all I shall have to go through 
 to get at what it really means." 
 
 "No. If you want me like that I don't want you to 
 let me go," she said, "for it is so important." 
 
 "Yes," he said. "It may mean an entirely new kind 
 of picture, for I. don't know anybody's work that has 
 quite what is hammering away in my head to get out. It 
 must be because you love me that you can feel it when
 
 REACTION 
 
 339 
 
 no one else can. Even to Logan it is only like a superior 
 poster." 
 
 How adorable he was in this mood of simplicity and 
 humility! She could relax her vigilance, and sway un- 
 reservedly to his mood and give him all that he required 
 of her, her clearness, her sensitive purity. 
 
 "You are like no other woman in the world to me," 
 he went on. "You fill me with the most wonderful joy, 
 like a Cranach or a Diirer drawing. I can forget al- 
 most that you are a woman, so that it is a most wonder- 
 ful surprise that you are one after all. You are the 
 only person in the world whom I can place side by side 
 with my mother." 
 
 "You don't know what it is to me," she said, "to have 
 a friend so strong and frank as you are." 
 
 He put out his hand and laid it on her arm won- 
 deringly, as if to satisfy himself that she was really 
 there, much as on his first visit to Hampstead he had 
 touched the grass. 
 
 "I think I shall live to be very old," he said, "and 
 you will be just the same to me then as you are now."' 
 
 "Oh, Mendel!" 
 
 "Say that again!" he said, but she could not speak. 
 Her eyes were brimming with tears and she hung her 
 head. She longed to take him to her arms and to fondle 
 him, to make him young, to charm away the pitiful old 
 weary helplessness that he had. Reacting from this mood 
 in her, which he did not understand and took for the 
 first symptoms of surrender, he became wild and boastful, 
 and clowned like a silly boy to attract her attention. 
 
 Her will set against him. She could not endure the 
 sudden swoop from the highest sympathy to the gal- 
 lantry of the streets, and when he was weary of his
 
 340 MENDEL 
 
 tricks she tried to bring him to his senses by asking him 
 suddenly : 
 
 "Is Logan a nice man ?" 
 
 "He is my best friend. He has wonderful ideas and 
 energy like a steam-engine, and he has suffered too. He 
 is not like the art students who expect painting pic- 
 tures to be as easy as knitting. He could have been 
 almost anything, but he believes that art is the most im- 
 portant thing of all. He has made a great difference 
 to me, by teaching me to be independent. ... I will take 
 you to see him one day." 
 
 "I should like to meet him, because he has made a 
 great difference in you." 
 
 "He steals." 
 
 That gave Morrison a shock, for Mendel seemed to 
 be stating the fact as a recommendation. 
 
 "Yes. When he has no money he steals. I went 
 with him once and we stole some reproductions." 
 
 She was sorry she had mentioned Logan. Mendel 
 was a different creature at once. Their glamourous 
 happiness was gone. Logan seemed to have stalked in 
 between them and the purity of their delight withered 
 away. 
 
 He felt it as strongly as she, but thought she was 
 deliberately escaping from him, that she was fickle and 
 could not stay out the day's happiness. Women, he knew, 
 were like that. They gave out just as the best was still 
 to come. 
 
 It was dusk and they were in a lonely glade. He 
 pounced on her and drew her to him : 
 
 "I want you to kiss me." 
 
 "No no!" 
 
 "Yes yes yes! I say you shall. I will not have 
 you let it all slip away."
 
 REACTION 341 
 
 "Don't! Don't!" she said, in a passion of resentment. 
 He was spoiling it all. How could he be so crude and 
 insensible after this matchless day? 
 
 At last he was convinced of her anger. 
 
 "I don't understand you," he said. "Don't you want 
 anything like that?" 
 
 "It has spoiled the day for me," she answered, "or 
 almost, for nothing could really spoil it." 
 
 She walked on and he stood still for a moment. Then 
 he ran after her. 
 
 "Did you . . . did you hate me then?" 
 
 "No, I didn't hate you. I hated myself more because 
 I can't say what I feel." 
 
 "If you don't love me like that," he said, "I love you 
 all the same. I must see you often always. I can't 
 live, I can't work, if you don't let me see you. . . . No. 
 That isn't true. I shall work whatever happens." 
 
 How she loved his honesty! He was making no at- 
 tempt to creep behind her defences. They had baffled 
 him, and he counted his wounds cheerfully. 
 
 "If you don't love me like that," he went on excitedly, 
 "it doesn't make any difference. You are my love all 
 the same. You are in all my thoughts, in every drop 
 of my blood, and you can do with me as you will. If 
 you don't love me like that I will never touch you. I 
 can understand your not wanting to touch me, because 
 I am dirty. I am dirty in my soul. I will never touch 
 you. I promise that I will never touch you, and what 
 you do not like in me you shall never see. . . ." 
 
 She broke down, and burst into an unrestrained fit of 
 weeping. Why could she not make clear to him, to 
 herself, what she felt so clearly? ... Oh! She knew 
 she ought to tell him to go, to spare him all the suffering 
 that he must endure, but also she knew by the measure
 
 342 MENDEL 
 
 of her need for him how sorely he must need her. Their 
 need of each other was too profound, too strong, too pas- 
 sionate, easily to find its way to surface life, nor could it 
 be satisfied with sweets too easily attained. . . . She 
 must wait. To leave him or to surrender to him would 
 be a betrayal of that high mystery wherein they had 
 their spiritual meeting. 
 
 "I shall win," she said to herself, "I shall win. I 
 know I shall win." ^ 
 
 And she amazed him with her sudden lightness of 
 heart. She laughed and told him how solemnly Clowes 
 was taking it all, and how the loose-tongued busybodies 
 were talking. . . . As if it mattered what they said ! He 
 mattered more than all of them, because they took easily 
 what was next to hand and grew fat on it, while he 
 fought his way upward step by step and was never satis- 
 fied, and would fight his way always step by step with 
 bloody pains and suffering. 
 
 "Oh, Mendel!" she cried; "I'm so proud so proud 
 of you." 
 
 She was too swift for him. He came lumbering after 
 her, puzzled, amazed, confounded at finding in this girl 
 something that was so much more than woman, some- 
 thing that could actually live on the high level of his 
 creative thought, something as necessary to his thought 
 .as dew to the grass and the ripening corn.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 LOGAN GIVES A PARTY 
 
 r I^HE impulse to take his doubts to Logan endured, 
 * and was aggravated by the wretchedness into which 
 Mendel was plunged by Morrison's return and her pow- 
 erful effect upon his life. He raged against himself 
 as an idiot and a fool for taking her seriously and for 
 believing that she could realise his work when as yet 
 he understood it so little himself. If it was love, then 
 have the love-making and get it over. If she refused, 
 then let her go! What did she mean by slipping away 
 just when the day's happiness began to demand utter- 
 ance, closeness, intimacy, the promise of the dearest and 
 most comfortable joys? 
 
 He knew that he was deceiving himself, that she could 
 do just as she liked and it would make no difference, but 
 he also knew that he mistrusted her. In his heart he 
 suspected her of being one of those who like to pretend 
 that life can be all roses and honey, that there can be 
 summer without winter, day without night. . . . Just a 
 pretty English girl, he called her, and, in his most bitter 
 moods, he regarded himself as caught; and in that there 
 was a certain sardonic satisfaction. It seemed appro- 
 priate that, having known many women without a parti- 
 cle of love for them, he should be in love with a woman 
 who did not wish to have anything to do with him. 
 
 343
 
 344 MENDEL 
 
 When he told Logan about it, that experienced in- 
 dividual smoked three cigarettes and was silent for ten 
 minutes by the clock. 
 
 "It won't do," he said; "give it up. You're in love 
 with her. Oh yes ! You were bound to have your taste 
 of it, being so young. But, for God's sake, keep it 
 clear of your work. I know it is very delightful and 
 all that, and like the first blush of spring, and that she 
 seems to understand everything. First love is always 
 the same. She seems to understand, but so do the vio- 
 lets in the woods, and the apple-blossom in an orchard, 
 and the singing birds on a spring morning. They all 
 seem to understand everything. Life is solved: there 
 are no more problems, and the rarest flower of all is 
 the human heart. Yet the violets and the apple-blossoms 
 fade and the birds sing no more : the spring passes and 
 the summer is infernally hot and stale, and winter comes 
 at last. So it is with love and women. Nothing en- 
 dures but art, and that they are physically incapable of 
 understanding. My God! Don't I know it? A picture 
 of mine means no more to Oliver than my boot does 
 rather less, because my boot is warmed with the warmth 
 of my body. That's all she understands." 
 
 He looked down at the boots and fidgeted with his 
 hands. 
 
 "Yes. That's all she understands," he repeated. 
 
 He was very haggard, and he looked up at Mendel as 
 though he were trying to say something more than he 
 could get into words; but Mendel was preoccupied with 
 his own perplexities, and Logan's appealing glance was 
 lost upon him. 
 
 "I'm older than you," Logan continued, "and of course 
 it is difficult for me to say anything that will be of any 
 use to you, but a man like you ought not to let life get
 
 LOGAN GIVES A PARTY 345 
 
 in his way. It isn't worth it. Life is only valuable to 
 you as a condition of working. Nothing in it ought to 
 be valuable for its own sake. Do you hear? You ought 
 never to have anything in your life that you couldn't sac- 
 rifice couldn't do without." 
 
 He seemed to be rather thinking aloud than talking, 
 and something indescribably solemn in his voice made 
 Mendel shiver. He had hardly heard what Logan was 
 saying and, thinking he must be in a draught, he looked 
 towards the window. 
 
 Logan went on: 
 
 "She'll be back in a moment. We don't often get the 
 opportunity to talk like this. She has begun to read 
 books, and thinks she knows about pictures now. She 
 won't leave us alone. That damned critic has been stuff- 
 ing her up and she reads all his articles." 
 
 He made a grimace of weary disgust. 
 
 "I care about you, Kiihler, almost more than I do 
 about myself, which is saying a good deal. Don't let 
 this love business get mixed up with your work, espe- 
 cially if, as you say, it is Platonic that is the worst 
 poison of all almost, almost. . . . Still, I'd like to see 
 the girl. Bring her to the party. We might join up and 
 make a quartette if she can stand Oliver. Women can't, 
 as a rule. They don't like full-blooded people of their 
 own sex." 
 
 "She wants to know you," replied Mendel half-heart- 
 edly. "I'm always talking to her about you." 
 
 "All right," said Logan. "Bring her to the party." 
 
 Downstairs the front door slammed and Logan gave 
 a nervous start. His whole aspect changed. He lost 
 the drooping solemnity that had come over him and 
 was stiff, quick, and alert, and prepared to be droll,
 
 346 MENDEL 
 
 as he was when it was a question of humbugging Tysoe 
 and Cluny. 
 
 Oliver came in with a bottle of wine under each 
 arm. She was in very good spirits and looking remark- 
 ably handsome. 
 
 "Hello, Kiihler!" she cried. "How do you like being 
 a success? We're full of beans. We're going to take a 
 house. Did Logan tell you?" 
 
 "No," said Mendel. "I hadn't heard of it." 
 
 "Well, it's true. We've done with the slums and 
 being poor and all that. We're going to have a house 
 and I'm going to have a servant, and I shall have noth- 
 ing to do all day but eat chocolates and read novels 
 and have people to tea." 
 
 "So you're going to be a real lady." 
 
 "Yes. I'm going to wear a wedding-ring, and we're 
 going to give out that we're married, so that Mrs. Tysoe 
 can call on me." 
 
 "You're not going to do anything of the kind," snapped 
 Logan. 
 
 "I am. I don't see why I should have a beastly time 
 just because you won't marry me, setting yourself up 
 against the world and saying you don't believe in mar- 
 riage." 
 
 "I don't want to be more tied to you than I am," said 
 Logan, endeavouring to adopt a reasonable tone. 
 
 He was curiously subdued, and never took his eyes off 
 her. Mendel had the impression that they must recently 
 have had a quarrel. Logan was endeavouring to placate 
 her, but she was constantly aggressive. She seemed to 
 have gained in personality and to be possessed of a defi- 
 nite will. She was no longer shrouded in the mists of 
 sensuality, but stood out clearly, a figure of such vitality 
 that Mendel could no longer keep his lazy contempt for
 
 LOGAN GIVES A PARTY 347 
 
 her. Almost admirable she was, yet he found her de- 
 testable. He thought she should be thanking her lucky 
 stars for having found such a man as Logan ; she should 
 be taking gratefully what he chose to give her, instead 
 of setting herself up and putting forward her own vulgar 
 needs. If a woman threw in her lot with an artist, she 
 ought to revel in her freedom from the petty interests 
 and insignificant courtesies that made the lives of ordi- 
 nary women so humiliating. 
 
 What was she up to? He knew that there was a 
 deeper purpose in her, something very definite, for which 
 she had been able to summon up her raw vitality. He 
 could understand Logan being fascinated. If he had 
 been in love with the woman he would have been the 
 same, and his mind would have been swamped by sen- 
 sual curiosity. 
 
 Before, he had always been rather mystified to know 
 what Logan saw in the woman, but now the infatuation 
 was comprehensible to him. His mind played about it 
 with a strange delight, and he was even envious of Lo- 
 gan to be consumed in the heart of that mystery upon 
 whose fringes he himself was held. And he thought 
 that if he brought Morrison to see them he would be 
 able to understand her better, and might even be able 
 to place his finger on the weak place in her armour. 
 
 "You two do give me the pip," said Oliver. "You 
 sit there as glum and silent as though you were in church. 
 Taking yourselves too seriously, I call it." 
 
 Still in his forbearing tone Logan said : 
 
 "We talk of things which are very hard to under- 
 stand." 
 
 "Oh, give it up!" she said. "Leave all that to folk 
 with brains and education. Why can't you just paint
 
 348 MENDEL 
 
 without talking about it ? You'd get twice as much work 
 done." 
 
 "Because, don't you see, unless you're a blasted ama- 
 teur, you can't paint without rousing all sorts of questions 
 in your mind questions that don't seem to have anything 
 to do with painting; but unless you attempt to answer 
 them there's no satisfaction in working." 
 
 "Oh, cheese it!" she said; "I know what the critics 
 look for, and it has nothing to do with brains. It is 
 like being in love." 
 
 "Who told you that?" asked Logan with sudden heat; 
 but before she could answer him Mendel had exploded : 
 
 "It is nothing at all like being in love. That is what 
 all the beastly Christians think of being in love. And 
 they want art always, always to remind them of that 
 how they have been, are, or will be in love, as they call 
 it. And what they call being in love is nothing but a 
 filthy lecherous longing, which is a thousand miles be- 
 neath love, and twenty thousand miles beneath art, which 
 is so rare, so noble, so beautiful a mystery that only 
 those whom God has chosen can understand it at all; 
 for while you are in this state of longing you can under- 
 stand, you can feel nothing at all except a hungry delight 
 in yourself and your own sticky sensations. What can 
 women know of art? It needs strength and will, and 
 women have neither; they have only obstinate fancies." 
 
 When he had done he was so astonished at himself 
 that he gasped for breath. Logan and Oliver, gaping 
 at him, seemed ridiculous and little. Talking to them 
 was a waste of breath, because when she was there Lo- 
 gan was not himself, but only a kind of excrescence upon 
 her monstrous vitality. The room seemed to stink. It 
 was airless and reeking with sex. He must get out and 
 away, under the sky, among the trees, upon his beloved
 
 LOGAN GIVES A PARTY 349 
 
 Hampstead. . . . Without another word he stalked 
 away. 
 
 "Well! I never!" exclaimed Oliver. "Is Kiihler in 
 love?" 
 
 "Oh! shut up!" said Logan wearily. 
 
 For the party the room was cleared and a pianola 
 was hired. The guests were invited to bring their own 
 glasses and drink, and also any friends they liked. The 
 result was that half the habitues of the Paris Cafe turned 
 up, including Jessie Petrie, Mitchell, and Thompson, who 
 was over for a short time from Paris, very important 
 and mysterious because he had something to do with a 
 forthcoming exhibition of Modern French Art which was 
 to knock London silly. And there was a rumour that 
 Calthrop himself was coming. 
 
 Oliver wore a new evening dress, which she had in- 
 sisted on buying because she was very proud of her bust 
 and arms. The dress was of emerald green silk and 
 she looked very lovely in it "Like a water nymph," 
 said Logan, and he went out and bought her a string 
 of red corals to give the finishing touch. 
 
 "You won't have much of this kind of thing when 
 we move," he said. "It is to be farewell to Bohemia. 
 I'm going to settle down to work. I've taught Kiihler 
 a thing or two, but he has taught me how to work." 
 
 "Damn Kiihler! I hate him," said Oliver. 
 
 "You can hate him as much as you choose. It won't 
 hurt him or me. I'm not a Hercules, and my work 
 and you are about as much as I can manage." 
 
 "You're a nice one to be giving a party. You talk 
 as though you would be in your grave next week." 
 
 "It is a farewell party."
 
 350 MENDEL 
 
 "'Farewell to the Piano/" laughed Oliver. "That 
 was the last piece I learned when I had music lessons." 
 
 Mitchell was among the first to arrive. He had been 
 ill, and looked washed-out and unwholesome. There 
 was very little of the Public School boy left in him. 
 
 "Is Kiihler coming?" he asked nervously. 
 
 "I expect so," answered Logan. "Do you know how 
 to manage a pianola?" 
 
 "Yes. We've got one at home." 
 
 "You might play it then, to keep things going until 
 they liven up." 
 
 Mitchell was placed at the pianola, and was still there 
 when Mendel arrived with Morrison. 
 
 "I'm very glad to meet you," said Logan. "Kiihler 
 has talked about you so often." 
 
 "Yes," said Morrison. 
 
 "I hope you don't mind a Bohemian party. They are 
 a mixed lot." 
 
 "No," said Morrison. 
 
 "Good God!" thought Logan. "Not a word to say 
 for herself!" 
 
 Mendel introduced her to Oliver, who looked her up 
 and down superciliously this little schoolgirl in her 
 brown tweed coat and skirt. 
 
 "I'm sorry I didn't dress," said Morrison. "I didn't 
 know." 
 
 She shrank from the big, fleshy woman, who made 
 her feel very unhappy. Yet she wanted to be fair. She 
 had heard Mendel storm and rage against Oliver and 
 she hated to be prejudiced. It distressed her not to 
 like anybody, for she found most people likeable. She 
 tried to be amiable : 
 
 "I'm so glad the exhibition was such a success. Every- 
 body is talking about it."
 
 LOGAN GIVES A PARTY 351 
 
 "Oh! yes, yes," said Oliver vacantly. Obviously she 
 was not listening. She had eyes only for the men, and 
 she bridled with pleasure when she attracted their at- 
 tention. 
 
 Morrison was glad to escape to a corner, where she 
 could watch the strange people and be amused by them, 
 their attitudes and gestures and queer, conceited efforts 
 deliberately to charm each other. 
 
 She blushed when she saw Mitchell at the pianola, 
 and thought she had been rather foolish and weak to 
 allow Mendel to bully her into dismissing him from her 
 acquaintance, and she was relieved when she saw Men- 
 del take in the situation and go up to Mitchell and tap 
 him on the shoulder and enter into eager discussion of 
 the pianola. She was less happy when she saw Mendel 
 take Mitchell's place, and Mitchell make a bee-line for 
 herself. 
 
 An astonishing change came over the music, which 
 got into Mendel's blood. It was maddening, it was 
 glorious to feel that he had all that wealth of sound 
 in his hands. He knew nothing of music, and it was 
 almost pure rhythm to him, and he wished to beat it 
 out, to accentuate it as much as possible. The machine 
 confounded him every now and then by running too fast 
 or too slow, but he soon learned to pedal less violently, 
 and then he was gloriously happy and drunk with ex- 
 citement. 
 
 Astonishing, too, was the change in the company. 
 Everybody began to talk and to laugh, and space was 
 cleared in the middle of the room, and Clowes and a 
 young man from the Detmold began to dance. Jessie 
 Petrie and Weldon joined them, and soon the room was 
 full of whirling, gliding couples. 
 
 Said Mitchell to Morrison :
 
 352 MENDEL 
 
 "I didn't expect to find you here. Are you going 
 to dance?" 
 
 "No. I like watching." 
 
 He sat on the floor by her side, and, hanging his 
 head, he said woefully : 
 
 "So Kiihler's won! Gawd! He always gets what 
 he wants. There's no resisting him." 
 
 "Don't be absurd," said Morrison. "I hear you've 
 been ill." 
 
 "Yes. I've been going to the dogs, absolutely to the 
 dogs. I had to pull up. ... I didn't know you knew 
 Logan; but, of course, as he's so thick with Kiih- 
 ler >!" 
 
 "I met him for the first time to-night. What do 
 you think of his work?" 
 
 "Flashy !" said Mitchell. "Very flashy. . . . Will you 
 let me come and see you again?" 
 
 "I'd rather not, if you don't mind." 
 
 "Why do you dislike me so much?" 
 
 "I don't dislike you. I can't trust you not to be silly." 
 
 "Gawd ! I bet I'm not half so silly as Kiihler !" 
 
 "He is never silly!" 
 
 "Ah ! Now you're offended !" 
 
 She turned away from him and refused to speak again. 
 His half-flirtatious, half -patronising manner offended her 
 deeply, and was far more of an affront to her than Lo- 
 gan's almost open scorn of her as a little bread-and- 
 butter miss. She wished Mendel would leave the pianola, 
 but he was enthralled and could not tear himself away. 
 He played the same tune over and over again, or went 
 straight from one to another, swaying to and fro, beat- 
 ing time with his hands, swinging his head up and 
 down.
 
 LOGAN GIVES A PARTY 353 
 
 Mitchell went very red in the face and slipped away. 
 Presently she saw him dancing with Oliver. 
 
 After a few moments she found Logan by her side, 
 and he said kindly: 
 
 "I'm afraid you are not enjoying yourself much." 
 
 "Oh yes !" she gasped, in a frightened voice. 
 
 "I was thinking you were not used to this kind of 
 thing." 
 
 "Oh yes! I often go to parties in people's studios." 
 
 "I remember, I saw you at the Merlin's Cave one 
 night." 
 
 "Yes, I remember. I didn't enjoy that a bit. It all 
 seemed such a sham." 
 
 "So it was," said Logan. "So is most of this. These 
 people aren't really wicked, though they like to pretend 
 they are. I don't dance myself. I'm too clumsy. Clog- 
 dancing I can do, but not dancing with anybody else. 
 . . . But perhaps I am keeping you ?" 
 
 "Oh no! I'm very happy looking on." 
 
 "Kiihler's worth watching, isn't he?" 
 
 This was said with such insolent meaning that Mor- 
 rison wilted like a sensitive plant. She managed to 
 gasp out "Yes," and went on asking wild, pointless 
 questions, with her thoughts whirling far removed from 
 her words. 
 
 Why were all these people so impertinent, with their 
 trick of plunging into intimate life without waiting for 
 intimacy? She felt that in a moment Logan would be 
 telling her all about himself and Oliver by way of luring 
 her on to discuss Mendel. That she had no intention of 
 doing, with him or with any one else. 
 
 "She's just a shy little fool," thought Logan, "and 
 hopelessly, hopelessly young." 
 
 "I'm unhappy!" thought Morrison, and it seemed to
 
 354 MENDEL 
 
 her foolish and mean to be so. Her loyalty resented 
 her weakness. She owed it to Mendel to enjoy herself 
 and to share as far as she could his friends. But there 
 was in the atmosphere of that gathering something that 
 repelled her and roused the fighting quality in her, some- 
 thing indecent, something that hurt her as the picture 
 of the flayed man in the anatomy book hurt her. 
 
 Mendel was playing a wild rag-time tune. 
 
 "I think I'd like to dance to this tune. You must 
 dance with me. I don't think you ought to be out of 
 your own party," she said to Logan, who caught her 
 up in a great bear's hug, trod on her toes, knocked her 
 knees, pressed his fingers so tight into her back that 
 she could hardly bear it, and at last, as the music ceased, 
 deposited her by Mendel's side. 
 
 "It is a marvellous thing, this machine," he said. "I 
 should like to go on at it all night. Have you been 
 dancing? You look hot. You said you weren't going to 
 dance." 
 
 "I made Logan dance. He nearly killed me!" 
 
 "How did you get on?" 
 
 "Not not very well." 
 
 "You don't like him?" 
 
 Jessie Petrie came running up: "Kiihler, Kiihler!" 
 she cried. "Do, do dance with me!" 
 
 He was very angry with Morrison for daring not to 
 like Logan, for making up her mind in two minutes that 
 she did not like him. He gave her a furious glance 
 as Weldon took his place and started a waltz, put his 
 arms round Jessie's waist, and swung into the dance. 
 
 "Oh, Kiihler!" said Jessie in her pretty birdlike voice, 
 "I heard the most awful story about you the other day." 
 
 "Do be quiet!" he grunted. "Dance!" 
 
 But he was out of temper, out of tune, and the music
 
 LOGAN GIVES A PARTY 355 
 
 he had been crashing out on the pianola was thudding 
 in his head, so that he could not respond either to the 
 music of the waltz or to Jessie's eagerness. 
 
 "Isn't it funny Thompson being back in London? I 
 don't like him a bit now. You have spoiled me for 
 everybody else. Do you want me to come on Friday as 
 usual?" ' 
 
 "Do be quiet." 
 
 "What's the matter ? You aren't dancing at all nicely 
 and you haven't looked at me once this evening." 
 
 "No; don't come on Friday." 
 
 "Not ?" 
 
 Her voice was shrill with pain. 
 
 "No. That's all over." 
 
 She hung limp in his arms and her face was a ghastly 
 yellow. She muttered : 
 
 "Take me out. ... I think I'm going to faint." 
 
 He half -carried her into the passage, where she sat 
 on the stairs and began to cry. Neither of them no- 
 ticed Clowes and the young man from the Detmold sit- 
 ting above them. 
 
 "Don't cry!" he said roughly; "what have you got 
 to cry about?" 
 
 "I never thought you only wanted me for that." 
 
 "You came to me. I didn't ask you to come." 
 
 "But I do love you so. I only want you to love me a 
 little." 
 
 "I don't know how to love a little. When I love it is 
 with the whole of me, and it is for always." 
 
 "But can't we be pals, just pals? We've been such 
 
 >a "I'm sick to death of it all," he said violently, "sick 
 to death. You're the best girl in London, Jessie, but 
 it's no good it's no good."
 
 356 MENDEL 
 
 Clowes and the young man ostentatiously and with 
 a great clatter went higher up the stairs, but neither 
 Jessie nor Mendel heard them. The pain and the shame 
 they were suffering absorbed them. 
 
 "I never thought," said Jessie, "it was near the end. 
 I've always known when it was near the end before. 
 It is like being struck by lightning." 
 
 Mendel was silent. He could do nothing. There was 
 nothing to be said. Jessie had consoled him, comforted 
 him, but she had only made his suffering worse. By 
 the side of Morrison she simply did not exist, and it 
 had been a lie to pretend that she did. That lie must 
 be cut out. 
 
 "I never thought you only wanted me for that," she 
 repeated, and began to move slowly down the stairs. At 
 the bend she stopped and looked up at him, gave a little 
 muffled cry, and moved slowly down into the dim lobby 
 of the house. 
 
 Mendel gripped the banisters with both hands and 
 shook them until they cracked. 
 
 "How horrible!" he muttered to himself, "how hor- 
 rible!" 
 
 Upstairs, Clowes was boiling with rage. She lost all 
 interest in her young man, and as soon as Mendel had 
 returned to the room she raced downstairs, almost sob- 
 bing, and saying to herself : > 
 
 "That settles you, Master Kuhler ! That settles you !" 
 
 She darted across to Morrison, who had taken refuge 
 in a corner, seized her by the hand and whispered : 
 
 "Greta! Greta! I've just heard the most frightful 
 thing. I couldn't help overhearing it and I ought not 
 to tell anybody, but you ought to know. Kuhler and 
 Petrie! It must have been going on for months. He 
 broke with her in the most cold-blooded way. It was
 
 LOGAN GIVES A PARTY 357 
 
 heart-rending. I can't bear it. Oh! these men, these 
 men!" 
 
 Morrison clenched her fists and her eyes blazed. 
 
 "Don't tell me any more!" she said. "Don't tell me 
 any more!" 
 
 "I want to go home," whispered Clowes. "It is a 
 dreadful party. That awful green woman spoils every- 
 thing. It is like a nightmare to me now." 
 
 "It wouldn't be fair to go without telling him," said 
 Morrison. "It wouldn't be fair." 
 
 "But you can't think of him after that," protested 
 Clowes. "Oh! good gracious! There's Calthrop com- 
 ing in. It is getting worse and worse." 
 
 Calthrop swung into the room with his magnificent 
 stride. As usual, his entrance created a dramatic sen- 
 sation. Logan, who had always decried his work, leaped 
 to meet him and Mendel stood shyly waiting for his 
 nod. . . . Whom would the great man speak to? That 
 was the question. . . . He fixed his eyes on Oliver and 
 strode up to her. 
 
 "You're the best-looking woman in the room," he 
 said. "Do you like cinemas?" 
 
 "I adore them," said Oliver, with an excited giggle. 
 
 "Now, now's the chance!" whispered Clowes. "We 
 can slip away now, before they begin drinking." 
 
 "I must tell him," replied Morrison, and, summon- 
 ing up all her courage, she went up to Mendel and asked 
 if she could speak to him. He went out with her, trem- 
 bling in every limb. 
 
 "I am going," she said. "I have just heard something. 
 Clowes overheard you and Jessie Petrie. She ought not 
 to have told me. I don't know what I feel about it. 
 Very wretched, chiefly. Please don't try to see me." 
 
 "I have told you what I am again and again," he said.
 
 358 MENDEL 
 
 "Yes. You are very honest, but it is hard for a girl 
 to imagine these things. Please, please see how hard 
 it is and let me be." 
 
 "Very well," he answered, feeling that the whole world 
 had come to an end. "Very well." 
 
 She called Clowes, who had stayed just inside the 
 door, and together, like little frightened children, they 
 crept downstairs. 
 
 "Good-bye, love !" said Mendel. "My God, what rub- 
 bish, what folly, what nonsense! Love and a Christian 
 girl! That's over. That's finished. I am outside it all 
 outside, outside, outside. Oh ! Dark and vile and bit- 
 ter, and no sweetness anywhere but in my own thoughts !" 
 
 Inside the room some one began to sing : 
 
 I want to be, I want to be, 
 
 I want to be down home in Dixie. . . . 
 
 Oh ! the mad folly of these Christians, with their child- 
 ish songs, their idiotic pleasures, their preposterous belief 
 in happiness. . . . Happiness! They ruin the world to 
 satisfy their childish longing, and all their happiness lies 
 in words and foolish songs. . . . The rhythm of the pian- 
 ola tunes began to beat in his head, and another deeper 
 rhythm came up from the depths of his soul and tried 
 to break through them. It was the same rhythm that 
 always came up when he had reached the lowest depths 
 of misery. It came gushing forth like water from the 
 rock of Moses, and crept through his being like ice, up, 
 up into his thoughts, bringing him to an intolerable 
 agony. 
 
 In the room glasses clinked. He turned towards the 
 light and plunged into the carouse.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 REVELATION 
 
 THREE weeks later the exhibition of Modern French 
 Art was opened in an important gallery in the West 
 End. It roused indignation, laughter, scorn, and made 
 such a stir in the papers that public interest was ex- 
 cited and the exhibition was an unparalleled success. Peo- 
 ple from the suburbs, people who had never been to a 
 picture gallery in their lives, flocked to see the show, and 
 most of them, when they left, said : "Well, at any rate 
 we've had a good laugh." 
 
 Mendel never read the papers and knew nothing at 
 all about it. These three weeks had been a time of blank 
 misery for him. He could not work. His people set 
 his teeth on edge. He could not bear to see a soul, for 
 he could not talk. When he met friends and acquaint- 
 ances, not a word could he find to say to them. There 
 was nothing to say. They were living in a world from 
 which he had been expelled. More than once he was 
 on the point of going to his father and asking to be taken 
 into the workshop, since the only possible, the only bear- 
 able life was one of hard manual labour, which left no 
 room for spiritual activity, none for happiness, and very 
 little for unhappiness. 
 
 He found some consolation in going to the synagogue. 
 His mother was delighted, but the religion was no com- 
 
 359
 
 360 MENDEL 
 
 fort to him. What pleased him was to see the old Jews 
 in their shawls and the women in their beaded gowns, 
 praying each in their separate parts of the building 
 praying until they wept, and abasing themselves before 
 the Lord. What woe, what misery they expressed ! All 
 the year round was this dismal wailing, and there was 
 only happiness on the day that Haman was hanged. . . . 
 It seemed good and decent to him that the sexes should 
 be separate before the Lord, as they should be separate 
 before the holy spirit that was in them. They should 
 meet in holiness, hover for a moment above life, then 
 sink back into it again to gather new strength. So love 
 would be in its place. It could be gathered up and dis- 
 tilled. It would not be allowed to spread like a flood of 
 muddy water over life, which had other passions, other 
 delights, other glorious flowerings. 
 
 It had been a great day for him when, in a little 
 shop near his home, he had come on a pair of wooden 
 figures rudely carved by savages African, the shopman 
 said they were. Rurely carved, they were not at all re- 
 alistic, but admirably simplified, the man and the woman 
 sitting side by side naked. The man was wearing a 
 little round bowler hat, while the woman was uncov- 
 ered. They had the spirit and the idea that he most 
 loved the idea of man and woman sitting side by side, 
 bound in love, unfathomably deep and unimaginably high, 
 until one should follow the other to the grave. 
 
 He showed them to Golda, and told her they were 
 she and his father. 
 
 "What next will you be up to ?" she said. "Why, they 
 are blackamoors." 
 
 "They are you and my father," he said, caressing the 
 figures lovingly. 
 
 "I wish you would put the thought of that girl out
 
 REVELATION 361 
 
 of your head," she said tenderly. "It is' making you so 
 ill and so thin, and I dare not think what your father 
 will say when he knows you are drinking again." 
 
 "Mother," he said, "when did you begin to love me?" 
 
 "When you were born," she said. 
 
 "Yes, yes. I know, as a cow loves its calf. But I 
 mean love, for you do not love the others the same 
 as me." 
 
 "You were not so very old when it came to me that 
 you were different." 
 
 "But it is more now that I am a man?" 
 
 "Of course." 
 
 That settled his mind on the point that had been 
 bothering him. Everywhere among the Christians love 
 the love that he knew and honoured seemed to be 
 lost in a soft, spongy worship of the mother's love for 
 her child. The woman seemed to be wiped out of ac- 
 count altogether except as a mother. It seemed that 
 she was not expected to love, and she was left by herself 
 with the child, with the man looking rather foolish all 
 by himself, seeing his strong, beautiful masculine love 
 absorbed and given to the senseless little lump of flesh 
 in the woman's arms. It was like discarding the flower 
 for the seed, like denying the wonder of spring for the 
 autumn fruit. 
 
 "If that is your Christian love," he said to himself, 
 
 "I will have none of it." 
 
 He studied the Madonnas in the National Gallery, 
 and they confirmed his impression of the weakness of 
 Christian love, that left out the strong, vital love < 
 man for a woman, of a woman for a man. He charac- 
 terised it as womanish, and could not see that the ide 
 had served to save women from male tyranny. More- 
 over most of the pictures struck him as shockingly bad,
 
 362 MENDEL 
 
 which confirmed his notion that the ideal that inspired 
 them was rotten. 
 
 He could not test his ideas by his experience with 
 Morrison, for he dared not think of her at all. When 
 his mother spoke of her, it had been like a sharp knife 
 through his heart. . . . Yes. That was love, and it 
 could not be bothered with the idea of children. If 
 they came, it would make room for them, but it was 
 not going to be robbed by them. Its object was the 
 woman, and it detested any idea that got between it and 
 her. . . . Yet when this love for Morrison stood be- 
 tween himself and his love for art, he hated her almost 
 as violently. Sometimes he thought that he would kill 
 her, because she stood there smiling. She was always 
 smiling. She could be happy; she could so easily be 
 happy. . . . 
 
 Logan came to fetch him to go to the exhibition. 
 
 "I don't want to go to the exhibition. I don't want 
 to see other people's pictures. I want to paint my own." 
 
 "What are you working at ?" 
 
 "Nothing." 
 
 "What's the matter?" 
 
 "Sex." 
 
 "Oh! That's always the matter with everybody." 
 
 "ButTve thought of something." 
 
 "What?" 
 
 "Women don't love their children." 
 
 Logan roared with laughter, and he went on laugh- 
 ing because he enjoyed it. It was long since he had 
 laughed so easily. 
 
 "Most of them do," he said. "Even if they've hated 
 having them." 
 
 "They don't," said Mendel. "It's instinct just to gloat
 
 REVELATION 363 
 
 over them, just as one gloats over a picture one has just 
 finished, however bad it may be. It has cost you some- 
 thing, and there is something to show for it. It is quite 
 blind and stupid, like an animal. It is like lust. It is 
 neither true nor false. It just is, chaotic and half-cre- 
 ated. ' Love is a human thing. Love is the most human 
 thing there is. When a clerk marries a girl because 
 he wants a woman, I don't call that love. He is only 
 making himself comfortable. There is a little more dirt 
 in the world, that is all." 
 
 Logan laughed uncomfortably. 
 
 "Please listen," said Mendel. "I have been nearly 
 mad this last fortnight, ever since the party. All my 
 life seems to have broken its way into my mind, and 
 I don't know when I shall be able to get it out again. 
 It is very important that I should talk, and I have no 
 one really to talk to except you. I am very lonely be- 
 cause I am a Jew and people do not understand me, or 
 rather they think they understand me because I am a 
 Jew. They think all Jews are the same. It is very rarely 
 that I feel I am accepted as a man with thoughts, feel- 
 ings, tears, laughter, tastes, bowels, senses like any other 
 man." 
 
 "I know," said Logan sympathetically. 
 
 "How can you know? You have only to live in a 
 world that is ready-made for you. I have to make mine 
 as I go, step by step." 
 
 "That isn't because you are a Jew, but because you 
 are an artist. It is the same for all of us." 
 
 "It can't be the same, for the ordinary world is not 
 utterly foreign to you. You do not find that which you 
 were brought up to believe, the wisdom you sucked in 
 with your mother's milk, completely denied. ... I 
 you, love is all wrong, and because love is all wrong,
 
 364 MENDEL 
 
 art is all wrong, everything is wrong, and so is every- 
 body. Everybody is living with only a part of himself, 
 so that the cleverest people are the worst and most mis- 
 chievous fools. I tell you, there are times in your West 
 End when I can hardly breathe because people are such 
 fools. If you are successful, they smile at you. If 
 you are not successful, they look the other way. . . . 
 Oh ! I know it does not matter, but it makes success 
 a paltry thing, and when you have lived for it and hun- 
 gered for it, what then? What are you to do when it 
 is like sand trickling through your fingers?" 
 
 "You can't stop it," said Logan. "You can't throw 
 it away. You can only go on working, come what may." 
 
 "Yes," replied Mendel dubiously, and grievously dis- 
 appointed. He had so hoped to squeeze out his twisted, 
 tortured feelings into words, but at a certain point Logan 
 failed him and seemed to shy at his thought. To a 
 certain quality of passion in himself Logan was insensi- 
 ble. Where his own passion began to gain in clear force 
 and momentum, swinging from the depths of life to the 
 highest imagination, only gaining in strength as the 
 ascent grew more arduous, Logan's remained in an ex- 
 asperated intensity. 
 
 "I'm sorry," said Mendel. "Talking is no use. I've 
 found my way out of as bad times as this, and shall 
 again. It is no good talking. I will sit as silent as the 
 little figures there, and in time I shall know what I 
 must do." 
 
 "You want taking out of yourself," muttered Logan 
 irritably. "Come and see Thompson's show." 
 
 As successful artists they entered the gallery self-con- 
 sciously and rather contemptuously. That did not last 
 long. There were many people sniggering at the Van
 
 REVELATION 365 
 
 Goghs and the Picassos, but Mendel's thoughts flew back 
 to a still-life he had painted of a blue enamel teapot and 
 a yellow matchbox years ago. He had painted them 
 as he had seen them, in raw, crude colour, but the pic- 
 ture had been so derided, and he had been so scornfully 
 reminded that there were no brilliant colours in nature, 
 that he had painted the same subject over again with a 
 very careful rendering of what was called "atmosphere." 
 
 Here were crude colours indeed almost, in many 
 cases, as they came from the tubes, and as for drawing, 
 there was hardly a trace of it, yet in the majority of 
 the pictures there was a riotous freedom which rushed 
 like a cleansing wind through Mendel's mind, and it 
 seemed to him that here was the answer to many of his 
 doubts not a clear vision of art, but a roughly indi- 
 cated road to it. It was absurd to sit cramping over 
 rules and difficult technicalities when the starting-point 
 of art lay so far beyond them. There was much rub- 
 bish in the show, but the works of Cezanne and Picasso 
 were undeniably pictures. They were not flooded with 
 a clear loveliness, like the pictures of Botticelli or Uc- 
 cello, but they had beauty, and lured the mind on to 
 seek another more mysterious beauty beyond them. 
 
 The two friends went through the exhibition in silence. 
 As they left, Mendel asked: 
 
 "Well! what did you think of it?" 
 
 "We're snuffed out," replied Logan despondently. 
 
 "Not I!" cried Mendel. "I'm only just beginning." 
 
 "I don't understand it yet. It has made my eyes 
 and my head ache. At first it seemed to me too cerebral 
 to be art at all, but there's no denying it, and it has to 
 be digested. In a way it is what I have always been 
 talking about. It has to do with the life we are living, 
 which may not be much of a life, but it is ours and we
 
 366 MENDEL 
 
 find it good. It has not been a plunge into another 
 world, like a visit to the National Gallery, but into 
 some reality a little beyond this extraordinary jumble 
 and hotchpotch of metropolitan life." 
 
 "It is painting," said Mendel. "That is enough for 
 me. And they are not afraid of colour. Why should 
 they be ? The colours are there : why not use them ? 
 I'm going to." 
 
 And he went home and dashed off a savage mother 
 with a green face thrusting a straw-coloured breast into 
 the gaping red lips of a child. 
 
 So much for maternity and the Madonnas ! He knew 
 how a man loved his mother, and it was not in that 
 milky way, setting her above nature, she who was tied 
 and bound to natural, instinctive, animal life. If a 
 man loved his mother, it was because with her it was 
 the easiest thing in the world to be intimate and frank 
 and honest and without pretence of any kind. 
 
 His mother was marvellous to him because she was 
 his dearest friend, not because she had given him suck. 
 That was a fact like any other, and facts were not mar- 
 vellous until more and more light was thrown on them 
 from the mind, for in the murk and muddle of human 
 life they were distorted. 
 
 For Mendel this was the wildest and rarest adventure 
 yet. It was a flinging of his cap over the windmills, 
 and with it he had the sense of losing all his troubles, 
 all his perplexities. Nothing for the time being seemed 
 to matter very much. He had always been denied colour, 
 and here he had the right to use it because it had been 
 used by other men rightly. In the world of art, or rather 
 of artists, he had always been a sort of Ishmael, ever 
 since he had outgrown being a prodigy, and here was a 
 new world of art where he could be free. . . . True, he
 
 REVELATION 367 
 
 had seen the same things in Paris and had not thought 
 much of them, but so much had happened since then, and 
 he had passed through the greatest crisis of his life. 
 
 Always after his crises he expected to find himself, 
 and now he thought he had surely done so. He would 
 be entirely free, completely independent. 
 
 For three weeks he lived between his studio and the 
 gallery, studying these strange new vibrant pictures and 
 experimenting with their manners as now this, now that 
 painter influenced him. Picasso baffled him altogether. 
 These queer, violent, angular patterns actually hurt him, 
 and he was repelled by their intellectual intensity. Gau- 
 guin he found too easy, Van Gogh too incoherent. It 
 was when he came to Cezanne that he was bowled out 
 and reduced to impotence and all the egoistic excitement 
 oozed out of him. 
 
 He was not so free then. Here was an art before 
 which he must be humbled and subdued if he was to 
 understand it at all. He abandoned his experiments and 
 made no attempt to work at all, but bought a reproduc- 
 tion of Cezanne's portrait of his wife and spent many 
 days poring over it. It held him and fascinated him, 
 and yet it looked almost like the unfinished work of an 
 amateur who could not draw. Of psychological interest 
 the picture was bare. It was just a portrait of a woman 
 at peace, with her hands folded in her lap, bathed in a 
 serenity beyond mortal understanding, though not beyond 
 mortal perception, since a man had rendered it in paint. 
 It released directly the swift, soaring emotion which, 
 though it was roused in him by many pictures and by 
 some poetry passages in the Bible, for instance was 
 quickly entangled in sensual pleasure and never properly 
 set free. Here, the more he gazed the more that emo- 
 tion, pure, disinterested, unearthly, rushed through him,
 
 368 MENDEL 
 
 exploring all the caverns in his imagination and deliver- 
 ing from them new powers of perception. He felt, as 
 he told Logan afterwards, like a tree putting out its 
 leaves in the spring. 
 
 And yet he could not tell how this miracle was ac- 
 complished. No words could explain it abstraction, 
 composition, design, none of these words helped at all. 
 It was not so much the doing of the thing, the art of 
 the painter, as the setting out of the woman on the can- 
 vas without reference to anything in heaven or earth, 
 or any idea, or any emotion or desire. It was enough 
 that she was a woman, not especially beautiful, not par- 
 ticularly remarkable. So perfect a vision had no need 
 to be tender or affectionate or sensual, or to call in aid 
 any of the emotions of life. It needed no force but the 
 rare religious ecstasy which has no need of ideas or com- 
 mon human feelings, and this vision of a woman gave 
 Mendel a new appreciation of life and love and art. 
 It gave human beings a new value. It was enough that 
 they were alive and upon the earth with all that they 
 contained of good and evil. They were in themselves 
 wonderful, and there was no need to worry about whence 
 they came or whither they were going, or what was their 
 relation to God and the universe. In each man, each 
 woman was enough of God and of the universe to keep 
 them poised for their little hour. 
 
 What, then, was love? What but the sense of being 
 poised, of being borne up by God, an intimation that 
 could only be won through contact with life at its purest. 
 And beyond that again lay a further degree of purity 
 which could only find expression in art, since life, even 
 at its rarest, was too gross. 
 
 Often Mendel kissed his reproduction reverently and 
 hugged it to his bosom, thinking childishly that some of
 
 REVELATION 369 
 
 its spirit could enter into him by contact. He whispered 
 to it : 
 
 "I love you. You are my truth and my joy rising 
 up through life, even from its very depths, and shaking 
 free of it at last into pure, serene beauty. You weigh 
 neither upon my senses nor upon my thoughts, but, fol- 
 lowing you, they are joined together to become a high 
 sense which can know deliverance." 
 
 Followed days of a supreme delight. He wandered 
 through the streets seeing all men and all women and 
 all things as wonderful, since through them all flowed 
 his lovely spirit which in the few men here and there 
 could find its freedom and its expression in form. 
 
 Through Thompson he met a journalist who was 
 writing a book about the new painting, and from him 
 he learned the little that was known about Cezanne : how 
 he worked away experimenting unsuccessfully until he 
 was middle-aged, and then withdrew from the world of 
 artists in Paris, to live the life of a simple country bour- 
 geois and to paint the vision which he had begun to 
 divine: and how he painted out in the fields, leaving 
 his canvases in the hedges and by the wayside, because 
 not the painting but the expression of his spirit and the 
 solution of his problem mattered to him: and how he 
 never sold a single picture, never attempted to sell them. 
 
 Such, thought Mendel, should the life of an artist 
 be. But how was it possible if life would not let him 
 alone, but was perpetually dragging him down into the 
 mud? What mud, what filth he had had to flounder 
 through to get even so far as he had! 
 
 And already he began to feel that he was slipping 
 back. He could not accept that knowledge of the spirit 
 vicariously, but must fight for his own knowledge of it 
 in direct contact with life. To endeavour to escape from
 
 370 MENDEL 
 
 life was to isolate himself, to lose the driving force of 
 life from darkness into the light, to dwell in the twilight 
 of solitude armed only with his puny egoism and the 
 paltry tricks of professional painting. He felt that at last 
 he knew his desire, but in no wise how to attain it. 
 Cezanne had had a wife: that had settled one of the 
 torments of life. He had had ample means : that had 
 absolved him from the ever-present difficulty of money. 
 These considerations relieved Mendel from another 
 weighty puzzle. Perhaps if Cezanne had had to please 
 other people and not only his own spirit, he would have 
 cared more for his craft and for the quality of his paint. 
 . . . All the same, it was good to have pictures reduced 
 to their bare essentials, relieved of ornament and trickery, 
 and yet retaining their full pictorial quality. 
 
 Shortly after the party Logan and Oliver had moved 
 to a little cottage on Hampstead Heath, just below Jack 
 Straw's Castle. Mendel went to see them there and met 
 Logan on the Spaniard's Road. He was in a deplorable 
 condition. His right eye was blackened, his nose was 
 bloody and scratched, the lobe of his ear was torn and 
 his forehead was purple with bruises. 
 
 "What on earth have you been doing to yourself!" 
 asked Mendel. 
 
 "I've had a fight," said Logan glibly. "The other 
 night on the Heath I came on a man beating a girl. I 
 went for him. He was a huge lout of a man. We had 
 a terrific tussle, and just as I was getting him down 
 the girl went for me and scratched my face." 
 
 "If you lived where I do," said Mendel, "you would 
 know better than to interfere." 
 
 "Oh! I enjoyed it," said Logan. "I couldn't stand by 
 and see it done."
 
 REVELATION 371 
 
 They ran down the grassy slope to the cottage, where 
 they found Oliver entertaining Thompson and her critic. 
 She had a slight bruise over her right eye, and Mendel 
 thought : 
 
 "Why does he lie? Why should he lie to me? I 
 should think no worse of him for beating her. If I 
 could not shake her off I should kill her." 
 
 He was filled with a sudden disgust at the household, 
 which in his eyes had become an obscene profanation. 
 
 The talk was excited, and formerly he would have 
 found it interesting. Thompson was full of the triumph 
 of the exhibition and its success in forcing art upon the 
 public. He spoke glibly of abstraction and cubing, and 
 it was clear that they only delighted him as new tricks. 
 
 Oliver took part in the conversation. She had picked 
 up the jargon of painters and made great play with the 
 names of the new masters. To hear her talking glibly 
 of Cezanne and saying how he had shown the object 
 of pictorial art to be pattern filled Mendel's soul with 
 loathing. He could not protest. What was the good of 
 protesting to such people? ... If only Logan had not 
 been among them ! He wanted to talk to Logan, to tell 
 him what this new thing meant, to make him see that 
 he must give up all thought of turning art back upon 
 life, because life did not matter so very much. It could 
 look after itself, while the integrity of art must at all 
 costs be maintained. 
 
 However, when Thompson said that the artist was 
 now free to make up a picture out of any shapes he 
 liked, Mendel could not contain himself, and said : 
 
 "The artist is no more free than ever he was. He 
 does not become free by burking representation. He is 
 not free merely to work by caprice and fantasy .^ He is 
 rather more strictly bound than ever, because he is work-
 
 372 MENDEL 
 
 ing through his imagination and cannot get out of it 
 merely by using his eyes and imitating charming things. 
 If he tries to get out of it by impudent invention, then 
 pictures will be just as dull and degraded as before." 
 
 " 'I am Sir Oracle/ " said the critic, " 'and when I 
 ope my lips let no dog bark.' ' 
 
 "You can bark away," cried Mendel, "but you must 
 not complain if a man loses patience with you and kicks 
 you back into your kennel." 
 
 "Just listen to the boy!" cried Oliver. "Success has 
 turned his pretty little head. Just listen to him teaching 
 the critics their business!" 
 
 Mendel gave her a furious look of contempt and left 
 the room and the house. Logan came running after him. 
 
 "I say, old man," he said, "you mustn't mind what 
 she says. Those damn fools have stuffed her head up 
 with their nonsense and she hasn't the brains of a louse." 
 
 "If it was my house, I would kick them out." 
 
 "They are good fellows enough." 
 
 "Good fellows ! When they make her more idiotic and 
 blatant than she is!" 
 
 "I can't think what made you so angry. There was 
 nothing to flare up about. You are so touchy." 
 
 Mendel was walking at a furious pace. Logan was 
 out of condition and had to beg him to go more slowly. 
 
 "I'm all to bits," said Logan. "That row " 
 
 "Why do you tell lies? It was she who mauled you. 
 Why do you tell lies to me? I have never told lies to 
 you about anything. You have always jeered at women 
 and said they can know nothing about art, and yet you 
 let her talk. . . . Why don't you leave her?" 
 
 "We're very fond of each other," replied Logan. "It 
 has gone too deep. We hate each other like poison some- 
 times, but that only makes it the real thing go deeper."
 
 REVELATION 373 
 
 "I can't bear it," said Mendel ; "I can't bear it. It was 
 bad enough when she kept quiet, but now that she gives 
 herself airs and talks, I can't stand it. I hate her so 
 that I feel as if the top of my head would blow off. . . . 
 Perhaps there was nothing much in what she said. Per- 
 haps it was only a slow growing detestation coming to 
 a head. But there it is. It is final. I have tried to like 
 her, to be decent to her, to make allowances for her, but 
 it is impossible." 
 
 "You don't mean you are not going to come to see us 
 again ?" 
 
 "Yes. That is what I do mean. She doesn't exist 
 for me any longer. If I met her in a cafe or in the 
 streets she would be all right. She would be in her place. 
 There would be some truth in her. In connection with 
 you she is a festering lie." 
 
 "She can't settle down to it," replied Logan lamely, 
 ashamed of his inability to defend Oliver from this on- 
 slaught. Defence would be quite useless, for he knew 
 that Mendel would detect his untruth. If only Mendel 
 were a little older, if only he could have grown out of 
 youth's dreadful inability to compromise. 
 
 "She can't settle down," Logan continued. "She is 
 a creature of enormous vitality and she has no life out- 
 side herself, no imagination. Can't you see that her 
 vitality has no outlet? I don't know, but it seems to 
 me appalling to think of these modern women with their 
 independence, and nothing at all to do with it. 
 won't admit the authority of the male, and they have 
 broken out of the home. A lot of them refuse to have 
 children. I feel sorry for them." 
 
 "Don't go on talking round and round the subject, 
 cried Mendel wrathfully. He was really alarmed and 
 pained as he saw himself being carried nearer and nearer
 
 374 MENDEL 
 
 to a breach with his friend. "I can't feel sorry for her 
 and I don't. She is ruining you. You never laugh now- 
 adays. You are always more dead than alive, and I can- 
 not bear to see you with her. I cannot bear even to think 
 of you with her." 
 
 "For God's sake, don't talk like that!" muttered Lo- 
 gan, quickening his pace to keep up, for Mendel was 
 flying along. 
 
 "You must either give her up or me," said Mendel. 
 
 "Don't say that!" pleaded Logan; "don't say that! 
 I can't get on without you. I don't see how I can get 
 on without you. All the happiness I have ever had has 
 come through you. Every hope I have is centred in 
 you. If you go, life will become nothing but work, work, 
 work, with nobody to understand. Nobody. . . . And 
 I have been so full of hope. All this new business has 
 made such a stir and has brought such life into painting 
 that I had begun to feel that anything was possible. 
 There might be even a stirring of the spirit to stem the 
 tide of commercialism. You know what my life has 
 been one long struggle to find a way out of the pres- 
 sure of vulgarity and sordid money-making, out of sen- 
 timentality and pretty lying fantasy, out of the corrup- 
 tion that from top to bottom is eating up the life of the 
 country. You know that when I met you I had almost 
 given up the struggle in despair. One man alone could 
 not do it. But two men could two men who trusted 
 and believed in each other. . . . You were very young 
 when I first met you, but you have come on wonder- 
 fully. It has been thrilling for me to watch the growth 
 of your mind and the strengthening of your character. 
 You are the only man I ever met who could really stand 
 by himself. ... It isn't easy for me to say all this, but 
 I must tell you what your friendship has meant to me."
 
 REVELATION 375 
 
 The more Logan talked, the more he divulged his feel- 
 ings, his very real affection, the more Mendel's mind 
 was concentrated on the one purpose, to get him away 
 from Oliver. 
 
 "You must give her up," he said. 
 
 "I can't," gasped Logan. 
 
 They stood facing each other, Mendel staring into 
 his friend's eyes that looked piteously, wearily, miser- 
 ably out of his haggard, battered face. He could not 
 endure it, and he could not yield to the entreaty in Lo- 
 gan's eyes. 
 
 He turned quickly and ran to a bus which had stopped 
 a few yards in front. He rushed up the steps and was 
 whirled away. Unable to resist turning round, he saw 
 Logan standing where he had left him, with his head 
 bowed, his shoulders hunched up, a figure of shameful 
 misery. 
 
 After some minutes of numbness, of trying to gather 
 up the threads snapped off by his astonishment at the 
 quickness of the affair, Mendel began to tremble. His 
 hands and his knees shook, and he could not control 
 them. It was only gradually that he began to realise 
 how strong his feelings had been, and how great the 
 horror and the shock of knowing through and through, 
 without blinking a single fact, the terrible relationship 
 that bound Logan and Oliver tied together in an insa- 
 tiable sensuality, locked in a deadly embrace, like beasts 
 of prey fighting over carrion : a furious, evil conflict over 
 a dead lust. ... At the same time he knew that he was 
 bound with them, that in their life together he had his 
 share, and that it was dragging him down, down from 
 the ecstatic exaltation he had perceived in his new friend, 
 Cezanne, a friend who could never fail, a friend upon
 
 376 MENDEL 
 
 whom no devastation could alight, a friend through 
 whom he could never be clawed back into life. 
 
 By the time he reached home he was completely ex- 
 hausted, and begged his mother to make him a cup of 
 strong tea. 
 
 "What is it now ?" Golda asked. "What is the trouble ? 
 There is always something new, and I think you will 
 never be a man. For a man expects trouble and does 
 not make himself ill over it." 
 
 "I have quarreled with Logan," said Mendel, dropping 
 with relief into Yiddish as a barrier against the outer 
 world, in which terrible things were always happening. 
 
 "A good job too!" said Golda; "a good job too! He 
 was no good to you. He only made you do the work 
 that nobody likes. Now you can go back to the old 
 way, and Mr. Froitzheim and Mr. Birnbaum will be 
 pleased with you again. . . . You had better give up 
 your friends. You are like a woman, the way you must 
 always be in love with your friends. . . . But it is no 
 good. Men will always fall in love, and then it is over 
 with friendship. . . . Friends are only for moments. 
 They come and disappear and come again. It is foolish 
 to think you can keep them. ... Is your head bad ?" 
 
 "Pretty bad." 
 
 "You have not been drinking again?" 
 
 "No. I've been leading a decent life. I expect it 
 doesn't suit me." 
 
 "Rubbish. . . . Rosa says the Christian girl has been 
 to see you." 
 
 He leaped to his feet. \ 
 
 "Didn't she stay? Didn't you make her stay? What 
 did she say? How did she look? Did she leave no 
 message?" 
 
 Golda smiled at him.
 
 REVELATION 
 
 377 
 
 "You had better go and see," she said. 
 
 He darted from the room and across to his studio 
 panting with excitement, persuading himself at every 
 step that she was there, waiting for him, perhaps hiding 
 to tease him, for she was a terrible tease. 
 
 By the time he reached his studio he was so con- 
 vinced that she was there that he hardly dared open 
 the door. He pushed it open very gently and peered in". 
 The room was empty, but he felt sure that she was there. 
 He peeped round the corner into his bedroom. She was 
 not there. He had to believe it, and came dejectedly 
 back into the studio. 
 
 On his painting-table were autumn flowers daintily ar- 
 ranged in the old jug he used for a vase. He buried 
 his face in them. She was there! She was there in 
 the sweetness and fragrance of the flowers.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 CONFLICT 
 
 T\>TORRISON had fought bravely through her storms 
 *** and difficulties. She frightened Clowes with the 
 violence of her efforts and the terrible strain she in- 
 flicted on her vitality. There were times when she 
 thought the simplest way would be to cut adrift from 
 all her old associations and to throw in her lot with 
 Mendel, to give him his desire and so save him from 
 the terrible life he was leading. But that was too dras- 
 tic, too simple. She could only have done it on a great 
 impulse, but always her deepest feelings shrank from it, 
 and without her deepest feelings she could not go to him, 
 for they were engaged most of all. . . . She felt 
 cramped and confined, as though her love were a cord 
 wound round and round her limbs, and she could not, she 
 would not go to him bound. He must release her; she 
 must compel him to release her. If it took half her life- 
 time she would so compel him. Her will was concen- 
 trated upon him. She would not have their love droop 
 from the high sympathy it had known, nor should it 
 be torn from it by his savage strength and the adorable 
 violence of his passion. Neither, on the other hand, 
 would she turn back from him. That would be to deny 
 her freedom which she had bought so dearly. She had 
 thought her freedom would give her the easy joy of 
 
 378
 
 CONFLICT 
 
 379 
 
 flowers and clouds and birds, and she still believed in 
 that easy joy, but it lay beyond the tangled web of this 
 love for the strange, dark, faunlike creature whom she 
 had found in the woods. If she turned back, if she 
 denied the urgent emotions that drove her on, she had 
 nothing to turn to but the old captivity, the life where 
 all difficulties were arranged for, where all roads led to 
 marriage, where men could only talk to women in a half- 
 patronising, half -flirtatious way that led to a ridiculous 
 meeting of the senses, then to an engagement, and so 
 to church. To that she would never, never return. She 
 had fought her way out of it. She had learned to live 
 by herself, within herself, to wrestle with her thoughts 
 and emotions and to get them into shape. (It had been 
 at a great cost to her external tidiness and orderliness, 
 but that too she hoped to tackle in time.) She had 
 won all this, and she had found a glorious outlet in 
 work. So far as she had gone she had been successful, 
 and she was ambitious, terribly ambitious, to show that 
 a woman could do good work. 
 
 And then there was the dark side of Mendel's life 
 Logan, Oliver, Jessie Petrie. At the thought of it she 
 shuddered, but her honesty made her confess that it 
 made no difference to her central feeling. It had shocked 
 her, outraged her, roused her to a fury of jealousy, but 
 that she would not have. She fought it down inch by 
 inch until she had it so well in control that, whenever it 
 reared its head, she could crush it down. 
 
 Many a tear had it cost her, but she insisted that she 
 must understand. 
 
 When she cut her hair short, she found, to her horror, 
 that it was taken by many men as a sign that she was 
 open to their advances, and all sorts and conditions of 
 men had found to their astonishment that, although
 
 380 MENDEL 
 
 she was an artist and lived an independent life, she was 
 immovable, and when it came to argument she was more 
 than a match for them. 
 
 Again, she had had the confidence of more than one 
 of the models, and she knew how they courted their own 
 disasters. If there was to be any question of blame, 
 the women must share it with the men. 
 
 She had no thought of blaming Mendel, but she hated 
 to have that underworld in contact with the world which 
 it was her whole desire to keep beautiful. It was no good 
 pretending that the underworld was not there, but if 
 she could have her way she would keep a tight control 
 over it, and suppress it as she suppressed her jealousy, 
 that other source of ugliness. If she could only, some- 
 how, find an entrance to Mendel's life, not only to his 
 rare moments, but to the life that went on from day to 
 day, she would suppress it, she would cut it out and throw 
 it away. She thought of it almost as a surgical opera- 
 tion, or as cutting a bruise out of an apple, for all her 
 thoughts of life were as simple as herself, and life too 
 was simple in her eyes. Anything that threatened to 
 complicate it she expunged. 
 
 After a time she discovered that it was no good hoping 
 to understand so long as she regarded the dark aspect 
 of Mendel from outside his life. She must find her way 
 inside it and see how it looked there. That was hard. 
 
 Clowes could not help her at all. To Clowes it was 
 simply unintelligible that men could do these things. 
 They bewildered her, and her only way out of it was 
 to suppose that men were like that, and the less said 
 about it the better. She was really very annoyed with 
 Morrison for worrying over it, and she was disappointed. 
 She had hoped that the unfortunate adventure would be 
 over and that Morrison would wait tranquilly for her
 
 CONFLICT 381 
 
 affections to be engaged by some one who was present- 
 able. . . . Still, there was no accounting for this strange, 
 impulsive creature, though it was a pity she should throw 
 away her growing popularity with people who were, after 
 all, important, both in themselves and by their position; 
 for Morrison's frank charm carried her to places where 
 Clowes would have given her eyes to be seen. Clowes 
 was baffled by her friend, but she would not abandon 
 her. She was often bored with her, often exasperated, 
 and more than once she said: 
 
 "Well, if you like these wild people so much, why 
 don't you take the plunge and join them? You are wild 
 enough yourself." 
 
 "I'm not wild in that way," replied Morrison. "And 
 I know that if I did do it it would be wrong." 
 
 And she returned to her task of labouring to under- 
 stand Mendel. She carried the idea of him wherever she 
 went, and was sometimes able to call up a clear image 
 of him, and she was fearful for him because he seemed 
 to her so helpless, so much a stranger in a strange land, 
 so easily caught up in any strong current of feeling or 
 enthusiasm. . . . She, too, often felt outside things, but 
 she so much enjoyed being a looker-on. She loved to 
 watch the race among the young artists, and she longed 
 for Mendel to win. It was right that he should win, 
 because he was so much the best of them all. He had 
 taken the lead. It had looked as though he must in- 
 fallibly win, and then Logan had appeared and he had 
 stumbled in his stride. 
 
 Yet this had never been satisfying. She had no right 
 to turn Mendel into a figure on a frieze, to see him in 
 the flat, as it were, and it was in revolt against this con- 
 ception that she had agreed to go with him to Logan's 
 party, which had been so disastrous. . . . Had she not
 
 382 MENDEL 
 
 been cowardly to run away? But what could she do, 
 what else could she do, when confronted so suddenly 
 with the appalling fact? 
 
 A week before the party Mendel had insisted on lend- 
 ing her "J ean .Christophe" volume by volume. She had 
 read the first without great interest. The friendship be- 
 tween the two boys struck her as silly and sentimental 
 and not worth writing about, and she had read no fur- 
 ther. However, when she found that Mendel was be- 
 coming a fixed idea, to escape from it she took up the 
 second volume, and was enthralled by the tale of Chris- 
 tophe's love for Ada, thrilled by the sudden scene of his 
 assault on the peasant girl in the field, and with a grow- 
 ing sense of illumination followed his life as it passed 
 from woman to woman, finding consolation with one, 
 relief with another, comfort with another, comradeship 
 with yet another, and the physical relationship slipped 
 into its place and was never dominant. And Christophe, 
 too, had had women of passage because his vitality was 
 so abundant that it could not be contained in his being. 
 It must be always flowing out into art or into life, taking 
 from life more and more power to give to art. . . . 
 With Gratia she was out of patience. Gratia was alto- 
 gether too complacent an Egeria. Morrison thought she 
 could have given Christophe more than that. 
 
 She made Clowes read the book, but Clowes found 
 it no help. That was in a story, this was actually 
 happening in London ; and besides, the book had a rhap- 
 sodic, dreamlike quality that smoothed away all ugliness, 
 all difficulties. In life things were definitely ugly, and 
 it was no good pretending they were anything else. 
 
 "Anyhow," said Morrison, "I'm going on." 
 
 "You are going to see him again?" 
 
 "Yes, I will not be beaten. If I were married to
 
 CONFLICT 383 
 
 him I should put up with everything, and I don't see 
 why not being married should make any difference." 
 Clowes threw up her hands and said : 
 "Well, if you come to grief, don't blame me." 
 "I'm not going to come to grief," said Morrison. "I'm 
 going to win I'm going to win." 
 
 It was then that she went out and bought the flowers. 
 Her courage nearly failed her as she approached the door 
 in the little slummy street. Suppose he should be angry 
 with her for running away, and contemptuous of her 
 cowardice ! His anger and contempt were not easy things 
 to face. 
 
 She was relieved, therefore, when the dirty little Jew- 
 ish servant opened the door and told her Mendel was 
 out. She handed in the flowers shyly and went away 
 without a word. 
 
 Mendel wrote to thank her for the flowers, but said 
 nothing about going to see her or about what he was 
 doing. She thought he must be contemptuous of her, 
 though it was not like him to be so stupid as not to re- 
 spond to a direct impulse. On the other hand, he had 
 always tried to impose his authority on her, and she was 
 not going to do his bidding. Either he must take her 
 on her own level or not at all. She would make him 
 understand that she too was driving at something, and 
 that love was to her not an end in itself, much though 
 she might desire love and its freedom. He had always 
 made her feel that he regarded love as sufficient for 
 her. She must curl up in it and be happy while he went 
 on with his work. Against that all the free instinct in 
 her cried out. A woman was not a mere embryo to be 
 incubated in a man's passion, hatched out into a wife 
 and a helpmate. . . . When she tried to imagine what
 
 384 MENDEL 
 
 life with him would be like, she shivered until she thought 
 what life with him might be if she could bring to it all 
 her force and all her freedom. 
 
 At last she began to think that perhaps it was her own 
 fault for not having left a note or a message with the 
 flowers, which might be regarded only as a token of 
 sentimental forgiveness. She knew how easily he was 
 sickened by any sign of Christian sentimentality "filthy 
 gush" as he called it. ... To safeguard against that 
 and to have done with it once and for all, she wrote to 
 him and told him that she had been reading "Jean Chris- 
 tophe," and that it had helped her to understand both his 
 sufferings and his need of what in an ordinary foolish 
 vain man would have to be condemned. 
 
 To this letter he did not reply, and she determined 
 that she would go and see him. She would take Clowes, 
 in case things had become impossible and their sympathy 
 had somehow been undermined and destroyed. Even if it 
 were, she would not accept or believe it, and she would 
 fight to restore it. A vague intuition took possession of 
 her by which she surely knew that something strange, 
 perhaps even terrible, was happening to him, and she 
 felt that he needed her but did not know his need. 
 
 It required some persuasion to take Clowes down to 
 Whitechapel. She declared that she would stand by her 
 friend whatever happened, but that she did not wish to be 
 personally mixed up in it. It would, she said, make her 
 in part responsible for whatever happened, and she did 
 not think she could bear it. However, Morrison ex- 
 plained that she only wanted her there in case things 
 were impossible, and that, if they were not, she could 
 make good her escape as soon as she liked. On that 
 Clowes consented and they journeyed to the East End. 
 
 The little Jewish servant said that Mr. Mendel was
 
 CONFLICT 385 
 
 engaged. Would she go up and see if he would soon be 
 disengaged ? She ran upstairs and came down in a mo- 
 ment to ask if they would wait, and to their surprise, 
 darted past them, along the street, beckoned to them to 
 follow, and led them to Golda's kitchen. Golda bobbed 
 to them, dusted chairs for them to sit on, and, not know- 
 ing enough English to be able to talk to them, went on 
 with her ironing. When she had finished that, she shyly 
 produced an album and showed them all the photographs 
 of Mendel since he was a baby. 
 
 Meanwhile, in his studio Mendel was in agitated con- 
 versation with Mr. Tilney Tysoe, who had arrived half 
 an hour before, wagging his hands, rolling his enormous 
 eyes, almost demented by the lamentable news he had to 
 tell. Logan had left Oliver! 
 
 "When?" asked Mendel. 
 
 "A few days ago," said Tysoe. "The poor fellow 
 came round to me one night after dinner. You know, he 
 often drops in in the evening. Such a splendid fellow, 
 so sincere, such a force ! And his admiration for you is 
 very touching. He came in and raved like a madman and 
 said terrible things oh, terrible things ! He told me that 
 I was a fool and did not know a picture from my foot, 
 and he denounced himself as a scoundrel and a thief and 
 a liar. He wanted me to destroy all the pictures I had 
 bought from him, and said they were not worth the 
 stretchers of the canvas they were painted on. ... Oh ! 
 it was terrible, terrible ! He said that for years he had 
 been pulling my leg, and had got such a taste for it that 
 he had begun to pull his own leg, and he went on to say 
 that his soul was rotten with lies ; and then he broke into 
 a torrent of wild, splendid stuff that made my spine 
 tingle. I assure you, I could not contain my enthusiasm.
 
 386 MENDEL 
 
 . . . Oh ! he is a splendid fellow. ... I can't remember 
 it all very well, but he said that love is impossible in 
 the world as it is, and that everybody is living in hate. 
 It sounded most true most true though you know I 
 adore my wife. . . . He said that humanity has tried 
 aristocracy and failed, and it has tried democracy and 
 failed. It has swung from one extreme to the other and 
 found satisfaction in neither, and now it must bend the 
 two extremes together so as to get the electric spark 
 which can illumine life, and also to create a circle in 
 which life can be contained. Of course, I haven't got it at 
 all clear, but it was most inspiring most inspiring. Cer- 
 tainly life is very unsatisfactory, and it must be mad- 
 dening for artists, maddening, though of course it should 
 drive them on to make a mighty effort. We are all look- 
 ing to the artists nowadays, especially since that won- 
 derful exhibition." 
 
 "Yes, yes," said Mendel impatiently; "but what about 
 Logan?" 
 
 "He told me you had quarrelled with him. Such a 
 pity! Dear me! dear me! You were such a splendid 
 pair, so sincere. He said it was irrevocable. But, you 
 know, 'The falling out of faithful friends renewing is 
 of love.' Have you read the Oxford 'Book of Verse'? 
 A storehouse of poetry. ... I came to see you for that 
 reason. Quarrels ought not to be irrevocable. ... I 
 have been to see Oliver too. Poor girl! poor girl! I 
 am keeping their little nest at Hampstead for them. . . . 
 I told Logan he ought to marry her. Of course, I know, 
 artists have their own view on that subject, but there is 
 a great deal to be said for marriage. Most people are 
 married, you know, and a woman who is not married 
 must feel out of it. Nothing to do with morality, of 
 course, but you know what women are. They can't bear
 
 CONFLICT 387 
 
 even their clothes to be different, and, after all, marriage 
 is only a garment which we wear for decency's sake." 
 
 "But where is Logan ?" 
 
 "That I don't know," said Tysoe. "Oliver said he 
 would be here. She said it was your fault that they had 
 quarrelled. . . . Poor girl! So pretty too! ... I 
 thought if you made it up with Logan, then he could 
 make it up with her and we should all be happy again. 
 We might have a nice little dinner of reconciliation at my 
 house." 
 
 "It is no use, no use whatever," said Mendel. "Logan 
 might go back to her, but he will never come back to 
 me. We have gone different ways, not only in life, but 
 in our work." 
 
 "You won't make it up?" asked Tysoe plaintively. 
 
 "No," answered Mendel. "I should like to, but it is 
 impossible. It is very good of you to try to intervene. 
 Logan was my friend. He is no longer the same man. 
 He is altered, he is changed, he is done for." 
 
 "Nothing could ruin a man like that. It is disastrous, 
 it is terrible that he should lose his friend and the girl 
 he loves at one stroke. Kuhler, I implore you, I entreat 
 you, if he comes to see you, you will not refuse him." 
 
 "If he comes I will see him, certainly," said Mendel. 
 
 "Ah! That is all I want," said Tysoe, beaming hope- 
 fully. 
 
 "But he will not come." 
 
 "We shall find a way. We shall find a way. ... Ah! 
 superb !" he added, catching sight of Mendel's green- faced 
 Mother. "Ah! The new spirit at work in your art. 
 Colour! What you have always wanted! . . . How- 
 how much?" 
 
 "Ten pounds," said Mendel. 
 
 "May I take it with me ? I will send you my cheque."
 
 388 MENDEL 
 
 Mendel wrapped the picture up in brown paper and 
 gave it him, told him he must go, thanked him for his 
 kindness, and with unutterable relief watched him go 
 shambling down the stairs. 
 
 It was very certain that Logan would not come. There 
 could be nothing but futile suffering for both of them, 
 and Logan would know that as well as he. Logan knew 
 himself better than most men, and he must have felt the 
 finality of that parting in the street. The breach was 
 final and irrevocable, for Oliver was definitely a part of 
 Logan, as much a part of him as his hand or his eyes, and 
 Mendel hated Oliver with a pure, simple, immovable pas- 
 sion. He saw in her embodied the natural enemy of all 
 that he loved : order, decency, honesty, art, and beauty. 
 He would have liked to blot out all trace of her every- 
 where, but she lived most intensely in his mind. She ex- 
 isted for him hardly at all as a person, but as an evil, 
 fixed will set on the destruction of Logan, of friendship, 
 of art, of love, of beauty, of everything that lived dis- 
 tinctly and clearly and with a flame-like energy. She 
 existed to drag all down into the glowing ashes of lust 
 and lies. There were times when she became symbolical 
 of that Christian world that had made him suffer so in- 
 tensely. In her was the only discernible will of that 
 world in which everything was losing shape and form, 
 every flame was dying down, and "everything, good and 
 bad, was being reduced to ashes. 
 
 "Good and bad?" thought Mendel. "I don't know 
 what they mean. I know what is false and what is true. 
 What is false I hate. What is true I love. That woman 
 is a lie and I hate her, and I wish she were dead." 
 
 Logan might hate her too, but he would always try, al- 
 ways hope to love her, always waste himself in trying to
 
 CONFLICT 389 
 
 kindle her lust into a passion. The fool, the weak fool ! 
 Let her rot; let her drop down to her own level, where 
 she could be decently a beast of prey, marked out to be 
 shunned except by those who were her natural victims. 
 Logan was too good : but if there was so much good in 
 him, might not something be done? . . . No. Only Lo- 
 gan's own will could save him. Nothing could be done 
 for him except out of pity : and who wants pity? Leave 
 that to men like Tysoe, the kindly, emasculate fools of 
 the world. 
 
 Yet mendel knew that he was bound to Logan. At 
 first he thought it must be by pity, but it was deeper 
 than that. There was not much capacity for pity in 
 Mendel. Ruthless with himself, he could see no reason 
 why others should be spared what he himself was ready 
 to endure. He had never thought that others might be 
 weaker than he. Logan, for instance, with ten years' 
 more experience behind him, had always seemed in- 
 finitely stronger. 
 
 And so Logan had left Oliver! There must have 
 been a terrible row. . . . Oh, well, he would go back to 
 her. There would be no end to the affair, there could 
 be no end unless Logan were strong enough to stand 
 by himself. But when had he ever tried to do that? 
 Even in his work he borrowed here and there. Mendel 
 was sure now that all Logan's work had grown out of 
 his own, and was often, by some amazing sleight of 
 mind, an anticipation of his own ideas. That explained 
 a good deal : his growing sense that Logan was really 
 his enemy, and was cramping and thwarting him, a 
 sense that endured even after the quarrel. It was strong 
 upon him now. Tysoe had brought Logan vividly to his 
 mind and made him feel impotent, possessed by a vision 
 of art but unable to move a step towards it, rather
 
 390 MENDEL 
 
 dragged further and further away from it. He was 
 ashamed when he thought of how often he had excitedly 
 followed Logan's lead, only to come now to this dis- 
 covery that he was brought back to his own inchoate 
 ideas. . . . He was reminded oddly of the journalist 
 who had interviewed him after his first success and had 
 produced so grotesque a parody of his innocently con- 
 ceited remarks. 
 
 A tap at the door reminded him of the "two young 
 ladies" who were waiting to see him. He rushed 
 eagerly to the door and flung it open, thinking to find 
 healing and refreshment in the sight of Morrison. 
 Only Clowes was standing there, and in his disappoint- 
 ment her face seemed to him so foolish and flabby and 
 idiotic that his impulse was to shut the door. . . . He 
 would bang the door in her face and it would shut out 
 the Christian world for ever. It did not want him, and 
 he did not want it, for it was full of lies. . . . Then he 
 heard a footstep on the stairs and Morrison appeared. 
 
 "Come in," he said. "Come in." 
 
 "I can't stay long," said Clowes nervously. 
 
 "All right," he replied. 
 
 Morrison reached the top of the stairs, and he stood 
 looking at her. 
 
 "How are you?" 
 
 "I'm very well." 
 
 She was horrified at the change in him. He looked so 
 tragic and drawn. 
 
 "Clowes can't stop long," she said. "But I'll stop, if 
 I may. I should like to." 
 
 "I'm afraid I haven't got anything to show you. I 
 haven't been working lately." 
 
 "It seems to be a pretty general complaint," said 
 Clowes. "Everybody is so upset by the French pictures.
 
 CONFLICT 391 
 
 I should like to shake that Thompson until his teeth rat- 
 tled. He is so pleased with himself." 
 
 "He's an awful man," muttered Mendel. "He seems 
 to think he told Cezanne and Van Gogh how to do it. 
 There seems to be a whole army of men ready to take 
 the credit of a thing when some one else has done it. 
 I suppose they are all talking like mad." 
 
 "What is so astonishing is that these things are actu- 
 ally selling, and people who never sold a picture in their 
 lives dab a few straight lines on a picture and off it goes." 
 
 Mendel laughed. 
 
 "I've just sold one," he said. "I came straight back 
 from the exhibition and painted it. They sell just as if 
 they were a new kind of toy that is all the rage." 
 
 So they kept up a cheerful rattle of conversation until 
 Clowes said she really must go. No ; she would not have 
 tea, but she hoped Mendel would come to tea with her 
 one day. 
 
 He saw her to the front door and ran upstairs again, 
 
 three steps at a time. 
 
 "Now, then," he said, "what have you come for, and 
 why did you bring her?" 
 
 "In case there was nothing to be said and this visit 
 was another failure. I'm sick of failure ; aren't you ?" 
 
 "I didn't answer your letter. I thought it was all 
 
 over." fj 
 
 "But I told you what had made me change. 
 "It was nothing to do with that. Everything seemed 
 
 all over, and I'm not sure even now that it isn't." 
 
 "I knew something was happening to you. What is 
 
 it?" 
 
 "I've quarrelled with Logan." 
 
 She was silent for a moment or two, and then she 
 
 said :
 
 392 MENDEL 
 
 "I'm so glad." 
 
 "You didn't like him. Why?" 
 
 "I thought him second-rate." 
 
 "He isn't that. He has a good mind, and he was a 
 good friend." 
 
 "Are you so sure of that?" 
 
 "Of some things in him of his affection, for instance 
 I am as sure as I am of myself." 
 
 She smiled at him. 
 
 "Yes. That is saying a good deal. But why did you 
 quarrel?" 
 
 "It was over his woman." 
 
 "Oh yes!" , , 
 
 "He has left her." 
 
 "Has he been to see you?" 
 
 "No. It was a friend of his. I don't know what will 
 happen. They are bound to come together again. Per- 
 haps they will go through life like that parting and 
 coming together again. I can't get it out of my head. I 
 shall never forget it. It is like my father knocking a 
 drunken soldier down with a glass. I never forget that, 
 though it was different. That was just something that 
 I saw. This is in my own life. I feel as though it had 
 somehow happened through me. I was with him when 
 he met her, you know, and his whole life changed when 
 he met me. Perhaps he wasn't meant to take things seri- 
 ously. ... I didn't write to you because I didn't want to 
 drag you into it. But I'm glad you've come. I'm glad 
 you've come. . . . You know, it was beginning to be a 
 horror with me that Logan would come in at that door, 
 looking like a poor, battered, broken little Napoleon, 
 and I should have to tell him that I was not his friend. 
 . . . You know, he was something vital and living in my 
 work, but Cezanne has kicked him out. He was only my
 
 CONFLICT 393 
 
 friend really in my work, and if that goes everything 
 goes. I couldn't explain it to him, for he wouldn't un- 
 derstand. He used to laugh at me for talking about my 
 work to you. I'm afraid I told him more about you than 
 I ought to have done, but, you see, he was my friend. 
 He laughed at everything. He ought to have been a very 
 happy man, the way he laughed at everything." 
 
 He placed in her hands his reproduction of Cezanne's 
 portrait of his wife. 
 
 "That's better than Cranach," he said. 
 
 "But why is her mouth crooked?" asked Morrison, 
 puzzled by the picture and by his setting it above Cranach. 
 
 "I don't know," replied Mendel, "but Cezanne knew 
 when he did it." 
 
 And he tried to explain the making of the picture, 
 but she could not understand it. However, she could 
 understand and love his enthusiasm, and they were both 
 happy, talking rather aimlessly and often relapsing into 
 silence. 
 
 "I never can make out," he said, "why you are more 
 wonderful to me than anybody else. Directly I am with 
 you, I am not so much happy as free. Even if I am 
 miserable and you don't make me any happier, I want 
 you with me. ... You mustn't go away again." 
 
 "No. I don't want to go away." 
 
 "Why need you actually go? Why shouldn't you stay 
 here now? Stay with me. Don't go. Don't think of 
 going. I want you always with me. . . .If you don't like 
 the place we will find another studio and go there. And 
 if you want to be married we can get married at once. 
 I have nearly a hundred pounds in the bank." 
 
 He knelt by her side and held her knees in his two 
 hands. She took his face in her hands and said gently : 
 
 "You mustn't talk like that, Mendel. Please don t
 
 394 MENDEL 
 
 think I don't love you because I don't want you to talk 
 like that. It is the first thing to come into your mind, 
 but with me it is almost the last thing. I want love 
 to be very, very beautiful before it comes to me. I want 
 love to be as beautiful to me as that picture of Cezanne's 
 is to you. Do you understand me?" 
 
 He sprang to his feet and turned away from her. 
 
 "No, I don't!" he shouted; "no, I don't!" 
 
 He was wildly angry. Her words had acted like salt 
 upon his raw feelings. 
 
 "No, I don't understand you. You want love to be 
 like art. You want to mix love up with art. Love be- 
 longs to life. Love is rich and ripe and warm. You want 
 it to be like the dew on the grass. It can't be ! dt can't 
 be! Love bursts out of a man's body into his soul, and 
 you want it to live in his soul and to leave him with an 
 impotent, cold body. You want me to bend to your 
 woman's will, for you know I cannot break away from 
 you. You are with your soul like Oliver with her body. 
 You are with your love like Oliver with her lust, and 
 Logan and I are a pair a miserable, broken pair." 
 
 "Oh!" she cried, hiding her face in her hands. "You 
 are wrong, wrong, hideously wrong. You have under- 
 stood nothing at all. Your mind has rushed away with 
 you. For God's sake be quiet for a little, to see if we 
 can't get it straight." 
 
 His desire was to batter down her opposition, yet 
 he could not but realise that she was too strong, and 
 that he would only do grievous and useless harm. He 
 controlled himself, therefore, and was silent. At last he 
 grunted : 
 
 "Can't you make me see what you mean?" 
 
 "It isn't a thing I could say in cold blood," she said.
 
 CONFLICT 395 
 
 He moved towards her, but she held up her hands to 
 ward him off. 
 
 "No, no!" she almost whispered. "That only makes 
 my heart grow colder and colder until it aches." 
 
 "Do you mean that you don't want me?" 
 
 "Foolish, foolish, foolish!" she said. "If you loved 
 me one tenth part as much as I love you, you would know 
 what I mean." 
 
 "I don't," he said simply. "I don't, honestly I don't. 
 Perhaps you are so beautiful to me that I am blinded 
 with it." 
 
 Of the truth of her feeling against him he had no 
 doubt, but though he laboured bitterly to understand it, 
 he could make nothing of it. He was driven back on his 
 simple need for her. 
 
 "Very well," he said; "if it makes you feel like that 
 for me to touch you, I never will. Only don't talk of 
 loving me more than I love you. It isn't true." 
 
 "Yes. It was silly of me to say that," she agreed. "It 
 isn't true." 
 
 "What do you want, then?" 
 
 "I want to share as much of your life as I can." 
 
 "It is a bleak, grimy business, a good deal of it." 
 
 "I want to share it." 
 
 "There is a good deal in it that will horrify you." 
 
 "I must get used to that. . . . When I am in London 
 I want you to promise that you will see me at least 
 once a week." 
 
 "There are seven days in the week. Let it be seven 
 
 times." 
 
 She laughed at that. 
 
 "And some day," she went on, "I want to take you 
 down into the country."
 
 396 MENDEL 
 
 He began to suspect her of wanting to meddle with 
 his work. 
 
 "I don't want the country," he rapped out. "I am a 
 Londoner. All the life I care about is in the streets and 
 in the houses, in the restaurants and the shops, and the 
 costers' barrows and the cinemas and the picture gal- 
 leries. That is why I live here, because I love the coarse, 
 thrumming vitality all round me." 
 
 "But / want the country," she said, "and you should 
 know the life / love." 
 
 For a moment it seemed to him that the key to the 
 mystery she talked of was in his hands. He clutched 
 at it and it evaded him, but his idolatry of her was shaken, 
 and he began dimly to see her as a creature like himself, 
 with feelings, thoughts, desires, and a will. There was 
 no doubt at all about the will, and he had to recognise it.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 OLIVER 
 
 ' I A HEN began a period of quiet, happy friendship for 
 * them both. Mendel was astonishingly amenable to 
 many of her disciplinary suggestions and allowed her 
 to cut his hair (though not without thinking of Delilah), 
 and when she ordered him to get some new clothes he 
 went off obediently to a friend of Issy's and had a suit 
 made West End style at East End prices. 
 
 "You will soon have me looking like a Public School 
 gentleman," he said. 
 
 "Never!" she replied. "You will never move like one 
 thank goodness." 
 
 "Why thank goodness?" 
 
 "Because they walk about as though they owned the 
 earth and the fatness thereof, as though the earth ex- 
 isted for them to walk about on it without their need- 
 ing even to look at it to see how beautiful it is." 
 
 "That's like Logan," he said. "He used always to be 
 railing against the English. He said they had no eyes, 
 only stomachs. But I think the English must be the 
 nicest people in the world, for there is no place like Lon- 
 don for living in." 
 
 Indeed, they both thought there could be no place 
 like London. Once or twice a week they dined together 
 at the Pot-au-Feu and went on to a party or to a music- 
 
 397
 
 398 MENDEL 
 
 hall or to the cinema, which he adored. He said it gave 
 him ideas for pictures and that there were often wonder- 
 ful momentary pictures thrown on the screen. 
 
 "The cinema does what the bad artists have been try- 
 ing to do for generations. It is a great relief to have it 
 done by a machine. The artist need not any more try 
 to be a machine. There is no need for him now to please 
 the public. He can leave all that to the machine and go 
 straight for art. The few decent people will follow him, 
 and what more does he want? Art is not for the fools. 
 . . . Logan was wrong. He wanted art to go to the 
 people. That is all wrong. The people must come up 
 to art. When they are sick of the machine, art is there, 
 ready for them." He added naively, "I shall be there, 
 waiting for them." 
 
 He loved especially the dramas, when they were not 
 clogged and obscured with sentimentality. The simple 
 values that governed them, the triumph of virtue and the 
 downfall of evil, appealed to him as solid, as related to 
 a process, a drama, that went on in himself, and, he 
 supposed, in everybody else. It worried and annoyed 
 him when Morrison made fun of these values and jeered 
 at them. 
 
 "But things don't work like that," she protested. 
 
 "I think they do," he said. 
 
 "Good people are often crushed," she replied, "and bad 
 people often have things all their own way." 
 
 "But it is inside people that it happens like that. False 
 people have their souls eaten away with lies, and true 
 people have free, happy souls like yours. Being rich or 
 poor, or what you call good or bad, has nothing to do 
 with it. Yes. It is inside people that it happens like 
 that, and I am more often the villain than the hero 
 inside myself."
 
 OLIVER 399 
 
 "It seems absurd to me, and I can't think why you 
 should take it seriously." 
 
 "It is because you are so idiotically good. You have 
 only one side to your nature. You are like a heroine 
 in your Dickens." 
 
 "I'm not. I'm sure I'm not. I'm bad-tempered and 
 mean and unjust." 
 
 "You don't even know how bad I am. You have no 
 more idea of what my life is like than a rose has of 
 an onion's." 
 
 "I don't like onions." 
 
 "That's the trouble. You don't like the smell of 
 onions, and so you don't eat them. Very poor people 
 live on bread and onions and they find them good. I 
 have no patience with you. You want to be a rose 
 growing in a sheltered English garden." 
 
 "I don't. I don't want anything of the kind." 
 
 "A wild rose, then; and you have no right to want 
 such a life. You are not a flower. You are a human 
 being, and you can't have a sheltered life, or a summer 
 hedgerow life, because you have truth and falsehood 
 in you, and if you will not live for the truth you will 
 die for the falsehood. That is why cinemas are good 
 and theatres are rotten. All the plays are false, because 
 they have forgotten truth and falsehood and are all about 
 being rich or poor, or old or young, or married or un- 
 married, and in the worst plays of all they are about 
 people pretending to be children so as to get out of the 
 whole thing. I hate you sometimes when you seem to 
 be trying that game of refusing to be grown up, denying 
 your own feelings and letting men love you and pre- 
 tending yo'i don't know what it is all about." 
 
 "I never do that," she cried indignantly. 
 
 "I'm not so sure," he said, unable to resist the tempta-
 
 400 MENDEL 
 
 tion to press home the advantage he had won in rousing 1 
 her out of her placid happiness. "I'm not so sure. There 
 are too many girls do that." 
 
 "I don't. I may have done it. But I have never done 
 it with you. It is a wicked lie to say anything of the 
 kind." 
 
 "You can't blame me if I catch at any idea that will 
 help me to understand you." 
 
 "You never will, if you go grubbing about with your 
 mind." 
 
 "Oh ! my mind is no good, is it? Then take your hands 
 off my feelings. They'll understand you right enough." 
 
 "No. They won't." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 "Because they're blind." 
 
 "Good God ! What am I to do, then ?" 
 
 "Wait." 
 
 "How long?" 
 
 "Till you can see." 
 
 "I never shall see more than I do now. If you love 
 me, why don't you love me as I am?" 
 
 "I do. But you don't know what you are yet, and 
 you don't know what I am." 
 
 "I know what I want." 
 
 "It isn't what I want." 
 
 "If you knew at all what I wanted, you would want 
 it too." 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 "Love." 
 
 "You've got it." 
 
 "You don't call this love?" 
 
 "I do." 
 
 "Then I don't. It is just playing the fool wasting 
 time."
 
 OLIVER 401 
 
 "It isn't wasting time. We are much better friends 
 than we were." 
 
 "I don't want to be friends. I've had enough of 
 friends. They have never done me any good. It's a 
 silly, thin kind of happiness at best." 
 
 "It is better than no happiness at all, which the other 
 would be." 
 
 "How can you say that?" he cried, revolted. "How 
 can you say that? Every thought, every dream I have 
 is centred on it. It is such happiness that my imagina- 
 tion is baffled by it." 
 
 "Please let us stop talking about it. We are only get- 
 ting horribly at cross-purposes." 
 
 He had learned when it was wise to stop, but he needed 
 every now and then the assurance that her serene confi- 
 dence was shot with doubt. Once or twice when he had 
 tried to thrust her back on her doubts she had flared up, 
 and had fought tooth and nail, declaring that she would 
 never see him again. And, as he knew she meant it, he 
 yielded, and said that any sacrifice was better than that. 
 
 On her part, as she came more nearly to see his point 
 of view, she was often shaken and tempted to admit that 
 he was right. There was no looseness or formlessness 
 about his ideas. He lived in a world that apparently 
 made room for everything, a world in which he stood 
 solidly on his feet while the waves of life broke upon 
 him, and he only absorbed into himself that which his 
 passions needed. It was a plain, simple world, where 
 good and evil were equally true, and, apparently, largely 
 a matter of chance -a world in which he was gloriously 
 independent. But was he free? Sometimes she thought 
 that he was amazingly free. His only prejudice seemed 
 to be against pink, fleshy young men who had to do noth- 
 ing for a living young men like her brothers, for in-
 
 402 MENDEL 
 
 stance, of whom she had drawn an amusing series of 
 caricatures showing the effect of introducing Mendel 
 to them. . . . Sometimes she wondered if her own long- 
 ing for freedom was not just her ignorance, just a craven 
 desire to escape from knowing anything about life, to 
 remain an amused but fundamentally indifferent on- 
 looker. And when she had to face the suffering she in- 
 flicted on him, then she was often moved to cry out 
 within herself : 
 
 "Oh! Take me, take me! Have your will. It will 
 make an end of it all, and you will pass on and forget 
 me, but you will no longer suffer through me." 
 
 But she could not bend her own will, which insisted 
 that the treasure she desired lay through him, and that 
 he needed it even more than she. It was because of his 
 need that he clung to her through all his suffering and 
 exasperation. . . . Why, why was he so blind that he 
 could not see it? Why could he, who was so sure and 
 so strong, not see what was to her so clear through all 
 her vacillation and all the confusion of her idealism? 
 . . . She tried to make him read English poetry, but he 
 could make little of it, and said none of it was worth 
 the Bible. He declared that Shelley wrote romantical 
 nonsense, because men could never be made perfect, and 
 it was cruelly absurd to try it like dressing a monkey 
 up in human clothes. And he countered by making her 
 read "Candide." 
 
 "When you have been through as much as Cune- 
 gonde," he said, "I'll believe in your purity." 
 
 "It isn't purity that I'm fussing about." 
 
 "What is it, then?" 
 
 "Don't let us begin it all over again." 
 
 They found common ground in Blake, whom Mendel
 
 OLIVER 403 
 
 consented to read because Blake was the only English 
 painter who had had any idea of art at all. 
 
 Blake brought them much closer together, and their 
 tussles were sharper, but less futile and exasperating. 
 
 "Why don't you take a lesson from Mrs. Blake?" he 
 asked, after they had read the Life. 
 
 "What? And sit and hold your hand? You'd turn 
 round and hit me." 
 
 "I believe I would," he laughed. "By Jove! I believe 
 I would." 
 
 He was not easy for her to handle. It was like play- 
 ing with high explosives, save that she was not playing. 
 
 She said to him once, when they had come very near 
 the intimacy she desired : 
 
 "I believe you would understand me if only you could 
 let go." 
 
 "How can I let go," he roared, "when I feel that you 
 are weighing and judging and criticising every word I 
 say, every thing I do ?" 
 
 And she was silent for a long time. It was a new and 
 dreadful idea, that she was hemming him in by making 
 him feel that she was judging him. It was so far from 
 her intention that she protested : 
 
 "I am not judging you. I accept you just as you 
 are." 
 
 "Accept!" he grumbled. "Accept! When you keep 
 me at arm's-length !" 
 
 "I go as far as we can, then it breaks down." 
 
 "What breaks down ?" 
 
 "I don't know what to call it. Sympathy, if you like." 
 
 "Oh! then if it breaks down it isn't any good, and we 
 may as well give it up for ever. I will learn to shuffle 
 along without you."
 
 404 MENDEL 
 
 "I won't shuffle. I refuse to hear of your shuffling." 
 
 "Then you want to know what to do ?" 
 
 "What?" 
 
 "Take your place by my side, walk along with me like 
 a sober, decent woman." 
 
 "But I want to fly with you, hand in hand." 
 
 She was elated, exalted. Her eyes shone and she 
 glowed with excitement and hope. Surely he would 
 understand now! Surely she had found words for it 
 at last! 
 
 "That's rubbish," he said. "Men aren't birds, and 
 they are not angels. If you want to fly, go up in an 
 airyoplane. That's another machine like the cinema. It 
 relieves human beings of another mania." 
 
 She turned away to hide the tears that had gushed 
 to her eyes. Why did he waste his strength? Why did 
 he keep his force from entering 1 into his imagination? 
 
 That evening was most miserable for her, and she was 
 glad when it came to an end. 
 
 To add to her difficulties he was making himself ill 
 over his work, which, as he said, had gone completely 
 rotten, and he did not scruple to ascribe it to her. He 
 would spend a delightful happy evening with her and 
 feel that his difficulties were over, that in the morning 
 he would be able to make a beginning upon all the ideas 
 that were so jumbled and close-packed in his head. But 
 in the morning he would be dull and nerveless, and 
 though he might work himself up into a frenzy, yet he 
 could produce nothing that was any good. His work 
 was easier, and even a little better, after the evenings 
 when they almost quarrelled. 
 
 Again and again he told himself that he could not go 
 on, that life was as thick and heavy as the air before
 
 OLIVER 405 
 
 a thunderstorm. Often he thought that this density, 
 this opaqueness, with which he was surrounded, meant 
 that he must quarrel and break with her once and for 
 all. It would nearly kill him to do it, but if it must 
 be done, the sooner the better. Perhaps it was wrong 
 for him to have anything to do with the Christian world 
 at all. No single friendship or relationship that he had 
 had in it had been successful or of any profit to him. 
 Little by little his peace of mind had been taken from 
 him. Everything had been taken from him, even, now, 
 his work. . . . That he would not have. He set his 
 teeth and stuck to it, every day and all day, but the few 
 pictures he turned out did not sell. Cluny would not have 
 them, and they were rejected by the exhibitions, even 
 by the club of which he was a member. 
 
 Of all this he said not a word to a soul, not even to 
 Morrison, not even to Golda. His money was dwindling. 
 That put marriage out of the question. Fate, or the 
 ominous pressure of life, or whatever it was, played into 
 Morrison's hands. 
 
 Every now and then, unable to endure this pressure, 
 he plunged into excesses. There seemed to be no other 
 way out. The Christian world refused him. He no 
 longer belonged to his own people. Their poverty dis- 
 gusted him. People had no right to be so poor as that, 
 to have no relief from the joyless daily grind for bread. 
 ... It was the fault of the Christians who prayed to 
 the Lord for their daily bread and stole it from each 
 other because they had forgotten that it was not given 
 them except in return for daily work. 
 
 That was the one strand of sympathy he had left with 
 his father Jacob's absolute refusal to receive his daily 
 bread from any other hands than his own, and his almost 
 crazy refusal to let Issy and Harry go out and work
 
 406 MENDEL 
 
 for other masters. They could work for their father 
 because he had authority over them, but other masters 
 had no authority except what they bought or stole. 
 
 But a talk with Harry decided Mendel that his peo- 
 ple's way, the Jewish way, was no longer his. 
 
 Harry was bored. He had bouts of boredom when he 
 could not endure the workshop and refused to go near 
 it, however great the pressure of business might be. 
 Like his father, he said: 
 
 "I want nothing." 
 
 "Very well then," said Mendel; "you've got nothing. 
 What are you grumbling at?" 
 
 "But there is nothing." 
 
 "Then it is easy to want nothing and you should be 
 satisfied." 
 
 "That's it. It is too easy. Work, work, work. Play, 
 play, play. How disgusting it all is!" 
 
 "Why didn't you stay in Paris?" 
 
 "I could not bear to be away from the people." 
 
 "But if they give you nothing?" 
 
 / "They have nothing to give. Nothing but old Jews 
 who believe and young Jews who cannot believe and 
 are nothing." 
 
 "It is the same everywhere. The Christians .do not 
 believe either." 
 
 "But they are fools and can make themselves happy 
 with their cinemas and their newspapers and their for- 
 ward women." 
 
 "I thought you liked women, Harry." 
 
 "I don't like women who like me. ... I don't want 
 to marry, I don't want anything. I shall see the old 
 people into their graves, and then I don't know what I 
 shall do. You are the only one I know who has anything 
 to live for or any life in him."
 
 OLIVER 
 
 407 
 
 "I have little enough." 
 
 "Oh God ! don't you start talking like me, or we shall 
 all go to the cemetery at once." 
 
 "All right, Harry. I'll keep you going. I'll keep you 
 astonished." 
 
 His brother's despondency helped Mendel on a little, 
 but what a mean incentive to work, to astonish his poor 
 ignorant family! 
 
 Very soon there came a terrible day when he had to 
 tell them that he had not a penny in the world and that 
 he was a failure. It would have gone hardly with him 
 but for Harry, who espoused his cause, saying dramati- 
 cally that he believed in his young brother as he be- 
 lieved in God, and that Mendel should not be stopped 
 for want of money. And he went upstairs and came 
 down with his savings, nearly thirty pounds. 
 
 "Don't be a fool !" said Jacob. "He will only spend it 
 on drink and women." 
 
 "He is a genius," said Harry simply, and Issy, fired by 
 his brother's example, said he had saved ten pounds 
 and he would add that. Together they shouted Jacob 
 down when he tried to raise his voice, until at last he 
 produced his cash-box and gave Mendel a ten-pound 
 note, saying: 
 
 "If the Christians are liars when they say they believe 
 in you, we are not. You must learn that the Christians 
 are all liars and you must show them that you are the 
 greatest artist in the world." 
 
 "I'll show them," mumbled Mendel. "Yes, I'll show 
 them." 
 
 He returned to his work with a better determination 
 to succeed, but he felt more barren than ever, and had 
 nothing to work with but his will. Into that he gath-
 
 4 o8 MENDEL 
 
 ered all his force and determined to go back and pick 
 up the thread of his work at the point where Logan 
 had broken into the weaving of it. He would paint yet 
 another portrait of his mother, and then he would choose 
 a subject from among the life of the Jews. He would 
 start again. The Jews believed in him; he would glorify 
 them, although he no longer believed in but only admired 
 them. When he came to look at them clearly, they were 
 squat and stunted, because he could only look at them 
 from a superior height. . . . He turned over his early 
 work, and studied it carefully, but he could not recover 
 his childish acceptance of that existence. 
 
 For some weeks he did not go near Morrison and fre- 
 quented the Paris Cafe, where he felt hopelessly out 
 of it. No one spoke to him. Hardly a soul nodded 
 to him. Night after night he sat there despondently, 
 conjuring up the exciting evenings he had spent there. 
 They were like ashes in his mouth. 
 
 One night, to his amazement and almost fear, some 
 one slipped into the seat at his side. It was Oliver. She 
 laid her hand on his knee and said : 
 
 "You look pretty bad, Kiihler. Anything wrong?" 
 
 "Much as usual. How are you? What'll you drink ?" 
 
 "Kummel's mine," she said. 
 
 He ordered two Kummels. 
 
 "I'm all right. How are you?" 
 
 "I've told you how I am," he said testily. 
 
 "All right, all right!" she said, "I haven't been here 
 for a long time. I wish you'd come and see me, Kiihler. 
 We never did get on, but I'd like to have a talk about 
 old times." 
 
 "Old times!" he said. "It seems only yesterday." 
 
 "It's nearly a year since I saw you. Logan came back,
 
 OLIVER 409 
 
 you know. Mr. Tysoe was so good. He kept on the 
 house for me. Wasn't it good of him?" 
 
 The waiter brought the Kiimmel. She drank hers off 
 at a gulp, and said : 
 
 "It is like old times to see you, Kuhler. I am glad." 
 
 "Go on about Logan." 
 
 "He went back to that Camden Town place, you know, 
 and we didn't see each other for nearly two months. It 
 was awful. I couldn't sleep at nights, and I knew he 
 wouldn't be able to sleep. He never slept, you know, 
 when we had had one of our hells and I wouldn't speak 
 to him. He! he!" she gasped and giggled nervously at 
 the memory. 
 
 "Go on," said Mendel. He was icy cold. All the 
 strange oppression that was brooding in his life seemed 
 to gather into a thick snowy cloud about his head and 
 to fit it like a cap of ice. "Go on." 
 
 "Mr. Tysoe gave me money. Wasn't it good of him? 
 He used to see Logan. Not very often 'just occasion- 
 ally. Logan was painting a wonderful portrait of me, 
 in my green dress and the corals he gave me . . . See: 
 I always wear them, even now." 
 
 She thrust her hand into her bosom and produced 
 the string of corals. 
 
 "I lived all alone and refused to see any one. I got 
 so thin, all my skirts had to be taken in. I knew Logan 
 was jealous, so I didn't see any one, and when I heard 
 about the portrait I knew he would come back. So I used 
 to wear the green dress every evening and wait for him 
 till twelve, one, two, three in the morning, all alone, in 
 that little cottage on the Heath. . . . My, I was tired, 
 I can tell you. But I never was one for getting up in 
 the morning. ... At last, one night, he came. He 
 walked in quite quietly, as though nothing had happened.
 
 410 MENDEL 
 
 He had brought the picture with him. My word, it is good. 
 You'd love it. He had offers for it, but he wouldn't sell 
 it. He said a funny thing about it. He said : 'It's litera- 
 ture. It isn't art.' So he wouldn't sell it. ... We had 
 a glorious time a glorious time! It was better even 
 than the beginning." 
 
 She stopped to linger over the memory, and she drew 
 her hand caressingly along her thigh. 
 
 "Go on," said Mendel, to break in upon her heavy 
 silence. 
 
 "He had plenty of money. He sold everything he did. 
 There were one or two society ladies, the cats! Com- 
 mon property, I call them." 
 
 "So it broke down again," said Mendel. 
 
 "Yes. He got You know what he could be like. 
 
 Sometimes I thought he was going off his head, and I 
 often wonder if he wasn't a bit touched. ... I haven't 
 seen him since. I wondered if you had seen him." 
 
 "No. I haven't seen him. He doesn't come back to 
 me." 
 
 "Mr. Tysoe hasn't seen him. Cluny has some of his 
 things, but won't say a word. I think he must have 
 left London." 
 
 "I should think so," said Mendel wearily, suddenly 
 losing all interest. "I should think so." 
 
 "I've left Hampstead. I'm living over the Pot-au- 
 Feu. I'm working as a model. Don't forget me, and 
 if you hear of Logan, do let me know, and come and 
 have a talk over old times." 
 
 She had caught sight of an acquaintance smiling at 
 her and went over to him, for all the world, as Mendel 
 thought, like a fly-by-night. 
 
 He half ran, half staggered out of the place, saying 1 
 to himself:
 
 OLIVER 411 
 
 "I must see Morrison. I must see her at once." 
 
 He tried to see her next day, but Clowes told him she 
 had gone to the country. 
 
 "I insisted on her going, she was looking so pale. You 
 know when she feels lonely she won't eat. When she 
 is miserable she gets so shy that she can't even go into 
 a shop. ... I have taken a cottage in the country, just 
 outside London. Two rooms, two shillings a week. 
 Isn't it cheap ? So I packed her off there two days ago." 
 
 "When will she be back?" 
 
 "I don't know. When she is tired of being alone. 
 She said she wanted to be alone." 
 
 "I want to see her. It is very important for me to 
 see her." 
 
 "I won't have you making her ill," said Clowes. 
 
 "I must see her. Will you give me her address, so 
 that I can write to her?" 
 
 Clowes gave him the address, and he wrote saying 
 that life was intolerable without her. 
 
 Morrison did not need his letter, and, indeed, it only 
 reached the cottage after she had left. She knew he 
 needed her. Never for an instant was his image absent 
 from her mind, and at night, when she lay awake, she 
 could have sworn she heard a moaning cry from him. 
 No wind ever made a sound like that. 
 
 There was a pouring rain and a howling wind, but she 
 walked the four miles to the station and sent him a wire 
 telling him to meet her at the station in London. He 
 received it just in time and was on the platform. 
 
 He took her in his arms and kissed her. 
 
 "What is the matter?" 
 
 "Did you get my letter?"
 
 412 MENDEL 
 
 "No. But I knew. What is it?" 
 
 "I don't know. My work, I think. I met Oliver last 
 night. It upset me. But I wanted you for my work. It 
 is like a knife stuck through my brain. I wanted to be 
 with you, just to see you and to hear your voice. Noth- 
 ing else. That part of me feels dead. . . . Oliver is liv- 
 ing over the Pot-au-Feu, where Hetty Finch used to be. 
 I wonder what's become of her. I expect she has found 
 a millionaire by now. . . . We'll have the evening to- 
 gether. We'll dine at the Pot-au-Feu. We might meet 
 Oliver, but I can't think of any other place." 
 
 "We'll dine with Clowes, if you like." 
 
 "No; I want to go to the Pot-au-Feu." 
 
 "Very well. Are you very tired ? Your voice sounds 
 tired." 
 
 "I'll be all right now I am with you. Mr. Sivwright 
 asked me to go to the Merlin's Cave to-night. He has 
 to shut it up. I thought I wouldn't go, but I want to go, 
 if you will come with me." 
 
 "It might cheer us up, and you love dancing." 
 
 They both thought of the night when he had danced 
 with Jessie Petrie. 
 
 "I'm painting a picture of a Jewish market. I want 
 you to see it." 
 
 "I'm glad you've gone back. I'm sure it is right." 
 
 "What are you doing?" 
 
 It was the first time he had asked after her work and 
 a glow of happiness overcame her. 
 
 "Oh! I ... I'm doing a landscape just a road run- 
 ning up a hill with some houses on top." 
 
 "Like Rousseau. He was good at roads." 
 
 "Mine's just painting. It isn't abstract." 
 
 "You can't paint without being abstract," he said ir- 
 ritably. "Even Academicians can't really imitate, but
 
 OLIVER 413 
 
 they abstract without using their brains. You can't 
 really copy nature, so what's the good of trying?" 
 
 "You can suggest." 
 
 "Then it's a sketch and not a picture." 
 
 "Perhaps mine is only a sketch," she said rather for- 
 lornly, because she had been rather hopeful of her 
 work. 
 
 They went back to his studio, where he showed her 
 his studies and drawings for the new picture. She saw 
 that he was working again with his old love of his craft. 
 
 They dined at the Pot-au-Feu, and had it all to them- 
 selves because the weather was so bad. There were 
 only the goggle-eyed man in the corner with his green 
 evening paper and Madame Feydeau and Gustave, the 
 waiter. 
 
 Over the dinner Mendel waxed very gay and gave 
 her a very comic description of the scene when he had 
 gone to his family to confess his failure. He had a 
 wonderful power of making them comic without laughing 
 at them. 
 
 "They are wonderful people," he said. "They know 
 what is sense and what is nonsense. If you gave them 
 the biggest problem in the world they would know what 
 was true in it and what was false. They are always 
 right about politics and public men. But when it comes 
 to art, they are hopeless." 
 
 "But they believe in you." 
 
 "Because I belong to them. They believe in them- 
 selves. . . . My mother was quite sound about Logan. 
 She said it could not go on. I thought it was for ever. 
 I've been thinking about Logan. He could never be him- 
 self. He was always wanting to be something some- 
 thing big. I thought he was big for a long time. But 
 he's just a man. I don't think Cezanne was ever any-
 
 4H MENDEL 
 
 thing but just a man. It makes one thing, doesn't it ? All 
 these people who are written about as though they were 
 something terrific, all trying to be something more than 
 they are just men. And then a quiet little man comes 
 along and he is bigger than the lot of them, because he 
 has never tried to blow himself out, but has given him- 
 self room to grow." 
 
 She had never known him so gentle and tender and 
 wise, and if he had wanted to love her she would not 
 have denied him. She trusted him so completely. And 
 he looked so ill and tired. But he only wanted to be 
 with her, and to talk to her and to hear her voice. 
 
 After dinner they went to a cinema to fill in time, and 
 he shouted with laughter like a boy, threw himself about, 
 and stamped his feet at the comic film. And she laughed 
 too, and took his hand in hers and held it in her lap. 
 
 "That was good!" he said. "I think I should like 
 to be a cinema actor. If I get really hard up I shall try 
 it. I might be a star, if I could learn to wear my clothes 
 properly and could get my hair to lie down in a solid 
 shiny block." 
 
 "I'll go with you. I'm sure I could roll my eyes 
 properly." 
 
 "Come along," he said. 
 
 It was still raining hard, so they took a taxi to the 
 Merlin's Cave, though it was not half a mile away. 
 
 Everything was the same, even to the two rich young 
 men who entered just after them. They signed the book, 
 and then, hearing the music, Mendel seized Morrison by 
 the wrist and dragged her down the stairs. 
 
 The place was astonishingly full. Nearly all the tables 
 were occupied, and they had to take one between the 
 orchestra and the door. Calthrop, Mitchell, Weldon, Jes- 
 sie Petrie, everybody from the Paris Cafe was there.
 
 OLIVER 415 
 
 Oliver was sitting with Thompson and the critic. In 
 a far corner Clowes was sitting with the young man from 
 the Detmold. There were models, male and female, all 
 the strange people who for one reason or another had 
 lived in or on the Calthrop tradition. In the middle of 
 the room were two large tables which Sivwright had 
 packed with celebrities authors, journalists, editors, 
 actors, and music-hall comedians. They were being fed 
 royally, as became lions, and there were champagne bot- 
 tles gleaming on the tables. Tall young soldiers in mufti 
 began to arrive with chorus-girls who had not troubled 
 to remove their make-up. 
 
 "It's a gala!" said Mendel. 
 
 Oliver saw him, and beamed and raised her glass. He 
 rose and bowed with mock solemnity. 
 
 Dancing had not begun. Apparently the lions were to 
 sing for their supper. 
 
 An author read a short play, which he explained had 
 been suppressed by the censor. To Mendel it sounded 
 very mild and foolish. It was a tragedy, but no one was 
 moved; the audience much preferred the music-hall come- 
 dian, who followed with a song about a series of mishaps 
 to his trousers. 
 
 The same reedy-voiced poet recited the same poem as 
 before, and the same foolish girl sang the same foolish 
 song, and it looked as though the programme would never 
 end. 
 
 Mendel was irritated and bored, and called for cham- 
 pagne. 
 
 "Waiter!" 
 
 But the waiter did not hear him. 
 
 "You don't want any champagne," said Morrison. 
 
 "Waiter!" 
 
 The door by them opened and Logan slipped in. He
 
 416 MENDEL 
 
 was almost a shadow of his old self. The plump flesh 
 had gone from his face, which was all eyes and bones. 
 He looked famished. His eyes swept round the room, 
 and, fastening on Oliver, lit up with a gleam of satis- 
 faction. He was like a starving man looking at a nice 
 pink ham in a shop window. He moved swiftly towards 
 her, but stopped on seeing the men she was with and 
 swerved to a table a few yards behind her. From where 
 Mendel was sitting it looked as though he were peering 
 over her shoulder, an evil, menacing face. 
 
 Mendel shivered, and his eyes suddenly felt dry and 
 hot, as though they were being pushed out of his face. 
 His throat went dry, and when he tried to call the 
 waiter he could make no sound. The waiter met his 
 eyes and came. 
 
 "Champagne!" said Mendel. 
 
 "Very good, sir. One bottle?" 
 
 "Half-a-bottle," said Morrison. 
 
 "One bottle," roared Mendel. 
 
 A young artist, who knew them both slightly, hearing 
 the order, came and sat with them. 
 
 The dancing began. 
 
 "Come and dance," said Morrison. 
 
 "No, I don't want to dance. That was Logan who 
 came in. He hasn't seen me yet." 
 
 "Which is Logan?" asked the young artist. "He's 
 done some good things. Some one told me the other day 
 he had softening of the brain." 
 
 "Rubbish!" said Mendel. "They say that of every 
 man who makes a success, as though it needed something 
 strange to account for it. It's either softening of the 
 brain, or consumption, or three wives, or he is killing 
 himself with drink. They talk as though art itself were 
 some kind of disease."
 
 OLIVER 417 
 
 Logan had seen Mendel, and their eyes met. Mendel 
 felt that Logan was looking clean through him, looking 
 at him as a ghost might look at a man whom he had 
 known in life, fondly, tenderly, icily through him, with- 
 out expecting him to be aware of the terrible scrutiny. 
 But Mendel was aware of it, and it chilled him to the 
 marrow. Logan gave no sign, but stared and stared, 
 and presently turned his eyes away without a sign, with- 
 out a tremor. It was like turning away the light of a 
 lantern. He turned his eyes from Mendel to Oliver in 
 one sweep. No one else but those two seemed to exist 
 for him, and Mendel felt that he no longer existed. And 
 more than ever Logan looked as if he were peering 
 over Oliver's shoulder with those staring, piercing eyes 
 of his from which the soul had gone out. Only the 
 glowing spark of a fixed will was left in them to keep 
 them sane and human. 
 
 Mendel began to drink. The orchestra behind him sent 
 the rhythm of a waltz thumping through him. But it 
 went heavily, without music or tune. One two three. 
 It was like having molten lead poured on the nape of his 
 neck, threatening to jerk his head off his spine. From 
 where he sat he could not see the dancing-floor, except 
 reflected in a mirror opposite him. ... Oh! it was a 
 gay sight and a silly! It had nothing to do with him. 
 He could see nothing but Oliver with the grim, haggard 
 face looking over her shoulder. He gulped down a 
 glass of wine. That was better. It made things bear- 
 able. He poured out another glass of wine. 
 
 "I think there is more in the Futurists than the Cub- 
 ists," said the young artist. 
 
 "In art," said Mendel, turning on him savagely, "there 
 is neither past nor present nor future; there is only eter- 
 nity. You try to make a group out of that, and see
 
 418 MENDEL 
 
 how you will get on. You can put that at the head of 
 your manifesto and your group would melt away under 
 it like the fat on a basted pigeon." 
 
 He put out his hand for his glass, but Morrison had 
 taken it and was drinking. 
 
 "You'll make yourself drunk," he said, taking it from 
 her gently. 
 
 "I finished it all," she said, with an unhappy smile. 
 "I didn't want you to drink it, and you looked so tragic 
 I knew it would be bad for you." 
 
 The young artist crept away. Mendel took Morrison's 
 hand and gripped it. 
 
 "I'm glad you are with me," he said. "Look at 
 Logan!" 
 
 Never taking his eyes off Oliver, Logan had begun 
 to move towards her with his hand in his breast pocket. 
 He had nearly reached her with his eyes glowing almost 
 yellow under the electric light, when he changed his mind, 
 swung round, and went to another table and sat with 
 his head down, biting his nails. 
 
 The dancing was fast and furious, and this time it was 
 the flute which played an obbligato, thin, fantastic, and 
 comic, real silvery fun, like a trickle of water down a 
 crag into a pool in sunshine. 
 
 Thompson went to the dancing-floor with a girl in 
 fancy dress a columbine's costume. That seemed to 
 relieve Logan, who jumped to his feet, walked quickly 
 round to Oliver, bent over her, and spoke to her. Her 
 face wore an expression of amazed delight. Her eyes 
 were drawn to his, and though she shrank under them, 
 she seemed to go soft and flabby: she could not resist 
 them. There was no menace in Logan now, only an 
 attitude of fixed mastery, an air of taking possession of
 
 OLIVER 
 
 419 
 
 her once and for all, of knowing that at last he would 
 get the longed-for satisfaction. 
 
 They spoke together for a little longer, then she rose 
 and put her hand up and caressed his cheek and neck 
 as though it hurt her to see them so thin as though, 
 indeed, she refused to believe what her eyes told her. 
 
 They walked past Mendel and Morrison without see- 
 ing them. Mendel gripped Morrison's hand until she 
 felt that the blood must gush out of her nails. Logan 
 opened the swing-door for Oliver, devouring her with 
 his burning eyes, in which there was a desperate set 
 purpose of which he seemed to be almost weary. So 
 frail he looked, as if but a little more and he would loose 
 his hold even on that to which he clung. And Oliver 
 smiled at him with a malicious promise in her eyes that 
 he should have his will, that his hold should be loosened 
 and his weariness come to an end. Clearly she knew that 
 he had no thought outside herself. 
 
 And outside the two of them Mendel had no thought. 
 His mind became as a tunnel down which they were mov- 
 ing, and soon they were lost to his sight and he was left 
 to wait. There his thoughts stopped, while he waited.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 LOGAN MAKES AN END 
 
 ALL night long he paced up and down his studio. 
 His thoughts would not move, but went over and 
 over the scene in the Cave, and probed vainly in the 
 darkness for the next move. When he heard footsteps 
 in the street he hung out of the window, making sure 
 that it must be Logan come for him. But no one stopped 
 .at the door, and soon within himself and without was 
 complete silence, save for his footsteps on the floor and 
 the matches he struck to light cigarette after cigarette, 
 though he could not keep one of them alight. 
 
 His imagination rejected the facts and refused to work 
 on them. The scene in the Cave had left an impression 
 upon his retina, like that of the cinema just a plain 
 flat impression containing no material for his imagina- 
 tion. And yet he knew that he was deeply engaged in 
 whatever was happening. 
 
 With his chin in his hands he leaned out of his win- 
 dow and watched the dawn paint the eastern sky and 
 the day wipe out the colours. Doors were opened in 
 the street. Windows were lit with the glow of the fires, 
 and the day's activity had begun, but he had no share 
 in it, for he knew that this day was like no other. For 
 him it was a day lost in impenetrable shadow, and he 
 
 420
 
 LOGAN MAKES AN END 421 
 
 could not tell what should take him out of it. And still 
 he expected Logan would come. 
 
 He heard Rosa get up and go downstairs and light 
 the fire and bawl up to Issy to jump out of his bed, filthy 
 snoring sluggard that he was. He heard the voices of 
 the children and the baby yelling. . . . How indecent, 
 how abominable it was to cram so many people into one 
 small house! 
 
 At the usual time he went over to his mother's kitchen 
 for breakfast, and gulped down his tea, but made no- 
 attempt to eat. Golda looked at him reproachfully, but 
 said nothing, for she saw that he was in some deep 
 trouble. 
 
 After breakfast, as usual, he went for his walk down 
 through Whitechapel almost as far as Bow Church and 
 back. 
 
 In his studio when he returned he found a policeman, 
 who said : 
 
 "Mr. Mendel Kiihler?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 The policeman handed him a letter from Logan who 
 had scrawled: 
 
 "I believe in you to the end." 
 
 To the end ? 
 
 "Is he dead ?" asked Mendel. 
 
 "Next door to it," said the policeman. "The woman's 
 done in." 
 
 "Where?" 
 
 "At the Pot-au-Feu, Soho." 
 
 "Where is he now ?" 
 
 "Workhouse infirmary. If you want to see him the 
 police will raise no objection." 
 
 "Thank you," said Mendel. 
 
 He asked the direction and set out at once.
 
 422 MENDEL 
 
 The workhouse was a dull grey mass of buildings, ris- 
 ing 1 out of a dull grey district like an inevitable creation 
 of its dullness, and it seemed an inevitable contrast to 
 the Merlin's Cave, so that it was right that Logan should 
 walk out of the glitter into it. This was the very con- 
 trast that Mendel's imagination had been vainly seeking, 
 and now, with the violence of a sudden release, his 
 thoughts began to work again. . . . Oliver was dead. 
 That was inevitable too. But why? 
 
 Logan had surrendered to her. They would go home 
 from the Merlin's Cave to the Pot-au-Feu, to Hetty 
 Finch's room. He would surrender to her absolutely, 
 because she had willed his destruction and could not 
 see that his destruction meant her own. She wanted 
 recognition, acknowledgment that her vitality was more 
 important than anything else in the world, and she had 
 brought Logan to it. There had been a cold, set pur- 
 pose in his eyes last night an intellectual purpose. The 
 equation was worked out. She could have what she 
 wanted, at a price. She could destroy the will and the 
 desire of a man, but not his mind, not his spirit, which 
 would still be obedient to a higher will, and that would 
 break her as she had broken. 
 
 Very bare and grim was the waiting-room in which 
 Mendel had to bide until the nurse came for him. Its 
 walls were of a faded green, dim and grimy, and when 
 the door was opened as people went in or out, there was 
 wafted in a smell of antiseptics. But as his thoughts 
 gathered force the room seemed to be rilled with a great 
 light, which revealed beauty in the poor people waiting 
 patiently to see their sick. They became detached and 
 pictorial, but he could not think of them in terms of 
 paint. His mind had begun to work in a new way, and 
 he felt more solid, more human, more firmly planted
 
 LOGAN MAKES AN END 
 
 423 
 
 on the ground, as though at last he was admitted to a 
 place in life. It mattered to him no more that he was 
 a Jew and strange and foreign to the Christian world. 
 There were neither Jews nor Christians now. There 
 were only people tragic, wonderful people. . . . He 
 even forgot that he was in love. All his mind was con- 
 centrated upon Logan, who was now also tragic and won- 
 derful, a source of tragedy and wonder, and his whole 
 effort was to discover and to make plain to himself his 
 share in the tragedy: not to weigh and measure and 
 to wonder whether at one point or another he could have 
 stopped it. Nothing could have stopped it. 
 
 There was no room for judgment in this tragic world. 
 
 A nurse came to fetch him. 
 
 She said : 
 
 "He is very weak, but he will be strong enough to 
 know you. Don't excite him." 
 
 She led him into the bare, white ward, across which 
 the sun threw great shafts of light, to Logan's bedside. 
 At the head of the bed a policeman was sitting with his 
 helmet on his knees, staring straight in front of him. 
 He turned his eyes on Mendel, who thought he looked 
 a very nice man, something amusingly imperturbable in 
 this racking world of tragedy. 
 
 He stood by the bedside and looked down at Logan, 
 in whose face there was at last the noble, conquering 
 expression at which, through all his foolish striving, 
 he had always aimed. His brow was strong and massive, 
 his mouth relentless as Beethoven's, his nose sharp and 
 stubborn, and there was something exquisite and sensi- 
 tive in the drawn skin about his eyes. From his white 
 brow his shock of black hair fell back on the pillow. 
 
 His hand was outside the grey coverlet. Mendel took 
 it in his. Logan opened his eyes, and into them came an
 
 424 MENDEL 
 
 expression of almost incredulous surprise, of ecstatic, in- 
 tolerable happiness. He had wakened out of his dream 
 into his dream, to be with Mendel, to have gone through 
 the very depths to be with Mendel. His hand closed tight 
 on his friend's and his lids drooped over his eyes. 
 
 He opened them again after a few moments and 
 said : 
 , "You!" 
 
 The nurse placed a chair for Mendel, and he sat down 
 and said : 
 
 "How are you feeling?" 
 
 "Pretty weak. I dreamed of your coming, but I didn't 
 really believe it. ... I've done it, you know." 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "What are you doing ?" 
 
 "I've painted another portrait of my mother. A good 
 one, this time. She is sitting in a wooden chair as she 
 always sits, with her hands folded on her stomach. And 
 I am planning a picture of a Jewish market, something 
 bigger than I have attempted yet." 
 
 "I see. Good good. . . . We must work together. 
 We can do it now." 
 
 "Yes," said Mendel, rather mystified. It was very 
 strange to have Logan talking like that, as though he were 
 going back to the first days of their friendship. 
 
 "It is such peace," said Logan ; and indeed he looked as 
 if he were at peace, lying there so still and white, with 
 the hard strain gone from his eyes, in which there was 
 none of the old roguish twinkle, but an expression of pain 
 through which there shone a penetrating and most tender 
 light. 
 
 "Peace," murmured Logan again. "Tell me more. 
 There is only art." 
 
 "There is nothing else," answered Mendel, carried
 
 LOGAN MAKES AN END 425 
 
 away on the impulse of Logan's spirit and understanding 
 what he meant when he said "we." Life, the turbulent 
 life of every day, the life of desire, was broken and had 
 fallen away from him, so that he was living without 
 desire, only in his enduring will, which had lost patience 
 with his desires and had destroyed them. 
 
 Through Mendel trembled a new and strange elation. 
 He recognised that his friendship with Logan was just 
 beginning, and that he was absolved from all share in the 
 catastrophe, if such there had been. And from him too 
 the turbulent life of desire fell away, and he could be at 
 one with his friend. There was no need to talk of the 
 past it was as though it had never been. 
 
 He described the design he had made for his picture: 
 two fat old women bargaining, and a strong man carrying 
 a basket of fruit on his head. 
 
 "A good beginning," said Logan. "I ... I could 
 never get going. I was always overseen in my work." 
 
 "Overseen !" said Mendel, puzzled by the word. 
 
 "Yes. I was always outside the picture, working at it. 
 . . . Too ... too much brains, too little force." 
 
 "I see," said Mendel, for whom a cold finger had been 
 put on one of his own outstanding offences against art. 
 For a moment it brought him to an ashamed silence, but 
 Logan's words slipped so easily into his understanding 
 and took up their habitation there, that he was powerless 
 to resent or to attempt to dislodge them. 
 
 "Overseen," Logan repeated, with an obvious pleasure 
 in plucking out the weeds from their friendship, in the 
 fair promise of which he found peace and joy. "That 
 was the trouble. It couldn't go on. ... City life, I 
 think. Too much for us. Things too much our own way. 
 . . . Egoism. . . ."
 
 426 MENDEL 
 
 "I know that I am feeling my way towards something 
 and that it is no good forcing it," said Mendel. 
 
 An acute attack of pain seized Logan, and he closed 
 his eyes and was silent for a long time, with his brows 
 knit in a kind of impatient boredom at having to submit 
 to such a thing as pain. 
 
 "They've been very good to me," he said. "Given me 
 everything as if I were really 111." 
 
 He sank back into pain again. 
 
 Mendel looked across at the policeman with a feeling 
 of irritation that he should be there, a typical figure of the 
 absurd chaotic life which had fallen away, a symbol of 
 the factitious pretence of order which could only deceive 
 a child. 
 
 "Can't you leave me alone with him ?" he whispered. 
 
 The policeman shook his head. 
 
 "No, sir." 
 
 "You mustn't worry about outside things," said Logan, 
 with an effort. "We are alone. . . . Have you found a 
 new friend?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "You will. Better men than I have been. . . . Do you 
 see that girl still ?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "She was the strongest of us." 
 
 "How?" 
 
 Logan made no answer, and gave a slight shake of 
 impatience at Mendel's not understanding him. 
 
 "Something," he said, "that I never got anywhere 
 near. ... I ... I was overseen in that too." 
 
 The blood drummed in Mendel's temples. Logan's cold 
 finger went probing into his life too, and showed him 
 always casting his own shadow over his passions. In 
 love it was the same as in art. ... It was very odd that,
 
 LOGAN MAKES AN END 427 
 
 with every nerve at stretch to understand Logan and 
 how he had been brought to smash the clotted passion of 
 his life, it should only be important to understand him- 
 self, and that he should be able to understand so coldly, 
 so clearly, so easily. 
 
 And now the presence of the policeman became a relief. 
 It was a guarantee that the whole visible world would 
 not be swept away by the frozen will in Logan, which 
 was like a floe of ice bearing everything with it, nipping 
 at Mendel's life, squeezing it up high and dry and bear- 
 ing it along. He felt that if the policeman were to go 
 away he would be drawn down into the doom that was 
 upon Logan, into the valley of the shadow, even while 
 the good sun came streaming in through the tall windows. 
 . . . He had lost all the emotional interest which had 
 kept him awake through the night. ... It had been sim- 
 ple enough. There had been himself, Logan and Oliver, 
 three people, living in London the gay, reckless life of 
 artists in London, a city so huge that men and women 
 could do in it as they pleased. Oliver and he had hated 
 each other, and Logan had had to choose between them. 
 He had chosen wrongly and had put an end to his misery 
 in the only possible way. 
 
 Mendel fought back out of the shadow back to the 
 policeman, and the sick men lying in the rows of beds, 
 and the dead man lying in the bed which had just been 
 surrounded by a screen, and the simple, wonderful peo- 
 ple in the waiting-room downstairs, and the sun stream- 
 ing through the windows, and the teeming life outside in 
 London wonderful, splendid London, the very heart of 
 the world. ... It was well for Logan to lose sight of 
 these things. He was a dying man. But Mendel was 
 alive, never more alive than now, in face of the shadow 
 of death, and he would not think the thoughts of a dying
 
 428 MENDEL 
 
 man unless they could be shaped in the likeness of life. 
 He gathered together all his forces, summoned up every- 
 thing that urged him towards life and towards art, and 
 of his own strong living will plunged after Logan, no 
 longer in obedience to Logan's frozen purpose, but as a 
 friend giving to his friend the meed that was due to him. 
 
 He took Logan's hand and pressed it, and chafed it 
 gently to make it warm, and Logan smiled at him, and 
 an expression of anguish came into his face as the 
 warmth of his friend wrapped him round, penetrated him, 
 thawed and melted his purpose, with which he had lived 
 for so many empty, solitary days until it had driven him 
 to make an end. The coldness in his friend touched 
 Mendel's heart and was like a stab through it, and he 
 felt soon a marvellous release, as if his blood were flow- 
 ing again, and it seemed that the weaknesses on which 
 Logan had laid his finger were borne down with him into 
 the shadow. 
 
 Mendel remembered Cezanne's portrait of his wife, and 
 how he had intended to tell Logan that it had made him 
 feel like a tree with the sap running through it to the 
 budding leaves in spring. 
 
 He told him now, and added : 
 
 "It doesn't matter that I did not understand you in 
 life." 
 
 "No," said Logan. "Don't go away !" 
 
 "I'll stay," replied Mendel; "I'll stay." 
 
 Then he was in a horrible agony again, as the mar- 
 vellous clarity he had just won disappeared. Logan knew 
 what he was doing, that he was taking with him all the 
 weaknesses and vain follies which had so nearly brought 
 them both to baseness, and Mendel knew that Logan must 
 continue as a powerful force in his work ; but he crushed 
 the rising revolt in himself, the last despairing effort of
 
 LOGAN MAKES AN END 429 
 
 his weakness, and gave himself up to feeding the ex- 
 traordinary delight it was to the poor wretch, lying there 
 with his force ebbing away, to give himself up to a pure 
 artistic purpose such as had been denied him in his tan- 
 gled life. Through this artistic purpose Logan could rise 
 above the natural ebbing process of his vitality, which 
 sucked away with it the baseness and the folly he had 
 brought into his friend's life. He could rejoice in the 
 contact of their minds, the mingling of their souls, the 
 proud salute of this meeting and farewell. It was nothing 
 to him that he was dying, little enough that he had lived, 
 for he knew that he had never lived until now. 
 
 The nurse came and said the patient must rest. 
 
 "Don't go away !" pleaded Logan. 
 
 "I'll wait," said Mendel, patting his hand to reassure 
 him. 
 
 "Half-past two," said the nurse as she followed Mendel 
 out. "What a remarkable man!" she added. "What a 
 tragedy ! I suppose the girl was to blame too." 
 
 "Blame?" said Mendel, rather dazed at being brought 
 back to customary values. "Blame?" 
 
 He went down to the dingy waiting-room and sat there 
 subdued, cowering, exhausted. He felt very cold and 
 miserable. It was so terrible waiting for a thing that 
 had happened. The physical fact could make no differ- 
 ence. . . . Logan had made an end, a very complete and 
 thorough end. . . . Oh! the relief of it, the relief of hav- 
 ing Logan for his friend at last, of having seen him freely 
 and fully tasting at last his heart's desire, of being him- 
 self brought up to that level, that pure contact with an- 
 other human being, for which he had always longed. . . . 
 That desire in both of them had been violated and de- 
 spoiled, God knows how. Lies ? Lust ? Profanation of
 
 430 MENDEL 
 
 the holy spirit of art? .... What words could describe 
 the evil that everywhere in life lay in wait for the ad- 
 venturous, letting the foolish and the timid, the faint of 
 heart and the blind of soul, go by, and waiting for strong 
 men who walked with purpose and a single mind ? 
 
 At half -past two the nurse came to fetch him. 
 
 "He is very weak now," she said. 
 
 Logan's face wore a noble gathering serenity. He was 
 too weak to talk much, and only wanted Mendel to hold 
 his hand and to talk to him about art, about pictures 
 "they" were going to paint, and about pictures they had 
 both loved : Cranach, Diirer, Uccello, Giotto, Blake, 
 Cezanne. 
 
 "Good men, those," said Logan. "Good company." 
 
 "Good, decent, quiet little men." 
 
 "We shall do good things." 
 
 His hand closed more tightly on Mendel's, who sur- 
 rendered himself to the force of the ebb in his friend, 
 felt the cold, salt waves of death close about him and 
 drag him out, out until Logan was lost, and with a fright- 
 ful wrench all that was dead in himself was torn away, 
 and he was left prostrate upon the fringes of his life. . . . 
 He became conscious to find himself leaning over Logan, 
 gazing at his lips, with his own lips near them, waiting 
 for the breath that would come no more. 
 
 It was finished. Logan had made an end. 
 
 Turning away, Mendel saw through the window the 
 lovely grey-blue sky, fleecy with mauve-grey clouds 
 heaped up by the driving wind beautiful, beautiful. . . .
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 PASSOVER 
 
 f T was many days before Mendel could take up his work 
 * again. His mind simply could not express itself in 
 paint 
 
 His first clear thought as he emerged from the numb- 
 ness of the crisis was for Morrison, and to her he wrote, 
 telling her what had happened, describing in minute de- 
 tail his experience in the hospital, and adding that he was 
 without the least wish to see her, and would write to her 
 if his life ever became again what it had been before 
 Logan's violent end. 
 
 It seemed to him that Logan had claimed him, that he 
 was destined to go through life with Logan, a dead man, 
 for sole companion, and always behind Logan was the 
 ominous and dreadful shadow of Oliver, from whom he 
 had thought to escape those many months ago. 
 
 His isolation was complete. It seemed that he had not 
 a friend in the world, and there was not a soul towards 
 whom he could move or wished to move. He could only 
 rake over the ashes of the dead past and marvel that there 
 had ever been a flame stirring in them. And as he raked 
 them, he thrust into them much that only a short while 
 ago had been living and delightful. 
 
 What had happened ? Youth could not be gone while 
 he was yet so young, but he felt immeasurably old, and,
 
 432 MENDEL 
 
 in his worst condition, outside Time, which took shape 
 as a stream flowing past him, bearing with it all his 
 dreams, loves, aspirations, hopes, thoughts. When he 
 tried to cast himself into it, to rescue these treasured 
 possessions, he was clutched back, thrown down, and left 
 prostrate with his eyes darkened and the smell of death in 
 his nostrils. 
 
 Sometimes he thought with terror that he had plunged 
 too far, had given too much to Logan, had committed 
 some obscure blasphemy, had been perhaps "overseen" 
 even in that moment when the weakness and all that was 
 dead in him had been wrenched away. And he said to 
 himself : 
 
 "No. This is much worse than death. It is foolish 
 to seek any meaning in death, for death is not the worst." 
 
 It was no good turning to his people, for he knew that 
 he was cut off from them. They were confined in their 
 Judaism, from which he had broken free. That was one 
 of the dead things which had been taken from him. 
 
 His mother could not help him, because she could not 
 endure his unhappiness. The pain of it was too great 
 for her, and he had to invent a spurious happiness, to 
 pretend that he was working as usual, though with great 
 difficulty, and that, as usual, he was out and about, see- 
 ing his friends. And in a way this pretence gave him 
 relief, though he suffered for it afterwards. He suf- 
 fered so cruelly that he was forced by it into making an 
 effort to grope back into life. 
 
 He was able to take up his work again, and the exer- 
 cise of his craft soothed him, though it gave him no 
 escape. The conception of his market picture was dead. 
 It was enclosed in Judaism, from which he was free. Yet 
 he had no other conception in his mind, and he knew that 
 any picture he might paint must spring from it. So he
 
 PASSOVER 433 
 
 clung to the dead conception and made studies and draw- 
 ings for its execution. 
 
 Some of these drawings he was able to sell to Tysoe, 
 who worried him by coming to talk about Logan and was 
 nearly always ashamed to leave the studio without buy- 
 ing. Mendel was saved from borrowing of his people, 
 which had become repugnant to him now that he no 
 longer belonged to them. 
 
 It was through Tysoe's talk that he was able to push 
 his way through the tragedy of Logan and Oliver back 
 to life. Tysoe insisted that the cause of it was jealousy, 
 but Mendel knew that Logan was beyond jealousy, and, 
 piecing the story together, he saw how Oliver had set 
 herself to smash their friendship because it fortified in 
 her lover what she detested, his intellect, which, because 
 she could not satisfy it, stood between him and his passion 
 for her. If any one was responsible it was she, for she 
 had tried to smash a spiritual thing and had herself been 
 smashed. . . . And Mendel saw that had he tried to 
 smash the relationship between Logan and Oliver he too 
 would have been broken, for that also was a spiritual 
 thing, though an evil. And he saw that, but for Mor- 
 rison, he must have tried to smash it. His obligation to 
 her had given him the strength to resist, to make his 
 escape. Oliver had triumphed, evil had triumphed, and 
 she and Logan were dead and he had to grope his way 
 back to life, and if he could not succeed in doing that, 
 then she and evil would have triumphed indeed, and what 
 was left of him would have to follow the dead that had 
 gone with Logan. 
 
 He sought the society of his father and of the old 
 Jews, the friends of the family, and was left marvelling 
 at their indifference to good and evil. They knew neither 
 joy nor despair. They had yielded up their will to God,
 
 434 MENDEL 
 
 upon Whom, through fair weather and foul, their 
 thoughts were centred. They lived in a complete stag- 
 nation which made him shudder. Their lives were like 
 stale water, like unmoved puddles, from which every now 
 and then their passions broke in bubbles, broke vainly, 
 in bubbles. Nothing brought them any nearer to the God 
 upon Whom their thoughts were centred, and only Time 
 brought them any nearer to the earth. 
 
 And yet Mendel loved them in their simple dignity. 
 They had a quality which he had found nowhere in the 
 Christian world, where men and women had their 
 thoughts centred on the good, leaving evil to triumph as 
 it had triumphed in Oliver. . . . She had wanted good. 
 With all the power of her insensate passion, her blind 
 sensuality, she had wanted love, the highest good she 
 could conceive. . . . But these old Jews were wiser : 
 they wanted God, Whom they knew not how to attain. 
 Yet God was ever present to them. 
 
 In Mendel, too, this desire for God became active and 
 kindled his creative will. He plunged into his work with 
 a frenzy, but soon recognized that he was committing 
 the old offence and was "overseen." . . . Yet how shall 
 a man approach his God if not through art? 
 
 "Something is lacking!" cried Mendel desperately. 
 "Something is lacking!" 
 
 His imagination flew back to that last sublime moment 
 of friendship with Logan, but it lacked warmth. It 
 seemed that he could not take it back into life with him, 
 or that until he had established contact with life its force 
 could not be kindled. . . . Oh! for sweet, comfortable 
 things flowers, and rare music, a white, gleaming table- 
 cloth, and good meats ! 
 
 He thought, with envy, of Edward Tufnell and his 
 wife going along the road on either side smiling at each
 
 PASSOVER 435 
 
 other, so happily smiling. And then he thought with / 
 more satisfaction of the old Jews. They were the wiser 
 and the more solid. They walked in the middle of the 
 way, and good and evil went on either side and neither 
 could attain them. . . . His thoughts swung between 
 those two extremes like a pendulum, and out of the 
 momentum thus created grew a force in his mind which 
 began to find its way towards the God he was seeking. 
 But it was only in his mind. His force, his passion, were 
 left slumbering in the hypnotic sleep imposed on them by 
 the tragedy. 
 
 Yet the mental impulse kept him working in a serene 
 ecstasy. He could make the design for his picture, and 
 simplify his figures into a form in which he knew there 
 was some beauty, or at least that it could hold beauty and 
 let no drop of it escape. 
 
 He could return then to his normal life, and made 
 Golda very happy by joking with her and spending many 
 evenings in her kitchen. 
 
 "You should take a holiday," she said. "You look 
 tired out." 
 
 "I will," he said, "when the spring comes. I am going 
 to be an artist, but I am afraid it will not mean carriages 
 and horses and the King commanding his portrait to be 
 painted." 
 
 He had the very great joy of beginning to understand 
 Cezanne's delight in the intellectual craft of painting and 
 to see why he had neglected the easier delights of handi- 
 craft and the mere pleasure of the eye. But the more 
 he understood, the harder it became to finish his picture. 
 He slaved at it, but there was still no beauty in it. 
 
 He would not surrender. It would have been so easy 
 to slip back to fake a pictorial quality. He had only to
 
 436 MENDEL 
 
 go to the National Gallery to come out with his head 
 buzzing with ideas and impressions. He had only to go 
 into the street to have a thousand mental notes from 
 which to give his work a human and dramatic quality. 
 
 He stuck to it and slaved away until he was forced 
 to give in. 
 
 "You devil !" he said, as he shook his fist at the picture. 
 "You empty jug !" 
 
 But there was some satisfaction in it, unfinished failure 
 as it was, and he wanted Morrison to see it. 
 
 He wrote and asked her to come. 
 
 She and Clowes were in the country, painting, and 
 they wired to him to come and stay with them for a week. 
 Clowes wrote to tell him that she could put him up in 
 the farm of which her cottage was a part. 
 
 With her letter he went racing over to see his mother. 
 
 "I'm going away," he said. "I'm going away to the 
 country. The Christian girl has a house in the country 
 and I am going to stay in it." 
 
 "You will have fresh air and new milk to make you 
 well again," cried Golda, scarcely able to contain her joy 
 at seeing him once more his happy, elated, robustious self. 
 "You will be well again, but you should have done with 
 that nonsense about the Christian girl. A sparrow does 
 not mate with a robin, and a cock robin is what you 
 are." 
 
 "Yes. I'm a robin," said Mendel, and he whistled 
 blithely, "Tit-a-weet! tit-a-weet! tit-a-weet! I shall go 
 on the halls as a whistler. Tit-a-weet ! and I shall make 
 three hundred pounds a week. Tit-a-weet ! tit-a-weet !" 
 
 Golda laughed at him till the tears ran, so happy was 
 she to have him come back to her. 
 
 "It is not nonsense about the Christian girl," he said.
 
 PASSOVER 
 
 437 
 
 "She is going to turn me into a Public School gentleman, 
 and I shall bring her to see you, so that you can know 
 for yourself that it is not nonsense." 
 
 "It is not the girl who is nonsensical, but you." 
 
 "Tit-a-weet!" 
 
 "I will bake her a Jewish bread and you shall take it 
 to her. Yes. Bring her to me and I will thank her for 
 bearing with you." 
 
 "Tit-a-weet ! Tit-a-weet !" 
 
 "Cock robin!" 
 
 His luggage consisted of a brown-paper parcel, a paint- 
 box and two canvases. 
 
 Morrison met him at the station. She was glowing 
 with health and good spirits and began to tease him at 
 once about his luggage, of which she insisted on taking 
 charge. 
 
 "It's the loveliest little cottage!" she said; "only two 
 rooms. ... I hope you don't mind walking along the 
 road. There is another way through the fields, but I 
 daren't try to find it ; besides, it goes through the woods, 
 and I don't want you to see any woods before you have 
 been to mine. I don't believe there'll be room for you in 
 the cottage. You'll have to sit in the garden and have 
 your meals handed out to you, among the chickens and 
 the pigs." 
 
 "Pigs?" said Mendel, "I want to draw pigs. Marvel- 
 lous animals !" 
 
 "These are the most marvellous pigs that ever were." 
 
 So they chattered in a growing glee as they walked 
 along the winding road up into the hills. They were 
 unwilling to let their deep thoughts emerge until they 
 had been caught up in the beauty of the place, the serene 
 lines of the comfortable folding hills, the farmsteads
 
 438 MENDEL 
 
 tucked in the hollows, the rich velvet plough-lands, the 
 blue masses of woods, the gorse-grown common, and the 
 single sentinels the trees, and the hedges where the birds 
 sang and twittered, Tit-a-weet! tit-a-weet! . . . And 
 over the hills hung the wide sky, vast and open, with 
 great clouds that seemed to be drawn from the edge of 
 the earth and sent floating up and up to show how limit- 
 less was the space above the earth. 
 
 For the first time Mendel had no sting of anger at the 
 exhilaration in the English girl, no desire to pluck her 
 out from the surroundings of the lovely English country 
 in which it seemed to be her desire to lose herself. She 
 was one with the rich fields and the mighty trees and the 
 singing birds in the hedges, and when his heart sang 
 Tit-a-weet, he knew it for a comic Cockney note. It was 
 he who was at fault, not she, and she was the very com- 
 fort he had come to seek. 
 
 The farmer's wife received him with a kindly pity 
 the poor, pale London foreigner and told him he must 
 have plenty of good plain country food, plenty of milk, 
 plenty of fresh air. 
 
 "I do the cooking for Miss Clowes," she said, "and if 
 you'll excuse my saying so, the young ladies take a deal 
 of tempting." 
 
 Mendel thought her a wonderful woman, his room a 
 wonderful room, the cottage a wonderful cottage, and the 
 place the finest in the world. The air was rare and 
 buoyant and he had never felt so free and so strong. His 
 life in London looked to him like a bubble which he could 
 break with a touch or with a puff of his breath. But 
 he was reluctant to break it yet, for the time had not 
 come. 
 
 The girls showed him their work and he praised it, 
 and began to talk of his own picture. Clowes led him
 
 PASSOVER 
 
 439 
 
 on to explain what she called the modern movement, 
 which she could not pretend to understand. 
 
 Conversation that first evening was all between Qowes 
 and Mendel, while Morrison sat silent, curled up on the 
 floor by the fire, gazing into it, sometimes listening, some- 
 times dreaming, sometimes shaking with a happy dread as 
 she thought how near she was to her heart's desire. It 
 had been for so long her central thought that she would 
 take him down to the country and get him away from 
 the terrible pressure of London upon his spirit, so that 
 she could see released in him, perhaps slowly, perhaps 
 painfully, what she loved the vivid, clear vitality. And 
 now she had won. She had him sitting there within 
 reach, with good, faithful Clowes, and already she could 
 feel the new glow of health in him. Almost she could 
 detect a new tone in his lovely rich voice. . . . Some- 
 times, as she gazed into the fire, her eyes were clouded 
 with tears. It seemed so incredible that she could have 
 won against the innumerable enemies, invisible and in- 
 tangible, against whom action had been impossible, even 
 if she had known what to do. 
 
 She had been happy enough with Clowes in this place, 
 but now she could not help a wickedly ungrateful desire 
 that Clowes should be spirited away. 
 
 Clowes absented herself in the day-time, but Mendel 
 had very little energy, and for the most part of the day 
 sat by the fire brooding over the bubble of his London 
 life, which he knew he must break with a touch. Often 
 Morrison sat with him, and neither spoke a word for 
 hours together. 
 
 On the fifth day, when the sun shone so that it was 
 wicked to be indoors, Morrison suggested lunch in the 
 woods. Clowes excused herself, but Mendel agreed to
 
 440 MENDEL 
 
 go with her, and the farmer's wife packed them a basket 
 of food. They set out gaily, over the common, up the 
 rolling field green with winter corn, down through the 
 jolly farmyard full of gobbling turkeys and strutting 
 guinea-fowl, under the wild cherry-trees to the woods, 
 where in a clearing they made a fire, and Morrison, de- 
 claring that she was a gipsy, sang the only song she could 
 remember, "God Save the King," and told his fortune 
 by his hand. He was to meet a dark woman who would 
 make a great change in his life, and money would come 
 his way, but he must beware of the Knave of Clubs. 
 
 Entering into her mood, he insisted that they must 
 act a Wild West cinema drama, and he rescued her from 
 Indians and a Dago ravisher, and in the end claimed her 
 hand from a grateful father; and so hilarious did they 
 become that the cinema drama turned into an opera, and 
 he was Caruso to her Melba. In the end they laughed 
 until they were exhausted, and decided that it was time 
 for lunch. 
 
 After they had eaten they were silent for a long time, 
 and at last, rather to her surprise, she found herself be- 
 ginning to explain to him that this was love, this the 
 heaven at which she had been aiming, the full song 
 whereof they had played the first few notes as boy and 
 girl at the picnic and again in the dewy grass on the 
 Heath. And she told him quite simply that she had loved 
 him always, from the time when they had met on the 
 stairs at the Detmold, and even before that, though she 
 could not remember clearly. And she told him that 
 love dwelt in the woods and the hedgerows, in the sweet 
 air and the song of the birds, not only in the spring- 
 time but in the harsh winter weather and in the summer 
 ..heat of the sun.
 
 PASSOVER 44! 
 
 "Oh, Mendel," she said, "I have been wanting you 
 to know, but it seemed that you would never know while 
 you looked for love in the heat and the dust of London." 
 
 And he as simply believed her. It was lovely there in 
 the woods, among the tall grey-green pillars of the trees, 
 with the pale yellow sunlight falling on the emerald of 
 the moss and the russet of the dead bracken, and the 
 brilliant enamel of the blackberry leaves. He was over- 
 come with his exquisite delight, and she, to comfort him, 
 held him in her arms, her weary shaggy faun, so bit- 
 terly conscious of his own ugliness. She soothed him 
 and caressed him, and won him over to her own serene 
 joy, which passed from her to him in wave upon wave of 
 flooding warmth, melting the last coldness in his soul, 
 healing the last wounds upon his spirit. 
 
 He roused himself, flung up his head, and began to 
 whistle : 
 
 "Tit-a-weet!" 
 
 And he looked so comical that she laughed. 
 
 "That isn't anything like a bird," she said. 
 
 "It is. It is very like cock robin." 
 
 To -their mutual amazement it seemed entirely un- 
 necessary to discuss the future or the past, and the pres- 
 ent demanded only happy silence. Here in the enchant- 
 ment of the woods was love, and it was enough. 
 
 While they stayed in the woods they hardly talked 
 at all, but as they walked home he became solemn and 
 said, as though it pained and puzzled him : 
 
 "We are no longer young." 
 
 "We shall never be anything else," she protested, for 
 she was pained by the change in his mood. 
 
 "Youth passes," he said. 
 
 And her exhilaration died in her, for she knew she 
 had touched his obstinacy. He saw her droop and was
 
 442 MENDEL 
 
 sorry, and began to whistle and to laugh, but she could 
 not be revived. She had thought to have secured him, 
 to have made him safe with the charm of love for ever, 
 but she was sure now that the hardest of all was yet to 
 come. 
 
 In the evening, as they sat by the fire in the little white 
 room, Mendel and Clowes talking and Morrison curled 
 up on the floor gazing into the coals, he suddenly ceased 
 to hear Clowes' voice, and saw very clearly the bubble 
 of his life in London before him Mr. Kuit, Issy, Hetty 
 Finch, Mitchell, Logan and Oliver Logan and Oliver 
 leaving the Merlin's Cave and going out into the street 
 and walking home to the Pot-au-Feu, up the narrow, 
 dark stairs to Hetty Finch's room. . . . He put out his 
 hand to touch the bubble and it broke, and with a shud- 
 dering, gasping cry he heard Clowes saying : 
 
 "On the whole I don't think all this modern stuff can 
 be good for anything but decoration." 
 
 And he began to think of his own picture, which was 
 full of life. Wherever he picked up the design he could 
 follow it all round the picture, and through and through 
 it, beyond it into the mystery of art, and out of it back 
 into life. It was poised, a wonderful, lovely created 
 thing, with a complete, unaccountable, serene life of its 
 own. The harsh, gloomy background of London fell 
 away, and in its place shone green hills and a clear blue 
 sky, fleecy with mauve-grey clouds. . . . 
 
 Following the clouds, he came easily back to life again, 
 to the two girls sitting in this wonderful snug cottage, 
 and he was overwhelmed by a feeling that he was shar- 
 ing their comfortable happiness on false pretences. It 
 was not to him the perfectly satisfying wonder they so 
 obviously wished it to be for him, and at last he could 
 not contain himself, and burst out:
 
 PASSOVER 443 
 
 "You must not expect me to be happy. I cannot be 
 happy. I will swing up to it as high as ever you like, 
 but I must swing back again. Happiness is not life, love 
 is not life, any more than misery is life. If I stay in 
 happiness I die as surely as if I stay in misery. I must 
 be like a pendulum. I must swing to and fro or the 
 clock will stop. ... I can't make it clear to you, but 
 it is so. What matters is that the clock should go. Jews \ 
 understand, but they forget that they are the pendulum 
 and they do not live at all. Jews are wonderful peo- 
 ple. They know that what matters is the impulse of 
 the soul. It matters so much to them that they have for- 
 gotten everything else. And those who are not Jews 
 think of everything else and forget the impulse of the 
 soul. But I know that when I swing from happiness 
 to unhappiness, from good to bad, from light to dark, 
 then a force comes into my soul and it can move up to 
 art, and beyond art, into that place where it can be free. 
 . . . Don't, please, misunderstand me." He addressed 
 himself frankly to Morrison, who dropped her head a 
 little lower. "In love I can no more be free than I can 
 in misery. I will swing as high on one side as I will 
 on the other, and then I can be free." 
 
 Morrison folded her hands in her lap and her hair 
 fell over her face. Mendel got up, said good-night, and 
 went over to the farm. 
 
 "Well," said Clowes uneasily, "I really think he must 
 be a genius." 
 
 Morrison made no reply, and presently Clowes went 
 upstairs to bed, leaving her with her hair drooping over 
 her face, staring into the glowing fire. 
 
 "I must learn my lesson," said Morrison to herself. 
 "I must learn my lesson." 
 
 She was so little trained for misery, but this was
 
 444 MENDEL 
 
 misery enough. But she sat and brooded over it, and 
 summoned up all her strength for the supreme effort of 
 her will, not to be broken and cast down in the swing 
 back from love. She had taught him to surrender him- 
 self to love; she must learn to surrender herself to mis- 
 ery, to swing as high on one side as on the other. 
 
 For many, many hours she wrestled with herself and 
 broke down fear after fear, weakness after weakness, 
 until she was utterly exposed to the enemies of love 
 and knew that she could be with Mendel through every- 
 thing. She took out from her paint-box his letter de- 
 scribing the scene in the hospital, which had shocked and 
 horrified her before, and now read and re-read it until 
 she had lived through all the story and could under- 
 stand both Logan and Oliver. 
 
 At last, when she could endure no more, relief came, 
 a new vision of love, no longer lost in the woods or 
 in any earthly beauty, but a clear light illuminating men 
 and women and the earth upon which they dwell. And in 
 her soul, too, the upward impulse began to thrill, and 
 with a sob of thankfulness she lay on her bed fully 
 clothed and went to sleep. 
 
 She was not at all disturbed when Mendel said in 
 the morning that he must go back to London to work 
 on his picture. It was right. Their happiness was too 
 tremulous. There was plenty of time for them to take 
 up their ordinary jolly human lives, plenty of time now 
 that they were no longer young. 
 
 She walked with him to the station, and on the way 
 they laughed and sang, and he whistled and talked 
 breathlessly about his picture. 
 
 "My mother says a cock robin can never mate with
 
 PASSOVER 445 
 
 a sparrow," he said. "I promised I would take you to 
 see her." 
 
 "I should love to come, for I love your mother." 
 
 "I would like you to see the Jews as they are," he 
 said, "so simply serving God that their souls have gone 
 to sleep." 
 
 As they stood on the platform she said : 
 
 "Mendel, I did . . . begin to understand last night, 
 and it has made you and your work more important than 
 anything else in my life." 
 
 He gripped her fiercely by the arm. 
 
 "Come to London, now," he said. 
 
 "Not now." 
 
 "Soon." 
 
 "Very soon." 
 
 He got into the train, and as it carried him off she 
 could not bear him to go, and, forgetting all the other 
 people, she ran as hard as she could along the platform, 
 and stood at its extremity until the train disappeared 
 round the corner of the embankment, and even then she 
 called after him: 
 
 "Mendel! Mendel!" 
 
 THE END