The Roll-Call - Arnold Bennett (top ten books to read TXT) 📗

Pilsener.

"Now, Mr. Cannon," he said, pouring beer into a glass with an up-and-down motion of the bottle so as to put a sparkling head on the beer.

"No, thank you," said George decidedly. "I won't have beer."

Mr. Buckingham Smith gazed at him challengingly out of his black eyes. "Oh! But you've got to," he said. It was as if he had said: "I am generous. I love to be hospitable, but I am not going to have my hospitality thwarted, and you needn't think it."

George accepted the beer and joined in the toasting of Mr. Alfred Prince's health.

"Old chap!" Mr. Buckingham Smith greeted his chum, and then to George and Marguerite, informingly and seriously: "One of the best."

It was during the snack that Mr. Buckingham Smith began to display the etchings of Mr. Alfred Prince, massed in a portfolio. He extolled them with his mouth half-full of brawn, or between two gulps of Pilsener. They impressed George deeply--they were so rich and dark and austere.

"Old Princey boy's one of the finest etchers in Europe to-day, if you ask me," said Mr. Buckingham Smith off-handedly, and with the air of stating the obvious. And George thought that Mr. Prince was. The etchings were not signed 'Alfred Prince,' but just 'Prince,' which was quietly imposing. Everybody agreed that Vienna had chosen the best one.

"It's a dry-point, isn't it?" Marguerite asked, peering into it. George started. This single remark convinced him that she knew all about etching, whereas he himself knew nothing. He did not even know exactly what a dry-point was.

"Mostly," said Mr. Prince. "You can only get that peculiar quality of line in dry-point."

George perceived that etching was an entrancing subject, and he determined to learn something about it--everything about it.

Then came the turn of Mr. Buckingham Smith's paintings. These were not signed 'Smith' as the etchings were signed 'Prince.' By no means! They were signed 'Buckingham Smith.' George much admired them, though less than he admired the etchings. They were very striking and ingenious, in particular the portraits and the still-life subjects. He had to admit that these fellows to whom he had scarcely given a thought, these fellows who existed darkly behind the house, were prodigiously accomplished.

"Of course," said Mr. Buckingham Smith negligently, "you can't get any idea of them by this light--though," he added warningly, "it's the finest artificial light going. Better than all your electricity."

There was a pause, and Mr. Prince sighed and said:

"I was thinking of going up to the Promenades to-night, but Buck won't go."

George took fire at once. "The Glazounov ballet music?"

"Glazounov?" repeated Mr. Prince uncertainly. "No. I rather wanted to hear the new Elgar."

George was disappointed, for he had derived from Mr. Enwright positive opinions about the relative importance of Elgar and Glazounov.

"Go often?" he asked.

"No," said Mr. Prince. "I haven't been this season yet, but I'm always meaning to." He smiled apologetically. "And I thought to-night----" Despite appearances, he was not indifferent after all to his great Viennese triumph; he had had some mild notion of his own of celebrating the affair.

"I suppose this is what etchings are printed with," said George to Mr. Buckingham Smith, for the sake of conversation, and he moved towards the press. The reception given to the wonderful name of Glazounov in that studio was more than a disappointment for George; he felt obscurely that it amounted to a snub.

Mr. Buckingham Smith instantly became the urbane and alert showman. He explained how the pressure was regulated. He pulled the capstan-like arms of the motive wheel and the blanketed steel bed slid smoothly under the glittering cylinder. Although George had often been in his stepfather's printing works he now felt for the first time the fascination of manual work, of artisanship, in art, and he regretted that the architect had no such labour. He could indistinctly hear Mr. Prince talking to Marguerite.

"This is a monotype," said Mr. Buckingham Smith, picking up a dusty print off the window-sill. "I do one occasionally."

"Did you do this?" asked George, who had no idea what a monotype was and dared not inquire.

"Yes. They're rather amusing to do. You just use a match or your finger or anything."

"It's jolly good," said George. "D'you know, it reminds me a bit of Cezanne."

Of course it was in Paris that he had heard of the great original, the martyr and saviour of modern painting. Equally of course it was Mr. Enwright who had inducted him into the esoteric cult of Cezanne, and magically made him see marvels in what at the first view had struck him as a wilful and clumsy absurdity.

"Oh!" murmured Buck, stiffening.

"What do you think of Cezanne?"

"Rule it out!" said Buck, with a warning cantankerous inflection, firmly and almost brutally reproving this conversational delinquency of George's. "Rule it out, young man! We don't want any of that sort of mountebanking in England. We know what it's worth."

George was cowed. More, his faith in Cezanne was shaken. He smiled sheepishly and was angry with himself. Then he heard Mr. Prince saying calmly and easily to Miss Haim--the little old man could not in fact be so nervous as he seemed:

"I suppose _you_ wouldn't come with me to the Prom?"

George was staggered and indignant. It was inconceivable, monstrous, that those two should be on such terms as would warrant Mr. Prince's astounding proposal. He felt that he simply could not endure them marching off together for the evening. Her acceptance of the proposal would be an outrage. He trembled. However, she declined, and he was lifted from the rack.

"I must really go," she said. "Father's sure to be home by now."

"May I?" demanded Mr. Buckingham Smith, stooping over Marguerite's portfolio of designs, and glancing round at her for permission to open it. Already his hand was on the tape.

"On no account!" she cried. "No! No!... Mr. Cannon, please take it from him!" She was serious.

"Oh! All right! All right!" Mr. Buckingham Smith rose to the erect good-humouredly.

After a decent interval George took the portfolio under his arm. Marguerite was giving thanks for hospitality. They left. George was singularly uplifted by the fact that she never concealed from him those designs upon which Mr. Buckingham Smith had not been allowed to gaze. And, certain contretemps and disappointments notwithstanding, he was impressed by the entity of the studio. It had made a desirable picture in his mind: the romantic paraphernalia, the etchings, the canvases, the lights and shadows, the informality, the warm odours of the lamp and of the Pilsener, the dazzling white of the tablecloth, the quick, positive tones of Buckingham Smith, who had always to be convincing not only others but himself that he was a strong man whose views were unassailable, the eyes of Buckingham Smith like black holes in his handsome face, the stylish gestures and coarse petulance of Buckingham Smith, the shy assurance of little old Prince. He envied the pair. Their existence had a cloistral quality which appealed to something in him. They were continually in the studio, morning, afternoon, evening. They were independent. They had not to go forth to catch omnibuses and trains, to sit in offices, to utilize the services of clerks, to take orders, to 'Consider the idiosyncrasies of superiors. They were self-contained, they were consecrated, and they were free. No open competitions for them! No struggles with committees and with contractors! And no waiting for the realization of an idea! They sat down and worked, and the idea came at once to life, complete, without the necessity of other human co-operation! They did not sit in front of a painting or etching and say, as architects had too often to say in front of their designs: "That is wasted! That will never come into being." Architecture might be the art of arts, and indeed it was, but there were terrible drawbacks to it....

And next he was outside in the dark with Marguerite Haim, and new, intensified sensations thrilled him. She was very marvellous in the dark.

Mr. Haim had not returned.

"Well!" she muttered; and then dreamily: "What a funny little man Mr. Prince is, isn't he?" She spoke condescendingly.

"Anyhow," said George, who had been respecting Mr. Alfred Prince, "anyhow, I'm glad you didn't go to the concert with him."

"Why?" she asked, with apparent simplicity. "I adore the Proms. Don't you?"

"Let's go, then," he suggested. "We shan't be very late, and what else is there for you to do?"

His audacity frightened him. There she stood with him in the porch, silent, reflective. She would never go. For sundry practical and other reasons she would refuse. She must refuse.

"I'll go," she said, as if announcing a well-meditated decision. He could scarcely believe it. This could not be London that he was in.

They deposited the portfolio under the mat in the porch.


IV


When they got into the hall the band was sending forth a tremendous volume of brilliant exhilarating sound. A vast melody seemed to ride on waves of brass. The conductor was very excited, and his dark locks shook with the violence of his gestures as he urged onward the fingers and arms of the executants flying madly through the maze of the music to a climax. There were flags; there was a bank of flowers; there was a fountain; there were the huge crimson-domed lamps that poured down their radiance; and there was the packed crowd of straw-hatted and floral-hatted erect figures gazing with upturned, intent faces at the immense orchestral machine. Then came a final crash, and for an instant the thin, silvery tinkle of the fountain supervened in an enchanted hush; and then terrific applause, with yells and thuds above and below the hand-clapping, filled and inflamed the whole interior. The conductor, recovering from a collapse, turned round and bowed low with his hand on his shirt-front; his hair fell over his forehead; he straightened himself and threw the hair back again, and so he kept on, time after time casting those plumes to and fro. At last, sated with homage, he thought of justice, and pointed to the band and smiled with an unconvincing air of humility, as if saying: "I am naught. Here are the true heroes." And on the end of his stick he lifted to their feet eighty men, whose rising drew invigorated shouts. Enthusiasm reigned; triumph was accomplished. Even when the applause had expired, enthusiasm still reigned; and every person present had the illusion of a share in the triumph. It was a great night at the Promenades.

George and Marguerite looked at each other happily. They both were inspired by the feeling that life was a grand thing, and that they had reached suddenly one of the summits of existence. George, observing the excitement in her eyes, thought how wonderful it was that she too should be excited.

"What was that piece?" she asked.

"I don't quite know," he said. "There don't appear to be any programmes about." He wished he had been able to identify the piece, but he was too content to be ashamed of his ignorance. Moreover, his ignorance was hers also, and he liked that.

The music resumed. He listened, ready to put himself into the mood of admiration if it was the Glazounov item. Was it Glazounov? He could not be certain. It sounded fine. Surely it sounded Russian. Then he had a glimpse of a programme held by a man standing near, and he