Entr’ Acte
Two men turned out of the gateway of the McGrath and walked up the street that led to the Euston Road. Just before they reached the corner one of them stopped and gave a lingering, but sardonic, look behind him. He was Jowett, the Professor of Painting, and his companion was the friend who had once talked with him at a students’ dance, while the Discobolus and the Gladiator had held the shawls and fans of the dancers. Then they went forward together again.
“So you’re shaking the dust off your feet?” Jowett’s friend said. “How many years has it been?”
“Twenty-odd. Twenty-two or three. Twenty-three years next March, to be precise. Nice way for a man to spend twenty-three years of his life, isn’t it?”
“A very nice way, I should say. Beautiful things about you all the time—lots of pleasant young people and so on. One gets older, of course, but you have the fun of starting ’em in the world and seeing how far they go.”
With an “Eh?” Jowett looked sideways at his companion; then he looked before him again.
“The world? That place hasn’t got anything to do with the world,” he said.
“No? Well, one of your old students seemed to be making quite a stir in it not so long ago—that girl who painted ‘Barrage’—what’s her name—Miss Towers, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. Amory Towers. A small red-haired girl. I fancy I pointed her out to you once. She was married a year or so ago; married another of our students. Pratt, his name was.”
“Then she’s in the world now, at any rate.”
“Think so? I very much doubt it. Of course she is, in one sense; I can’t deny that; but this is what I mean: There’s too much paper in their lives. They read too much. Draw too much. Especially reading. Lord, the books they get hold of! Weeks and months together I’ve heard ’em: Myers says this, and Galton says that, and Tolstoi says the other; and they make up a sort of world out of all that, and think it’s the real one, or is soon going to be, and they live in it, and go on living in it, and never get out of it. I hope I’ve heard the last of Myers and Galton and Tolstoi.”
“But—my good chap!”
Jowett glared. “Well?”
“Well!”
“You mean these are the great men? Well, I’m not a great man myself, so what does it matter to me? And what does it matter to those infants? Oh, it’s all in the old Greek tag: ‘A great book is a great evil.’... You’re laughing; look here: I’ll tell you the kind of thing that used to happen half a dozen times a day. I used to set these boys and girls to draw a simple object—simple, but more than they could do, for all that, or ever would be able to do; it all depends on how much you see in a simple object. And I’d even show ’em how to do it—for there are one or two simple things I really know and can do myself. Well, presently I’d look up, and there would be sweet seventeen, giving me a pitying sort of smile. I’d ask her what she was smiling at, and then she’d coo, ‘Oh, but Degas didn’t draw like that!’—or Beardsley, or the newest man from Montmartre (but the chances were it was somebody rather corrupt). ‘But you don’t happen to be his pupil just at this moment,’ I’d say.... Anyhow, the point is, that an adorable young female person, or a decent young fellow for that matter, with no more use for an idea than I have for Moses’ Rod, would throw one of these names at my head as soon as look at me. And the bigger the duffer the bigger the name: get that well into your head: that was unvarying. They used to think it was a joke when I asked them, whether they could make an omelette—of course, I really meant make a baby’s shirt and contrive to get a baby inside it, but I couldn’t exactly say that, so I used to say ‘omelette’ very slowly and distinctly, and look hard at ’em.... A baby? If I had said it, another piece of paper would have come in. They wouldn’t have been able to get a baby until they’d seen what Strindberg or Nietzsche or somebody had to say about it first! And even if they did manage it, then there’d be more paper—systematics—newest methods of this and that and the other—lectures on proteids before they dared to feed it—paper, paper, paper—I know—I’ve had twenty-three years of it——”
His friend twinkled. “Has the little red-haired girl any family yet?” he asked.
“I don’t know; but”—something like a twinkle flickered for a moment under Jowett’s shaggy brows also—“perhaps I’m wrong. Perhaps Pratt knows at least one little bit about Life by this time. One of the girls there used to sing some song or other, I remember—something about—
“‘Tying a piece of ribbon round his bonnie, bonnie waist,
To let the ladies know he was married.’
and I shouldn’t be surprised—I don’t know, of course, but at a guess——”
“Oh?... You mean she’ll be likely to be jealous?”
“Well, I fancy she’ll have him safe under her pretty little thumb. I suppose there’s nothing new about the whole thing really—same old twig, same old lime, same old bird. But a vast deal more paper—I still stick to that.”
Jowett’s friend twinkled again. “I know what’s the matter with you and me,” he chuckled. “We’re both on the wrong side of five-and-forty. That’s all that’s the matter with us.”
Jowett had been muttering within his shaggy moustache some extempore Litany or other; his friend caught the words, “From all young women who talk paper with their hair down—From all young men who think the New Woman isn’t just the same as the Old one—And from all day-nurseries for the children of the well-to-do middle classes——” He stopped short.
“Think so?” he said. “You think that’s it? Perhaps you’re right.... Well, it’s not my habit, but suppose—if it was only for the sake of the name——”
He indicated an establishment with large hanging lamps——
And they entered the Adam and Eve.