July 25
While sketching under Hammersmith Bridge yesterday, R⸺ heard a whistle, and, looking up, saw a charming “young thing” leaning over the Bridge parapet smiling like the blessed Damozel out of Heaven.
“Come down,” he cried.
She did, and they discussed pictures while he painted. Later he walked with her to the Broadway, saw her into a bus and said “Goodbye,” without so much as an exchange of names.
“Even if she were a whore,” I said, “it’s a pity your curiosity was so sluggish. You should have seen her home, even if you did not go home with her. Young man, you preferred to let go of authentic life at Hammersmith Broadway, so as to return at once to your precious watercolour painting.”
“Perhaps,” replied he enigmatically.
“Whatever you do, if ever you meet her again,” I rejoined, “don’t introduce her to that abominable ⸻. He is abominably handsome, and I hate him for it. To all his other distinctions he is welcome—parentage, money, success, but I can never forgive him his good looks and the inevitable marriage to some beautiful fair-skinned woman.”
R. (reflectively): “Up to now, I was inclined to think that envy as a passion did not exist.”
“Have you none?”
“Not much,” he answered, and I believe it.
“Smug wretch, then. All I can say is, I may have instincts and passions but I am not a pale watercolour artist. … What’s the matter with you,” I foamed, “is that you like pictures. If I showed you a real woman, you would exclaim contemplatively, ‘How lovely;’ then putting out one hand to touch her, unsuspectingly, you’d scream aghast, ‘Oh! it’s alive, I hear it ticking.’ ‘Yes, my boy,’ I answer severely with a flourish, ‘That is a woman’s heart.’ ”
R⸺ exploded with laughter and then said, “A truce to your desire for more life, for actual men and women. … I know this that last night I would not have exchanged the quiet armchair reading the last chapter of Dostoevsky’s The Possessed for a Balaclava Charge.”
“A matter of temperament, I suppose,” I reflected, in cold detachment. “You see, I belong to the raw meat school. You prefer life cooked for you in a book. You prefer the confectioner’s shop to cutting down the wheat with your own scythe.”