Where Love Is. William John Locke

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Chapter IV—THE GREAT FROCK EPISODE

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      JIMMIE PADGATE was the son of a retired commander in the Navy, of irreproachable birth and breeding, of a breezy impulsive disposition, and with a pretty talent as an amateur actor. Finding idleness the root of all boredom, he took to the stage, and during the first week of his first provincial tour fell in love with the leading lady, a fragile waif of a woman of vague upbringing. That so delicate a creature should have to face the miseries of a touring life—the comfortless lodgings, the ill-cooked food, the damp death-traps of dressing-rooms, the long circuitous Sunday train-journeys—roused him to furious indignation. He married her right away, took her incontinently from things theatrical, and found congenial occupation in adoring her. But the hapless lady survived her marriage only long enough to see Jimmie safe into short frocks, and then fell sick and died. The impulsive sailor educated the boy in his own fashion for a dozen years or so, and then he, in his turn, died, leaving his son a small inheritance to be administered by his only brother, an easy-going bachelor in a Government office. This inheritance sufficed to send Jimmie to Harrow, where he began his life-long friendship with Morland King, and to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he learned many useful things beside the method of painting pictures. When he returned to London, his uncle handed him over the hundred or two that remained, and, his duty being accomplished, fell over a precipice in the Alps, and concerned himself no more about his nephew. Then Jimmie set to work to earn his living.

      When he snatched the child Aline from the embraces of her tipsy aunt and carried her out into the street, wondering what in the world he should do with her, he was just under thirty years of age. How he had earned a livelihood till then and kept himself free from debt he scarcely knew. When he obtained a fair price for a picture, he deposited a lump sum with his landlord in respect of rent in advance, another sum with the keeper of the little restaurant where he ate his meals, and frittered the rest away among his necessitous friends. In the long intervals between sales, he either went about penniless or provided himself with pocket money by black and white or other odd work that comes in the young artist's way. His residence at that time consisted in a studio and a bedroom in Camden Town. His wants were few, his hopes were many. He loved his art, he loved the world. His optimistic temperament brought him smiles from all those with whom he came in contact—even from dealers, when he wasted their time in expounding to them the commercial value of an unmarketable picture. He was quite happy, quite irresponsible. When soberer friends reproached him for his hand-to-mouth way of living, he argued that if he scraped to-day he would probably spread the butter thick tomorrow, thus securing the average, the golden mean, which was the ideal of their respectability. As for success, that elusive will-o'-the-wisp, the man who did not enjoy the humour of failure never deserved to succeed.

      But when he had rescued Aline from the limbo over the small apothecary's shop, as thoughtlessly and as gallantly as his father before him had rescued the delicate lady from the trials of theatrical vagabondage, he found himself face to face with a perplexing problem. That first night he had risen from an amorphous bed he had arranged for himself on the studio floor, and entered his own bedroom on tiptoe, and looked with pathetic helplessness on the tiny child asleep beneath his bedclothes. If it had been a boy, he would have had no particular puzzle. A boy could have been stowed in a corner of the studio, where he could have learned manners and the fear of God and the way of smiling at adversity. He would have profited enormously, as Jimmie felt assured, by his education. But with a girl it was vastly different. An endless vista of shadowy, dreamy, delicate possibilities perplexed him. He conceived women as beings ethereal, with a range of exquisite emotions denied to masculine coarseness. Even the Rue Bonaparte had not destroyed his illusion, and he still attributed to the fair Maenads of the Bal des Quatre-z' Arts the lingering fragrance of the original Psyche. Of course Jimmie was a fool, as ten years afterwards Norma had decided; but this view of himself not occurring to him, he had to manage according to his lights. Here was this mysterious embryo goddess entirely dependent on him. No corner of the studio and rough-and-tumble discipline for her. She must sleep on down and be covered with silk; the airs of heaven must not visit her cheek too roughly; the clatter of the brazen world must not be allowed to deafen her to her own sweet inner harmonies. Jimmie was sorely perplexed.

      His charwoman next morning could throw no light on the riddle. She had seven children of her own, four of them girls, and they had to get along the best way they could. She was of opinion that if let alone and just physicked when she had any complaint, Aline would grow up of her own accord. Jimmie said that this possibility had not struck him, but doubtless the lady was right. Could she tell him how many times a day a little girl ought to be fed and what she was to eat? The charwoman's draft upon her own family experiences enlightened Jimmie so far that he put a sovereign into her hand to provide a dinner for her children. After that he consulted her no more. It was an expensive process.