THE GAY SCIENCE IN A NEW ILLUSTRATION.
Mary Blanchet was, for the time, one of the happiest women on the earth
when she had to bestir herself, on their returning home next day, to
make preparations for the test-reading of her brother's poems. To hear
Herbert's poems read was a delight which could only be excelled by the
pride and joy of having them read to such an audience. She had so long
looked up to Minola as a leader and a princess that she at last came to
regard her as the natural arbitress of the destiny of any one belonging
to the Blanchet family. In some vague way she had made up her mind that
if Miss Grey only gave the word of command, the young poet's works must
go forth to the world, and going forth must of course be estimated at
their proper worth. Her pride was double-edged. On this side there was
the poet-brother to show to her friends; on that side the friend who was
to be the poet-brother's patroness. Her "animula vagula, blandula"
floated all that day on the saffron and rose clouds of rising joy and
fame.
Nor was her gratification at all diminished when Herbert Blanchet called
very early to crave permission to bring Mr. Heron with him, and when he
obtained it Blanchet had thought it prudent not to rely merely on the
close friendship with Miss Grey, of which he had spoken a little too
vauntingly to Victor the night before, and it seemed to him a very
necessary precaution to call and ask permission to introduce his friend.
He was fortunate enough to find Minola not only willing, but even what
Mary might have thought, if she had considered the matter, suspiciously
willing, to receive Mr. Heron. In truth, Minola had in her mind a little
plot to do a service to Mary Blanchet and her brother in the matter of
the poems, and she had thought of Mr. Heron as the kindliest and
likeliest person she knew to give her a helping hand in the carrying out
of her project. Mary, not thinking anything of this, was yet made more
happy than before by the prospect of having a handsome young man for one
of the audience. As has been said already, she had the kindliest
feelings to handsome young men. Then the presence of another listener
would make the thing quite an assembly; almost, as she observed in
gentle ecstasy more than once to Minola, as if it were one of the poetic
contests of the middle ages, in which minstrels sang and peerless ladies
awarded the prize of song.
So she busied herself all the morning to adorn the rooms and make them
fit for the scene of a poet's triumph. She started away to Covent
Garden, and got pots of growing flowers and handfuls of "cut flowers,"
to scatter here and there. She had an old guitar which she disposed on
the sofa with a delightfully artistic carelessness, having tried it in
all manner of positions before she decided on the final one, in which
the forgetful hand of the musician was supposed to have heedlessly
dropped it. All the books in the prettiest bindings--especially
poems--she laid about in conspicuous places. Any articles of
apparel--bonnets, wraps, and such like, that might upon an ordinary
occasion have been seen on tables or chairs--were carefully stowed away
in their proper receptacles--except, indeed, for a bright-colored shawl,
which, thrown gracefully across an arm of the sofa, made, in conjunction
with the guitar, quite an artistic picture in itself. Near the guitar,
too, in a moment of sudden inspiration, she arranged a glove of
Nola's--a glove only once worn, and therefore for all pictorial effect
as good as new, while having still the pretty shape of the owner's hand
expressed in it. What can there be, Mary Blanchet thought, more winsome
to look at, more suggestive of all poetic thought, than the
carelessly-lying glove of a beautiful girl? But she took good care not
to consult the owner of the glove on any such point, dreading with good
reason Minola's ruthless scorn of all shams and prearranged
affectations.
Mary was a little puzzled about the art fixtures, if such an expression
may be used, of the room--the framed engravings, which belonged to the
owner of the house and were let with the lodgings, of which they were
understood to count among the special attractions. She had a strong
conviction that her brother would not admire them--would think meanly of
them, and say so; and although Minola herself now and then made fun of
them, yet it did not by any means follow that she should be pleased to
hear them disparaged by a stranger. About the wall paper she was also a
little timorous, not feeling sure as to the expression which its study
might call into her brother's critical eye. She could not, however,
remove the engravings, and doing anything with the paper was still more
completely out of the question. There was nothing for it, therefore, but
to hope that his poetry and his audience would so engross the poet as to
deprive his eyes of perception for cheap art and ill-disciplined colors.
There was to be tea, delightfully served in dainty little cups, and Mary
could already form in her mind an idea of the graceful figure which
Minola would make as she offered her hospitality to the poet. An alarm,
however, began to possess her as the day went on, about the possibility
of Minola not being home in time for the reception of the strangers. In
order that she might have the place quite to herself to carry out her
little schemes of decoration, the artful poetess had persuaded Minola
not to give up her usual walk in the park, and now suppose Minola forgot
the hour, or lost her way, or was late from any cause, and had not time
to make any change in her walking dress, or actually did not come in
until long after the visitors had arrived! What on earth was she, Mary,
to do with them?
This alarm, however, proved unfounded. Minola came back in very good
time, looking healthy and bright, with some raindrops on her hair, and
putting away with good-humored contempt all suggestions about an
elaborate change of dress. Miss Blanchet would have liked her leader to
array herself in some sort of way that should suggest a queen of beauty,
or princess of culture, or other such imposing creature. At all events
she would have liked trailing skirts and much perfume. She only sighed
when Minola persisted in showing herself in very quiet costume.
The rattle of a hansom cab was heard at last--at last, Mary thought--in
reality a few minutes before the time appointed; and the poet and Mr.
Heron entered. The poet was somewhat pale, and a little preoccupied. He
had a considerable bulk of manuscript in his hand. The manuscript was in
itself a work of art, as he had already explained to Victor. Each page
was a large leaf of elaborately rough and expensive paper, and the lines
of poetry, written out with exquisitely careful penmanship, occupied but
a small central plot, so to speak, of the field of white. The margins
were rich in quaint fantasies of drawing, by the poet himself, and
various artists of his brotherhood. Sometimes a thought, or incident, or
phrase of the text was illustrated on the margin, in a few odd, rapid
strokes. Sometimes the artist, without having read the text, contributed
some fancy or whimsy of his own; sometimes it was a mere monogram,
sometimes a curious, perplexed, pictorial conceit; now merely the face
of a pretty woman, and again some bewildering piece of eccentric
symbolism, about the meaning whereof all observers differed. It must be
owned that as Minola looked at these ornaments of the manuscript, she
could not help feeling a secret throb of satisfaction at the evidence
they gave that the reading would not be quite so long as the first sight
of the mass of paper had led her to expect.
Mr. Blanchet did not do much in the way of preliminary conversation. He
left all that to Minola and Victor; and the latter was seldom wanting in
talk when he believed himself to have sympathetic listeners. It should
be said that the well-ordered guitar effect proved a failure; for Mr.
Blanchet soon after entering the room flung himself into what was to
have been a poetic attitude on the sofa, and came rather awkwardly on
the guitar, and was a little vexed at the thought of being made to seem
ridiculous.
Every one was anxious that a beginning of the reading should be made,
and no one seemed to know exactly how to start it. Suddenly Mr. Blanchet
arose, as one awakened from a dream.
"May I beg, Miss Grey, for three favors?"
Minola bowed and waited.
"First, I cannot read by daylight. My poems are not made for day. They
need a peculiar setting. May I ask that the windows be closed and the
lamps lighted? I see you have lamps."
"Certainly, if you wish," and Minola promptly rang the bell.
"Thank you very much. In the second place I would ask that no sign of
approval or otherwise be given as I read. The whole must be the
impression, not any part. It must be felt as a whole, or it is not felt
at all. Until the last line is read no judgment can be formed."
This was discouraging and even depressing, but everybody promised.
Minola in particular began to fear that poets were not so much less
objectionable than other men as she had hoped. She could not tell why,
but as she listened to the child of genius she was filled with a strange
memory of Mr. Augustus Sheppard. Everything that seemed formal and
egotistic reminded her of Mr. Augustus Sheppard.
"Then," continued Herbert, "when I have finished the last line, you will
perhaps allow me to leave you at once, without formality, and without
even speaking? I ask for no sudden judgment; that I shall hear another
time; too soon, perhaps," and he indulged in a faint smile. "But I
prefer to go at once, when I have read a poem; it is a peculiarity of
mine," and he passed his hand through his hair. "Reading excites me, and
I am overwrought. It may not be so with others, but it is so with me."
"I can quite understand," the good-natured Victor hastened to say.
"Quite natural--quite so. I have often worked myself into such a state
of excitement, thinking of things--not poetry, of course, but colonial
affairs, and such dry stuff--that I have to go out at night, perhaps,
and walk in the cool air, and recover myself. Don't you feel so
sometimes, Miss Grey?"
"Oh, no; I am neither poet nor politician, and I have nothing to think
about." At the moment she thought Blanchet a sham, and Heron rather a
weak and foolish person for encouraging him. What would you have of men?
"I have felt so often," Mary Blanchet said with a gentle sigh.
Miss Grey did not doubt that people felt so; that everybody might feel
so under appropriate conditions. It was the deliberate arranging of
preliminaries by Mr. Blanchet that vexed her; it seemed so like
affectation and play-acting. She was prepared to think his poetry
rubbish.
It was not rubbish, however; not mere rubbish, by any means. Mr.
Blanchet had a considerable mastery of the art of arranging together
melodious and penetrating words, and he caught up cleverly and adopted
the prevailing idea and purpose of the small new group of yet hardly
known artists in verse and color, to whom it was his pride to belong.
His poems belonged to what might be called the literature of disease. In
principle, they said to corruption, "Thou art my father," and to the
worm, "Thou art my mother and my sister." They dealt largely in graves
and corpses, and the loves of skeletons, and the sweet virtues of sin,
and the joys of despair and dyspepsia. They taught that there is no
truth but paradox. Mr. Blanchet read his contributions with great
effect: in a voice now wailing, now threatening, now storming fiercely,
now creeping along in tones of the lowest hoarseness. What amazed Minola
was, to find that any man could have so little sense of the ridiculous
as to be able to go through such a performance in a small room before
three people. In a crowd there might be courage; but before three! It
was wonderful. She felt horribly inclined to laugh; but the gleaming
eyes of the poet alighted on hers and fastened them every now and then;
and poor Mary too, she knew, was watching her.
It was very trying to her. She endeavored to fill her mind with serious
and sad thoughts; and she could not keep herself from thinking of the
scene in Richter's "Flegeljahre" where the kin of the eccentric testator
are trying in fierce rivalry who shall be the first to shed a tear for
his loss, in presence of the notary and the witnesses, and thereby earn
the legacy to which that exasperating condition was attached. After all
it is probably easier to restrain a laugh than to pump up a tear,
especially when the coming of the tear must bring the drying glow of a
glad success with it. Minola's condition was bearable; and indeed, when
she saw the genuine earnestness of the poet, her inclination to laugh
all died away, and she became filled with pity and pain. Then she tried
hard to admire the verses, and could not. At first the conceits and
paradoxes were a little startling, and even shocking, and they made one
listen. But the mind soon became attuned to them and settled down, and
was stirred no more. Once you knew that Mr. Blanchet liked corpses, his
peculiarity became of no greater interest than if his liking had been
for babies. When it was made clear that what other people called
hideousness he called beauty, it did not seem to matter much more than
honest Faulconbridge's determination, if a man's name be John, to call
him Peter.
The poet sometimes closed his eyes for a minute together, and pressed
his hand upon his brow, while drops of perspiration stood distinctly on
his livid forehead. But he took breath again, and went on. He evidently
thought his audience could not have enough of it. The poem was, in fact,
a chaplet of short poem-beads. Many of its passages had the peculiarity
that they came to a sudden end exactly when the listeners supposed that
the interest of the thing was only going to begin. When a page was ended
the poet lifted it, so to speak, with the sudden effort of one hand and
arm, as though it were something heavy like a shield, and then flung it
from him, looking fixedly into the eyes of some one of the three
listeners the while. This formality impressed Mary Blanchet immediately.
It seemed the very passion and wrestling of poetic inspiration; the
prophetic fury rushing into action through the prophet.
Minola once or twice glanced at the face of Victor Heron. At first it
was full of respectful and anxious attention, animated now and then by a
sudden flicker of surprise. Of late these feelings and moods had
gradually changed, and after a while the settling-down condition had
clearly arrived. At length Miss Grey could see that while Mr. Heron
still maintained an attitude of the most courteous attention, his ears
were decidedly with his heart, and that was far away--with his own
grievance and the St. Xavier's Settlements.
At last it was over. The close, for all their previous preparation, took
the small audience by surprise. It came thus:
I asked of my soul--What is death?
I asked of my love--What is hate?
I asked of decay--Art thou life?
And of night--Art thou day?
Did they answer?
The poet looked up with eyes of keen and almost fierce inquiry. The
audience quailed a little, but, not feeling the burden of response
thrown upon them, resumed their expectant attitudes, waiting to hear
what the various oracles had said to their poetic questioner. But they
were taken in, if one might use so homely an expression. The poem was
all over. That was the beginning and the end of it. The poet flung away
his last page, and sank dreamy, exhausted, back into his chair. A moment
of awful silence succeeded. Then he gathered up his illuminated scrolls,
rose from his chair, bowed gravely, and left the room, Mary Blanchet
hurried after him.
Minola was perplexed, depressed, and remorseful. She thought there must
be something in the productions which made their author so much in
earnest, and she was afraid she had not seemed attentive enough, or that
Blanchet had detected her in her early inclination to smile. There was
an embarrassed pause when Victor and she were left together.
"He reads very well," Heron said at last. "A capital reader, I think.
Don't you? He throws his soul into it. That's the great thing."
"It is," said Minola, "if it's much to throw--oh, I don't know what I
mean by that. But how do you like the poems?"
"Well, I am sure they must be very fine. I should rather hear the
judgment of some one else. I should like to hear you speak first. You
tell me what you think of them and then I'll tell you, as the children
say."
"I don't care about them," said Minola, shaking her head sadly. "I have
tried, Mr. Heron; but I can't admire them. I can't see any originality,
or poetry, or anything in them. I could not admire them--unless a
command came express from the Queen to tell me to think them good."
"So you read the 'Misanthrope'--Molière's 'Misanthrope?'" Victor said
eagerly, and having caught in a moment Minola's whimsical allusion to
the duty of a loyal critic when under royal command.
"Yes, I used to pass half my time reading it; I have almost grown into
thinking that I have a sort of copyright in it. Alceste is my chief
hero, Mr. Heron."
"I wish I were like him," said Mr. Heron.
"I wish you were," she answered gravely.
"But I am not--unfortunately."
"Unfortunately," she repeated, determined to pay no compliment.
"You must let me come some day and have a long talk with you about
Molière," Victor said, nothing discouraged, having wanted no compliment,
nor thought of any.
"I shall be delighted; you shall talk and I will listen. I am so glad to
find a companion in Molière. But I wish I could have admired Mr.
Blanchet's poems. I prefer my own ever so much."
"Your own!" The audacious self-complacency of the announcement
astonished him, and seemed out of keeping with Miss Grey's character and
ways. Do you write poems?"
"Oh, no; if I did, I don't think I could admire them."
"But how then--what do you mean?"
"Well--one can feel such poetry in every blink of sunshine even in this
West Centre, and every breath of wind, and every stray recollection of
some great book that one has read, when we were young, you know. That
poetry never is brought to the awful test of being written down and read
out. I do so feel for Mr. Blanchet; I suppose his poems seemed glorious
before they were written out."
"But I think they seem glorious to him even still."
"They do--and to Mary. Mr. Heron, tell me honestly and without
affectation--are you really a judge of poetry?"
"Not I," said Heron. "I adore a few old poets and one or two new ones,
but I couldn't tell why--and those that I admire everybody else admires
too, so that I can't pretend to myself that I have any original
judgment. My opinion, Miss Grey, isn't worth a rush."
"I am very glad to hear it--very. Neither is mine. So you see we may be
both of us quite mistaken about Mr. Blanchet's poems."
"Of course we may--I dare say we are; in fact I am quite sure we are,"
said Heron, growing enthusiastic.
"Anyhow it is possible. Now I have been thinking----"
"Yes, you have been thinking?"
"I don't know whether I am only going to prove myself a busybody; but I
am so fond of Mary Blanchet."
"Yes: quite right; so am I--I mean I like her very much. But what do you
think of doing?"
"Well, if one could do anything to get these poems published, or brought
out in some way--if it could be done without Mr. Blanchet's knowledge,
or if he could be got to approve of it, and was not too proud."
"All that I have been thinking of already," Victor said. "I do think
it's a shame that a fellow shouldn't have a chance of fighting his
battle for the want of a few wretched pounds."
"How glad I am now that I spoke of this to you! Then if I get up a
little plot, you'll help me in it."
"I'll do everything--delighted."
"But first you must understand me. This is for my dear old friend, Mary
Blanchet--not for Mr. Blanchet; I don't particularly care about him, in
that sort of way, and I fancy that men generally can take care of
themselves; but I can't bear to have Mary Blanchet disappointed, and
that is why I want to do something. Now will you help me? I mean will
you help me in my way?"
"I will help in anyway you like, so long as I am allowed to help at all.
But I don't quite understand what you mean."
"Don't you? I wish you did without being told so very, very clearly.
Well, my Mary Blanchet is proud; and though she might accept for her
brother a helping hand from me, it would be quite a different thing
where a stranger was concerned. In plain English, Mr. Heron, whatever
money is to be paid must be paid by me; or there shall be no plot. Now
you understand."
"Yes, certainly; I quite understand your feelings. I should have
liked----"
"No doubt; but there are so many things one could have liked. The thing
is now, will you help me--on my conditions?"
"Of course I will; but what help can I give, as you have ordered
things?"
"There are ever so many things to do which I couldn't do, and shouldn't
even know how to go about: seeing publishers and printers, and all that
kind of work."
"All that I'll do with pleasure; and I am only sorry that you limit me
to that. May I ask, Miss Grey, how old are you?"
"What on earth has that to do with the matter? Shall you have to give
the publishers a certificate of my birth?"
"No, it's not for that. But you seem to me a very young woman, and yet
you order people and things as if you were a matron."
Minola smiled and colored a little. "I have lived an odd and lonely sort
of life," she said, "and never learned manners; perhaps that is the
reason. If I don't please you, Mr. Heron--frankly, I shan't try."
There was something at once constrained and sharp in her manner, such as
Heron had not observed before. She seemed changed somehow as she spoke
these unpropitiatory words.
"Oh, you do please me," he said; "sincere people always please me.
Remember that I too admire the 'Misanthrope.'"
"Yes, very well; I am glad that you agree to my terms--and we are
fellow-conspirators?"
"We are--and----"
"Stop! Here comes Mary."
Mary Blanchet came back. Her face had a curiously deprecating
expression. She herself had been filled with wonder and delight by the
reading of her brother's poems; but she had known Minola long enough to
be as sensitive to her moods and half-implied meanings as the dog who
catches from one glance at his master's face the knowledge of whether
the master is or is not in a temper suited for play. Mary had done her
very best to reassure her brother; but she had not herself felt quite
satisfied about Minola's admiration.
"Well?" Mary said, looking beseechingly at Minola, and then appealingly
at Victor, as if to ask whether he would not come to the rescue. "Well?"
"We have been talking," Minola said, with a resolute effort--"we have
been talking--Mr. Heron and I--about your brother's poems, Mary; and we
think that the public ought to have a chance of judging of them."
"Oh, thank you!" Mary exclaimed, and she clasped her hands fervently.
"Yes, Mr. Heron says he is clear about that."
"I was sure Mr. Heron would be," said Mary with becoming pride in her
brother. She was not eager to ask any more questions, for she felt
convinced that when Minola Grey said the poems ought to go before the
public, they would somehow go; and she saw fame for her brother in the
near distance. She thought she saw something else, too, as well as fame.
The interest which Minola took in Herbert's poems must surely betoken
some interest in Herbert himself. She knew well enough, too, that there
is nothing which so disposes some women to love men as the knowledge
that they are serving and helping the men. This subject of love the
little poetess had long and quaintly studied. She had followed it
through no end of poems and romances, and lain awake through long hours
of many nights considering it. She had subjected it to severe analysis,
bringing to the aid of the analyzing process that gift of imagination
which it is rarely permitted to the hard scientific inquirer to employ
to any purpose. She had pictured herself as the object of all manner of
wooings, under every conceivable variety of circumstances. Love by
surprise; love by the slow degrees of steady growth; love pressed upon
her by ardent youth; gravely tendered by a dignified maturity which,
until her coming, had never known such passion; love bending down to her
from a castle, looking up to her from the cottage of the peasant--love
in every form had tried her in fancy, and she had pleased and vexed
herself into conjuring up its various effects upon her susceptibility.
But the general result of the poetess's self-examination was to show
that the love which would most keenly touch her heart would be that
which was born of passion and compassion united. He, that is to say,
whom she had helped and patronized, and saved, would be the man she best
could love. Perhaps Mary Blanchet's years had something to do with this
turn of feeling. The unused emotions of the maternal went, in her
breast, to blend with and make up the equally unsatisfied sentiments of
love; and her vague idea of a lover was that of somebody who should be
husband and child in one.
Anyhow the result of all this, in the present instance, was that Mary
felt a sudden and strong conviction that to allow Minola Grey to do
Herbert a kindly service was a grand thing gained toward inducing Minola
to fall in love with him.
So the three conspirators fell to making their arrangements. The parts
were easily divided. Mr. Heron was to undertake the business of the
affair, to see publishers, and printers, and so forth; Mary Blanchet was
to undertake, or at least endeavor, to obtain the consent of her
brother, whose proud spirit might perhaps revolt against such patronage,
even from friendly hands. Miss Grey was to bear the cost. It was soon a
very gratifying thing to the conspirators to know that no objection
whatever was likely to come from Mr. Blanchet. The poet accepted the
proffered favor not only with readiness, but with joy, and was
particularly delighted and flattered when he learned from Mary--what
Mary was specially ordered not to tell him--that Miss Grey was his
lady-patroness. He was to have been allowed vaguely to understand that
friends and admirers--whose name might have been legion--were combined
to secure justice for him. But Mary, in the pride of her heart, told him
all the truth, and her brother was greatly pleased and very proud. The
only stipulation he made was that the poems should be brought out in a
certain style, with such paper, such margins, such binding, and so on;
according to the pattern of another poet's works, whereof he was to
furnish a copy.
"She will be rich one day, Mary," he said, "and she can afford to do
something for art."
"Will she be rich?" Mary asked, eagerly. "Oh, I am so glad! She ought to
be a princess; she should be, if I were a queen."
"Yes, she'll be rich--what you and I would call rich," he said
carelessly. "Everything is to be hers when the stepmother dies; and I
believe she is in a galloping consumption."
"How do you know, Herbert?"
"You asked me to inquire, you know," he said, "and I did inquire. It was
easily done. Her father left his money and things to his second wife
only for her life. When she dies everything comes to your friend; and I
hear the woman can't live long. Keep all that to yourself, Mary."
"I am sure Minola doesn't know anything about it. I know she never asked
nor thought of it."
"Very likely, and the old people would not tell her. But it's true for
all that. So you see, Mary, we can afford to have justice done to these
poems of mine. If they are stones of any value, let them be put in
proper setting or not set at all. I am entitled to ask that much."