Chapter IV: The Choice of a Patron

I prowled along the Strand, in quest of an inspiration. You will readily conceive that the situation was serious. I had disbursed my last coin for lunch that morning. True, I had still my bicycle; and by its aid I might set off to join my unknown brothers, the anarchists, near Horsham. But my heart smote me, for I had not wherewith to pay my landlady. Had I worked out my week with Ahasuerus, no doubt I might have settled her bill, and gone on my way honestly. But I could not leave her in the lurch; nor, indeed, could I set out without the contents of my modest portmanteau. My effects must go with me. Thus the position teemed with difficulties. I had an aunt in London, of course; I suppose not even the most destitute are ever wholly deprived of the solace of a maiden aunt in London. Conscience suggested that in such a crisis I ought to consult her. But fortunately I belong to a generation which has analysed conscience away. “Go to the aunt,” said Duty. “Stop away,” said Inclination. And Inclination, as usual, won in a canter—I might almost say, Inclination walked over. If you doubt that these metaphors are becoming on a woman’s lips, you must recollect that my style had been suffering for three days from the enforced proximity of the Grand Vizier, his satraps, and the noble quadruped.

I _could_ not go to the aunt. She was the average woman of the small fixed income; prosaic, stagnant, serenely literal; a placid pool that reflects its surroundings. It was her fixed belief that everything I did was in equal parts foolish and wicked. No doubt she was right; but her arguments vexed me. “It is quite impossible for a young lady to do so,” she said about many actions which I knew from experience to be not only possible but actual. So I avoided the aunt, and set my face toward the shop-windows for light and guidance. I found it, of course. Faith is always rewarded, or I like to think so. At a corner shop, devoted to the sale of more or less genuine _bric-à-brac_, I saw in the window a charming little Fra Angelico, almost a replica of a miniature I remembered to have noted at the Vatican. Whether it was authentic or not I do not presume to decide; who am I that I should give myself the airs of a Morelli? But its _naïveté_, its grace, its frank purity of colour, were obvious at once, even to the eye of a woman. The picture represented what is called in art the Charity of St. Nicholas. Through an open door you see into the home of a poor nobleman. ’Tis a dainty interior, of the age when drab had not wholly ousted the primary hues. In the background his three starving daughters lie snugly in bed—a trio of innocent maidens, with pretty blonde heads of infantile guilelessness, laid on white pillows, between dimity curtains. In the foreground the nobleman their father is seated, the picture of despair, in a long vermilion robe and a brown study; without, by a grated window, the dear young saint himself, in Florentine hose, with a sleeveless jerkin, stands timidly on tip-toe, in the very act of dropping three purses of gold as dowries for the maidens through the open casement. The story is told with the pellucid simplicity of early Tuscan art; no airs and graces, but just the bare outline of facts which it behoves you to know;—these girls are poor; their father is at his wits’ end; and yonder amiable young gentleman, in crimson and puce, has come to their rescue, like a gallant Christian, with purses of gold very fat and opulent.

I stood long and looked at it. It was so archly engaging. The clear-cut outlines, the translucent hues, the sweet old-world directness, the story-telling faculty, each charmed and beguiled me. “After all,” I said to myself, “St. Nicholas, not St. George, is the saint for me. My dragon is poverty. St. George for princesses; St. Nicholas for the poor and portionless maiden!” I gazed at him long, with affectionate eyes; then I went on my way towards the National Gallery, strengthened and comforted.

Have you found out the true use of the National Gallery, I wonder? On three days in the week the British nation throws those stately rooms open, free, to any woman who chooses to enter them. I use them as my drawing-room. You get a comfortable chair to sit upon for nothing; you get pictures to look at; and in winter the gallery is heated by flues, over which you can stand and warm your feet gratis. I went in on this critical afternoon of my history, not only for rest, but in search of St. Nicholas—St. Nicholas of Myra—St. Nicholas of Bari—St. Nicholas, the giver of dowries to damsels. My dear father had been a lover of Italian art, and had taught me betimes the legends of the saints, without which Fra Angelico and Benozzo Gozzoli talk a strange tongue to you. I was certain now that St. Nicholas, not St. George, was my predestined patron. He was so good to the poor, and especially to maidens. In many pictures on those walls I beheld him as of old, in his bishop’s robes, benign and benevolent, a model of suavity, holding the three golden balls which typify the three fat purses of gold he threw in at the window to the starving daughters of the nobleman of Myra. He was the saint of the oppressed, the enslaved, the suffering. If knighthood had its St. George, serfdom had its St. Nicholas. I saw him again, with his three spheres of gold, traced by the hand of Raphael in the Blenheim Madonna; a courteous old gentleman here, bland and mild, and very sweet of feature. I saw him in many other less famous pictures, a friend in need, ever gentle and helpful, the patron of children, of the distressed, of the storm-tossed. I saw him in many guises, painted for the most part in what, in default of exact knowledge, I will call a chasuble, but always as the deliverer. My heart went forth to him. “Holy Nicholas,” I murmured, “you were my father’s friend; be my friend as well! Stand by me, and protect me!”

I issued once more into the phantom-crowded Strand. Below, the streaming street was full of those hurrying, scurrying men with black bags, bound as ever for the Unknown. But above—I lifted my eyes, and there, clear against the sky, I beheld—the three golden balls of St. Nicholas.