II
Meanwhile she wrote the last chapters of her book, sitting on the beach among drying nets and boats, in some fishing cove up the coast. The Newlyn shore she did not like, because the artist-spoilt children crowded round her, interrupting.
“Lady, lady! Will you paint us?”
“No. I don’t paint.”
“Then what are you doing?”
“Writing. Go away.”
“May we come with you to where you’re staying?”
“No. Go away.”
“Last year a lady took us to her studio and gave us pennies. And when she’d gone back to London she sent us each a doll.”
Silence.
“Lady, if we come with you to your studio, will you give us pennies?”
“No. Why should I?”
“You might because you wanted to paint us. You might because you liked us.”
“I don’t do either. Go away now.”
They withdrew a little and turned somersaults, supposing her to be watching. The artistic colony had a lot to answer for, Nan thought; they were making parasites and prostitutes of the infant populace. Children could at their worst be detestable in their vanity, their posing, their affectation, their unashamed greed.
“Barry’s and mine,” she thought (I suppose we’ll have some), “shall at least not pose. They may break all the commandments, but if they turn somersaults to be looked at I shall drop them into a public crèche and abandon them.”
The prettiest little girl looked sidelong at the unkind lady, and believed her half-smile to denote admiration. Pretty little girls often make this error.
Stephen Lumley came along the beach. It was lunch time, and after lunch they were going out sailing. Stephen Lumley was the most important artist just now in Newlyn. He had been in love with Nan for some months, and did not get on with his wife. Nan liked him; he painted brilliantly, and was an attractive, clever, sardonic person. Sailing with him was fun. They understood each other; they had rather the same cynical twist to them. They understood each other really better than Nan and Barry did. Neither of them needed to make any effort to comprehend each other’s point of view. And each left the other where he was. Whereas Barry filled Nan, beneath her cynicism, beneath her levity, with something quite new—a queer desire, to put it simply, for goodness, for straight living and generous thinking, even, within reason, for usefulness. More and more he flooded her inmost being, drowning the old landmarks, like the sea at high tide. Nan was not a Christian, did not believe in God, but she came near at this time to believing in Christianity as possibly a fine and adventurous thing to live.