SIC ME SERVAVIT APOLLO!
Perhaps you think I have made too much of those ancestors of mine who
fought and bled at Lexington. That is always possible; if so, on further
thought, you will feel that there are excuses for me. My ancestors
bequeathed me nothing save the memory of their courage. Had I inherited
from them an estate in Middlesex, or even in Massachusetts, I might
dwell less on their valour. But since they have left me heiress of their
glory alone, ’tis natural that I should magnify the one legacy I have
received from them. To deprive me of that pittance were to leave me poor
indeed. Let me salve my indigence with the honour of the family.
And, in truth, when I got back to my rooms in Soho, I stood in need of
every ghost among my ancestral warriors. All the dragons in London
flapped wings together in that narrow lodging.
Picture my position. I had no money in hand, and no machine to work
upon. Besides, with my maimed fingers, it would be impossible for me to
type-write for three days at least. I had no prospect of food till my
wounds recovered. Even then, much must depend upon the chance of an
engagement; and for record of my “last place” what had I but my mocking
letter to This Indenture Witnesseth?
_Must_ I fall back on the aunt, with her black thread gloves and her
Zenana Missions? I glanced at Commissioner Lin; no, a bone, and freedom!
However, petty troubles are the mustard of life: they add pungency.
Besides, we are all Cinderellas with a fairy godmother. Her name is
Aide-toi-et-Dieu-t’aidera. I have never failed to find much efficacy in
Citizen Danton’s prescription. In hopeless circumstances our three best
allies are audacity, audacity, and again audacity.
I made up my mind to be audacious. I have big black eyes, as Michaela
had truly observed, so audacity comes easily to me; celestial blue is
always shrinking. I presented myself at the door of my lodgings with the
air of one who had merely gone away for a few days’ bicycling trip, and
had thousands at her banker’s. I think my jauntiness impressed the
landlady. I spoke in vague terms of “a tour in Sussex,” and of its
premature close through the accident of a collision. Item, the knees of
my knickerbockers had distinctly suffered. However, as I had paid a
fortnight’s rent before I left, out of St. Nicholas’s benefaction, and
had been away for a week and a day, besides four days more or less spent
at Flor and Fingelman’s, I was still entitled to two clear nights’
lodging. If the worst came, I might even stop on for another week
without paying. The mere fact of my return was a guarantee of
“respectability,” which, in the lodging-house acceptation, is a synonym
for probable continuous solvency.
I commanded supper with my lordliest air. My landlady was too much taken
aback to refuse me. I suggested a chop, as though chops grew wild. She
acquiesced without a murmur.
I have remarked already that I belong to a generation which has analysed
conscience away. But I am sorry to say analysis is not really one with
annihilation. Conscience resembles nature in that, when driven out with
a pitchfork, it recurs in spite of you. My enjoyment of that excellent
chump chop—grilled brown to a turn—was sadly interfered with by the
floating fear that I might never be able to pay for it. I had painful
qualms. Had my landlady been rich, I might have swallowed them with the
chop: but she was a reduced widow with one invalid daughter.
Conscience, however, though it makes cowards of us all, does not (within
my experience) produce insomnia. I slept the sleep of the just, and woke
up an Antæus, or rather an Antæa. (This remark I offer as a contribution
to the unsolved problem whether or not I have been to Girton.)
The sun was shining. The thrushes (at the bird fancier’s opposite) were
bent on justifying Browning, by singing twice over each careless
_leit-motiv_. I ordered breakfast with an undaunted face, like Leonidas
at Thermopylæ. The landlady, completely subdued, brought up coffee and
rolls as if I had been a duchess. I almost soared to an egg; as the word
hung on my lips, conscience stepped in with “Necessaries, yes; but
luxuries—that were an infamy.” I forewent the egg, though my long ride
had begotten in me a noble hunger. And I rather flatter myself that in
saying “forewent” I am enriching the language with a new preterite.
Oxford Dictionary, please copy.
Breakfast inspired me with fresh hope. There is much virtue in a
breakfast. I began to surmise that I might have misjudged St. Nicholas.
Not the bland old bishop of the National Gallery—he was a humbug, I
felt sure—but that charming young benefactor in Fra Angelico’s panel;
could he be equally untrustworthy, and with so innocent a face? I, for
one, could scarce credit it. He seemed like the masculine counterpart of
Michaela. And Michaela was too mild not to be really guileless.
At least, I would stroll round to the Strand and seek another interview
with the holy man. For the next two days it were futile to hunt for
work. Those bandaged hands must tell against me. So perforce I took
holiday.
On Monday morning I sallied forth. I wore my little black dress and hat,
in which, even to myself, I looked absurdly proper. I love trudging down
the Strand. It may sound ungrateful to confess it, after the pains that
have been taken to make London ugly for us, but I find a weird charm in
its picturesque ugliness. When I reached the window of which I was in
search, a sudden thrill ran through me. It seemed as though I had
suffered some personal loss. My patron saint had disappeared! Not a
trace of St. Nicholas!
If the embalmed body of the holy bishop had been missing from the shrine
where it lies at Bari, still exuding manna, I could not have been more
disconcerted. In my surprise and alarm I even ventured into the shop.
“The little Fra Angelico,” I cried, “in the window—what has become of
it?”
My anxious manner made the astute proprietor scent a possible purchaser.
“Put up to auction to-day,” he answered. “You must be quick if you want
it.”
“Where?”
He mentioned a firm of picture-dealers in the West-End.
I know not what possessed me—unless it were the fairy godmother—but I
hurried off to the sale-rooms. I had never attended an auction before,
yet I wedged my way to the front with the assured air of a buyer.
I was only just in time. My patron saint was in the hands of the
slave-dealer, who expatiated, after the usual fashion of slave-dealers,
on his chattel’s youth, simplicity, and beauty. He also called attention
to the innocence and charm of the three sleeping maidens. His language
was florid. I could not help wondering whether, from some calm cell in
the heavenly monastery overhead, the angelic friar looked down with a
pitying smile on this vicissitude of his handicraft. How lovingly he
laid on his cinnabar and his cobalt! He painted that picture with holy
joy for some dim niche in a Florentine nunnery; could he have foreseen
how it would be bandied about, with unsympathetic remarks as to its
drawing and colouring, in the unsanctified hands of far northern
heretics?
It was hateful to behold that lovely youth, with his long fair hair and
his delicate trunk-hose, held up for competition to the highest bidder.
The desecration sickened me. There he stood on tip-toe, his back
half-turned to us, with his three purses of gold, a rich and noble
saint, yet not wealthy enough to redeem himself from such last
dishonour! Oh, strange craft of the brush which could so give life to a
dead thing that, ages after its fashioner had mouldered into dust, my
heart still went forth to it as to a living lover! Men began to bid for
St. Nicholas. Thirty, forty, fifty, sixty guineas; seventy guineas for
the saint; slower, slower, slower.
At last the auctioneer reached a hundred. Then came a long pause. I
could not bear to think that that coarse-looking dealer with the vulgar
laugh—fat, sleek, materialised—should possess my patron. A young man
with a sweet voice (on whose forehead I seemed to see the red star of
St. Dominic) had bid up to ninety-five. How I hoped he would continue!
But he was silent at the hundred. I could no longer contain myself. The
fairy godmother at my elbow impelled me. With an effort I gasped out, “A
hundred and five!”—just to keep up the bidding.
“Going at a hundred and five! A hundred and five guineas! A genuine Fra
Angelico! This exquisite work! _So_ small a price! Does no other
gentleman offer?” He made a dramatic pause. Then down came the hammer.
“The lady has it.”
In a second it rushed over me what I had done. I gasped in my
embarrassment. A clerk drew near and murmured something inaudible about
“conditions of sale.” Through a mist of words I caught faint echoes of
“Five per cent. at once, and the balance before to-morrow.”
My face was fiery red. I had dim dreams of prison. The young man with
the sweet voice stole quietly up to me.
“Excuse me,” he said, in my ear; “one moment, before you complete this
purchase. I want that picture. _Will_ you take five guineas for your
bargain?”
“Five guineas?” I cried, aghast. “For a picture worth more than a
hundred.”
“You misunderstand me,” he corrected. “I want that work very
much—though I doubt its authenticity: I believe it to be only a
contemporary replica. However, if you cede it to me, I will pay the
money down and give you five guineas over. I did not care to go on
bidding further against the dealer; he was running up the price: but I
will buy it from _you_. Do you accept my offer?”
_Sic me servavit Apollo!_ Thus St. Nicholas saved me! I repented of my
distrust. Twice was he tried at a pinch, and twice not found wanting!
In a haze, I assented. The stranger paid me the money, which I handed
over to the clerk, less my own profit. Then I went forth into the
street, a rich woman once more, with an almost inexhaustible capital of
five guineas.
Was it St. Nicholas, I wonder, or the fairy godmother?
The question is important, from the doctrinal point of view, for it
involves the conflict between the faith and paganism.
But my own opinion is that the young man with the star of Dominic on his
brow was St. Nicholas himself, come down to earth yet another time with
a purse of five guineas for a maiden’s dower. So have I seen him more
than once descending from solid clouds, in _ex voto’s_ in Italy.