by Ouida
The picture she spoke of stood with its face to the wall. As she turned it round, De Vigne and I gave an involuntary exclamation of surprise, it so far surpassed anything we should have fancied a girl of her age could have accomplished. The picture was one not possible to criticise chilly by exacting rules of art and of perspective. One looked at it as Murillo looked at the first Madonna of his wonderful mulatto, not to discuss critically, but to admire the genius stamped upon it, to admire the vivid breathing vitality, the delicate grace, and wonderful power marked upon its canvas.
De Vigne looked at it silently while Alma spoke; he continued silent some minutes after she had ceased; then he turned suddenly:
“Alma, if you choose, you can be as great a woman as Elizabeth Sirani — a greater than Rosa Bonheur, because what she gives to horses and cows, you will give to human nature. Be content. Whatever sorrows or privations come to you, you will have God’s best gift, which no man can take away, the greatest prize in life — genius!”
Alma looked up at him, her eyes brilliant as diamonds, her whole face flushed, her lips trembling.
“You think so? Thank God! I would have died to hear you say that.”
“Better live to prove it!” said De Vigne, mournfully. “Your picture is both well conceived and well carried out: it tells its own story; the imagining of it is poetic, the treatment artistic. There are faults, no doubt, but I like it too well to look out for them. Will you let me have it at my house a little while? I have some friends who are artists, others who are cognoscenti, and I should like to hear their opinion on it.”
“Will you keep it?” asked Alma, with the first shyness I had seen in her. “If you would hang it anywhere in your house, and just look at it now and then, I should be so glad. Will you?”
“I will keep it with pleasure, my dear child; but I will keep it as I would Landseer’s, or Mulready’s, by being allowed the pleasure of adding it to my collection.
Your picture is worth—”
“Oh, don’t talk of’worth!’” cried Alma, vehemently. “Take it — take it, as I give it you with all my heart! I am so glad to give you anything, you were so kind to him! Did he say anything in his letter to you that I might hear?”
De Vigne turned quickly.
“Did you not read it? It was unsealed.”
“Read it? No! You could not think for a moment that another person’s letter was less sacred to me because it happened to be unsealed! That is not your own code, I should say. What right have you to suppose me more dishonourable than yourself?”
Her eyes sparkled dangerously, the colour was hot in her cheeks, the imputation had roused her spirit, and her fiery indignation was as becoming as it was amusing.
“I beg your pardon. I was wrong,” said De Vigne. “You have a man’s sense of honour, not a woman’s; I I am glad of it Your grandpapa says very little. It was merely to ask me if I met you, to be your friend. It is little enough I can ever aid you in, and my friendship will be of little use to you; but, such as it is, it will be yours, if you like to take it.”
She held her hand out to him by way of answer! There were too many tears in her voice for her to trust herself to say anything.
“You do not remember your parents at all!” asked De Vigne.
She shook her head:
“I remember no home but Weive Hurst Nurse told me both died when I was a baby, and that grandpapa could never bear me to mention them to him: I don’t know why. How happy I was at Weive Hurst! I wonder if I shall ever be again!”
“To be sure you will,” said De Vigne, kindly. “You have a capacity for happiness, and are gay under heavy clouds, at eighteen no one has said good-bye to all the sunshine of life. Well, you have read Monte Christo? You must remember his last words.”
Attendre et espérer’?” repeated Alma. “To me they are the saddest words in human language. They are so seldom the joy-bells to herald a new future — they are’ so often the death-knell to a past wasted in futile striving and disappointed desire. ‘Attendre et espérer!’ How many golden days pass in trusting to those words; and when their trust be at last recompensed, how often the fulfilment comes too late to be enjoyed. ‘Attendre et espérer!’ Ah! that is all very well for those who have some fixed goal in view — some aim which they will attain if they have but energy and patience enough to go steadily on to the end; but only to wait for an indefinite better fate, which year after year retreats still farther — only to hope against hope for what never comes and in all probability will never come — that is not quite so easy.”
“If not, it is the lot of all. I agree with you, nothing chafes and frets one more than waiting; it wears all the bloom off the fruit to waste all our golden hours gazing at it afar off, and longing for it with Tantalus thirst. It has never suited me. I have too often brushed the bloom off mine plucking them too soon. I agree with you, to wait for happiness is a living death, to hope for it is a dreamer’s phantasy; but it is not like your usual doctrine, you little enthusiast, who are still such a child that you believe in the possible realisation of all your fond ideals? What were you saying to me the other day at Strawberry Hill about Chatterton, that if the poor boy had only had the courage to wait and hope, he might have reaped long years of honour and fame?”
“But Chatterton had an aim; and he had more; he had genius. I know he was goaded to madness by poverty. I know how bitter must have been the weary fret of thinking what he should eat, and wherewithal he should be clothed, the jar and grind of every-day wants, of petty, inexorable cares. At the same time, I wonder that he did not live for his works; that for their sake he did not suffer and endure; that he did not live to make the world acknowledge all that marked him out from the common herd. I know how he wearied of life; yet I wished he had conquered it. Genius should ever be stronger than its detractors. ‘What is the use of my writing poetry that no one reads’?’ asked Shelley. Yet he knew that the time would come when it would be read by men wiser than those of his generation, and he wrote on, following the inspiration of his own divine gift. Men know and acknowledge now how divine a gift it was.”
“True,” answered De Vigne; “wrestle with fate, and it will bless you, is a wise and a right counsel; still here and there in that wrestling-match it is possible to get a croc en jambe, which leaves us at the mercy of Fate, do what we may to resist her. Men of genius have very rarely been appreciated in their own time. Too often nations spend wealth upon a monument to him whom they let die for want of a shilling. Too many, like Cervantes, have lacked bread while they penned what served to make their country honoured and illustrious. They could write of him:
‘Porque se digua qua uno mano herida
Pudo dar à su dueno eterna vida;’
but they could leave him to poverty for all that. A prophet has no honour in his own country, still less in his own time; but if the prophets be true and wise men they will not look for honour, but follow Philip Sydney’s counsel, look in their own hearts and write, and leave the seed in their brain as ploughmen the com in the furrows — content that it will bring forth a harvest at the last, if it be ripe, good wheat.”
“Yet it is sad if they are forced to see only the dark and barren earth, and the golden harvest only rise to wave over their tomb!”
“It is; but, petite, there are few things not sad in life, and one of the saddest of them is, as Emerson says, ‘the madness with which the passing age mischooses the object on which all candles shine, and all eyes are turned.’ The populace who crowded to look at Charles and Louise de Kerroualle coming to Hampton never knew or thought of Cromwell’s Latin secretary, dictating in his study, old, blind, and poor. Well, it only shows us what fools men are, either to court the world or care for it! A propos of célébrés, Alma, you, vowed as you are to historic associations, should never be dull here, with all the souvenirs that are round Richmond and Twickenham!”
“Ah!” said Alma, turning her bright beaming face on him, “how often I think of them all! — of the talk roun
d that little deal table in the Grotto; of Swift, with his brilliant azure eyes, and his wonderful satire, and his exigeant selfish loves; of Mrs. Clive, with her humorous stories; of Harry Fielding, laughing as he wrote his scenes, and packing away his papers to eat his scrag of mutton as gleefully as if it were an entremêt; of Walpole, fitting up a Gothic chapel and writing for a Paris suit, publishing ‘Otranto,’ and talking scandals in Boodle’s — how often I think of them!”
“You need not tell me that,” laughed De Vigne. “With your historic passion, you live in the past. Well! it is safer and less deceptive, if not less visionary, than living in the future.”
“Perhaps I do both; yet I have little to hope from the future.”
“Why?” said De Vigne, kindly. “Who knows but what one of your old favourites, the fairies, may bring good gifts to their little queen? We will hope so, at least.”
Alma shook her head. “I am afraid not. The only fairy that has any power now is Money; and the good gifts the gods give us now-a-days, only go to those who have golden coffers to put them in!”
The morning after, while De Vigne was breakfasting, the cart that brought in Mrs. Lee’s home-made bread to town left at his house Alma’s picture; she had looked, I suppose, for his address in the Court Guide, and remembered her promise, though I am afraid the recipient of her gift had forgotten the subject altogether.
When it came, however, he hung it in a good light, and pointed it out to Sabretasche, who dined with him that night, to meet a mutual Paris friend.
“What do you think of that picture, Colonel!” he said, as we came into the drawing-room for a rubber. Whist was no great favourite with De Vigne; he preferred the rapidity and exciting whirl of loo or lansquenet; but he played it well, and Sabretasche and De Cassagnac were especially fond of it It suited the Colonel to lean back in a soft chair, and make those calm, subtle combinations. He said the game was so deliciously tranquil and silent!
Sabretasche set down his coffee-cup, put his glass in his eye, and lounged up to it “Of this water-colour! I like it exceedingly. Where did you get it! It is not the style of any one I know; it is more like one of your countrymen’s, Cassagnac, eh! It wants toning down; the light through that stained window is a trifle too bright, but the boy’s face is perfect I would give something to have idealised it; and the hair is as soft as silk. I like it extremely, De Vigne. Where did you get it!”
“I picked it up by accident It pleased my eye, and I wanted to know if my eye led me right. I know you are a great connoisseur.”
“There is true power in it, and an exquisite delicacy of touch. The artist is young, isn’t he? Do you know him?”
“Slightly. He works for his livelihood, and is only eighteen.”
“Eighteen? By Jove! if the boy go on as he has begun he will beat Maclise and Ingress. Has he ever tried his hands at oils?”
“I don’t know, I’m sure.”
“It’s a pity he shouldn’t He works for his livelihood, you say? If he will do me a picture as good as this, leaving the subject to himself, I will give him fifty guineas for it, if he think that sufficient. Some day, when we have nothing better to do, you will take me to his studio — a garret in Poland-street, probably, is it not? Those poor wretches! How they live on bread-and-cheese and a pipe of bird’s-eye, I cannot conceive! If the time ever come when I have my turbot and hock no longer, I shall resort to an overdose of morphia. What is the value of life when life is no longer enjoyment?”
“Yet,” suggested De Vigne, “if only those were alive who enjoyed living, the earth would be barren very speedily, I fancy.”
“That depends on how you read enjoyment,” said De Cassagnac.
“Enjoyment is easily enough defined — taking pleasure in things, and having things in which to take pleasure! Some men have the power to enjoy, and not the opportunity; others the opportunity, and not the power; the combination of both makes the enjoyment, I take it.”
“But enjoyment is a very different thing to different men. Enjoyment, for Sabretasche, lies in soirées, like the Gore House, or Madame de Sablé’s, wine as good as your claret, women as pretty as La Dorah, good music, good painting, and immeasurable dolce. Enjoyment lies, for Professor Owen, in the fossil tooth of an ichthyosaurus; for an Italian lazzarone, in sun, dirt, and maccaroni; for a woman, in dress, conquests, and tall footmen; for the Tipton Slasher, in the belt, undisputed: enjoyments are as myriad as the stars.”
“I know what you mean, my dear fellow,” said Sabretasche, dropping his eye-glass, and taking up his cup again. “You mean that Hodge, the bricklayer, goes home covered with whitewash, sits down to Dutch cheese, with the brats screaming about, with the same relish as I sit down to my very best-served dinner. It is true, so far, that I should rather be in purgatory than in whitewash, should turn sick at the cheese, murder the children and kill my own self afterwards; and that Hodge, by dint of habit and blunted senses, can support life where I should end it in pure self-defence. But I do not believe that Hodge enjoys himself — how should he, poor wretch! with not a single agrément of life? He does not know all he misses, and he is not much better than the beast of the field; but at the same time he only endures life, he can’t be said to enjoy it. I agree with De Vigne, that there is but one definition of enjoyment, and the ‘two handfuls, with quiet and contentment of spirit,’ is a poetic myth, for poverty and enjoyment can by no means run in tandem.”
“And contentment is another myth,” added De Vigne. “If a man has all he wants, he is contented, because he has no wish beyond, and is a happy man; if he has not what he wants, and is conscious of something lacking, he cannot be called contented, for he is not so.”
“Precisely! I don’t look to be contented, that is not in the lot of man; all I ask are the agréments and refinements of life, and without them life is a curse. Neither Diogenes, limiting himself to cabbages and water, nor Alexander, drunk with the conquest of the j empires, was one bit more contented at heart than the other. Discontent prompted the one to quit mankind and cast off wealth, the other to rule mankind and amass wealth.”
“And, after all, there is no virtue in contentment, since contentment is satisfaction in one’s lot; there is far more virtue in endurance — strong, manful, steady endurance — of a fate that is adverse, and which one admits to be such, but against which one still fights hard. Patience is all very well, but pluck is better,” said De Vigne. “The tables are set. Shall we cut for partners! You and Cassagnac! Chevasney and I may give ourselves up for lost!”
CHAPTER XVI.
The Fawn Robin Hood was to spare.
DE VIGNE never did anything by halves, to use a sufficiently expressive, if not over-elegant, colloquialism. He hated and mistrusted women, not individually, but sweepingly, en masse. At the same time, there were in him, naturally, too much chivalry and generosity not to make him pity the “Little Tressillian,” and show her kindness to the best of his power. In the first place, the girl was alone, and had no money; in the second, he had known her as a child, still held her as such, indeed, and never thought of classing her among his detested “beau sexe;” in the third, the letter of Boughton Tressillian had in a way recommended her to his care, and though De Vigne would have been the first to laugh at another man who had taken up a girl of eighteen as a protégée, and made sure no harm could come of it, he really looked on Alma as a child, though a very attractive and interesting child it is true, and would have stared at you if you had made his kindness to her the subject of one of those jests customary on the acquaintance of a man about town and an unprotected girl. As he had promised, he picked out some of the choicest books of his library, — not such as young ladies read generally, but such as it might be better if they did — and sent them to her, with the reviews and periodicals of the month. He sent her, too, a handsome parrot, for her to teach, he said, she being such an admirable adept in the locutory art, and ordered her a cartload of flowers to put her in mind of Weive Hurst “Her room looked so pitifully dull,
poor child!” said he, one morning, when I was lunching with him. “Those flowers will brighten it up a little. Raymond, did you send Robert down with those things to Richmond?”
“Yes, Major.”
I chanced to look at the man as he spoke; he was the new valet, a smooth, fair-faced fellow, really gentlemanlike to look at, not, ça va sans dire, the “gentle-manism” of high breeding, but the gentlemanlyism of many an oily parson or sleek parvenu. There was a sly twinkle in his light eyes, and a quick, fox-like glance, as he answered his master, which looked as if he at least attached some amusement to the Major’s acquaintance with the pretty artiste.
De Vigne, unhappily, never remembered the presence of servants; he thought they had no more eyes or ears than the chairs or tables around him. They served him as the plates or the glasses did, and they were no more than those to him; though more mischief, reports, and embrouillements have come from the prying eyes, coarse tongues, and second-hand slanders of those “necessary evils” than we ever dream of, for the buzz of the servants’ hall is often as poisonous as the subdued murmur of the scandal-retailing boudoir above-stairs.
How it came about, I don’t know, but Alma, some way or other, was not long kept in petto. Some three weeks after Sabretasche, Curly, Severn, Castleton, and one or two other men, were at De Vigne’s house. We had been playing Baccarat, his favourite game, and were now supping, between three and four, chatting of two-year olds and Derby prophecies, of bon mots and beauties, of how Mademoiselle Fifine had fleeced little Pulteney, and Bob Green’s roan mare won a handicap for 200 sovs., of Lilia Dorah’s last extravagance in the “shady groves of the Evangelist,” and of the decidedly bad ankles now displayed to us at Her Majesty’s; with similar floating topics of the town.