Will Warburton | Page 7

lit a cigarette, and tried to sit still, but was
very soon pacing the floor again. A tumbler of whisky and soda
reanimated his flagging talk.
"No!" he exclaimed. "I'm not going to admit that 'Sanctuary' is cheap
and sentimental, and all the rest of it. The more I think about it, the
more convinced I am that it's nothing to be ashamed of. People have
got hold of the idea that if a thing is popular it must be bad art. That's
all rot. I'm going in for popularity. Look here! Suppose that's what I
was meant for? What if it's the best I have in me to do? Shouldn't I be a
jackass if I scorned to make money by what, for me, was good work,
and preferred to starve whilst I turned out pretentious stuff that was
worth nothing from my point of view?"
"I shouldn't wonder if you're right," said Warburton reflectively. "In
any case, I know as much about art as I do about the differential
calculus. To make money is a good and joyful thing as long as one.
doesn't bleed the poor. So go ahead, my son, and luck be with you!"
"I can't find my model yet for the Slummer's head. It mustn't be too like
the 'Sanctuary' girl, but at the same time it must be a popular type of
beauty. I've been haunting refreshment bars and florists' shops; lots of
good material, but never quite the thing. There's a damsel at the Crystal
Palace--but this doesn't interest you, you old misogynist."
"Old what?" exclaimed Warburton, with an air of genuine surprise.
"Have I got the word wrong? I'm not much of a classic--"
"The word's all right. But that's your idea of me, is it?"
The artist stood and gazed at his friend with an odd expression, as if a
joke had been arrested on his lips by graver thought.
"Isn't it true?"

"Perhaps it is; yes, yes, I daresay."
And he turned at once to another subject.

CHAPTER 3

The year was 1886.
When at business, Warburton sat in a high, bare room, which looked
upon little Ailie Street, in Whitechapel; the air he breathed had a taste
and odour strongly saccharine. If his eye strayed to one of the walls, he
saw a map of the West Indies; if to another, it fell upon a map of St.
Kitts; if to the third, there was before him a plan of a sugar estate on
that little island. Here he sat for certain hours of the solid day, issuing
orders to clerks, receiving commercial callers, studying trade journals
in sundry languages-- often reading some book which had no obvious
reference to the sugar-refining industry. It was not Will's ideal of life,
but hither he had suffered himself to be led by circumstance, and his
musings suggested no practicable issue into a more congenial world.
The death of his father when he was sixteen had left him with a certain
liberty for shaping a career. What he saw definitely before him was a
small share in the St. Kitts property of Messrs. Sherwood Brothers, a
small share in the London business of the same firm, and a small sum
of ready money--these things to be his when he attained his majority.
His mother and sister, who lived in a little country house down in
Huntingdonshire, were modestly but securely provided for, and Will
might have gone quietly on with his studies till he could resolve upon a
course in life. But no sooner was he freed from paternal restraint than
the lad grew restive; nothing would please him but an adventure in
foreign lands; and when it became clear that he was only wasting his
time at school, Mrs. Warburton let him go to the West Indies, where a
place was found for him in the house of Sherwood Brothers. At St.
Kitts, Will remained till he was one-and-twenty. Long before that, he
had grown heartily tired of his work disgusted with the climate, and
oppressed with home sickness, but pride forbade him to return until he
could do so as a free man.
One thing this apprenticeship to life had taught him--that he was not

made for subordination. "I don't care how poor I am," thus he wrote to
his mother, "but I will be my own master. To be at other people's orders
brings out all the bad in me; it makes me sullen and bearish, and all
sorts of ugly things, which I certainly am not when my true self has
play. So, you see, I must find some independent way of life. If I had to
live by carrying round a Punch and Judy show, I should vastly prefer it
to making a large income as