THE GREAT ASSAY OF ART.
Macbeth; iv.--3.
A hush followed the conclusion of Mrs. Greyson's song.
No one wished to speak what all felt, and when the silence was broken,
it was with talk of the poet rather than of the singer. To the singing
they came only by slow degrees, and over it, when at length their
admiration found speech, they passed lightly.
One thing which seemed to be effected by the music was the awakening of
Fenton from his gloomy reverie. He began to talk in his most
extravagant and whimsical style, answering every question instantly, if
with no especial care concerning the relevancy of his replies.
"What nonsense it is," he exclaimed, "to talk of any man's originating
any thing. Why, when even Adam couldn't be made without material, what
are we, his descendants, that we should hope to create? The authors of
this old wisdom that we revamp to-day copied somebody further back, and
those in turn put down what the masses felt; collected the foam which
gathered on the yeasty waves of their age. Every truth comes to the
people first if they could only recognize it when it comes. It is
evolved by the friction of the masses, just as a fire is set by the
rubbing together of tree-boughs in primeval forests, and the dusky
redman incontinently roasted in his uncontaminated innocence. The
longer I live the less faith I have that a man evolves any thing from
his inner consciousness. Fancies are only the lies of the mendacious
brain, which perceives one thing and declares to us another."
"Go slow, Fenton," interrupted Herman, "you know our poor wits are apt
to be dazzled by too much brilliancy."
"The age," Fenton rattled on, "blooms once into a great man as an aloe
into a crown of bloom."
"Right in there," broke in Rangely, who longed for a share in the
conversation, "just consider how necessary it is that every art
producer shall be in sympathy with the human life about him. That he
should take the best wherever it is to be found. There's a miserable
sentiment about shutting one's self up in some dark corner, and
producing some tremendous thing. Don't you know how many New York and
Boston artists have gone to Europe and hermetically sealed themselves
up somewhere to ferment into greatness like a jug of cider turning into
vinegar in a farmer's cellar?"
"That's what made Hunt such a big fellow," Herman interposed; "because
he took the good wherever it offered."
"But that depends upon whether a man goes direct to Nature for
inspiration," declared Fenton, "or sets himself to get a living by
filching the good things his neighbors have won from her."
"Hunt did go to nature; that is just where he was great."
"I think," said Fred, laughingly, "that you will appreciate the mood in
which I once wrote a preface. I planned a great metaphysical and
philosophical work--I was a good deal younger than I am now--and the
preface was to be, 'As to the originality of these ideas, I have
nothing more to say than that I do not remember that they have ever
been printed with my name on the title-page.' Of course, after that
declaration, I felt at liberty to take any thing I wanted from any
where; but, unluckily, my book never got beyond the preface."
"I'm glad you had the sense to stop there," declared Arthur. "I forgive
the preface, but I could never have forgiven the book."
Helen rose from her seat at the piano and turned up the gas a little.
The effect for which the light had been lowered was secured, and it was
better, she recognized, to give to her singing a certain isolation,
which must be done before the conversation became so general that the
change from gloom to light would not be noticed.
She wore that evening a gray silk with black lace, a slight turning
away showing the whiteness of her beautiful throat. Her jewels were
cats'-eyes.
"Do you wear your cats'-eyes in honor of the cat-headed deity of the
Pagans, Mrs. Greyson?" Rangely asked, as she paused near his chair,
watching a burner which seemed disposed to flicker.
"No," returned she, smiling. "I am no follower of your Pasht; a goddess
of 'winged-words' attracts me less than a deity whose province is the
sacred sphere of silence. My dress is of Mr. Fenton's designing. He is
deeply versed in the subject of clothes. I even suspect him of being
the true author of _'Sartor Resartus.'_"
"That brings up my pet abomination," Fenton observed, with emphasis. "I
do hate Carlyle. I've even lain awake nights to think how I'd like to
pound his head. The self-conceited, self-centered, self-adoring old
humbug! He was the sham _par excellence_ of the nineteenth
century, this century of shams."
"It's something to be at the top of the heap in anything," interpolated
Herman, "even in shams."
"The trouble with Carlyle," Fenton continued, "besides his enormous
egotism, was that he never got beyond the whim that the truth is
something absolute. He could not abide the idea that it is merely a
relative thing and must be treated as such. If he'd got above the mass
of cloudy vapor he called truth, he might have gained a glimpse of real
sunlight; but his aggressive self-conceit clogged his wings. Don't you
recognize that a lie is often truer than the truth?" he ran on, sitting
up in his chair and speaking more rapidly; "that where the truth will
often produce an erroneous impression, a lie will convey a correct one?
that to be true to the spirit it is often necessary to violate the
letter?"
"Your patron saint should be the god of falsehood," Helen said lightly.
"I fear your allegiance to Pasht is not very sincere."
"Ah! but it is," retorted he, quickly. "My allegiance is to the goddess
of 'winged words'; to the glorious mother of fictitious speech; to
Pasht, the goddess of splendid, golden lying. A lie is only the truth
agreeably and effectively told. _Vive la fausseté!_"
"Doubtless each interprets Pasht's attributes according to his own
light," Herman observed, a little grimly.
He was only half-pleased with Fenton's badinage. But the latter,
apparently, did not feel the thrust.
"Let him alone," Helen said, "he believes in nothing; he is a genuine
Pagan."
"You are wrong in your idea," was Fenton's swift reply. "A true Pagan
must have a belief in some god to take from his shoulders the burden of
personal responsibility, or he cannot be joyous as a Pagan should.
However, to-night I make myself believe that I believe something, so it
comes to much the same thing."
Helen turned and looked at him, attracted by some subtle quality in his
voice.
He was sitting sidewise in his chair, holding an ivory paper-knife in
his slender fingers. His cheeks burned, his eyes were bright, his lips
red. He had shaken off the depression which oppressed him earlier in
the evening. An air of joyous, quivering excitement pervaded him. He
threw up his head with a characteristic gesture, and looked about him
like one who has conquered in some desperate conflict.
"Come," the hostess said, wondering in what inward struggle he had come
off victor; "you promised to assist me with the coffee. I make no boast
of my house or my hospitality, gentlemen," she added, with a charming
glance around, "but I warn you in advance that not to admire my coffee
is to lose my friendship forever."
In answer to her ring, a servant brought in a small mortar and a pretty
little bowl of whole coffee, delicately browned, and scarcely cold from
its roasting. Arthur, who seemed acquainted with Mrs. Greyson's methods
of procedure, began to pound the berries, roasted to perfect crispness,
in the ebony mortar, reducing them to an almost impalpable powder,
which diffused upon the air the entrancing odor dear to the nostrils of
all artists.
The servant meantime had provided tiny cups, a little copper ibrik and
an alcohol lamp over which simmered a vessel of boiling water.
"Coffee should be prepared only over coals of perfumed wood," Helen
remarked as she measured into the ibrik the small spoonful of coffee
dust designed for a single cup. "But alcohol is the next best thing, it
burns with such a supernatural flame."
She put into the ibrik a measure of boiling water, rested it an instant
over the flame to restore the heat lost in the cooler copper, and then
poured the beverage into the egg-shell cup destined for it.
"To my master first," she said, presenting the steaming cup to Herman,
who received it much as one might a gift from the skies. "I learned my
coffee making," she continued, "from an old Arab at Cairo, who used to
say that it was one of the only two things in life worth doing, the
other being the duties of religion; and it therefore should be
perfectly done."
"It is simply divine," the sculptor said. "I have never really tasted
coffee before. Only if it is made like this your Arab might have said
there was but one thing in life, for this becomes a religious duty."
One by one with equal care were prepared cups for the others, who were
neither slow nor perfunctory in their endorsement of the sculptor's
praise.