Celibates | Page 8

that had
fallen on the grass. 'Is it worth it?'
She picked up the sketch.
'It was better before you came,' she said, examining it absent- mindedly. 'I went on
working at it; I've spoiled it.' Then, noticing the incongruity, she added, 'But it doesn't
matter. Art is not the only thing in the world. There is good to be done if one only knew
how to do it. I don't mean charity, such goodness is only on the surface, it is merely a
short cut to the real true goodness. Art may be only selfishness, indeed I'm inclined to
think it is, but art is education, not the best, perhaps, but the best within my reach.'
'Mildred, I really do not understand. You cannot be well, or you wouldn't talk so.'
'I'm quite well,' she said. 'I hardly expected you would understand. But I beg you to
believe that I cannot act otherwise. My life is not with you. I feel sure of that.'
The words were spoken so decisively that he knew he would not succeed in changing her.
Then his face grew pale with anger, and he said: 'Then everything you've said--all your
promises--everything was a lie, a wretched lie.'
'No, Alfred, I tried to believe. I did believe, but I had not thought much then. Remember,
I was only eighteen.' She gathered up her painting materials, and, holding out her hand,
said, 'Won't you forgive me?'
'No, I cannot forgive you.' She saw him walk down the pathway, she saw him disappear
in the shadow. And this rupture was all that seemed real in their love story. It was in his
departure that she felt, for the first time, the touch of reality.

III.
Mildred did not see Alfred again. In the pauses of her painting she wondered if he
thought of her, if he missed her. Something had gone out of her life, but a great deal more
had come into it.
Mr. Hoskin, a young painter, whose pictures were sometimes rejected in the Academy,
but who was a little lion in the minor exhibitions, came once a week to give her lessons,
and when she went to town she called at his studio with her sketches. Mr. Hoskin's studio
was near the King's Road, the last of a row of red houses, with gables, cross- beams, and
palings. He was a good-looking, blond man, somewhat inclined to the poetical and
melancholy type; his hair bristled, and he wore a close-cut red beard; the moustache was
long and silky; there was a gentle, pathetic look in his pale blue eyes; and a slight
hesitation of speech, an inability to express himself in words, created a passing
impression of a rather foolish, tiresome person. But beneath this exterior there lay a deep,
true nature, which found expression in twilit landscapes, the tenderness of cottage lights

in the gloaming, vague silhouettes, and vague skies and fields. Ralph Hoskin was very
poor: his pathetic pictures did not find many purchasers, and he lived principally by
teaching.
But he had not given Mildred her fourth lesson in landscape painting when he received an
advantageous offer to copy two pictures by Turner in the National Gallery. Would it be
convenient to her to take her lesson on Friday instead of on Thursday? She listened to
him, her eyes wide open, and then in her little allusive way suggested that she would like
to copy something. She might as well take her lesson in the National Gallery as in Sutton.
Besides, he would be able to take her round the gallery and explain the merits of the
pictures.
She was anxious to get away from Sutton, and the prospect of long days spent in London
pleased her, and on the following Thursday Harold took her up to London by the ten
minutes past nine. For the first time she found something romantic in that train. They
drove from Victoria in a. hansom. Mr. Hoskin was waiting for her on the steps of the
National Gallery.
'I'm so frightened,' she said; 'I'm afraid I don't paint well enough.'
'You'll get on all right. I'll see you through. This way. I've got your easel, and your place
is taken.'
They went up to the galleries.
'Oh, dear me, this seems rather alarming!' she exclaimed, stopping before the crowd of
easels, the paint-boxes, the palettes on the thumbs, the sheaves of brushes, the maulsticks
in the air. She glanced at the work, seeking eagerly for copies, worse than any she was
likely to perpetrate. Mr. Hoskin assured her that there were many in the gallery who
could not do as well as she. And she experienced a little thrill when he led her to the easel.
A beautiful white canvas stood on it ready