"WERE ALL THY LETTERS SUNS, I COULD NOT SEE."
While the butterflies of fashion enjoyed the bright summer time,
and brazen bands brayed their loudest in horticultural gardens, and
foreign glee-singers carolled in every imaginable European language at
morning concerts and lawn parties, William Crawford shut himself in his
painting-room, and worked as he had never worked since the old days in
Buckingham Street, when the world had yet to learn that there was a
painter called Crawford.
He had nothing left him now but his art. He reminded himself of that
fact very often as he stood before his easel in the balmy summer
weather, while suburban butterflies wheeled above his roses, and a
suburban bee boomed and bounced against the old stained-glass in his
bay-window. Time had been when the painter had found his art more than
sufficient for his life, and when his chief regret had been that life
was not long enough for art. But the elegant siren of the Hermitage
had disturbed the even current of his existence; and it was in vain
that he tried to coax the stream back into its old course.
"I begin to think that I shall never paint another picture," he said
to himself, after abandoning more than one design in despair. "I make
sketch after sketch, but my ideas lose their freshness before I am
ready to begin upon my large canvas. Have I lost my love for my art, in
loving her? or what is this restless, feverish uncertainty which takes
the power out of my hand? I will not be the slave of this folly. I have
outlived bitterer sorrows than the loss of Mrs. Champernowne's society.
I lived down the trouble of my young wife's death; I survived ten years
of perpetual failure and disappointment; and am I to succumb at the
very last because a woman is selfish and heartless? No; I _will_ forget
Georgina Champernowne; I _will_ paint a better picture than I have ever
painted yet."
After arriving at this resolution, Mr. Crawford abandoned his brushes
and palette for one entire day, and shut himself in his library. He
took down his favourite volumes,--the sweet familiar stories of the
Greek fairyland; and all the lovely images which had made the brightest
dreams of his inspired boyhood came back to him, and floated around
him once more, in spite of Mrs. Champernowne. His Psyche's enchanting
face bent over him as he sat dreaming in the drowsy summer noon; his
Cupid peered at him in all the godlike beauty of immortal youth; and
innumerable nymphs, innumerable sirens filled the room with their
aërial loveliness.
He went back to his painting-room the next morning with new enthusiasm,
and with all the details of his picture fully developed in his mind.
"Come, my divinity," he cried; "come, my bright incarnation of the
immortal soul, and put to flight all earthly follies by your divine
presence. As I am a man and a painter, I will forget you, Mrs.
Champernowne; and my new picture shall plant me a round higher on the
glorious ladder."
From the beginning of May to the end of July William Crawford worked
incessantly at the large canvas which he had set up for himself in
his despair. No hand but his own had any part in the work; for he was
possessed with a feverish delight in his labour which he had never,
even in his most industrious days, felt before. He worked all through
the long summer days, by good lights and bad lights; entering his
painting-room at eight o'clock in the morning, rarely to leave it till
seven in the evening. He took his hasty meals in that tapestried
chamber, amongst the black oak cabinets and trailing draperies.
The servants at the Fountains remarked the change in their master's
habits, and talked gravely of his haggard face and restless impatient
manner.
"He used to be the best of tempers," said the painter's
man-of-all-work; "but now it's as much as you can do to open your
mouth without getting your nose snapped off, which the young person
that comes to sit for his Fishky says his tempers about her attitoods
is somethink offul, and that he's got no more consideration for her
elbow-joints than if she was his wooden dummy; which I'm sure, up to
two or three months back, there wasn't a pleasanter gentleman or a
better master than Mr. Crawford."
It is good for a mortal to be reminded of his mortality at that moment
when his yearnings towards a brighter universe have lifted him away
from this dull earth, and are wafting him towards that serener region
in which dwell the perfect images of his fancy. There are limits beyond
which no man can go; and during the last three months of his life
William Crawford had been trying to overstep those limits. In the hope
of forgetting the woman he loved, he had thrown himself into his work
with a burning eagerness for success that was dangerous to him alike as
a man and an artist.
"If other men work six hours a day, I will work twelve," he thought. "I
have nothing to live for now but my work."
This was the refrain of his life nowadays. What had he to live for but
his art? and if he did not do great things in that, what purpose was
there left for his existence?
The subject of his new picture was only another chapter in his
favourite fable--the story of Psyche. She lay asleep under a tent, with
the young god by her side, sleeping like herself, divinely innocent in
the unconsciousness of slumber. A crowd of zephyrs, holding one another
by the hand, have come to peep at the sleeping lovers. They float
on a wandering ray of moonlight, they hover in aërial circles about
the lovely sleepers. Never had William Crawford achieved a greater
triumph than in the creation of these ethereal beings, transparent as
water-drops against a moonlit sky, with sweet arch faces and gauzy
wings. And the slumbering Psyche, with her fair infantine face, and her
veil of pale golden hair; and the divine moonlight, and the mysterious
depths of cool shadow,--every detail of the picture was a triumph; and
as the work neared its completion the painter began to feel that he had
at least surpassed himself.
"When Sheridan was slow to write a new comedy, they said he was afraid
of the author of the _School for Scandal_. And people have declared
that I should never equal the painter of the 'Aspasia;' but I think I
have beaten the Aspasia at last," mused Mr. Crawford as he stood before
his easel, and pondered on the aërial charms of his zephyrs.
He had worked by bad lights and good lights--in sunshine and shadow.
He had grappled with and mastered the difficulties to which he had
been wont to succumb. Not content with doubling the daily hours of
his labour, he had worked at his background at night. There had been
no reason for his abnormal industry except his own restlessness; but
that restlessness was unconquerable. The intoxication of success took
possession of him, and he allowed himself neither pause nor respite.
There came a time when under any other phase of circumstances he would
have laid down his palette and left his painting-room. There came a
time when he felt that his sight was beginning to suffer from unwonted
use; but still he went on.
"I can rest as long as I like when my zephyrs are finished," he said to
himself. "If I were to leave my picture, I might lose the freshness of
my ideas; I might even take a disgust for my lovely Psyche."
So the painter held on steadily, in spite of a curious languor which
made his eyelids heavy, and an occasional visitation from a strange
throbbing pain above his eyebrows. He went on; promising himself a
consultation with some distinguished oculist, and a long rest when
his "Psyche and the Zephyrs" was finished. He continued his work with
unrelenting industry, indomitable determination: but there were moments
in which the beautiful faces upon his canvas disappeared suddenly
behind a dazzling mist, until he was fain to lay down his brushes and
walk up and down the room for a little while with his hands before his
tired eyes.
It was the middle of August, and the picture wanted little more than a
week's work for its completion, when the painter yielded for the first
time to that languid feeling in the eyelids, and abandoned his work
in order to indulge in a brief siesta. All the clocks of Kensington
had just struck three, and the vibration of the different chimes came
floating across the painter's garden. It was an almost insupportable
summer day--sultry and oppressive--the day of all others on which the
hardest worker is apt to be seized with a distaste for his labour.
"It's no use," said Mr. Crawford, as he gave a last look at his canvas;
"I can scarcely see the colours I am using. I can't stand against this
drowsiness any longer."
He threw himself upon a sofa, a noble conch of strictly classic form,
upon which had erst reclined Aspasia the wise and beautiful, or at
any rate the dark-haired model who had sat for the Grecian beauty;
that maligned enchantress who sinned against poetry by descending
from a Pericles to a cattle-dealer. The painter fell asleep almost
immediately; but for some time after he had lain down he had a dim
consciousness of pain above his eyebrows. By-and-by, however, the
slumber grew deeper; he no longer heard the bees humming in his roses,
the subdued roll of distant wheels. He fell into a long dreamless
sleep, from which he awoke at last very suddenly, with a feeling that
he had slept for many hours.
He had slept for a very long time as it seemed, for it was quite dark
when he awoke.
"No more work to-day," he thought with a sigh. "I counted on getting an
hour between five and six. Why hasn't Dimond lighted my lamps?"
The painter groped his way to the bell and rang violently.
"What a night!" he muttered; "there must be a storm brewing. I haven't
known it as dark as this all the summer."
He stood by the mantelpiece waiting. The window was opposite him, and
he felt the warm summer air floating in upon him where he stood. But
he could not even define the broad opening of the window through the
profound darkness.
"Lights, Dimond," he said impatiently, as the man opened the door.
"Lights, Sir?"
"Yes; of course. Why have you left the lamps till this time? Why isn't
that passage lighted?"
"But it's so early, Sir--not much after five--and such a bright
afternoon. I didn't think you'd like me to light the gas yet awhile."
"Not much after five o'clock!" repeated the painter in a tone of utter
stupefaction.
"No, Sir; just a quarter-past by your own clock, Sir."
"And a bright afternoon?" he asked in the same tone.
"Well,--of course, Sir, I don't presume to say as regards paintin'; but
in a general way a very bright afternoon."
"Oh my God!" cried the painter suddenly.
The servant ran to his master, alarmed by that sudden exclamation,
which sounded like a cry of agony.
"Is anything the matter, Sir?"
"No; go--go and get me a cab--immediately--I must go out--and I shall
want you to go with me."
"Me, Sir?"
"Yes, you, Sir! Go at once, man, for God's sake--and lose no time about
it."
The servant departed in bewilderment of mind, and William Crawford
groped his way through the outer darkness to the nearest chair. He sunk
into the chair, covered his face with his hands, and burst into tears.
"Blind!" he cried; "blind! blind! I said I had nothing but my art, and
now my art is lost to me."
He sat with his head bent forward on his breast, staring hopelessly
into the darkness. Strain his eyeballs as he might, they could not
pierce that darkness. He saw no Psyche and the Zephyrs, no lovely
images created by his hand, no bright glimpse of summer sunshine on the
smooth green lawn, no changing light upon the summer flowers, no tender
shadows from the grand old cedars,--only darkness, utter darkness;
beyond which it might be that his eyes were never again to penetrate.
"Cab, Sir," said the man, presenting himself in the doorway.
"Come here, Dimond," William Crawford said very quietly; "come close to
me, and give me your arm, please. I beg your pardon if I was impatient
just now, but I have had a great shock. I have been working too hard
lately and have injured my sight. God only knows whether the injury
is to be a lasting one; but for the moment I am quite blind. I think
perhaps I shall manage better if you give me your hand to lead me to
the cab. I must go at once to an oculist, and I shall want you to go
with me."