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Clutton, who never read, had heard them first from Cronshaw; and though they had made small impression, they had remained in his memory; and lately, emerging on a sudden, had acquired the character of a revelation: a good painter had two chief objects to paint, namely, man and the intention of his soul.
They were clad in European, shabby clothes, their thin great-coats were threadbare, but each wore a tarbouch. Their faces were gray with cold. One was of middle age, with a black beard, but the other was a youth of eighteen, with a face deeply scarred by smallpox and with one eye only. They passed by Cronshaw and Philip. "Allah is great, and Mahomet is his prophet," said Cronshaw impressively.
"Why don't you light the candle?" he said then. Philip struck a match and discovered that there was a candlestick on the floor beside the bed. He lit it and put it on the washing-stand. Cronshaw was lying on his back immobile; he looked very odd in his nightshirt; and his baldness was disconcerting. His face was earthy and death-like. "I say, old man, you look awfully ill.
The waiter was a jovial fellow and knew Cronshaw intimately. Cronshaw gazed at him. "If you give me your word of honour as a nobleman and a gentleman that nobody but I has been drinking my whiskey, I'll accept your statement." This remark, translated literally into the crudest French, sounded very funny, and the lady at the comptoir could not help laughing. "Il est impayable," she murmured.
There was neither good nor bad there. There were just facts. It was life. Towards the end of the year, when Philip was bringing to a close his three months as clerk in the out-patients' department, he received a letter from Lawson, who was in Paris. Dear Philip, Cronshaw is in London and would be glad to see you. He is living at 43 Hyde Street, Soho.
"Nay, show us the priceless web of Eastern looms," quoth Cronshaw. "For I would point a moral and adorn a tale." The Levantine unfolded a table-cloth, red and yellow, vulgar, hideous, and grotesque. "Thirty-five francs," he said. "O, my uncle, this cloth knew not the weavers of Samarkand, and those colours were never made in the vats of Bokhara."
He had talked to her about Cronshaw, she would see him; and there was Lawson, he had gone to Paris for a couple of months; and they would go to the Bal Bullier; there were excursions; they would make trips to Versailles, Chartres, Fontainebleau. "It'll cost a lot of money," she said. "Oh, damn the expense. Think how I've been looking forward to it. Don't you know what it means to me?
Cronshaw smiled his old, slow smile of past days. "I told you that it would give you an answer to your question when you asked me what was the meaning of life. Well, have you discovered the answer?" "No," smiled Philip. "Won't you tell it me?" "No, no, I can't do that. The answer is meaningless unless you discover it for yourself." Cronshaw was publishing his poems.
With measured words he told Philip what to think of Rodin, Albert Samain, and Caesar Franck. Philip's charwoman only came in for an hour in the morning, and since Philip was obliged to be at the hospital all day Cronshaw was left much alone. Upjohn told Philip that he thought someone should remain with him, but did not offer to make it possible. "It's dreadful to think of that great poet alone.
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