BETWEEN CARTHAGE AND KENSINGTON.
While the splendours and gaieties of Mr. Lobyer's household afforded
conversation for the neighbourhood of Pevenshall, William Crawford the
painter worked his hardest at a picture which he fondly hoped would be
one of his best achievements. It was for this that he had declined his
daughter's invitations,--for this, and perhaps just a little because
the society of Mr. Lobyer was distasteful to him, and the gorgeousness
of the Lobyer _menagé_ stifling and oppressive.
He had refreshed himself with a month's holiday during the past autumn,
and had spent his holiday in Venice, the city of his love,--the city to
which he had taken flight after his first success,--to rest for a while
amid the dreamy beauty of the Adriatic, the poetic glories of the past.
After his holiday he had returned to the Fountains with a sketch for
his new picture in his portfolio--a sketch that had been thought out
and dreamed over as he lay back in his gondola, or basked, at full
length, in some woody island, with pine-trees murmuring above his head,
and blue and emerald-tinted wavelets creeping to his feet.
The union between the painter and his only child had never been a very
close one; and although pretty, frivolous Florence was very dear to his
heart, her marriage had not made any great break in his life. He looked
forward to seeing her early in the spring, when a Tyburnian mansion
which Mr. Lobyer had hired at a rental of something between five and
six hundred per annum, was to be furnished and fitted for the reception
of its occupants; and in the mean time he was very happy alone in his
painting-room, with the grand old cedars making a solemn shade in his
garden, and his big canvas on the monster easel under the north-west
light.
He was very happy, with ample leisure for his art; and, alas for the
weakness of earth's grandest spirit! there was one other passion
besides his worship of art which absorbed the painter's mind in these
quiet January days.
Mrs. Champernowne had returned to the Hermitage before Christmas, and
had been pleased to write a little note of inquiry about Mr. Crawford's
labours, and had been pleased to welcome him graciously when he called
in response to her note, and to bestow her sweetest smiles upon him
whenever he chose to visit her.
His visits to the Hermitage had been very frequent of late, and it
seemed as if the fascinating Georgina could not see him too often. She
talked of his art and of his own special triumphs that had been and
were yet to be, with as much appearance of interest as if she had been
his sister or his wife; for sisters are not always given to enthusiasm
upon the subject of a brother's successes. She made him strong tea;
she played Mozart to him; she ordered her niece to sing pretty little
ballads for his pleasure; she spent a small fortune in the purchase of
French and German photographs in order to have something new to show
him whenever he came to the Hermitage; but in the presence of other
people she always carefully avoided any thing like _empressement_ in
her manner to the great painter.
"She is very cautious," he thought bitterly. "It amuses her to indulge
me as she indulges her cats; but if I were to tell her that I adore
her, and that she has rendered my life a burden to me without her, she
would elevate her eyebrows with the most innocent air of surprise, and
demand what justification she had given me for my presumption."
But in spite of this conviction the painter was a constant visitor in
that tranquil abode, where there was always a faint odour of hyacinth
and myosotis, and a delicious atmosphere of repose not to be found
elsewhere. Ah, if the lively matrons, the brilliant rattles, only
knew the profound charm which a wise man finds in the companionship
of a quiet woman! Mr. Crawford dined sometimes with the widow, who
altered her old-fashioned hours, and took her dinner at seven to
serve his convenience. The little dining-room at the Hermitage was
very delightful to the painter, with its sombre colouring of grey and
green, its few perfect bronzes, and three or four rare pictures, and
instead of the glare of gas, the subdued light of half-a-dozen yellow
wax candles in antique silver candlesticks. The widow's dinners were
perfection on a small scale; her wines were of the rarest and best;
and above and beyond all this, she possessed the talent of bringing
together people who suited one another.
William Crawford abandoned himself entirely to the dangerous delights
of this acquaintance. The cup which the siren's hand offered his
thirsty lips contained a beverage which he knew to be poisonous; but
he drank nevertheless, and grasped the fatal chalice with a feverish
eagerness.
He was in love--as entirely engulphed in the terrible ocean as the most
ignorant plunger who ever leapt blindly to his doom in the stormy
waves. He had allowed himself to drift imperceptibly down the stream;
and it was only when the current had grown too strong for him that
he discovered whither the cruel tide was hurrying him. And when the
discovery came it was too late--too late to recede--too late to be wise.
"At the worst she can only break my heart," thought the painter. And
having a good deal of the _laissez-aller_ in his composition, he gave
himself up to the delights of the Hermitage, and shut his eyes upon the
darksome vision of the future.
He worked hard; but not so indefatigably as he would have worked if
there had been no such person as Mrs. Champernowne in existence; not
as he had worked in the Buckingham-Street lodging in the days of his
obscurity. The real artist should care for nothing but his art. This
is the doctrine which William Crawford had preached and practised for
fifteen years of his life; but in these latter days he was false to his
own teaching, and tried to serve two masters. The great canvas on his
easel progressed slowly, and he began to look at it hopelessly as he
thought how soon the fitful sunshines of April would steal upon him.
"A year sooner or later can make little difference to me," he thought,
"and yet I should like to have made my mark in the Academy this season.
There are new men springing up, and--and I want the critics to see
that my colour has not lost all its brilliancy since the days of the
Aspasia."
Throughout the progress of his picture Mrs. Champernowne was his
sympathising and encouraging friend. She entered heart and soul into
every subject connected with his work--all his ambitious hopes--his
depressing fears. He trusted her entirely--laying bare all the
weaknesses of genius, and confiding himself wholly to her mercy. He
talked to her as he had never talked to man or woman in his life
before; and perhaps she in all the world was the only creature who knew
that Mr. William Crawford believed in his own genius.
"I know how small I am, if you weigh me in the balance with the men
of the past," he said. "Good Heavens! where did they get their power,
those demi-gods of art? There is a head of Christ by Quentin Matsys, in
the Museum at Antwerp, and the eyes that look at you out of the canvas
are human eyes, dim with tears. There is a _chasse_ in the hospital
at Bruges, painted by Hemling, which you could look at for a year,
and find new wonders in it every year. And you remember Van Eyck's
Adoration of the Lamb--the crimsons and purples, all the brightness of
summer in the green trees and winding blue rivers. The power to paint
like that seems to have vanished off the face of the earth. And yet
we love our art, and work hard, and do good things, too, in our way. I
wonder whether the men of the future will measure themselves against
us, centuries after we are dead and gone, and talk despairingly of our
power. I suppose every work of genius is sanctified by time, and that
if Rubens lived in the next street, we should have plenty to say about
the violence of his colour and the audacity of his foreshortening. What
should we think of the Pyramids if they had been built yesterday? We
go into raptures about those great piles of stone because it is some
thousands of years more or less since they were erected; but who ever
talks of the monster hotels? And yet I think the monster hotels are
quite as wonderful as the Pyramids, and I should just as soon expect
domestic comfort in the one as in the other. Depend upon it, Mrs.
Champernowne, we are all just a little fooled by the past. If a man
sent the Venus de Milo to Trafalgar Square to-morrow, there would be
plenty of Art-critics ready to declare that her head was too large for
her body, or that her knees were afflicted with white swelling."
Many times during that early spring did the siren plead for a glimpse
of the picture; but on this point William Crawford was resolute--even
to her.
"What would you have thought of my Aspasia, if you had seen her a month
before she was finished?" he said, when the widow entreated for one
peep at the Dido. The inexhaustible _Æneid_ had furnished the subject
for the new picture. "I assure you there was a period in which she
appeared in the last stage of intoxication. My model is a figurante
at Drury Lane. Don't shrug your shoulders so contemptuously, Mrs.
Champernowne. She is a very good little girl, though she does dance
behind a row of footlights for a guinea a week--a girl with the face of
an angel, and the figure of a Dutch doll. I have to find my Dido her
arms and shoulders between this and May; but if you will come to my
painting-room during the first week in April----"
"If I will come!" cried the widow impatiently; "I have a good mind to
make my way into your painting-room some night like a burglar, and look
at Dido and your Æneas by the light of a bull's-eye lantern, as they
say Mr. Morlais painted his 'Queen of Lydia unrobing.' I hope Æneas is
handsome."
"Oh, poor fellow, he is a professional model, who has been handsome
in his day, but whose beauty has succumbed beneath the influence of
gin-and-water. My Æneas shall take after his mother. I have been
studying all the types of the Greek Aphrodite in order to find the head
I want."
"I heartily despise that poor stupid Dido, and I have always detested
Æneas," said the widow; "it is my belief that his piety was of the
Pecksniffian order, and that he only carried his father in order that
he might have an excuse for losing his wife. But I am dying to see
your picture nevertheless, and I shall count the days between this and
April."
The days passed quickly enough in spite of Mrs. Champernowne's
impatience; and early in that capricious month the painter stood before
his finished picture, waiting the widow's visit. He had been putting
the last touches to the canvas during that very morning; and even now
he had his palette in his hand, and hovered restlessly before his easel
every now and then, as if he would fain have made some new attack upon
Dido or her cruel lover.
"If Mrs. Champernowne doesn't come directly, I shall do something
dreadful to the Trojan's nose," he muttered, looking at the big
clock. "His nostrils are a thought too red, as it is: another touch
of vermilion, and he would look as if his nose had been bleeding. You
are a lovely creature, Dido; though perhaps I have no right to say
so. There are the wheels, and the bell,--'She is coming, my love, my
sweet.' I hope they have arranged a nice luncheon. I'll go out and meet
her."
The painter laid down his palette and ran to the portico, beneath which
Mrs. Champernowne appeared with her niece in attendance. Charming as
she was always, she had never been more delightful than to-day, with
her pretty air of impatience, her bewitching assumption of sisterly
interest in the painter's triumph.
"Take me straight to the painting-room, please," she said, as Mr.
Crawford moved towards the open door of the drawing-room. He obeyed
her, and led her at once to the big tapestried chamber, where the
perfume of jonquils and hyacinths blew in under the open window.
The great picture stood opposite to the door, and Mrs. Champernowne
sank silently into a low chair which the painter had placed for her
at some little distance from the easel. It was a perfect feast of
colour, a banquet of beauty. The painter had chosen for his subject the
humiliation of the Carthaginian queen at the feet of her lover. Dido
has heard of the Trojan's intended departure, and the first storm of
passion has spent itself. She has come to implore him to remain; she
came to reproach him for his cruelty, but love has been stronger than
indignation, and in her tears and her passion she has fallen prostrate
at his feet, her hands clasped, her eyes uplifted to his thoughtful
face, her golden hair falling about her in a glittering shower, her
regal mantle of white and gold streaming on the ground as she kneels.
There are real tears in her blue eyes, so deep in their violet shadow,
so brilliant in their light. You see the traces of tears that she has
dashed away with an impassioned hand, still glittering on the golden
fringe of her lashes; and in every articulation of the intertwined
fingers, in the convulsive contraction of the lovely lips, the lines
that wrinkle the ivory brow, you behold the evidences of her despair.
William Crawford's Dido is no beautiful doll, but a living, breathing
woman, sublimely lovely in her womanly anguish.
Æneas, disturbed and compassionate, but still resolute, has only a
secondary interest in the picture. He is listening, and will speak
presently; and you feel that he will be courteous, and tender, and
gentlemanly, in his answer to that fond, appealing creature. But the
passion and the despair are Dido's and the interest of the picture is
hers.
In every detail of his great work William Crawford had shown himself
a poet as well as a painter. The atmosphere was not of Kensington,
but of Carthage. It was evening; and athwart barbaric pillars you saw
the sun going redly down behind a waveless sea, while far above dim
stars glimmered in an opal-tinted sky. A faint languorous mist crept
over the purple distance; but the foreground of the picture was one
glow of gorgeous colour. The tessellated pavement on which the queen
of Carthage knelt was inlaid with mother-of-pearl and gold, curtains
of strangely-mingled hues trailed from the cornices of the chamber,
revealing glimpses of a wall covered with broad bands of black and red.
The gaudy plumage of strange birds made a confusion of colour amidst
the purple cushions of a low couch that filled a niche in the curtained
wall, and the western sunlight was reflected redly on the water in
a shallow basin of jasper and onyx, over the margin of which hung a
woman's embroidered garment.
The widow sat before the picture in perfect silence. There was no
affectation in her love of art; and seated before the painter's work,
she seemed unconscious of the painter's presence. But it was not so
with her niece, who gave utterance to all those rapturous exclamations
peculiar to persons of her sex and age.
"Oh, how lovely, Mr. Crawford!" cried this young lady; "your Dido is
a most exquisite creature, and I am sure your picture will be _the_
picture of the year. I had no idea the Carthaginian costume was so
becoming, or that Carthaginians ever had that lovely golden hair. Isn't
she beautiful, Aunt Georgina?"
"Go and amuse yourself in Mr. Crawford's garden, Helen," Mrs.
Champernowne exclaimed impatiently. "If _I_ am to enjoy this picture,
I must see it in peace. Your 'how lovelys' and 'how beautifuls!' are
most distracting. You are always going into raptures about hyacinths;
you can look at Mr. Crawford's hyacinths and go into raptures about
them."
"I should very much like to see the garden," the young lady replied
discreetly; and having received the painter's permission, she flitted
away through the open window and disappeared in the trellised walk in
which Philip Foley had nursed his despair.
The widow sat for some minutes after her niece's departure still
silent, with her hands clasped in her lap and her eyes fixed on the
canvas in solemn contemplation. At last she drew a long breath, a sigh
of relief, as of one who had been held for a while breathless and
spell-bound: and then the painter ventured to speak to her.
"Are you satisfied?" he asked nervously.
She turned to look at him with eyes that were dim with tears.
"It is great," she said, in a voice so subdued as to be almost a
whisper; "it is worthy of you. I am proud of your triumph. I cannot
tell you how proud I am."
Never until that moment had he seen tears in the eyes of his siren;
never until that moment had he lost command of himself; never until
then had sober common-sense failed to pluck him backward with a
relentless hand when he faltered on the brink of folly; but the tears
in Georgina Champernowne's eyes were too much for common-sense. For the
last six months the painter had known that the moment must come sooner
or later when his own rash hand would destroy the airy fabric of his
folly. The fatal moment came to-day, and he was powerless to struggle
against his destiny. He gave one furtive glance towards the garden,
where Miss Vicary's light-silk dress glanced hither and thither among
the flower-beds, and then he laid his hand on the back of the widow's
chair and bent his head to speak to her.
"Do you know how dangerous it is for you to speak to me like that?" he
asked.
"Dangerous? How or why dangerous?"
She looked up at him with the very expression he had so often imagined,
the pretty air of unconsciousness, in which there was neither
displeasure nor alarm; only an innocent surprise. It seemed to him as
if he had acted this scene a hundred times before, and knew what the
end was to be--so constantly had he acted it in his day-dreams, so
often had he imagined its bitter termination.
"Dangerous for you, trebly dangerous for me, because when you assume
an interest in my work, a pride in my fame, you tempt me beyond my
strength. You tempt me to say that which may make us strangers from
the moment you leave this house to-day. My work and my fame are
yours,--yours to trample under your feet if you please; for you have
only to tell me to-morrow that my art is distasteful to you, and I,
who have been the slave of art for five-and-twenty laborious years,
will never touch a brush again. You have been fatally kind to me during
the past few months, Mrs. Champernowne. You have admitted me to a
friendship which must embitter the remainder of my existence--unless
you are prepared to make that existence unspeakably happy. You must
have expected this--or something like this. You could not imagine that
I could see you day after day, and be with you week after week, without
loving you, as I do love you; as I think only a man of my age and of my
concentrated life can love."
The widow sat with her face turned away from the painter, her eyes
fixed on his picture. The soft folds of her cashmere shawl were
slightly stirred by her hurried breathing, but her attitude was
statuesque as the attitude of Dido herself.
"I am very sorry," she said softly; "very, very sorry."
"Sorry that I love you?"
"I am sorry that you should speak so seriously."
"How would you have me speak? How can you expect that I should be
otherwise than serious? You must know that I love you--you must
know that I have loved you ever since you first admitted me to your
intimacy, ever since you first assumed a friendly interest in my
career. Yours is too sympathetic a nature for the coquette's heartless
ignorance. You could not have been unconscious of such love as mine."
"I never dreamt that you felt so deeply. If--if I fancied sometimes
that you valued my friendship more, far more than it was worth, I
thought you were only like some of my other friends, who are pleased
to think better of me than I deserve to be thought of; friends who
pay me pretty compliments whenever they come to see me, and forget my
existence half an hour after they have left my house. Why should you be
so much more in earnest than they?"
"You are only equivocating with me, Mrs. Champernowne; you must have
known that I was in earnest."
"I never thought about it. I knew that your society was very delightful
to me, but I never for a moment imagined that such a friendship as
ours could result in unhappiness to either of us. And why should our
friendship have any such result? Why should I not continue to be
interested in your career? why should not you come to see me whenever
you please? Is friendship impossible between a man and woman, even
when both have bidden adieu to youth? Promise me that you will never
again say the desperate kind of things you have been saying to-day; and
I will promise to take pleasure in your society to my dying day. Why
should we not be like Cowper and Mrs. Unwin? You are not mad, and I am
not evangelical, but I think that is rather an advantage. Promise, Mr.
Crawford, and let us be friends for ever and ever."
She held out her hand, and the painter took it tenderly in both his
own. Could he have refused to take that hand, even if it had held the
sentence of his death?
"I cannot make such a promise," he said gravely; "I love you too dearly
to be your friend. There is not an hour I have spent in your society
during the last two years in which I have not been on the brink of
telling you what I have told you to-day."
"Oh, but that is positively dreadful," cried the widow archly;
"friendship must be quite impossible if one's friends are always to be
on the brink of saying desperate things."
"Don't laugh at me, Mrs. Champernowne; my future life depends upon
the answer you give me to-day. Against my own reason, against my own
will, I have yielded myself up heart and soul to the fascination you
exercise over me. I had not been in your house half-a-dozen times
before I knew that if it was not my road to paradise, it was my road
to perdition--and yet I came. I knew that you had money, high family,
fashion; and that in your narrow world of the West-end I should be
laughed at for my presumption, if it was known that I hoped to win you
for my wife: and yet I came. I was quite prepared for what has happened
to-day. I never really hoped. I never in sober sadness believed that
you would answer me otherwise than you have answered me. I only let
myself drift. You asked me to come to you, and I came; and I should
have gone on and on, crawling to your feet like a lap-dog for ever
and ever, if the impulse of the moment had not been too strong for me
to-day."
"Our friendship was very dear to me," answered Mrs. Champernowne; "I am
sorry that it must end."
"I am sorry that it should ever have begun," responded he painter
passionately; "do you think a man has no more heart nor mind than one
of your Angora cats? Do you think you can play with his heart for a
year or two, and then give it back to him none the worse for your
year's amusement, and tell him to take it somewhere else? You have no
right to trifle with honest men as you have trifled with me. You have
no right to encourage my folly for your own amusement, and then tell
me that you never thought I was in earnest. You knew that I was in
earnest; and it was because of my earnestness that you found me more
amusing than your other admirers. Where they burned the conventional
flame that passes in society for real fire, I consume my heart and
soul; and now you affect unconsciousness. You offer me your friendship;
the right to go on being miserable, the privilege of sacrificing
my life and my heart for the sake of an occasional hour in your
drawing-room. You have been selfish and cruel, Mrs. Champernowne."
He walked to the window, turning his back upon the siren. But the siren
was not made angry by this discourtesy. She was sincerely sorry for his
grief and his passion. It was the story of Dido and Æneas over again;
only in this modern instance of the classic legend, it was the lady
who was cool and clear-headed, and the gentleman who was passionate
and unreasonable. The painter threw himself into a chair, by the
fire-place; and sat with his elbow resting on the arm of the chair, his
face hidden by his hand. Miss Vicary, who had been flitting restlessly
about the garden, came towards the window at this moment; but the widow
waved her back with a gesture which was unseen by William Crawford.
He had been sitting in the same attitude for some minutes, when his
visitor came softly to the hearth, and seated herself in the chair
opposite to him.
"Come, Mr. Crawford, let us talk seriously," she said.
"I have been only too serious from first to last."
"I believe that; and I am bound to speak frankly to you. You will think
me very cold-hearted, very unwomanly, very selfish, when I have spoken;
but it is better that you should think of me as I really am. Let me
first assure you that I truly value your friendship, and that I shall
be heartily sorry if I cannot retain it. But--but--I am selfish; and my
present mode of life is so agreeable to me, that I cannot bring myself
to change it. You, who have been your own master always, free to follow
your art, free to live your own life without question or hindrance,
can scarcely imagine what a precious thing liberty is to any one who
has suffered a long slavery. I am not going to tell you any piteous
story of my past life; it has been what people call a very fortunate
and favoured existence. But until I was thirty years of age I never
knew what it was to be my own mistress. Up to my eighteenth birthday
I was subject to the discipline of a convent. Very gentle, very wise,
that discipline was; but every book I read, every letter I wrote, every
country ramble or summer holiday, every garment I wore, was regulated
and arranged for me by others. I left my convent-school pining for
freedom, and found myself subject to the guardianship of a very strict
father and an uncompromising elder sister. In a twelvemonth a visitor
came; there was a little private discussion. I was summoned to my
father's study one summer morning, and was told that my fate had been
arranged for me; and that I had nothing to do but to thank Providence
for my good fortune. Six weeks afterwards I married a man old enough
to be my father, and began a new slavery. I had the best and kindest
of masters, and my bondage ought not to have been very irksome to me;
but it was bondage, and I thirsted for liberty. I ventured to hope that
I did my duty. My husband thanked and blessed me on his death-bed, in
words whose memory is very tender and precious to me. Since his death
I have been free; and I have lived my own life. A very simple life,
as you know; but, oh, so delicious to me in its untrammelled ease.
I read what books I like; I keep what hours I like; I choose my own
friends; I abandon myself to every caprice of the moment. If I want
to waste my time, I waste it, and there is no one to complain. If I
want to throw away money, I throw it away with open hands, and there
is no one to show me a long list of items in his banker's pass-book.
If I were seized to-night with a fancy for starting off to Naples, or
Cairo, or Constantinople, or the Caucasus, I should tell my maid to
pack a portmanteau, and be off by the first train to-morrow morning.
But a woman with a husband must employ the diplomacy of a Metternich
to obtain a trip to Brighton. Many men have asked me to abandon this
precious freedom; but I have never been so candid as I am with you
to-day. I know you must despise me for my selfishness; but I hope you
will try to forgive me. Accept me, if you can, for what I am worth, and
continue to be my friend."
"I cannot continue to be that which I have never been," answered the
painter sadly. "I have never been your friend. I am inclined to think
that friendship is only possible where any thing beyond friendship is
out of the question. I have always loved you; and I must go on loving
you till the end of my life. I think it will be better for us both
that all intimacy between us should end to-day. I thank you for your
candour. There are some men, perhaps, who would go on hoping against
hope, even after what you have said to me. But then I have never really
hoped. I spoke to you to-day because I was no longer able to keep
silence; not because I thought that any good could come of what I had
to say. There is one thing more that I am bound to speak of, and then I
have done for ever. I know that you are too generous to suspect me of
being influenced in the smallest measure by the consideration of any
worldly advantage to be derived from a union with you. But I am bound
to tell you, that had your answer been a different one--had it been
the answer which I never hoped it would be--I should have religiously
abstained from profiting in the most insignificant manner by any
superiority of fortune which you may have over me. My art brings me
four or five thousand a-year, and would, I am told, bring me double
that amount, if I cared to throw myself in the way of making larger
gains. I feel myself compelled to tell you this, Mrs. Champernowne; for
while there are fortune-hunters in the world, honest men must defend
themselves from the possibility of suspicion."
"I am sorry you should think it necessary to defend yourself where I am
concerned."
"Forgive me for thinking it barely possible you might do me wrong.--And
you really like the Dido?"
There was a long pause between the two sentences. Mrs. Champernowne
felt the full significance of that pause. She knew that in returning
to the subject of his picture, the painter had made an end for ever of
that other subject, so much nearer to his heart.
"I think you have surpassed yourself; and I shall look forward with
pride to your success.--Surely you have seen enough of those hyacinths,
Helen! You may come in and see the picture now, if you will promise to
moderate your raptures."
Thus appealed to, the young lady crossed the threshold of the window
with as unconscious an air as if she had been quite unaware of any
thing peculiar in the interview between her aunt and the painter. She
became straightway absorbed in the contemplation of Dido, while the
widow arranged her bonnet strings before the cheval-glass provided for
the accommodation of the "young persons" who sat to Mr. Crawford.
Mrs. Champernowne was some little time arranging her bonnet-strings;
and the face which the painter's furtive glance showed him reflected in
the glass was very pale.
"You will stop and take some luncheon," he said presently, when his
visitors were leaving the painting-room. "I have had it prepared for
you."
"You are very kind; but we dine at four; and it is half-past three now.
A thousand thanks for our private view; and good-bye."
"Good-bye. I am coming to the carriage with you."
When she was seated in her brougham, Mrs. Champernowne for the second
time offered her hand to the painter, while the most discreet of nieces
looked out of the opposite window.
"Is it really to be good-bye?" she asked, as Mr. Crawford pressed the
slender hand gently before releasing it.
"Believe me it is better so. I thank you much for your interest in
my work. I shall be hoping to please you when I am painting for other
people. Good-bye."
"And you are not angry with me?"
"I have no right to be angry. What am I to tell your servant?"
This inquiry had relation to the most discreet of footmen, who hovered
in attendance; second only to the most discreet of nieces in his
assumption of unconsciousness.
"Home, if you please," answered Mrs. Champernowne with a little sigh
or vexation. The siren had entertained a special penchant for this
particular victim, and she did not like to see him escape alive and
whole from amongst the corpses floating in the dim shades of her fatal
cavern. The most discreet of nieces found her aunt by no means easy
to please during the rest of that day; and the favourite Angora cat,
repulsed and discomfited, was fain to creep into his elegant lair of
quilted satin and wicker-work.
"It is very hard that at five-and-thirty a woman cannot have a friend,"
thought the widow, as she pretended to doze by the hearth where the
painter had so often found her in the dusky light, with her feet buried
in the fleecy depths of the Polar-bear skin, and a faint glow from the
fire glimmering here and there among the silken folds of her dress. "It
is really very hard, for I liked him so much."
* * * * *
William Crawford watched the widow's brougham drive away, and then
went slowly back to his painting-room. He carried a weary spirit to
the shrine of Art, the great consoler; but to-day even the face of the
serene goddess was darkened for him; as it had been years ago, when his
young wife's death left him desolate. He stopped before his picture for
a few minutes, looking at it wonderingly, lost in admiration of his own
work.
"I have painted _that_," he thought; "and yet I am not happy!"
It was no impulse of vanity that prompted the thought. The artist would
be something less than an artist if he did not recognise the beauty of
his own creations. Even in this picture, to which he had given so much
thought and labour, there were shortcomings which the painter's eye was
quick to perceive; but he was proud of his finished work nevertheless;
and he sat looking at it with a strange mixture of pride and sadness.
"I have nothing but my art now," he said, "nothing--nothing. My
daughter is a lady of fashion, too busy to spend a day in this quiet
house. The woman I love is selfish and heartless. I have nothing
but my art. Perhaps I ought to be very glad of that. I can make my
painting-room my pillar, and live in a solitude as complete as St.
Simeon Stylites found in his uncomfortable elevation. You shall have a
companion, Dido, before the year is done."