LEARNING AND TEACHING
Easter was just gone by. The Spences had timed their arrival in Rome so
as to be able to spend a few days with certain friends, undisturbed by
bell-clanging and the rush of trippers, before at length returning to
England. Their hotel was in the Babuino. Mallard, who was uncertain
about his movements during the next month or two, went to quarters with
which he was familiar in the Via Bocca di Leone. He brought his Paestum
picture to the hotel, but declined to leave it there. Mallard was
deficient in those properties of the showman which are so necessary to
an artist if he would make his work widely known and sell it for
substantial sums; he hated anything like private exhibition, and
dreaded an offer to purchase from any one who had come in contact with
him by way of friendly introduction.
"I'm not satisfied with it, now I come to look at it again. It's
nothing but a rough sketch."
"But Seaborne will be here this afternoon," urged Spence. "He will be
grateful if you let him see it."
"If he cares to come to my room, he shall."
Miriam made no remark on the picture, but kept looking at it as long as
it was uncovered. The temples stood in the light of early morning, a
wonderful, indescribable light, perfectly true and rendered with great
skill.
"Is it likely to be soon sold?" she asked, when the artist had gone off
with his canvas.
"As likely as not, he'll keep it by him for a year or two, till he
hates it for a few faults that no one else can perceive or be taught to
understand," was Mr. Spence's reply. "I wish I could somehow become
possessed of it. But if I hinted such a wish, he would insist on my
taking it as a present. An impracticable fellow, Mallard. He suspects I
want to sell it for him; that's why he won't leave it. And if Seaborne
goes to his room, ten to one he'll be received with growls of surly
independence."
This Mr. Seaborne was a man of letters. Spence had made his
acquaintance in Rome a year ago; they conversed casually in Piale's
reading-room, and Seaborne happened to say that the one English
landscape-painter who strongly interested him was a little-known man,
Ross Mallard. His own work was mostly anonymous; he wrote for one of
the quarterlies and one of the weekly reviews. He was a little younger
than Mallard, whom in certain respects he resembled; he had much the
same way of speaking, the same reticence with regard to his own doings,
even a slight similarity of feature, and his life seemed to be rather a
lonely one.
When the two met, they behaved precisely as Spence predicted they
would--with reserve, almost with coldness. For all that, Seaborne paid
a visit to the artist's room, and in a couple of hours' talk they
arrived at a fair degree of mutual understanding. The next day they
smoked together in an odd abode occupied by the literary man near Porto
di Ripetta, and thenceforth were good friends.
The morning after that, Mallard went early to the Vatican. He ascended
the Scala Regia, and knocked at the little red door over which is
written, "Cappella Sistina." On entering, he observed only a gentleman
and a young girl, who stood in the middle of the floor, consulting
their guide-book; but when he had taken a few steps forward, he saw a
lady come from the far end and seat herself to look at the ceiling
through an opera-glass. It was Mrs. Baske, and he approached whilst she
was still intent on the frescoes. The pausing of his footstep close to
her caused her to put down the glass and regard him. Mallard noticed
the sudden change from cold remoteness of countenance to pleased
recognition. The brightening in her eyes was only for a moment; then
she smiled in her usual half-absent way, and received him formally.
"You are not alone?" he said, taking a place by her as she resumed her
seat.
"Yes, I have come alone." And, after a pause, she added, "We don't
think it necessary always to keep together. That would become
burdensome. I often leave them, and go to places by myself."
Her look was still turned upwards. Mallard followed its direction.
"Which of the Sibyls is your favourite?" he asked.
At once she indicated the Delphic, but without speaking.
"Mine too."
Both fixed their eyes upon the figure, and were silent.
"You have been here very often?" were Mallard's next words.
"Last year very often."
"From genuine love of it, or a sense of duty?" he asked, examining her
face.
She considered before replying.
"Not only from a sense of duty, though of course I have felt that. I
don't _love_ anything of Michael Angelo's, but I am compelled to look
and study. I came here this morning only to refresh my memory of one of
those faces"--she pointed to the lower part of the Last Judgment--"and
yet the face is dreadful to me."
She found that he was smiling, and abruptly she added the question:
"Do you love that picture?"
"Why, no; but I often delight in it. I wouldn't have it always before
me (for that matter, no more would I have the things that I love). A
great work of art may be painful at all times, and sometimes
unendurable."
"I have learnt to understand that," she said, with something of
humility, which came upon Mallard as new and agreeable. "But--it is not
long since that scene represented a reality to me. I think I shall
never see it as you do."
Mallard wished to look at her, but did not.
"I have sometimes been repelled by a feeling of the same kind," he
answered. "Not that I myself ever thought of it as a reality, but I
have felt angry and miserable in remembering that a great part of the
world does. You see the pretty girl there, with her father. I noticed
her awed face as I passed, and heard a word or two of the man's, which
told me that from them there was no question of art. Poor child! I
should have liked to pat her hand, and tell her to be good and have no
fear."
"Did Michael Angelo believe it?" Miriam asked diffidently, when she had
glanced with anxious eyes at the pair of whom he spoke.
"I suppose so. And yet I am far from sure. What about Dante? Haven't
you sometimes stumbled over his grave assurances that this and that did
really befall him? Putting aside the feeble notion that he was a
deluded visionary, how does one reconcile the artist's management of
his poem with the Christian's stem faith? In any case, he was more poet
than Christian when he wrote. Milton makes no such claims; he merely
prays for the enlightenment of his imagination."
Miriam turned from the great fresco, and again gazed at the Sibyls and
Prophets.
"Do the Stanze interest you?" was Mallard's next question.
"Very little, I am sorry to say. They soon weary me."
"And the Loggia?"
"I never paid much attention to it."
"That surprises me. Those little pictures are my favourites of all
Raphael's work. For those and the Psyche, I would give everything else."
Miriam looked at him inquiringly.
"Are you again thinking of the subjects?" he asked.
"Yes. I can't help it. I have avoided them, because I knew how
impossible it was for me to judge them only as art."
"Then you have the same difficulty with nearly all Italian pictures?"
She hesitated; but, without turning her eyes to him, said at length:
"I can't easily explain to you the distinction there is for me between
the Old Testament and the New. I was taught almost exclusively out of
the Old--at least, it seems so to me. I have had to study the New for
myself, and it helps rather than hinders my enjoyment of pictures taken
from it. The religion of my childhood was one of bitterness and
violence and arbitrary judgment and hatred."
"Ah, but there is quite another side to the Old Testament--those parts
of it, at all events, that are illustrated up in the Loggia. Will you
come up there with me?"
She rose without speaking. They left the chapel, and ascended the
stairs.
"You are not under the impression," he said, with a smile, as they
walked side by side, "that the Old Testament is responsible for those
horrors we have just been speaking of?"
"They are in _that_ spirit. My reading of the New omits everything of
the kind."
"So does mine. But we have no justification."
"We can select what is useful to us, and reject what does harm."
"Yes; but then--"
He did not finish the sentence, and they went into the pictured Loggia.
Here, choosing out his favourites, Mallard endeavoured to explain all
his joy in them. He showed her how it was Hebrew history made into a
series of exquisite and touching legends; he dwelt on the sweet,
idyllic treatment, the lovely landscape, the tender idealism
throughout, the perfect adaptedness of gem-like colouring.
Miriam endeavoured to see with his eyes, but did not pretend to be
wholly successful. The very names were discordant to her ear.
"I will buy some photographs of them to take away," she said.
"Don't do that; they are useless. Colour and design are here
inseparable."
They stayed not more than half an hour; then left the Vatican together,
and walked to the front of St. Peter's in silence. Mallard looked at
his watch.
"You are going back to the hotel?"
"I suppose so."
"Shall I call one of those carriages?--I am going to have a walk on to
the Janiculum."
She glanced at the sky.
"There will be a fine view to-day."
"You wouldn't care to come so far?"
"Yes, I should enjoy the walk."
"To walk? It would tire you too much."
"Oh no!" replied Miriam, looking away and smiling. "You mustn't think I
am what I was that winter at Naples. I can walk a good many miles, and
only feel better for it."
Her tone amused him, for it became something like that of a child in
self-defence when accused of some childlike incapacity.
"Then let us go, by all means."
They turned into the Borgo San Spirito, and then went by the quiet
Longara. Mallard soon found that it was necessary to moderate his
swinging stride. He was not in the habit of walking with ladies, and he
felt ashamed of himself when a glance told him that his companion was
put to overmuch exertion. The glance led him to observe Miriam's gait;
its grace and refinement gave him a sudden sensation of keen pleasure.
He thought, without wishing to do so, of Cecily; her matchless,
maidenly charm in movement was something of quite another kind. Mrs.
Baske trod the common earth, yet with, it seemed to him, a dignity that
distinguished her from ordinary women.
There had been silence for a long time. They were alike in the custom
of forgetting what had last been said, or how long since.
"Do you care for sculpture?" Mallard asked, led to the inquiry by his
thoughts of form and motion.
"Yes; but not so much as for painting."
He noticed a reluctance in her voice, and for a moment was quite
unconscious of the reason for it. But reflection quickly explained her
slight embarrassment.
"Edward makes it one of his chief studies," she added at once, looking
straight before her. "He has told me what to read about it."
Mallard let the subject fall. But presently they passed a yoke of oxen
drawing a cart, and, as he paused to look at them, he said:
"Don't you like to watch those animals? I can never be near them
without stopping. Look at their grand heads, their horns, their
majestic movement! They always remind me of the antique--of splendid
power fixed in marble, These are the kind of oxen that Homer saw, and
Virgil."
Miriam gazed, but said nothing.
"Does your silence mean that you can't sympathize with me?"
"No. It means that you have given me a new way of looking at a thing;
and I have to think."
She paused; then, with a curious inflection of her voice, as though she
were not quite certain of the tone she wished to strike, whether
playful or sarcastic:
"You wouldn't prefer me to make an exclamation?"
He laughed.
"Decidedly not. If you were accustomed to do so, I should not be
expressing my serious thoughts."
The pleasant mood continued with him, and, a smile still on his face,
he asked presently:
"Do you remember telling me that you thought I was wasting my life on
futilities?"
Miriam flushed, and for an instant he thought he had offended her. But
her reply corrected this impression.
"You admitted, I think, that there was much to be said for my view."
"Did I? Well, so there is. But the same conviction may be reached by
very different paths. If we agreed in that one result, I fancy it was
the sole and singular point of concord."
Miriam inquired diffidently:
"Do you still think of most things just as you did then?"
"Of most things, yes."
"You have found no firmer hope in which to work?"
"Hope? I am not sure that I understand you."
He looked her in the face, and she said hurriedly:
"Are you still as far as ever from satisfying yourself? Does your work
bring you nothing but a comparative satisfaction?"
"I am conscious of having progressed an inch or two on the way of
infinity," Mallard replied. "That brings me no nearer to an end."
"But you _have_ a purpose; you follow it steadily. It is much to be
able to say that."
"Do you mean it for consolation?"
"Not in any sense that you need resent," Miriam gave answer, a little
coldly.
"I felt no resentment. But I should like to know what sanction of a
life's effort you look for, now? We talked once, perhaps you remember,
of one kind of work being 'higher' than another. How do you think now
on that subject?"
She made delay before saying:
"It is long since I thought of it at all. I have been too busy learning
the simplest things to trouble about the most difficult."
"To learn, then, has been _your_ object all this time. Let me question
you in turn. Do you find it all-sufficient?"
"No; because I have begun too late. I am doing now what I ought to have
done when I was a girl, and I have always the feeling of being
behindhand."
"But the object, in itself, quite apart from your progress? Is it
enough to study a variety of things, and feel that you make some
progress towards a possible ideal of education? Does this suffice to
your life?"
She answered confusedly:
"I can't know yet; I can't see before me clearly enough."
Mallard was on the point of pressing the question, but he refrained,
and shaped his thought in a different way.
"Do you think of remaining in England?"
"Probably I shall."
"You will return to your home in Lancashire?"
"I haven't yet determined," she replied formally.
The dialogue seemed to be at an end. Unobservant of each other, they
reached the Via Crucis, which leads up to S. Pietro in Montorio.
Arrived at the terrace, they stood to look down on Rome.
"After all, you are tired," said Mallard, when he had glanced at her.
"Indeed I am not."
"But you are hungry. We have been forgetting that it is luncheon-time."
"I pay little attention to such hours. One can always get something to
eat."
"It's all very well for people like myself to talk in that way," said
Mallard, with a smile, "but women have orderly habits of life."
"For which you a little despise them?" she returned, with grave face
fixed on the landscape.
"Certainly not. It's only that I regard their life as wholly different
from my own. Since I was a boy, I have known nothing of domestic
regularity."
"You sometimes visit your relatives?"
"Yes. But their life cannot be mine. It is domestic in such a degree
that it only serves to remind me how far apart I am."
"Do you hold that an artist cannot live like other people, in the
habits of home?"
"I think such habits are a danger to him. He _may_ find a home, if fate
is exceptionally kind."
Pointing northwards to a ridged hill on the horizon, he asked in
another voice if she knew its name.
"You mean Mount Soracte?"
"Yes. You don't know Latin, or it would make you quote Horace."
She shook her head, looked down, and spoke more humbly than he had ever
yet heard her.
"But I know it in an English translation."
"Well, that's more than most women do."
He said it in a grudging way. The remark itself was scarcely civil, but
he seemed all at once to have a pleasure in speaking roughly, in
reminding her of her shortcomings. Miriam turned her eyes in another
quarter, and presently pointed to the far blue hills just seen between
the Alban and the Sabine ranges.
"Through there is the country of the Volsci," she said, in a subdued
voice. "Some Roman must have stood here and looked towards it, in days
when Rome was struggling for supremacy with them. Think of all that
happened between that day and the time when Horace saw the snow on
Soracte; and then, of all that has happened since."
He watched her face, and nodded several times. They pursued the
subject, and reminded each other of what the scene suggested, point by
point. Mallard felt surprise, though he showed none. Cecily, standing
here, would have spoken with more enthusiasm, but it was doubtful
whether she would have displayed Miriam's accuracy of knowledge.
"Well, let us go," he said at length. "You don't insist on walking
home?"
"There is no need to, I think. I could quite well, if I wished."
"I am going to run through a few of the galleries for a morning or two.
I wonder whether you would care to come with me to-morrow?"
"I will come with pleasure."
"That is how people speak when they don't like to refuse a troublesome
invitation."
"Then what am I to say? I spoke the truth, in quite simple words."
"I suppose it was your tone; you seemed too polite."
"But what is your objection to politeness?" Miriam asked naively.
"Oh, I have none, when it is sincere. But as soon as I had asked you, I
felt afraid that I was troublesome."
"If I had felt that, I should have expressed it unmistakably," she
replied, in a voice which reminded him of the road from Baiae to Naples.
"Thank you; that is what I should wish."
Having found a carriage for her, and made an appointment for the
morning, he watched her drive away.
A few hours later, he encountered Spence in the Piazza Colonna, and
they went together into a _caffe_. Spence had the news that Mrs.
Lessingham and her niece would arrive on the third day from now. Their
stay would be of a fortnight at longest.
"I met Mrs. Baske at the Vatican this morning," said Mallard presently,
as he knocked the ash off his cigar. "We had some talk."
"On Vatican subjects?"
"Yes. I find her views of art somewhat changed. But sculpture still
alarms her."
"Still? Do you suppose she will ever overcome that feeling? Are you
wholly free from it yourself? Imagine yourself invited to conduct a
party of ladies through the marbles, and to direct their attention to
the merits that strike you."
"No doubt I should invent an excuse. But it would be weakness."
"A weakness inseparable from our civilization. The nude in art is an
anachronism."
"Pooh! That is encouraging the vulgar prejudice."
"No; it is merely stating a vulgar fact. These collections of nude
figures in marble have only an historical interest. They are kept out
of the way, in places which no one is obliged to visit. Modern work of
that kind is tolerated, nothing more. What on earth is the good of an
artistic production of which people in general are afraid to speak
freely? You take your stand before the Venus of the Capitol; you bid
the attendant make it revolve slowly, and you begin a lecture to your
wife, your sister, or your young cousin, on the glories of the
masterpiece. You point out in detail how admirably Praxiteles has
exhibited every beauty of the female frame. Other ladies are standing
by you smile blandly, and include them in your audience."
Mallard interrupted with a laugh.
"Well, why not?" continued the other. "This isn't the _gabinetto_ at
Naples, surely?"
"But you are well aware that, practically, it comes to the same thing.
How often is one half pained, half amused, at the behaviour of women in
the Tribune at Florence! They are in a false position; it is absurd to
ridicule them for what your own sensations justify. For my own part, I
always leave my wife and Mrs. Baske to go about these galleries without
my company. If I can't be honestly at my ease, I won't make pretence of
being so."
"All this is true enough, but the prejudice is absurd. We ought to
despise it and struggle against it."
"Despise it, many of us do, theoretically. But to make practical
demonstrations against it, is to oppose, as I said, all the
civilization of our world. Perhaps there will come a time once more
when sculpture will be justified; at present the art doesn't and can't
exist. Its relics belong to museums--in the English sense of the word."
"You only mean by this," said Mallard, "that art isn't for the
multitude. We know that well enough."
"But there's a special difficulty about this point. We come across it
in literature as well. How is it that certain pages in literature,
which all intellectual people agree in pro flouncing just as pure as
they are great, could never be read aloud, say, in a family circle,
without occasioning pain and dismay? No need to give illustrations;
they occur to you in abundance. We skip them, or we read mutteringly,
or we say frankly that this is not adapted for reading aloud. Yet no
man would frown if he found his daughter bent over the book. There's
something radically wrong here."
"This is the old question of our English Puritanism. In France, here in
Italy, there is far less of such feeling."
"Far less; but why must there be any at all? And Puritanism isn't a
sufficient explanation. The English Puritans of the really Puritan time
had freedom of conversation which would horrify us of to-day. We become
more and more prudish as what we call civilization advances. It is a
hateful fact that, from the domestic point of view, there exists no
difference between some of the noblest things in art and poetry, and
the obscenities which are prosecuted; the one is as impossible of frank
discussion as the other."
"The domestic point of view is contemptible. It means the bourgeois
point of view, the Philistine point of view."
"Then I myself, if I had children, should be both bourgeois and
Philistine. And so, I have a strong suspicion, would you too."
"Very well," replied Mallard, with some annoyance, "then it is one more
reason why an artist should have nothing to do with domesticities. But
look here, you are wrong as regards me. If ever I marry, _amico mio_,
my wife shall learn to make more than a theoretical distinction between
what is art and what is grossness. If ever I have children, they shall
from the first he taught a natural morality, and not the conventional.
If I can afford good casts of noble statues, they shall stand freely
about my house. When I read aloud, by the fire side, there shall be no
skipping or muttering or frank omissions; no, by Apollo! If a daughter
of mine cannot describe to me the points of difference between the
Venus of the Capitol and that of the Medici, she shall be bidden to use
her eyes and her brains better. I'll have no contemptible prudery in my
house!"
"Bravissimo!" cried Spenee, laughing. "I see that my cousin Miriam is
not the only person who has progressed during these years. Do you
remember a certain conversation of ours at Posillipo about the
education of a certain young lady?"
"Yes, I do. But that was a different matter. The question was not of
Greek statues and classical books, but of modern pruriencies and
shallowness and irresponsibility."
"You exaggerated then, and you do so now," said Spence; "at present
with less excuse."
Mallard kept silence for a space; then said:
"Let us speak of what we have been avoiding. How has that marriage
turned out?"
"I have told you all I know. There's no reason to suppose that things
are anything but well."
"I don't like her coming abroad alone; I have no faith in that plea of
work. I suspect things are _not_ well."
"A cynic--which I am not--would suggest that a wish had something to do
with the thought."
"He would be cynically wrong," replied Mallard, with calmness.
"Why shouldn't she come abroad alone? There's nothing alarming in the
fact that they no longer need to see each other every hour. And one
takes for granted that _they_, at all events, are not bourgeois; their
life won't be arranged exactly like that of Mr. and Mrs. Jones the
greengrocers."
"No," said the other, musingly.
"In what direction do you imagine that Cecily will progress? Possibly
she has become acquainted with disillusion."
"Possibly?"
"Well, take it for certain. Isn't that an inevitable step in her
education? Things may still be well enough, philosophically speaking.
She has her life to live--we know it will be to the end a modern life.
_Servetur ad imum_--and so on; that's what one would wish, I suppose?
We have no longer to take thought for her."
"But we are allowed to wish the best."
"What _is_ the best?" said Spenee, sustaining his tone of impartial
speculation. "Are you quite sure that Mr. and Mrs. Jones are not too
much in your mind?"
"Whatever modern happiness may mean, I am inclined to think that modern
unhappiness is not unlike that of old-fashioned people."
"My dear fellow, you are a halter between two opinions. You can't make
up your mind in which direction to look. You are a sort of Janus, with
anxiety on both faces."
"There's a good deal of truth in that," admitted the artist, with a
growl.
"Get on with your painting, and whatever else of practical you have in
mind. Leave philosophy to men of large leisure and placid pulses, like
myself. Accept the inevitable."
"I do so."
"But not with modern detachment," said Spence, smiling.
"Be hanged with your modernity! I believe myself distinctly the more
modern of the two."
"Not with regard to women. When you marry, you will be a rigid
autocrat, and make no pretence about it. You don't think of women as
independent beings, who must save or lose themselves on their own
responsibility. You are not willing to trust them alone."
"Well, perhaps you are right."
"Of course I am. Come and dine at the hotel. I think Seaborne will be
there."
"No, thank you."
Mallard had waited but a few minutes in the court of the Palazzo
Borghese next morning, when Miriam joined him. There was some
constraint on both sides. Miriam looked as if she did not wish
yesterday's conversation to be revived in their manner of meeting. Her
"Good-morning, Mr. Mallard," had as little reference as possible to the
fact of this being an appointment. The artist was in quite another mood
than that of yesterday; his smile was formal, and he seemed indisposed
for conversation.
"I have the _permesso_," he said, leading at once to the door of the
gallery.
They sauntered about the first room, exchanging a few idle remarks. In
the second, a woman past the prime of life was copying a large picture.
They looked at her work from a distance, and Miriam asked if it was
well done.
"What do you think yourself?" asked Mallard.
"It seems to me skilful and accurate, but I know that perhaps it is
neither one nor the other."
He pointed out several faults, which she at once recognized.
"I wonder I could not see them at first That confirms me in distrust of
myself. I am as likely as not to admire a thing that is utterly
worthless."
"As likely as not--no; at least, I think not. But of course your eye is
untrained, and you have no real knowledge to go upon. You can judge an
original picture sentimentally, and your sentiment will not be wholly
misleading. You can't judge a copy technically, but I think you have
more than average observation. How would you like to spend your life
like this copyist?"
"I would give my left hand to have her skill in my right."
"You would?"
"I should be able to _do_ something--something definite and tolerably
good."
"Why, so you can already; one thing in particular."
"What is that?"
"Learn your own deficiencies; a thing that most people neither will nor
can. Look at this Francia, and tell me your thoughts about it."
She examined the picture for a minute or two. Then, without moving her
eyes, she murmured:
"I can say nothing that is worth saying."
"Never mind. Say what you think, or what you feel."
"Why should you wish me to talk commonplace?"
"That is precisely what I don't wish you to talk. You know what is
commonplace, and therefore you can avoid it. Never mind his school or
his date. What did the man want to express here, and how far do you
think he has succeeded? That's the main thing; I wish a few critics
would understand it."
Miriam obeyed him, and said what she had to say diffidently, but in
clear terms. Mallard was silent when she ceased, and she looked up at
him. He rewarded her with a smile, and one or two nods--as his manner
was.
"I have not made myself ridiculous?"
"I think not."
They had walked on a little, when Mallard said to her unexpectedly:
"Please to bear in mind that I make no claim to infallibility. I am a
painter of landscape; out of my own sphere, I become an amateur. You
are not bound to accept my judgment."
"Of course not," she replied simply.
"It occurred to me that I had been rather dictatorial."
"So you have, Mr. Mallard," she returned, looking at a picture.
"I am sorry. It's the failing of men who have often to be combative,
and who live much in solitude. I will try to use a less offensive
tone."
"I didn't mean that your tone was in the least offensive."
"A more polite tone, then--as you taught me yesterday."
"I had rather you spoke just as is natural to you."
Mallard laughed.
"Politeness is not natural to me, I admit. I am horribly uncomfortable
whenever I have to pick my words out of regard to polite people. That
is why I shun what is called society. What little I have seen of it has
been more than enough for me."
"I have seen still less of it; but I understand your dislike."
"Before you left home, didn't you associate a great deal with people?"
"People of a certain kind," she replied coldly. "It was not society as
you mean it."
"You will be glad to mix more freely with the world, when you are back
in England?"
"I can't tell. By whom is that Madonna?"
Thus they went slowly on, until they came to the little hall where the
fountain plays, and whence is the outlook over the Tiber. It was
delightful to sit here in the shadows, made cooler and fresher by that
plashing water, and to see the glorious sunlight gleam upon the river's
tawny flow.
"Each time that I have been in Rome," said Mallard, "I have felt, after
the first few days, a peculiar mental calm. The other cities of Italy
haven't the same effect on me. Perhaps every one experiences it, more
or less. There comes back to me at moments the kind of happiness which
I knew as a boy--a freedom from the sense of duties and
responsibilities, of work to be done, and of disagreeable things to be
faced; the kind of contentment I used to have when I was reading lives
of artists, or looking at prints of famous pictures, or myself trying
to draw. It is possible that this mood is not such a strange one with
many people as with me, when it comes, I feel grateful to the powers
that rule life Since boyhood, I have never known it in the north. Out
of Rome, perhaps only in fine weather on the Mediterranean. But in Rome
is its perfection."
"I thought you preferred the north," said Miriam.
"Because I so often choose to work there? I can do better work when I
take subjects in wild scenery and stern climates, but when my thoughts
go out for pleasure, they choose Italy. I don't enjoy myself in the
Hebrides or in Norway, but what powers I have are all brought out
there. Here I am not disposed to work. I want to live, and I feel that
life can be a satisfaction in itself without labour. I am naturally the
idlest of men. Work is always pain to me. I like to dream pictures; but
it's terrible to drag myself before the blank canvas."
Miriam gazed at the Tiber.
"Do these palaces," he asked, "ever make you wish you owned them? Did
you ever imagine yourself walking among the marbles and the pictures
with the sense of this being your home?"
"I have wondered what that must be. But I never wished it had fallen to
my lot."
"No? You are not ambitious?"
"Not in that way. To own a palace such as this would make one
insignificant."
"That is admirably true! I should give it away, to recover
self-respect. Shakespeare or Michael Angelo might live here and make it
subordinate to him; I should be nothing but the owner of the palace.
You like to feel your individuality?"
"Who does not?"
"In you, I think, it is strong."
Miriam smiled a little, as if she liked the compliment. Before either
spoke again, other visitors came to look at the view, and disturbed
them.
"I shan't ask you to come anywhere to-morrow," said Mallard, when they
had again talked for awhile of pictures. "And the next day Mrs. Elgar
will be here."
She looked at him.
"That wouldn't prevent me from going to a gallery--if you thought of
it."
"You will have much to talk of. And your stay in Rome won't be long
after that."
Miriam made no reply.
"I wish your brother had been coming," he went on. "I should have liked
to hear from him about the book he is writing."
"Shall you not be in London before long?" she asked, without show of
much interest.
"I think so, but I have absolutely no plans. Probably it is raining
hard in England, or even snowing. I must enjoy the sunshine a little
longer. I hope your health won't suffer from the change of climate."
"I hope not," she answered mechanically.
"Perhaps you will find you can't live there?"
"What does it matter? I have no ties."
"No, you are independent; that is a great blessing."
Chatting as if of indifferent things, they left the gallery.