"Pictoribus atque Poetis
Quidlibet audendi semper fuit æqua potestas."
"With commissions"--Cornelius Jagenal spoke as if Gilead Beck was a
man of multitude, signifying many, and as if one commission was a
thousand--"with commissions pouring in as they should, Brother
Humphrey----"
"And the great Epic, the masterpiece of the century about to be
published in the Grand Style, brother Cornelius, the only style which
is worthy of its merits----"
"Something definite should be attempted, Humphrey----"
"You mean, brother----"
"With regard to----"
"With regard to Phillis Fleming."
They looked at each other meaningly and firmly. The little table was
between them; it was past twelve o'clock; already two or three
soda-water bottles were lying on it empty; and the world looked rosy
to the poetic pair.
Humphrey was the first to speak after the young lady's name was
mentioned. He removed the pipe from his mouth, threw back his head,
stroked his long brown beard, and addressed the ceiling.
"She is," he said, "she is indeed a charming girl. Her outlines finely
but firmly drawn; her colouring delicate, but strongly accentuated;
the grouping to which she lends herself always differentiated
artistically; her single attitudes designed naturally and with
freedom; her flesh-tints remarkably pure and sweet; her draperies
falling in artistic folds; her atmosphere softened as by the perfumed
mists of morning; her hair tied in the simple knot which is the
admiration and despair of many painters;--you agree with my rendering,
brother Cornelius"--he turned his reflective gaze from the ceiling,
and fixed his lustrous eyes, perhaps with the least little look of
triumph, upon his brother--"my rendering of this incomparable Work?"
He spoke of the young lady as if she were a picture. This was because,
immediately after receiving his commission, he bethought him of
reading a little modern criticism, and so bought the _Academy_ for a
few weeks. In that clear bubbling fount of modern English undefiled,
the Art criticisms are done with such entire freedom from cant and
affectation that they are a pleasure to read; and from its pages every
Prig is so jealously kept out, that the paper is as widely circulated
and as popular as _Punch_; thus Humphrey Jagenal acquired a new
jargon of Art criticism, which he developed and made his own.
Cornelius had been profiting by the same delightful and genial enemy
to Mutual Admiration Societies. He was a little taken aback for a
moment by the eloquence and fidelity of his brother's word-picture,
but stimulated to rivalry. He made answer, gazing into the black and
hollow depths of the empty fireplace, and speaking slowly as if he
enjoyed his words too much to let them slip out too fast--
"She is all that you say, Humphrey. From your standpoint nothing could
be better. I judge her, however, from my own platform. I look on her
as one of Nature's sweetest poems; such a poem as defies the highest
effort of the greatest creative genius; where the cadenced lines are
sunlit, and as they ripple on make music in your soul. You are rapt
with their beauty; you are saddened with the unapproachable magic of
their charm; you feel the deepest emotions of the heart awakened and
beating in responsive harmony. And when, after long and patient
watching, the Searcher after the Truth of Beauty feels each verse sink
deeper and deeper within him, till it becomes a part of his own
nature, there arises before him, clad in mystic and transparent Coan
robe, the spirit of subtle wisdom, long lying perdu in those magic
utterances. She is a lyric; she is a sonnet; she is an epigram----"
"At least," interrupted Humphrey unkindly, cutting short his brother's
freest flow, "at least she doesn't carry a sting."
"Then let us say an Idyl----"
"Cornelius, make an Idyl yourself for her," Humphrey interrupted
again, because really his brother was taking an unfair advantage of a
paltry verbal superiority. "Now that we have both described her--and I
am sure, brother," he added out of the kindness of his heart, "no
description could be more poetically true than your own--it would make
even a stranger see Phillis standing in a vision before his eyes. But
let us see what had better be done."
"We must act at once, Humphrey. We must call upon her at her
guardian's, Mrs. L'Estrange, at Twickenham. Perhaps that lady does not
know so many men of genius as to render the accession of two more to
her circle anything but a pleasure and an honour. And as for our next
steps, they must be guided by our finesse, by our knowledge of the
world, our insight into a woman's heart, our--shall I say our power of
intrigue, Humphrey?"
Then the Artist positively winked. It is not a gesture to be commended
from an artistic point of view, but he did it. Then he chuckled and
wagged his head.
Then the Poet in his turn also winked, chuckled, and wagged his head
too.
"We understand each other, Humphrey. We always do."
"We must make our own opportunity," said the Artist thoughtfully. "Not
together, but separately."
"Surely separately. Together would never do."
"We will go to bed early to-night, in order to be fresh to-morrow.
Have you--did you--can you give me any of your own experiences in this
way, Cornelius?"
The Poet shook his head.
"I may have been wooed," he said. "Men of genius are always run after.
But as I am a bachelor, you see it is clear that I never proposed."
Humphrey had much the same idea in his own mind, and felt as if the
wind was a little taken out of his sails. This often happens when two
sister craft cruise so very close alongside of each other.
"Do not let us be nervous, Humphrey," the elder brother went on
kindly. "It is the simplest thing in the world, I dare say, when you
come to do it. Love finds out a way."
"When I was in Rome----" Humphrey said, casting his thoughts backwards
thirty years.
"When I was in Heidelberg----" said Cornelius, in the same mood of
retrospective meditation.
"There was a model--a young artist's model----"
"There was a little country girl----"
"With the darkest eyes, and hair of a deep blue-black, the kind of
colour one seems only to read of or to see in a picture."
"With blue eyes as limpid as the waters of the Neckar, and light-brown
hair which caught the sunshine in a way that one seldom seems to see,
but which we poets sometimes sing of."
Then they both started and looked at each other guiltily.
"Cornelius," said Humphrey, "I think that Phillis would not like these
reminiscences. We must offer virgin hearts."
"True, brother," said Cornelius with a sigh, "We must. Yet the
recollection is not unpleasant."
They went to bed early, only concentrating into two hours the
brandy-and-soda of four. It was a wonderful thing that neither gave
the other the least hint of a separate and individual preference for
Phillis. They were running together, as usual, in double harness, and
so far as might be gathered from their conversation they were
proposing to themselves that both should marry Phillis.
They dressed with more than usual care in the morning, and, without
taking their customary walk, sat each in his own room till two
o'clock, when Humphrey sought Cornelius in the Workshop.
They surveyed each other with admiration. They were certainly a
remarkable pair, and, save for that little redness of the nose already
alluded to, they were more youthful than one could conceive possible
at the age of fifty. Their step was elastic; their eyes were bright;
Humphrey's beard was as brown and silky, Cornelius's cheek as smooth,
as twenty years before. This it is to lead a life unclouded and
devoted to contemplation of Art. This it is to have a younger brother,
successful, and never tired of working for his seniors.
"We are not nervous, brother?" asked Cornelius with a little
hesitation.
"Not at all," said Humphrey sturdily, "not at all. Still, to steady
the system, perhaps----"
"Yes," said Cornelius; "you are quite right, brother. We will."
There was no need of words. The reader knows already what was implied.
Humphrey led the way to the dining-room, where he speedily found a
pint of champagne. With this modest pick-me-up, which no one surely
will grudge the brethren, they started on their way.
"What we need, Cornelius," said Humphrey, putting himself outside the
last drop--"What we need. Not what we wish for."
Then he straightened his back, smote his chest, stamped lustily with
his right foot, and looked like a war-horse before the battle.
Unconscious of the approaching attack of these two conquering heroes,
Phillis and Agatha L'Estrange were sitting in the shade and on the
grass: the elder lady with some work, the younger doing nothing. It
was a special characteristic with her that she could sit for hours
doing nothing. So the modern Arabs, the gipsies, niggerdom in general,
and all that large section of humanity which has never learned to read
and write, are contented to fold their hands, lie down, and think away
the golden hours. What they think about, these untutored tribes, the
Lord only knows. Whether by degrees, and as they grow old, some faint
intelligence of the divine order sinks into their souls, or whether
they become slowly enwrapped in the beauty of the world, or whether
their thoughts, always turned in the bacon-and-cabbage direction, are
wholly gross and earthly, I cannot tell. Phillis's thoughts were still
as the thoughts of a child, but as those of a child passing into
womanhood: partly selfish, inasmuch as she consciously placed her own
individuality, as every child does, in the centre of the universe, and
made the sun, the moon, the planets, and all the minor stars revolve
around her; partly unselfish, because they hovered about the forms of
two or three people she loved, and took the shape of devising means of
pleasing these people; partly artistic, because the beauty of the June
afternoon cried aloud for admiration, while the sunshine lay on the
lawns and the flower-beds, threw up the light leaves and blossoms of
the passion-flower on the house-side, and made darker shadows in the
gables, while the glorious river ran swiftly at her feet. The river of
which she never tired. Other things lost their novelty, but the river
never.
"I wish Jack Dunquerque were here," she said at last.
"I wish so, too," said Agatha. "Why did we not invite him, Phillis?"
Then they were silent again.
"I wish Mr. Beck would call," remarked Phillis.
"My dear, we do nothing but wish. But here is somebody--two young
gentlemen. Who are they, I wonder?"
"O Agatha, they are the Twins!"
Phillis sprang from her seat, and ran to meet them with a most
unaffected pleasure.
"This is Mr. Cornelius Jagenal," she said, introducing them to Agatha.
"The Poet, you know." And here she laughed, because Agatha did not
know, and Cornelius perked up his head and tried to look unconscious
of his fame. "And this is Mr. Humphrey, the Artist." And then she
laughed again, because Humphrey did exactly the same as Cornelius,
only with an air of deprecation, as one who would say, "Never mind my
fame for the present."
It was embarrassing for Mrs. L'Estrange, because she could not for her
life recollect any Poet or Artist named Jagenal. The men and their
work were alike unknown to her. And why did Phillis laugh? And what
did the pair before her look so solemn about?
They were solemn partly from vanity, which is the cause of most of the
grave solemnity we so much admire in the world, and partly because,
finding themselves face to face with Phillis, they became suddenly and
painfully aware that they had come on a delicate errand. Cornelius
looked furtively at Humphrey, and the Artist glanced at the Poet, but
neither found any help from his brother. Their courage, as evanescent
as that of Mr. Robert Acres, was rapidly oozing out at their boots.
Phillis noted their embarrassment, and tried to put them at their
ease. This was difficult; they were so inordinately vain, so
self-conscious, so unused to anything beyond their daily experience,
that they were as awkward as a pair of fantoccini. People who live
alone get into the habit of thinking and talking about themselves; the
Twins were literally unable to think or speak on any other subject.
Phillis, they saw, to begin with, was altered. Somehow she looked
older. Certainly more formidable. And it was awkward to feel that she
was taking them in a manner under her own protection before a
stranger. And why did she laugh? The task which they discussed with
such an airy confidence over the brandy-and-soda assumed, in the
presence of the young lady herself, dimensions quite out of proportion
to their midnight estimate. All these considerations made them feel
and look ill at ease.
Also it was vexatious that neither of the ladies turned the
conversation upon the subject nearest to each man's heart--his own
Work. On the contrary, Phillis asked after Joseph, and sent him an
invitation to come and see her; Mrs. L'Estrange talked timidly about
the weather, and tried them on the Opera, on the Academy, and on the
last volume of Browning. It was odd in so great an Artist as Humphrey
that he had not yet seen the Academy, and in so great a Poet as
Cornelius that he had not read any recent poetry. Then they tried to
talk about flowers. The two city-bred artists knew a wall-flower from
a cabbage and a rose from a sprig of asparagus, and that was all.
Phillis would not help either the Twins or Agatha, so that the former
grew more helpless every moment. In fact, the girl was staring at
them, and wondering to feel how differently she regarded men and
manners since that first evening in Carnarvon Square, when they
produced champagne in her honour, and drank it all up themselves.
She remembered how she had looked at them with awe; how, after a day
or two, this reverence vanished; how she found them to be mere shallow
wind-bags and humbugs, and regarded them with contempt; how she made
fun of them with Jack Dunquerque; and how she drew their portraits.
And now--it was a mark of her advanced education--she looked at them
with pity. They were so dependent on each other for admiration; they
were so childishly vain; they were so full of themselves; and their
daily life of sleep, drink, and boastful pretension showed itself to
her experienced head as so mean and sordid a thing.
She came to the help of the whole party, and took the Twins for a walk
among the flowers, flattering them, asking how Work got on,
congratulating them on their good looks, and generally making things
comfortable for them.
Presently she found herself on the sloping bank of the river, where
she was wont to sit with Jack. Cornelius Jagenal alone was by her
side. She looked round, and saw Humphrey standing before Mrs.
L'Estrange, and occasionally glancing over his shoulder. And she
noticed, then, a curiously nervous motion of her companion's hand;
also that his cheek was twitching with some secret emotion. He looked
older, too, she thought; perhaps that was the bright sunlight, which
brought out the dells and valleys and the crow's-feet round his eyes.
He cleared his voice with an effort, and opened his mouth to speak,
but shut it again, silent.
"You were going to say, Mr. Cornelius?"
"Yes. Will you sit down, Miss Fleming?"
"He is going to tell me about the _Upheaving of Ælfred_" thought
Phillis. "And how does the Workshop get on?" she asked.
"Fairly well," he replied modestly. "We publish in the autumn. The
work is to be brought out, you will be glad to learn, with all the
luxury of the best illustrations, paper, print, and binding that money
can procure."
"So that all you want is the poem itself," said Phillis, with a
mischievous light in her eyes.
"Ye-es----" he winced a little. "As you say, the Epic itself alone is
wanting, and that advances with mighty strides. My brother Humphrey--a
noble creature is Humphrey, Miss Fleming----"
She bowed and smiled.
"Is he still hard at work? Always hard at work?" She laughed as she
asked the question.
"His work is crushing him, Miss Fleming--may I call you Phillis?" He
spoke very solemnly--"His work is crushing him."
"Of course you may, Mr. Cornelius. We are quite old friends. But I am
sorry to hear that your brother is being crushed."
"Yesterday, Phillis--I feel to you already like a brother," pursued
the Poet--"yesterday I discovered the secret of Humphrey's life. May I
tell it to you?"
"If you please." She began to be a little bored. Also she noticed that
Agatha wore a look of mute suffering, as if the Artist was getting
altogether too much for her. "If you please; but be quick, because I
think Mrs. L'Estrange wants me."
"I will tell you the secret in a few words. My brother Humphrey adores
you with all the simplicity and strength of a noble artistic nature."
"Does he? You mean he likes me very much. How good he his! I am glad
to hear it, Mr. Cornelius, though why it need be a secret I do not
know."
"Then my poor brother--he is all loyalty, and brings you a virgin
heart," (O Cornelius! and the model with the blue black hair!) "an
unsullied name, and the bright prospects of requited genius--my
brother may hope?"
Phillis did not understand one word.
"Certainly," she said; "I am sure I would like to see him hoping."
"I will tell him, sister Phillis," said Cornelius, nodding with a
sunny smile. "You have made two men happy, and one at least grateful."
His mission was accomplished, his task done. It will hardly be
believed that this treacherous bard, growing more and more nervous as
he reflected on the uncertainty of the wedded life, actually came to a
sudden resolution to plead his brother's cause. Humphrey was the
younger. Let him bear off the winsome bride.
"It will be a change in our lives," he said. "You will allow me to
have my share in his happiness?"
Phillis made no reply. Decidedly the Poet was gone distraught with
overmuch reading and thought.
Cornelius, smiling, crowing, and laughing almost like a child, pressed
her hand and left her, stepping with a youthful elasticity across the
lawn. Humphrey, sitting beside Mrs. L'Estrange, was bewildering that
good lady with a dissertation on colour _à propos_ of a flower which
he held in his hand. Agatha could not understand this strange pair,
who looked so youthful until you came to see them closely, and then
they seemed to be of any age you pleased to name. Nor could she
understand their talk, which was pedantic, affected, and continually
involved the theory that the speaker was, next to his brother, the
greatest of living men.
If it was awkward and stupid sitting with Humphrey on a bench while he
discoursed on Colour, it was still more awkward when the other one
appeared with a countenance wreathed with smiles, and sat on the other
side. Nor did there appear any reason why the one with the beard
should suddenly break off his oration, turn very red in the face, get
up, and walk slowly across the lawn to take his brother's place. But
that is what he did, and Cornelius took up the running.
Humphrey sat down beside Phillis without speaking. She noticed in him
the same characteristics of nervousness as in his brother. Twice he
attempted to speak, and twice his tongue clave to the roof of his
mouth.
"He is going to tell me that Cornelius adores me," she thought.
It was instinct. That was exactly what Humphrey--the treacherous
Humphrey--had determined on doing. Matrimony, contemplated at close
quarters and in the presence of the enemy, so to speak, lost all its
charms. Humphrey thought of the pleasant life in Carnarvon Square, and
determined, at the very last moment, that if either of them was to
marry it should not be himself. Cornelius was the elder. Let him be
married first.
"You are peaceful and happy here, Miss Fleming--may I call you
Phillis?"
"Certainly, Mr. Humphrey. We are old friends, you know. And I am very
happy here."
"I am glad"--he sighed heavily--"I am very glad indeed to hear that."
"Are you not happy, Mr. Humphrey? Why do you look so gloomy? And how
is the Great Picture getting on?"
"The 'Birth of the Renaissance' is advancing rapidly--rapidly," he
said. "It will occupy a canvas fourteen feet long by six high."
"If you have got the canvas, and the frame, and the purchaser, all you
want now is the Picture."
"True, as you say, the Picture. It is all that I want. And that is
striding--literally striding, _I_ am happy, dear Miss Fleming, dear
Phillis, since I may call you by your pretty Christian name. It is of
my brother that I think. It is on his account that I feel unhappy."
"What is the matter with him?"
She tried very hard not to laugh, but would not trust herself to look
in his face. So that he thought she was modestly guessing his secret.
"He is a great, a noble fellow, His life is made up of sacrifices and
devoted to hard work. No one works so conscientiously as Cornelius.
Now, at length the prospect opens up, and he will take immediately his
true position among English poets."
"Indeed, I am glad of it."
"Thank you. Yet he is not happy. There is a secret sorrow in his
life."
"Oh, dear!" Phillis cried impatiently, "do let me know it, and at
once. Was there ever such a pair of devoted brothers?"
Humphrey was disconcerted for the moment, but went on again:
"A secret which no one has guessed but myself."
"I know what it is." She laughed and clapped her hands.
"Has he told you, Phillis? The secret of his life is that my brother
Cornelius is attached to you with all the devotion of his grand poetic
soul."
"Why, that was what I thought you were going to say!"
"You knew it?" Humphrey was as solemn as an eight-day clock, while
Phillis's eyes danced with mirth. "And you feel the response of a
passionate nature? He shall be your Petrarch. You shall read his very
soul. But Cornelius brings you a virgin heart, a virgin heart,
Phillis" (O Humphrey! and after what you know about Gretchen!). "May
he hope that----"
"Certainly he may hope, and so may you. And now we have had quite
enough of devotion and secrets and great poetic souls. Come, Mr.
Humphrey."
She rose from the grass and looked him in the face, laughing. For a
moment the thought crossed the Artist's brain that he had made a mess
of it somehow.
"Now," she said, joining the other two, "let us have some tea, and be
real."
Neither of them understood her desire to be real, and the Twins
declined tea. That beverage they considered worthy only of late
breakfast, and to be taken as a morning pick-me-up. So they departed,
taking leave with a multitudinous smile and many tender
hand-pressures. As they left the garden together arm-in-arm they
straightened their backs, held up their heads, and stuck out their
legs like the Knave of Spades. And they looked so exactly like a pair
of triumphant cocks that Phillis almost expected them to crow.
"_Au revoir_," said Cornelius, taking off his hat, with a whole wreath
of smiles, for a final parting at the gate.
"_Sans dire adieu_," said Humphrey, doing the same, with a light in
his eyes which played upon his beard like sunshine.
"Phillis, my dear," said Agatha, "they really are the most wonderful
pair I ever saw."
"They _are_ so funny," said Phillis, laughing. "They sleep all day,
and when they wake up they pretend to have been working. And they sit
up all night. And, O Agatha! each one came to me just now, and told me
he had a secret to impart to me."
"What was that, my dear?"
"That the other one adored me, and might he hope?"
"But, Phillis, this is beyond a joke. And actually here, before my
very eyes!"
"I said they might both hope. Though I don't know what they are to
hope. It seems to me that if those two lazy men, who never do anything
but pretend to be exhausted with work, were only to hope for anything
at all it might wake them up a little. And they each said that the
other would bring me a virgin heart, Agatha. What did they mean?"
Agatha laughed.
"Well, my dear, it is a most uncommon thing to find in a man of fifty,
and I should say, if it were true, which I don't believe, that it
argued extreme insensibility. Such an offering is desirable at
five-and-twenty, but very, very rare, my dear at any age. And at their
time of life I should think that it was like an apple in May--kept too
long, Phillis, and tasting of the straw. But then you don't
understand."
Phillis thought that a virgin heart might be one of the things to be
understood when the Coping-stone was achieved, and asked no more.
At the Richmond railway-station the brothers, who had not spoken a
word to each other since leaving the house, turned into the
refreshment-room by common consent and without consultation. They had,
as usual, a brandy-and-soda, and on taking the glasses in their hands
they looked at each other and smiled.
"Cornelius."
"Humphrey."
"Shall we"--the Artist dropped his voice, so that the attendant damsel
might not hear--"shall we drink the health and happiness of Phillis?"
"We will, Humphrey," replied the Poet, with enthusiasm.
When they got into the train and found themselves alone in the
carriage they dug each other in the ribs once, with great meaning.
"She knows," said the Poet, with a grin worthy of Mephistopheles,
"that she has found a virgin heart."
"She does," said Humphrey. "O Cornelius, and the little Gretchen and
the milkpails? Byronic Rover!"
"Ah, Humphrey, shall I tell her of the contadina, the black-eyed
model, and the old wild days in Rome, eh? Don Giovanni!"
Then they both laughed, and then they fell asleep in the carriage,
because it was long past their regular hour for the afternoon nap, and
slept till the guard took their tickets at Vauxhall.