DELILAH.
After driving about half-a-mile Mr. Crawford halted in a little lane
leading out of the high road, and within five minutes' walk of Hyde
Park,--an obscure corner, in which one would scarcely expect to find a
decent house, but which was, nevertheless, one of the choicest spots
at the West-end. It was close to the park; and the maximum of earthly
bliss seems to be involved in that fact. The painter alighted before
a stout wooden door, set deep in a wall, above which appeared the
branches of leafless sycamores. The garden within that circling wall
was rather less than half-an-acre in extent: the house that nestled
amid those leafless trees was only a cottage; but the rent which Mrs.
Champernowne paid for this retreat was something like seven hundred
a-year.
It was a retreat--a little hermitage half hidden amidst a dreary
wilderness of stucco--a pearl of price amongst the meretricious
splendours of Birmingham jewellers' ware--a place, whose parallel
was not to be found within the charmed circle in which alone Mrs.
Champernowne could exist--and Mrs. Champernowne's landlord knew the
value of his treasure. Such a cottage and such a garden at Highgate, or
Kew, or Ealing, or Isleworth, might have been worth a hundred and fifty
pounds a-year: but such a cottage, within ear-shot of the sparrows of
Hyde Park, was worth almost any thing its owner chose to ask for it.
Mrs. Champernowne was elegant, Mrs. Champernowne was fashionable. She
was a widow--the widow of an elderly man, who had left her what was
supposed to be an inexhaustible fortune. But it may be that this idea
had arisen in the public mind rather from the reckless expenditure of
the widow than from any exact knowledge of the late Mr. Champernowne's
resources. With this gentleman had expired one unutterably ancient
lineage, and in the person of his widow was represented another.
Backward, through the misty regions of the past, Mrs. Champernowne
traced the currents of her own and her husband's blood, winding,
by separate ways, into the remote darkness of a legendary age. The
history of modern Europe had a personal interest for the elegant widow,
and Froissart was a family record. But she rarely spoke of these
past glories. Only now and then, when the name of some aristocratic
conspirator or court-poet, some distinguished politician, or general,
or admiral of a mediæval age arose in a discussion, Mrs. Champernowne
might be heard to murmur softly, as to herself, "His great grandson
married my mother's great aunt;" or, "Poor fellow, how fond my ancestor
Ralph Hyde's youngest daughter was of him! I have the ring he gave her
the night before his execution,--a posy ring with the motto, _Memoria
in æterna_."
If Georgina Champernowne had secured for herself a certain position in
the fashionable world, she had secured it entirely without effort. She
had pleased others by pleasing herself. During her husband's lifetime
she had been buried alive in a gloomy old Northumbrian castle that
rose black and bare above a great expanse of hill and dale, sparsely
wooded here and there, and dignified with the name of park. Those who
knew most about her--and even they seemed to know very little--declared
that the elegant Georgina had known the bitter gripe of poverty's stern
hand before she married Mohun Champernowne, of Champernowne Castle. Her
father, Ambrose Arscott Pomeroy, was the last representative of a grand
old Cornish family, and had carried his three sons and five daughters
to a sleepy Belgian town, where the grass grew in the deserted
highways, and where the halls in which mediæval commerce had displayed
her richest treasures amidst clamorous crowds of buyers and sellers,
served for the storehouses of petty manufacturers or the habitations
of lonely old women. Georgina had been educated in a convent within
a few miles of Brussels, at a cost of about forty pounds a year, and
had emerged therefrom more accomplished than one out of twenty of the
damsels who leave a fashionable finishing-school, where the annual
stipend is something over three hundred. An accidental meeting between
Ambrose Pomeroy and his old friend Mohun Champernowne had brought
about the marriage of Georgina; and after performing the duties of
a devoted wife, and enduring the humours of an invalid husband and
the unspeakable dulness of a Northumbrian mansion for ten years, Mr.
Pomeroy's daughter found herself mistress alike of her own destiny and
of every shilling that her husband had to leave. Her father had died
within the last few years; her brothers and sisters had scattered far
and wide, some doing badly, some doing well, but none of them holding
their own in the sphere to which Mohun Champernowne's widow belonged.
She was quite alone in the world. There was no one who had any right to
question her actions or interfere with her caprices. She was thirty-two
years of age, and in the dull period of her seclusion her taste had
refined itself, and her intellect had ripened.
Then it was that Mrs. Champernowne came to London, and began to live
her own life. For her, who had been so long an exile from society, the
laws of society had little weight. She took a house in a fashionable
neighbourhood because the neighbourhood was pleasant, rather than
because it was fashionable. She sent for one of her nieces, and made
the girl a permanent inmate of her house, not because she feared to
face society without the protection of a female companion, but because
she wished to benefit her sister's child. She rarely went into society.
She was never seen at horticultural _fêtes_, or fancy-fairs, races, or
lawn-parties; but at the private view of every exhibition of pictures,
at the opera, on the first night of a new piece at a fashionable
theatre, at a few of the choicer morning concerts in Hanover Square,
the initiated recognised Mrs. Champernowne, and pointed her out to
uninitiated friends as one of the most elegant women in fashionable
London. She was not a dashing woman; no flutter of lace or rustle of
silk, no musical tingling of bracelets or bangles, or perfume of jockey
club attended her entrance into any public resort. Country cousins,
staring at the patrician beauty of West-end belles and the splendour
of West-end millinery, were apt to overlook Mrs. Champernowne; but if
a connoisseur in the trifles of life had been told to look for the
woman whose toilette most successfully combined the extremity of rigid
simplicity with the perfection of elegance, he would inevitably have
selected the widow.
This was the woman who had been one of the first to recognise the
genius of William Crawford, who had given him a high price for one of
his earliest successes, and who had been pleased to set him down upon
the list of her intimates. And this last boon was no small privilege,
for Mrs. Champernowne did not crowd her drawing-room with acquaintances
of a season's standing. She lived her own life, and she chose her own
friends.
The chosen few who had at first constituted her circle grew into
many; but there was none amongst the many who had not some claim to
distinction. If the door of the Hermitage had been freely opened to
every comer, Mrs. Champernowne might have found it difficult to sustain
the tone of distinction which she had so unconsciously acquired. But
in shutting her door upon people whose acquaintance another woman in
her position might have courted, the widow invested her receptions
with a piquancy which fascinated the privileged ones who were free to
come and go as they pleased. To be free of the Hermitage was _d'être
de Marly_ over again; for, once admitted within those walls, all
ceremony was done with. No invitation-cards ever issued from Georgina's
fair hands. She was an inveterate tea-drinker; and to linger by her
side as she dispensed fragile cups of egg-shell china that held about
a table-spoonful, was to be carried back to the days of patch and
hoop, and to be subjugated by the charms of a new Belinda--a Belinda
of five-and-thirty years, well sounded, but the most bewildering of
enchantresses nevertheless.
In the evening Mrs. Champernowne was at home to her intimates, and from
ten until twelve the little lane leading out of the Kensington Road was
luminous with the lamps of broughams.
"I reserve no particular evening for my intimates, for I know so few
people," said the widow--she always made a strong point of her limited
circle--"and I so rarely go out. People know they can find me whenever
they choose to come, and that I like to see them come in and out of my
rooms as they please."
Placed on this easy footing, Mrs. Champernowne's friends found the
Hermitage one of the most agreeable houses in London. The best music to
be heard at the West-end was to be heard at Mrs. Champernowne's; the
freshest photographs of new pictures, that had been the gems of the
season in continental exhibitions; the last political pamphlet that
had aroused the indignation of the Parisian police; the last comedy by
Sardou or Augier, that had succeeded at the Française or Gymnase,--were
to be found scattered on her table; and all the lions and lionesses of
London roared their mildest roar for the pleasure of their accomplished
hostess. Some delicate instinct of her own enabled her to discover nice
people. She developed talents that had never been brought to light
before. The ice of a reserved nature melted under her genial influence;
the most afflicted of bashful men found courage in her presence.
People who were utterly subjugated by her fascination sought in vain
to define its nature, and were content at last to declare her the most
charming of women. Her intimates were pestered by the supplications of
outsiders, who wanted to penetrate the magic circle: but that circle
was not to be entered easily.
People pleaded hard to be allowed to introduce such and such a friend
who was dying to make Mrs. Champernowne's acquaintance, but she was
seldom charitable enough to say with Rogers, "Let him live." "Come to
see me whenever you like," she said; "but don't bring me any strangers;
I detest strangers. The only people I care to know are people I can
know before I see them. I read a book or see a picture, or hear a
sonata on the violin; and I know in a moment whether I shall like the
man or woman who writes, or paints, or plays. I knew by the turn of his
Iphigenia's head that I should like Mr. Glendower the sculptor, and
now he is one of my best friends. And there is Mr. Crawford," added
the widow, smiling sweetly as she turned to the painter; "I knew
him intimately from the moment in which I stood riveted before that
wonderful Aspasia."
It was at the call of this enchantress that Mr. Crawford had left his
painting-room in the bleak February afternoon. He rang the bell, which
tinkled with a subdued sound in the distance, for the genius of noise
was banished from the Hermitage. Once within those sheltering walls,
the visitor recognised an atmosphere which had nothing in common with
the vulgar air without. A solemn hush reigned as in a cathedral. No
shrieking birds, no yelping lapdogs broke the serene stillness. A
man admitted Mr. Crawford into a long glazed corridor, where there
were hothouse flowers, the frailest of exotics, whose waxen petals
glimmered whitely amidst foliage of dark shining green; and at the
extreme end two marble figures seemed to keep guard over a pair of
dark-green-velvet doors; which divided the corridor from the inner
sanctuary. One of the statues was the Genius of Night, with starry
veil and extinguished torch; the other, a Silence, with lifted finger
pressed upon closed lips. The subdued tone of the vestibule, the dark
foliage and colourless petals of the exotics, the chill whiteness of
marble against a background of sombre green, possessed a harmony of
their own; and the visitor who entered the Hermitage for the first time
felt, before he reached the end of the vestibule, that he was in no
common abode. For the painter, acutely alive to the sense of external
beauty, the surroundings of Mrs. Champernowne had an irresistible
intoxication.
"Why do I come here?" he asked himself, as he followed the servant to
the end of the vestibule. "There is an odour in the very atmosphere
that stupifies and bewilders me. Take away a wall here and there, and
open barbaric colonnades to the glare of an Eastern sun, and I can
fancy Samson coming to visit Delilah in this house. I have half a mind
to leave my card, and go away without seeing her."
The servant looked back at this moment, as wondering why the visitor
did not follow him; and after a little movement of hesitation, Mr.
Crawford passed into the hall. Need it be said that Mrs. Champernowne's
man-servant was not a common man-servant? He was a most gentlemanly
creature, upon whom a livery would have been as much out of place as
upon a bishop. A little powder in his hair was the sole badge of his
servitude, and became him admirably. For the rest, his costume was
such as might have been worn by the ideal curate or the poetic doctor
of a young lady's novel. The grave dignity of his manner was more
impressive than the concentrated insolence of twenty over-fed Jeameses.
As you looked at him you were overpowered by a sense of your own
inferiority. You felt instinctively that he had been intended for a
higher sphere; that he, too, could number conspirators and court-poets
amongst his ancestors; that his tastes were as refined as his manners
and appearance; that he devoted his Sabbath leisure to the perusal of
the _Saturday Review_, and would have fainted at the sight of a _Daily
Telegraph_.
The entrance-hall of the Hermitage was by no means spacious. A Persian
carpet of moderate dimensions covered the centre of the floor, and
protected the unwary stranger from the slipperiness of a tesselated
pavement. The same subdued colour which pervaded the vestibule reigned
in the hall, where there were yet more pale exotics and antique bronzes
looming duskily through the shade. Curtains of soft grey silk shrouded
a doorway, through which Mr. Crawford passed into the drawing-room,
where there were again dark foliage and starry-white blossoms in the
dim shade of grey-silk curtains lined with a pale rose colour, that
faintly tinted the subdued light, and where two white Angora cats were
sleeping peacefully amidst the fleecy fur of a huge polar-bearskin
spread upon the hearth. It might have been the chamber of the Sleeping
Beauty which Mr. Crawford had penetrated; and to support the delusion,
a lady with closed eyes sat half-buried in the softest and deepest of
easy-chairs. But she lifted her eyelids as the gentlemanly servant
announced Mr. Crawford, and rose to receive him. She was tall and
slender--a stern critic would have called her thin. She was dark and
pale, with thick bands of black hair carried behind her ears, and
gathered in a compact knot at the back of her head. If she had not
been Mrs. Champernowne she would scarcely have been called handsome;
but a plainer woman than she might have appeared beautiful amidst her
surroundings. Whatever charm there was in her face was not to be traced
to any perfection of feature; but in the shape of her small head, the
perfect grace of her throat, the varying expression of her countenance,
the refinement of her appearance, there lurked a charm rarely to be
found in the splendour of perfect loveliness.
This was the woman who had enslaved many men, but for whom independence
was too dear a treasure to be bartered lightly. She had been the
slave of an old man's caprices, and had endured her slavery with all
womanly patience and gentleness; but having won her freedom, she was
not inclined to accept any new bondage. Her friends declared that she
had refused more than one brilliant proposal within the few years of
her widowhood, and she had already acquired the reputation of a widow
who would never choose a second husband. This was the woman whose
fascinations were acknowledged by all who came within her influence,
but amongst whose victims there were very few so utterly helpless, so
entirely hopeless, as William Crawford.
He had begun by being grateful to her for that early recognition of his
genius which had borne witness to her taste. He had allowed himself to
be beguiled into a friendship for her, which speedily became the chief
delight of his life. He had wondered at her; he had admired her; he
had ended by adoring her. Whether she was fully aware of his weakness,
or utterly ignorant of it, was one of the great perplexities of his
existence. No word of his had ever declared his passion. He was content
to be her friend and guest on sufferance. A word, and he might have
been expelled from her presence for ever. There were times when he
grew desperate, and was inclined to make the declaration which, as he
thought, must inevitably banish him from the smiles of his enchantress,
and thus make an end of his love and his despair. There were times
when he made a solemn vow that he would abstain from her society, as a
drunkard vows that he will abstain from the fiery spirit that destroys
him, and, like the drunkard, broke his pledge, before it was many days
old.
The idea that any other result than disgrace and banishment could
follow the declaration of his love for Mrs. Champernowne never entered
the painter's mind. Her grace, her fashion, her wealth, constituted
a kind of royalty, which separated her from William Crawford as
completely as if she had been a queen. Sometimes, as he worked alone
in his painting-room, he thought of all the men who had been bewitched
by the light of royal beauty's glances, and had suffered the penalty
of their presumption. He thought of the legendary knight who loved
Queen Guinevere, of Rizzio and Chastelard, wild Buckingham and fated
Konigsmark, foolish Rohan and devoted Fersen.
Fanciful, as the man who lives by the cultivation of his fancy
must naturally be, the painter tried in vain to shut the image of
his enchantress from his thoughts. The simplicity of his life, the
singleness of his ambition, had preserved the freshness of his youth.
He was as romantic as a lad fresh from college, and his worship of his
divinity was pure and unselfish as the love of sentimental youth.
Mrs. Champernowne smiled her sweetest smile as she gave her hand to
William Crawford. She was not a vivacious enchantress. Her feminine
detractors had been heard to wonder what gentlemen could see in Mrs.
Champernowne, who had really no animation, and gave herself the languid
airs and graces of a person who was in the last stage of consumption.
But the devotees who worshipped at the Hermitage found a charm in
the widow's repose of manner which infinitely surpassed the frisky
fascinations of livelier belles. The touch of her soft cool hand had
a kind of mesmeric influence. The harmonious tones of her low voice
were like the dropping of water in some sylvan fountain. She excelled
rather as a sympathetic listener than as a brilliant talker; but as
she talked little, and never talked at random, she had a reputation
for sound judgment and refined taste rarely accorded to a brilliant
talker. For her adorers she was always charming; and though she was
alike to all, there was so subtle a fascination in her manner, that
there was scarcely one among her band of worshippers who did not fondly
cherish the delusion that he was the most favoured, and that there were
specially melodious accents and particularly delicious smiles reserved
for him alone.
Accustomed, in the ten years of her wifehood, to study the whims and
gratify the peevish fancies of an elderly invalid, Mrs. Champernowne
had acquired the power of pleasing people who were hard to please.
Never since she had reigned in her little world had she wounded the
self-love of one of her subjects. People left her presence delighted
with themselves, as well as charmed with her, and eagerly returned to
renew the impressions that were only to be experienced in her society.
"I thought you were never coming to see me again," she said, as the
painter seated himself opposite to her; "and yet you must know how
anxious I always am to hear about your new pictures, and to see you,"
she added, in a softer voice; and then there was a pause, during which
one of the Angora cats had crept to her knee to be caressed. There were
disappointed worshippers at the Hermitage, who, in the peevishness of
despair, declared that Mrs. Champernowne cherished her Angora cats
with a view to the aggravation of mankind; and that she knew she never
looked prettier than when one of her favourites was perched upon her
shoulder, making itself into a fleecy-white background for the jet
blackness of her shining hair and the pale olive of her complexion.
"I believe in the transmigration of souls, and that Mrs. Champernowne
is Cleopatra," said a young poet whom the widow had admitted into
the innermost circle of her intimates. "It's not to be supposed that
such a woman as that is only meant to last half a century. There
must be a principle of economy in nature by which the souls of the
mighty are utilised. I know where to put my hand upon all the great
men of the past. I have dined at the Garrick with Shakespeare, and I
can show you Snyders's house in St. John's Wood; and I have smoked a
pipe with Murillo at Kensington, and have seen John van Eyck putting
the last touches to his draperies on the Sunday before he sent his
picture to the Academy. I used to lift my hat to poor Harry Fielding,
who now lies buried at Kensal Green; and I have bought a cigar-case
of genial-hearted Peg Woffington at a fancy fair. Mrs. Champernowne
is Cleopatra. You can see the Egyptian tint in her complexion after
eighteen centuries; and her cats are lineal descendants from the sacred
animal of Memphis. She sits in her easy-chair in the very attitude
in which she sat in her galley when she went to meet Antony; and
sometimes, when she is _distrait_, I fancy she is thinking of Actium."
In the presence of his divinity for the first time after some months,
William Crawford strove in vain to suppress all semblance of emotion.
She was dearer to him than he had ever dared to confess to himself. He
tried to beguile himself with the belief that he was only fascinated
by her, that the admiration which he felt for her arose only from his
artistic sense of her grace. But in her presence all reasoning was
vain, and he knew that he loved her. To be near her was so deep a joy
that he feared to speak, lest in some wild impulse of rapture he should
reveal his secret. He sat opposite to her in silence, with the faint
glow of the fire upon his face.
"I hope you have not been working too hard," she said presently, when
the cat had clambered upon her shoulder, and she had leant her head
against the soft white fur.
It was very little to say, and it was an expression of sympathy that
William Crawford was in the habit of hearing from all manner of people;
but from this woman it seemed so much.
"No, indeed," he answered, almost sadly; "the error of my life is that
I don't work enough. Do you know, Mrs. Champernowne, that since my
good fortune I have sometimes wished myself back in my second-floor
lodging in Buckingham Street, in the blankest and dreariest interval
of my life, only because then at least my mind was free for my work?
I fancy that a painter ought to live on the top of a column, like St.
Simon Stylites; or if he is a sybarite, and must have shelter from the
sun and rain, let him beg a lodging in the octagon tower in Windsor
Forest, and spend his life there, with the keeper's children and the
deer for his only society. I think the old painters must surely have
lived lonely lives, and that the secret of their superiority to us must
lie in the fact of their seclusion. We live too much in the world,
and have too many distractions. The gleam of sunshine in a landscape,
or the smile upon a face which we have been trying vainly to produce
for weeks, is just beginning to beam upon our canvas, when a servant
opens the door of our painting-room and tells us that Mr. Smith has
called, and wants to see us most particularly, and will not detain us
a moment. We groan, and go to Mr. Smith, who detains us a quarter of
an hour; and when we return to our easel the power is gone out of our
brush, the divine light has vanished from our canvas."
In speaking of his art the painter had for the moment forgotten
his enchantress, but all the old weakness came back to him as Mrs.
Champernowne responded, with the low voice that seemed made to express
sympathy:
"I can fancy how annoyed you must be when commonplace people intrude
upon you. I hope you are going to do something great this year. You
have brought me a sketch to look at: that is indeed kind. I feel such
a privileged person when I see the germ of the masterpiece that is to
delight the world."
The painter looked at the speaker half incredulously; but the gentle
gravity of her manner gave evidence that she had no consciousness of
uttering an exaggerated compliment.
"My masterpieces are very poor achievements, Mrs. Champernowne," he
said; "and I shall begin to doubt the infallibility of your judgment if
you show too much indulgence for my shortcomings."
"I believe implicitly in the genius of my friends, and I will cherish
my faith as long as I live," answered the widow; and then she extended
her hand with an impatient gesture. "Let me see your sketch, if you
please, Mr. Crawford; and when you have told me all about it, I will
make you some tea."
There was considerable discussion about the future picture. The
subject was Cybele and the infant Jupiter, and the idea was taken
from an old play of Thomas Heywood's. Relentless Saturn had commanded
the destruction of the child, but the bright smile of the young god
disarmed the hand that would have slain him.
Mrs. Champernowne was not a "gushing" person. She gave utterance to no
rapturous praises of the sketch; but every word she said went to prove
how deeply she was interested in the painter's workmanship. An inner
door was opened while she was still bending over the canvas, and a
bright-looking, blooming young lady appeared, and greeted the painter
with frank cordiality. Some women might have feared the rivalry of
such a blooming niece as Miss Helen Vicary, but Mrs. Champernowne had
no mere terror of her niece's fresh young beauty than Mary Queen of
Scots felt when she contemplated the charms of her four fair namesakes.
She liked to have a pretty niece about her, just as she liked the
sleek beauty of her Angora cats, the delicate tints of her grey-silk
draperies, the turquoise blue of her Sèvres china.
"Tell them to send us some tea, Helen," she said; "I am going to give
Mr. Crawford an old woman's entertainment;--and you know this is not
the fashionable tea before dinner," she added, turning to the painter.
"The rest of the world may eat supper at eight and call it dinner, if
they like; but Helen and I dine at four, and doze by the fire till
six, and then we drink tea for the rest of the evening. I know that a
modern Brummel would be unutterably shocked if he heard our degraded
mode of life; but my tea keeps me awake, and I am always ready to
enjoy the society of my friends. I have no doubt that modern hours are
very wisely chosen; for of course every thing we do in the present is
incontestably right, and every thing that was done in the past was
supremely wrong; but I don't think the Hôtel de Rambouillet would have
been quite so celebrated as it was, if people in those days had dined
at half-past eight."
The Belinda tea-service was brought: a clumsy guest had once contrived
to break one of the Belinda saucers, but not by the faintest
contraction of Mrs. Champernowne's brow could the delinquent have
divined the value of the fragile soft paste which he had shattered.
The widow was never more charming than when presiding over her tiny
tea-table. There was no hissing urn, no glittering kettle simmering
noisily above a spirit-lamp; for urns and kettles are by nature fussy,
and fuss and bustle were unspeakably obnoxious to Mrs. Champernowne.
The gentlemanly man-servant brought a fresh teapot every ten minutes
when his mistress had many visitors, and Helen, seated by her aunt,
dispensed the cups to the tea-drinkers. Every one of the teapots was a
gem in its way, and had an individuality of its own. Mrs. Champernowne
had a mania for teapots, and had christened her favourites by the names
of illustrious tea-drinkers. There were Pope and Addison, Elizabeth
Steele and Lady Mary Montague, Molly Lepel and Horace Walpole. No
muscle of the gentlemanly servant's countenance relaxed when he was
told that there was to be gunpowder in Lady Mary, and orange-pekoe in
Mr. Pope.
The gentlemanly creature lighted a cluster of wax-candles and a
moderator-lamp, and stirred the fire as softly as if the poker had
been sheathed in velvet. No vulgar glare of gas ever illuminated the
Hermitage. Moderator-lamps, burning beneath Parian shades, cast their
chastened light upon the sombre green of the velvet pile, and waxen
tapers twinkled dimly as in a chapel.
Mrs. Champernowne glanced at the clock on the chimney-piece.
"What time do you dine, Mr. Crawford?" she asked. "I mustn't detain you
here while Florence is waiting for you at the Fountains."
"Florence dines in Bloomsbury this evening, and I--I dined between
three and four," said the painter, who had eaten three biscuits and
drunk a glass of pale sherry at that hour. Was there any such thing as
dinner for privileged creatures who were permitted to enter the sacred
chambers of the Hermitage?
"I wonder whether she thinks I would leave her for the sake of the best
dinner the united _chefs_ of all the London clubs could devise?" he
thought.
He stayed at the Hermitage, and drank innumerable cups of tea, and
forgot that he had ever sworn to abjure the society of Georgina
Champernowne. After tea there were new photographs to be looked at, and
pleasant talk about the celebrities of the Parisian _salons_, and then
the widow played the softest little bits of Mozart for the painter's
edification. Peculiar in every thing, she had her peculiarity with
regard to music, and played Mozart, and Mozart only.
"Other composers are very grand," she said, "but Mozart is grand enough
and good enough for me. I find every thing that I care for in his
music, and don't care to go further. You know I am wicked enough to
hate strangers."
Rossini and Auber, Beethoven and Mendelssohn, were amongst Mrs.
Champernowne's strangers. The room filled in the course of the evening,
and the painter stayed till eleven o'clock. He went very little into
society, and Mrs. Champernowne was pleased to exhibit him to her
friends. He knew that he was a slave amongst other slaves, who smiled
as they contemplated one another's fetters. But in the siren's presence
he gave himself up to the sweet intoxication of her influence. To-night
she was especially gracious to him, though even when most gracious she
contrived to avoid any thing like exclusiveness.
"You are my prodigal son," she said. "I began to think that I was never
to see you again."
Throughout all the evening she said nothing worth recording. She sat
in the midst of handsomer women than herself, and gave place while
cleverer women talked their best; but those who left her presence
remembered her and her only; and there were many who would have
sympathised with William Crawford as he walked slowly homeward through
the highways and byways of Kensington, pondering upon his enchantress.
"Why should I avoid her if it is such happiness to me to be near her?"
he thought. "I have no foolish hope that she will ever be more to me
than she is now. It ought to be enough for me to see her now and then,
to spend such an evening as I have spent to-night, and to go back to
my work all the better for so bright an interval of happiness. What
can I want more than that, or what could be more delightful--while
it lasts? But when I am old and grey and purblind, and have painted
half-a-dozen bad pictures, and the public are tired of me, and the
critics call my colour flimsy, and insolent young painters begin to
talk of poor old William Crawford, who was once such a great card, will
Mrs. Champernowne let me spend my evenings at the Hermitage _then_?"