by Grant Allen
“Unfortunately,” said I, “I have not the pleasure of knowing either Mr. Tennyson or Mr. Browning; and I think you vastly overrate the importance of my humble circle.”
“Well, now, that’s curious,” answered Epaminondas, “seeing that you live in London, the centre of all your fashionable world.”
In the afternoon I went to call on the Judge and explain to him how the mistake had arisen. The old gentleman was manifestly grieved and puzzled. “This is a bad business, Preston, my boy,” said he. “I should like to stick to my arrangement, you know, but I don’t quite see how to do it. You understand I took it for granted that you were going to marry Lavinia. Why, nobody ever thinks anything of that other insignificant little thing. She’s pretty enough, I grant you; but then Lavinia’s what I call a real live woman. Now, I’d always made up my mind to settle that twenty thousand on that girl; and last night, as soon as you had spoken to me, I sent her off a note telling her I heard she was going to be married, and promised her the money unconditionally on her wedding-day. Confound it all!” added the Judge, looking serious, “she’ll have told that fellow Epaminondas all about it by this time; so there’s no crying off that bargain. Otherwise I’d have shared it between the girls; for I like you, my boy, even though you are going to marry the wrong woman. But I’m not rich enough to fork over two little lump sums of twenty thousand; and yet, you see, I kind o’ don’t like to disappoint you. Come, now, mightn’t we settle the case by arbitration out of court? Couldn’t you manage anyhow to make an exchange with Epaminondas? Lavinia and you are just suited for one another; while he and Melissa ought to pair naturally, I take it.”
I shook my head firmly. “With every respect for your judicial opinion, Judge,” I said, “I must reluctantly decline the honour of Lavinia’s hand. As for the money, it has been all a misconception. I would have taken Melissa without it; and, since we have misunderstood one another, I shall take her all the same.”
“Well,” said the Judge reflectively, “I can’t give her twenty thousand dollars, but I think I can put as much or more into your pocket another way. Suppose I were to get you the contract for supplying frescoes — I think you call them — to the New State Capitol, at Albany? That job ought to be worth about thirty or forty thousand dollars.”
“Frescoes!” I cried in horror. “Why, I’m a landscape painter. I never tried figures from life in all my days.”
“It wouldn’t be from life,” said the Judge calmly. “They’re all dead. The sort of thing we want in our country is the American Eagle with all his feathers up, ‘Columbus concluding a treaty of peace with the Indians,’ or ‘General Jackson proclaiming the Monroe Doctrine before a terrified assembly of European sovereigns.’ As to figure-painting, well, I suppose Raphael never tried his hand at frescoes afore he began his cartoons at Hampton Court, or St. Peter’s, or wherever it is. You never voted the Republican ticket, did you?”
“Certainly not,” I answered promptly.
“Then I suppose you’re a good Democrat?”
“Well, I hardly know,” I replied. “I believe I’m a Conservative in England. That’s the opposite of a Republican or a Democrat, isn’t it?”
“Bless the boy for his European ignorance!” said the Judge forcibly (whose vague views on the nature of cartoons I had just so charitably passed over). “Democrats and Republicans ain’t the same thing. They’re the exact contraries of one another. It’s plain you don’t know much about politics. However, that don’t matter a cent. Will you solemnly promise, if I get you this contract, always to support the Democratic platform?”
“Certainly,” I answered, “if you think me strong enough.”
“Why, what on earth do you take a platform to be?” said the Judge in amazement. “I mean, will you paint pictures inculcating sound Democratic principles, with a group of leading Democratic statesmen in the centre of every foreground, and the Democratic colours introduced wherever convenient in the drapery and fixings?”
“I will try my best,” I answered, “to meet the wishes of any generous patron who chooses to employ me.”
“Well, then,” said the Judge triumphantly, “that’s the sort of art required by an enlightened Legislature in the State of New York. Never mind whether you can do frescoes or not. Stick ’em in Clay and Jackson and Calhoun in commanding attitudes, and they won’t ask you where you studied your anatomy. I’ll just tell my Democratic friends at Albany that a distinguished European painter, attracted from the crowded studios of London by the unparalleled beauties of our American scenery, has decided to make his home by the setting sun, and to devote his remarkable pictorial talents to the glorious furtherance of the Democratic cause. If I add that he is about to marry one of Columbia’s fairest daughters, I should think that would tickle ’em up, and they ought to be prepared to come down handsome with fifteen thousand dollars a year, the frescoes to be completed within five years at the outside. That would give you time to get up figures, wouldn’t it?”
Within a fortnight the whole question was fully settled. I was formally installed as Pictoriographer by Appointment to the State of New York, on the understanding that I should produce two frescoes within five years of a strictly Democratic and anti-Republican character. Melissa went to England in the autumn, while I gave up my circular ticket and settled down as an American citizen at Albany, where I at once buckled to work at getting up figures for my frescoes. At first Melissa went as a sort of family-boarder at the house of a country clergyman, and assiduously cultivated the Queen’s English, together with the amenities of European society; but after six months of probation, I judged her sufficiently advanced in her mastery of that foreign tongue to take up her abode under my mother’s roof. In the succeeding year I returned to London for a few weeks’ holiday; and there we were duly married at Kensington Church, the important event being even chronicled in the Morning Post, thanks to my exalted position in the world of art as Pictoriographer by Appointment to a friendly Government. Melissa is the cleverest, prettiest, and best of wives. My frescoes are now progressing favourably. I have acquired a conception of the majestic attitude which befits a Democratic leader, and of the Satanic spite to be depicted on the abject countenance of a baffled Republican; and when my five years’ engagement is completed, I expect to return, with my little wife, to the suburban shades of South Kensington, and spend the remainder of my existence happily in executing remunerative commissions for all the wealthiest legislators of the American Union. I regard Judge Decatur as the true founder of my artistic fortunes.
THE MINOR POET.
Arthur Manningham was a minor poet. But that was forty years ago; and in those younger days the minor poet had not yet become a public nuisance, as at our end of the century. Besides, he enjoyed the friendship of the Great Poet. The Great Poet was fond of him. He recognized in his friend, as he often remarked, the rare secondary gift of high critical appreciativeness. Whenever the Great Poet produced a noble work, Arthur Manningham was always the first man in England to whose eye he submitted the unprinted copy. It was Arthur who made those admirable suggestions in red pencil so familiar to collectors of the Great Poet’s manuscripts; and the curious, who have compared these manuscripts with the final published forms of the Siegfried poems, are equally familiar with the further fact that Arthur Manningham’s corrections almost always commended themselves to his distinguished companion. It was delightful to see the two out on the moors together; the great man laying down the law, as was his wont, in his double-bass voice, and Arthur, by his side, bending forward to listen rapt to the deep music that fell from the master’s lips with all a disciple’s ardour.
And Arthur, too, was a poet. Not great, but true; a minor poet. For ten years he worked hard at some few dozen lyrics, which he polished and repolished in his intervals of leisure with Horatian assiduity. One or two of them he rejected in time as unworthy the world’s ear, for he was fastidious of his own work as of the work of others; the rest he perfected till, for trifles that they wer
e, they had almost reached his own high standard of perfection. Almost, not quite, for no work of his own ever absolutely satisfied him. Tremulously and timidly, at last he published. He distrusted his powers even then. “But, perhaps,” he said to himself with a timorous smile, “if there’s anything in them the Great Poet’s friendship may avail me somewhat!”
When, in the fulness of time, his thin volume appeared, clad in the grass-green binding that then overgrew all Parnassus, he sent the very first copy of his timid-winged fledgeling to the Great Poet. And, after that, he waited.
The Great Poet did not desert his friend. By the very next post came a letter in the well-known hand — broad, black-dashed, vigorous. The Great Poet’s strong virility pervaded even his handwriting. Arthur Manningham tore it open with eager hands. What judgment had the Bard to pass on the work of the minor singer?
“My dear Arthur,” the letter began, “I have just now received your delightful-looking volume, ‘Phyllis’s Garden.’ I didn’t till this moment know you too were among the Immortals. I look forward to reading it with the greatest pleasure, and shall hazard my opinion of your sister Muse when I next have the happiness of seeing you amongst us. But why make her anonymous? Surely your name, so well known at the clubs, would have carried due weight with our captious critics!”
That was all. No more. Arthur waited with deep suspense for the Great Poet’s final opinion. He knew the Bard could make or mar any man. A week passed — two weeks — three — four — and yet no letter. At last, one morning, an envelope bearing the Savernake post-mark! (The Great Poet, you recollect, lived for years at Savernake.) It was in his wife’s hand; but — yes — that’s well!— ’twas an invitation to go down there. Arthur went, all trembling. To-day should decide his poor Muse’s fate; to-day he should know if he were poet or poetaster!
The Bard received him open-armed; talked of his own new tragedy. All afternoon they paced the forest together; the Great Poet talked on — but never of Arthur’s verses. He spoke kindly to his friend; inquired after his health; suspected, as usual, he’d been overworking himself. This daily journalism, you know, is so very exacting! Not a word of “Phyllis’s Garden.” “He’s waiting,” thought Arthur, “to discuss it after dinner.”
And after dinner, in effect, the Great Poet button-holed him confidentially into the library. “I’ve something special I want to talk over with you,” he said, looking interested.
Arthur’s heart gave a thump. “Ha! He likes my verses!”
The Great Poet sat down — and produced his own tragedy!
’Twas a tragedy for Arthur, too. He could hardly contain himself. The Bard had never known his friend’s criticism so weak, so vacillating, so pointless. He didn’t seem to listen, that was really the fact; he was evidently preoccupied. “Well, well,” the Great Poet thought, in his tolerant way, “men are all so petty! They’re often so engrossed with their own small affairs that they have no time to bestow on the biggest and most important affairs of others!”
And from that day forth Arthur Manningham never heard another word, by mouth or pen, from the Great Poet, of his poor little lyrics. He had but one guess to make; his friend had read them, found the verse poor stuff, and, wishing to spare his sensitive feelings, avoided speaking to him of his utter failure.
The press, that dispenser of modern laurels, dismissed him in half a dozen frigid lines— “Very tolerable rhyme,” “Fair minor poetry.”
Forty years passed. It took Arthur Manningham just forty years of his life to get through them. He wrote no more. He had given the world his best, and the world rejected it. He knew he could never do better than he had done. Why seek to multiply suspense and failure?
He lived meanwhile — or starved — on daily journalism. He never married; who could marry on that pittance? There had been a Phyllis once: she accepted an attorney. His love died down; but he had still the Great Poet’s friendship to console him.
One day when the broken soul was over seventy, and weak, and ill, and wearied out, and dying, a letter came in a crested envelope from the Great Poet, now rich and mighty, and the refuser of a baronetcy.
“My dear Arthur,” it said, just as friendly as ever, “I send you herewith a charming wee volume of fugitive verse by a forgotten author — middle of the century — name unknown, but inspiration undeniable — which our friend the Critic, ransacking the bookstalls, quite lately unearthed for me. I’m sure you’ll like it, for the verse has that ring and all those delicate qualities which I know you appreciate more than any man living. They’re true little gems. I’m simply charmed with them. Pray read and treasure.
“Yours ever,
“The Poet.”
With trembling fingers of presentiment, the worn old man untied the knotted string, and stared hard at the volume. He knew it at a glance. It was “Phyllis’s Garden”!
Weak and ill as he was, he took the first train that would bring him down to the Great Poet’s great new house at Crowborough. With a burning heart he dragged himself to the door; who was he that he should ride? and a fly three shillings! The Bard was at home. Arthur Manningham staggered in. Without one spoken word, he seized his friend’s arm, and pulled him on to the library. There, in a well-known corner, he selected from a specially dusty shelf a well-known book, whose place he had often noted in his mind before, but which never till that day had he ventured to take down. He took it down now, and handed it — all uncut as it was — to the Great Poet. The Bard opened the page wondering. On the fly-leaf he read in Arthur Manningham’s hand these few short words, “To the Prince of Poets, from his affectionate and confiding friend, the Author.”
“You promised you’d read it,” Arthur Manningham faltered out; “and now, I see, you’ve kept your promise!”
He died that night in the Great Poet’s arms. And the world has taken six editions since of “Phyllis’s Garden.”
Wednesday the Tenth
A TALE OF THE SOUTH PACIFIC
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
The original frontispiece
WEDNESDAY THE TENTH
CHAPTER I.
WE SIGHT A BOAT.
On the eighteenth day out from Sydney, we were cruising under the lee of Erromanga — of course you know Erromanga, an isolated island between the New Hebrides and the Loyalty group — when suddenly our dusky Polynesian boy, Nassaline, who was at the masthead on the lookout, gave a surprised cry of “Boat ahoy!” and pointed with his skinny black finger to a dark dot away southward on the horizon, in the direction of Fiji.
I strained my eyes and saw — well, a barrel or something. For myself, I should never have made out it was a boat at all, being somewhat slow of vision at great distances; but, bless your heart! these Kanaka lads have eyes like hawks for pouncing down upon a canoe or a sail no bigger than a speck afar off; so when Nassaline called out confidently, “Boat ahoy!” in his broken English, I took out my binocular, and focused it full on the spot towards which the skinny black finger pointed. Probably, thought I to myself, a party of natives, painted red, on the war-trail against their enemies in some neighboring island; or perhaps a “labor vessel,” doing a veiled slave-trade in “indentured apprentices” for New Caledonia or the Queensland planters.
To my great surprise, however, I found out, when I got my glasses fixed full upon it, it was neither of these, but an open English row-boat, apparently, making signs of distress, and alone in the midst of the wide Pacific.
Now, mind you, one doesn’t expect to find open English row-boats many miles from land, drifting about casually in those far-eastern waters. There’s very little European shipping there of any sort, I can tell you; a man may sometimes sail for days together across that trackless sea without so much as speaking a single vessel, and the few he does come across are mostly eng
aged in what they euphoniously call “the labor-trade” — in plain English, kidnaping blacks or browns, who are induced to sign indentures for so many years’ service (generally “three yams,” that is to say, for three yam crops), and are then carried off by force or fraud to some other island, to be used as laborers in the cane-fields or cocoa-nut groves. So I rubbed my eyes when I saw an open boat, of European build, tossing about on the open, and sang out to the man at the wheel:
“Hard a starboard, Tom! Put her head about for the dark spot to the sou’-by-southeast there!”
“Starboard it is!” Tom Blake answered cheerily, setting the rudder about; and we headed straight for that mysterious little craft away off on the horizon.
But there! I see I’ve got ahead of my story, to start with, as the way is always with us salt-water sailors. We seafaring men can never spin a yarn, turned straight off the reel all right from the beginning, like some of those book-making chaps can do. We have always to luff round again, and start anew on a fresh tack half a dozen times over, before we can get well under way for the port we’re aiming at. So I shall have to go back myself to Sydney once more, to explain who we were, and how we happened to be cruising about on the loose that morning off Erromanga.